Christ, he’d wanted her so badly even before he’d known what she looked like, which was a testimony to the powerful connection between them. Yes, that night in Bacalar—touching and kissing her body so intimately—had been the most unexpected, pleasurable experience of his life. He could only imagine what it would have been like if they’d been able to finish what they had started. But his lust didn’t come close to the depth of emotion he now felt for her.
He’d never have another sane or happy moment again without her.
He had to get her back.
Though would she want him after everything he’d done so horribly wrong? He’d refused to listen to her countless times, he’d unjustly directed his frustration and anger toward her when she’d simply been trying to help him, and he’d thrown this other woman in her face after she’d told him about the most painful moment of her life. Then… she still sacrificed herself for him.
Gods, he was such a coldhearted bastard. He’d let his hatred for his father and fear of losing his brother consume him.
He could only hope for a chance to make amends. Yes, whatever it took, he would find a way to get her back without freeing his father.
Perhaps the gods will know what to do. Because this Margaret woman sure as hell isn’t going to help me.
He looked at Margaret, who seemed lost in her own thoughts, and then at his watch. They were still two hours away. He went back to his e-mail, hoping for a short distraction. There was a note from his brother, who was on a business trip to Los Angeles and none the wiser that his life had been on the line or that their father was a demon and had been sucked into a portal. Antonio would have to explain everything when the time came.
Then Antonio saw that one of the parts he’d ordered for the circuit board was out of stock. “Son of a bitch,” he seethed. “Eight weeks for one
pinche circuito
!”
“I wouldn’t bother, yanno.”
He looked up at Margaret, who stared with intense dark eyes, sipping a glass of whiskey. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“The equipment can’t open the portal. It never could.”
“What do you mean?” he asked again, this time scathing.
She turned her gaze out the window.
She wasn’t going to answer.
“What did I ever do to you?” he asked.
She didn’t respond, but that wouldn’t stop him from giving her a piece of his mind.
“You nearly drove me mad while I tried to free you. Do you have any idea what I went through? Do you? I went blind. I had my throat ripped out and died. I turned into a vampire and killed—yes,
killed
a goddess, who, by the way, happens to be the woman I love and have now lost! Lost saving you! So if you think for one moment that I won’t hurt you to get her back, you are mistaken.”
She glanced at him, her face a vision of tranquility. “I know you won’t believe me, but Ixtab getting sucked into the portal was never part of my plan.”
“Then help me get her back. Tell me how to reopen the portal,” he demanded, standing over her.
She glared fearlessly with her deep brown eyes. “Do you think I’m an idiot? You think I’m going to tell you anything before I have what I want? I’ve waited over eighty years, watching the man I love suffer.” She looked out the window. “You’ll get your answers, Antonio, when I have justice for Chaam.”
“What if the gods don’t give you what you want?” Whatever the hell that was.
“Then it’s simple. You will not get Ixtab back.”
Like hell he wouldn’t.
* * *
Near Sedona, Arizona
Two hours later, the sky swirled with brilliant shades of blazing oranges and reds as the plane touched down just after sunrise on the dusty airstrip at the Uchben base. For a few moments, Antonio imagined it was a sign that the heavens were filled with contempt for his having let Ixtab slip through his fingers. And they had a right to be angry with him.
You fool.
The soldiers, who’d flown the plane, wasted little time ushering him and Margaret into a black Hummer and getting them to the estate a few kilometers away, situated atop a hill. Antonio had never been to this part of the country, but it looked exactly as one might imagine. Large cactus jutting from the ground like thorny sentinels, watching over miles of open sandy-brown dirt, the sharp angles of the buttes off in the distance, the straggly dry vegetation scattered across the desert floor like confetti after a big parade. Somehow the barren surroundings only made Antonio feel more anxious. This was not the sort of place he imagined his fate being decided.
The vehicle pulled up to the imposing, arched entrance of the sandstone-colored adobe home.
“This way. Everyone is waiting in the summit room,” said a soldier in a Scottish accent. He wore his red hair in a long braid and was dressed in black military garb. He didn’t wear any insignia but seemed to be in charge. “And I ken put that in the vault fer ya.” He reached for Antonio’s bag, which contained the tablet and his notebooks.
Antonio held on; knowing the Maaskab were after it, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to let the tablet go. “I don’t think I caught your name.”
“Gabrán. They call me, Gabrán.” The man’s voice was filled to the brim with don’t-fuck-with-me tone. Antonio approved and handed over the bag.
They followed Gabrán inside, down several long hallways, through the estate and finally to a set of enormous, hand-carved double doors. A loud ruckus radiated from the other side.
Antonio heard Penelope’s voice. “Shhh. They’re here.”
Gabrán opened the door and there, standing around a giant stone slab table was a group of very odd-looking circus types—a tall man with long silver hair down to his ankles, wearing a giant jade headdress; another man with a large round belly, wearing nothing but a pair of white underpants; another woman had an enormous beehive atop her head; and a few others who were ready to attend a costume party. If it weren’t for Penelope and Kinich standing at the head of the table—who he’d already met, along with Fate—Antonio would have believed that these were not in fact deities, but people who’d escaped from the insane asylum.
“Is that a burro with a sombrero standing in the corner?” Antonio asked the cold-faced soldier holding open the door.
“’Tis,” was his only reply.
Diablos. Qué locos.
“After you, Ms. O’Hare.” Antonio gestured to the woman, who now wore a plain baby-blue sweater and a denim skirt his Kirstie had given her. She looked like she should be attending classes at college, not orchestrating an epic blackmail of the gods to free her “king.” Of course, nothing ever appeared as it should in this world.
“Maggie, call me Maggie.” She smiled at Antonio, though he was in no mood to smile back.
“Hello, Maggie. I’m Penelope Trudeau and this is—”
“I know who you are.” Maggie’s eyes swept the rooms as she held out her palm, signaling for silence. “Kinich, Belch, K’ak, Fate, Bees, Akna, A.C., and that lady—I forget her name.”
“How do you know who we are?” Kinich asked.
“I’ve been trapped inside that portal since 1934,” Maggie replied. “And though you could not see me, I saw just about everything from the realm where I was trapped.”
Belch chimed in, “Did you see this?” He sprang from his chair and showed everyone his backside.
“Yes! We’ve all seen it!” everyone screamed.
With a satisfied grin, Belch sat back down in his throne and returned to his jumbo martini glass—the kind most people used as a decoration to hold candy and such.
Penelope cleared her throat. “My apologies, Maggie. Please continue. Why have you requested an audience?”
Maggie’s dark eyes shuffled around the faces in the room. “As I explained on the phone, Cimil has betrayed you, all of you. Not only am I here to set the record straight and demand justice, I’m here to ensure you free my mate, Chaam.”
A collective gasp erupted.
“Then you’ve wasted your time, woman,” replied Kinich. “He will never be freed. He is evil.”
“Yes. He is. But it’s not Chaam’s fault, nor does he wish to be; that’s why”—Maggie looked right at Antonio—“Ixtab is going to cure him.”
Hisses and objections filled the room.
Maggie slapped her hand on the rough stone table. “Enough! My patience ran out decades ago. You will listen to everything I have to say. You will free Chaam and you will punish Cimil.”
“If you’ve been spying on us, you…
pest,
then you are aware we do not take orders from mortals,” Fate pointed out, cleaning her nails with an arrowhead she’d plucked from her quiver.
“Then you won’t see Ixtab, Guy, and the others again,” Maggie said.
“Silly mortal, we have the tablet.” Fate sighed her words as if she were much too important for this conversation.
Gods, what a snotty woman.
How had Ixtab put up with her for seventy millennia? He’d only been in Fate’s presence a collective hour at best, and already he wanted to lock her in a closet. In fact, her snobby attitude was the reason he’d rejected Fate’s repeated pleas to assist him in his lab when he had met her in New York. Sorry, but he liked his women with a little humility. He liked Ixtab.
Maggie shook her head. “You’re all idiots. The tablet can’t free your men; while they are trapped inside another dimension, it’s a Maaskab spell that holds them there. You must free Chaam and make the trade with the Maaskab if you want them back. But you must cure Chaam before you do it or he’ll return to his evil ways. Ixtab is the only one who can help him, and I’m the only one who knows how to get her back.” She looked at Antonio. “Like I said on the plane, you’re welcome to rebuild your equipment and try, Mr. Acero, although I can guarantee, you will fail. There is only one way to invoke the tablet’s powers.”
Antonio’s mind ran with that statement. He remembered the portal opening at the precise moment Ixtab had entered the room with his father. Was there another variable?
“We will not free Chaam,” Kinich declared.
“Fine. Then our conversation is over. And so is everything else. You! Your baby.” She pointed at Penelope. “Everything! Because I can guarantee that this path you’re on, the path that Cimil created, is leading us all to a very, very bad place.” Maggie turned to leave.
“Wait,” Antonio said to Maggie and then looked at each of the gods. “Ixtab is your sister. Isn’t she worth a few minutes of your goddamned precious time?”
Penelope gently stroked Kinich’s arm. “He’s right, my love. Let’s hear Maggie out.”
Kinich grumbled, but accepted.
Penelope moved to the side and gestured toward the large throne at the head of the table. “Sit, Maggie. We’re all ears.”
Maggie looked around the table, and Antonio couldn’t help but wonder what sort of insane story she was about to tell. For the record, prior to meeting Ixtab, he’d thought his world was pretty damned strange. On the outside, he looked like a rich playboy from a privileged Spanish family, who owned the most prestigious wineries in Spain. In reality, his father was a monster who killed women for sustenance, including Antonio’s own mother. Antonio’s public and private lives couldn’t be more contradictory or bizarre. That’s what he believed, anyway, until he became a vampire—the least eventful part of this story—who loathed the thought of drinking blood before finding out evil Mayan priests made a tasty snack. Add that Ixtab, the Goddess of Suicide—a damned ridiculous title for such a lovely creature—was the love of his life and trapped with his demonic father in another dimension.
Sí. Pretty fucking strange.
Yet somehow, he knew they were only getting started as Maggie cleared her throat and lifted her chin.
“About eighty years ago,” she said, “I accompanied my father, an archaeologist, on a dig in southern Mexico. It was a terrible time in our lives; my mother had passed away only a few months earlier, and unknown to me, my father had become obsessed with bringing her back. Also unknown was that the tablet he’d discovered”—Maggie looked at Antonio—“was no coincidence. Cimil planned for him to find it and made sure he believed it could resurrect the dead.”
“Can it?” asked Penelope.
Maggie nodded. “Yes. It can, though not the way you think; the tablet has the ability to open portals to other points in time in addition to other dimensions. So if one wanted, they could go back and save someone before they die. The problem is returning. The portal only stays open for a short while. So if one doesn’t carry another tablet or have someone to reopen the portal from their point of origin, they might not return. That said, my father never got far enough to figure any of that out. He died before he had the chance to open it.”
“Did Cimil kill him?” Penelope asked, appearing horrified.
“No. Chaam did.” Maggie dropped her head and appeared to be struggling not to cry. “My father had been missing for several days, and I’d been searching the jungle for his excavation site—he’d kept it a secret. Then I got lost and, unfortunately, bumped into a very angry jaguar. When I ran, I fell and hit my head. That’s when Chaam found me.
“At first I thought I’d lost my mind. He told me he was a god, and while I didn’t believe him initially, every time we touched, I saw things. Visions. It took less than one day before I realized the truth; we were meant to be. He knew it, too. But what we didn’t know was that our meeting was all part of Cimil’s plot.”
Antonio now began to feel anxious. There were simply too many parallels to his story, including Cimil’s direct involvement with his finding the tablet, which ultimately led him to Ixtab.
“The details aren’t important,” Maggie explained. “However, Chaam eventually found my father. He’d gone mad and was about to kill a young woman—a friend of mine named Itzel. Chaam was forced to kill him, and Cimil made sure I was there to witness everything.”
“Why would Cimil want all this to happen?” Kinich asked.
Good question.
Because apparently whatever Cimil was up to definitely involved him and Ixtab, too. Bottom line, he didn’t like where this was going.
“Because the events triggered the portal, which sucked me in,” Maggie explained. “Then Cimil told Chaam I’d died only to make him suffer more. Everything she did was so his bond with the Universe would sever. Then she got inside his head and made him do horrible, horrible things, including trying to end the world—which she’s still planning to do. That’s what this is all about! Everything she’s ever done was always about this.”