Phantom Series Boxed Set (89 page)

“At daylight, we begin,” he said.

“But you’re not solid in the light,” she argued.

“This will work to our advantage.” He struggled to remain as cool and forthright as he guessed Mariah would if their roles were reversed. “When I am in the phantom state, I can expand my senses further than I can when I am corporeal. I will rely only upon my own gifts of the earth.”

“Don’t you need to rest?”

“There is time enough. I will be fine.”

“You feel stronger in this jungle, don’t you?”

He nodded. He’d known from his first step into the wild environment that he was home—or at least as close to home as he could be while thousands of miles away. This place was not Valoren. The topography, the climate and the rhythm were as different from his homeland as night was to day. But as in the Gypsy enclave, the spirits of the earth roamed freely here. They had not been shunted aside by civilization and the creations of man. The native people—the Mayans and their progeny—borrowed the land and treated it with awe. Like the Romani, he sensed that the people of this region had not claimed the land to conquer it, but to live on it for as long as the spirits allowed.

“This land calls to me,” he admitted. “The magic is strong. We will find your coins.”

“But you told me that your…ability…is about feelings,” she countered. “Last time I checked, coins don’t have emotions.”

“Do you?” he snapped. “Or perhaps you only choose to deny them.”

Cruelly, he’d cut straight to the heart of her most vulnerable weakness, and he could feel the battle brewing within her. The war between indignation and denial raged like cannon fire.

As he buttoned his shirt, she cleared her throat and stood, her emotions suddenly as naked and raw to him as her luscious body. She was hurt. Deeply hurt. And he’d caused her pain.

“I don’t deny anything,” she said. “I’m about the most honest woman you’ll ever meet.”

“Honest with me?” he asked. “To the extent that you can be, yes, you are very forthright. But until you learn to be completely honest with yourself, you’ll never share your heart with anyone.”

She lifted her chin defiantly. “Maybe I don’t need to share my heart with some man in order to be happy.”

“Maybe if you stopped considering me as simply ‘some man,’ your life would bring you more joy.”

Rafe grabbed a few dead branches from nearby, fed them to the fire, and then unrolled the bag she’d explained earlier would be used for sleeping. Though flimsy and light, the cushioned fabric might add comfort to the mossy jungle floor, so he tossed it flat on the ground beside the fire, stretched out and folded his arm over his head to block out the orange glow from the flames.

He breathed in and concentrated, evoking the old tricks he’d learned from his mother and from the
Chovihano
to prevent the emotions of others from overwhelming him. He’d never experienced the full upheaval and conflict of someone he wasn’t touching, but he supposed his increased intimacy with Mariah, the magic that connected him to the stone and the enchantments in the jungle all around them had amplified his abilities. Slowly, brick by brick, he constructed a barrier that restored the silence inside his head.

Mariah stood still as the night for a long time before he heard the rustle of her movements. He peeked one eye open and watched her slip into fresh lingerie, soft slacks and a snug, long-sleeved shirt. She retrieved a sleeping bag, but did not settle down. Instead, she stood just outside the glimmer of the fire, as if she couldn’t decide whether to stretch out near him or retreat to the other side.

With a sigh, he patted the grassy ground beside him.

She frowned.

He shrugged, put his arm back over his eyes, crossed his feet at the ankles and tried, yet again, to sleep. Yes, his muscles and joints protested against the long tramp through the jungle—not to mention the vigorous exercise of making love—but his mind whirled with the realization that while Mariah might have saved him from an eternity buried beneath Valoren soil, she would never be part of his future.

If he had a future. At the moment, he had nothing—no homeland, no family. Nothing to compel him to find a way out of Rogan’s curse except the curse itself.

Exhaustion finally began to overtake him by the time he heard the snap of Mariah unrolling her sleeping bag. She found a spot as close to him as possible, but without intruding on his space. The scent of her fresh, clean skin taunted him, made him regret invading her emotions and causing the rift between them that left her so confused. Mariah wasn’t uncaring, but just as he was unaccustomed to the technology and changes in the twenty-first century, so was she unfamiliar with the act of opening her heart.

Of course, for him to teach her fully about the pleasures of sharing a spirit with another, he’d have to first become human again. And to do that, he’d have to use Rogan’s black magic to find the coins.

He’d simply have to deal with the repercussions as best he knew how.

***

“Summon the coins again,” he said.

Mariah pressed the activation code into the global positioning system yet again. Standing under a break in the jungle canopy so that a single beam of sunlight seared the back of her neck, she wiped the sweat pooling above her lips while the mechanism searched for its companion.

This had been the strangest day in her entire life. She’d marched for hours, tossing aside maps and following Rafe’s instincts regarding which paths to follow—even when no paths existed. Her hands burned from wielding the machete, and she wouldn’t be surprised if her feet had swelled to twice their size inside her boots. Eventually, the path had become so treacherous, she’d left the burro and the bulk of their belongings in a clearing about a half mile back. With both food and water nearby, she’d removed Pedro’s bridle and hoped that if a predator came near, the animal could escape. Of course, for all she knew, the donkey would use his wicked sense of direction and find his way home the moment her scent faded from the breeze.

Didn’t much matter if she lost her stuff. She expected that the plane had already been confiscated by the villagers or the
federales
. Besides, if she didn’t find the coins, a couple of bottles of water, a few changes of clothes and dehydrated food weren’t going to make any difference. Velez would have her killed.

In his increasingly silent way, Rafe had assured her they were safe, protected by the spirits of the jungle. During their tedious journey, he told her about the other entities haunting the jungle—dark eyed and dark skinned like him, yet native to land in the way he was foreign. They greeted him with gentle nods and pointed the way. She couldn’t believe that ghosts of the ancient Mayans would help her recover coins that had once been theirs, but she couldn’t worry about supernatural ownership rights right now. She’d been awakened this morning by the sound of a helicopter buzzing not too far from where they’d slept beside the billabong. Someone either knew she was here—or would soon.

Thing was, it made no sense for Velez to come after her. He’d hired her to find the coins. She was in the jungle to recover his treasure—on her own dime. Why would he put out more capital to retrieve what she was pursuing on his behalf? In her entire career, Mariah had never cheated a single client out of what they’d paid her to retrieve.

She wondered about Ben and Cat, but she’d made very quiet inquiries before she’d left the States, and her intel placed her ex and his lover at the university where Ben worked. He’d have no way of tracking her here.

That left the people who’d attacked her in the hotel back in Texas. All morning, she’d racked her brain for exactly what the thug had said to her.

Thought you could steal from us, did you?

Those words could come only from someone hired by the government official she’d lifted the coins from—except…the guy wasn’t rich. He wasn’t even influential outside of his tiny corner of the world. And if he had enough money to hire muscle in the States to track her down, why had he left the coins so vulnerable in the first place? The man lived high on the hog by some standards, but he hadn’t spent a single penny on security. Mariah was certain he had no idea of the true value of the stash.

Was there, then, a fourth player in this increasingly dangerous game?

The instruments on her tracking system beeped impotently. The range on the device was supposed to pinpoint the item with the matching frequency within one mile. Though the signal had grown stronger in the past fifteen minutes, it was nowhere near specific enough for her to know how to proceed.

“This isn’t working,” she groused.

A whisper of a touch pressed at the small of her back, propelling her a few feet forward until she fell under the cool shadows of the treetops.

“Rest, Mariah. I shall return.”

“Return? Where are you…?”

But a second later, she could feel that he was gone. Instinctively, she reached into the dilly bag and took out Rogan’s marker, clutching it between her hands. The warmth she associated with Rafe still buzzed against her skin, and the fire opal, when held up to the dappled sunlight, glowed with the fire that had won it its name.

Assured that Rafe hadn’t somehow left her for good, she unscrewed the top of her canteen and drank. The cool water reminded her of the river, of the falls and of the lovemaking she and Rafe had shared under the silver moonlight. She’d never been one to fall for romantic clichés, but damned if she didn’t totally understand the appeal now. The sensations of the humid air, the churning pool and Rafe’s amazing body had her antsy all over again. She was suddenly very aware of the sweat pooling between her breasts and the nearly imperceptible breeze tickling the hairs at the back of her neck. She removed the hat she’d donned against the strong Mexican sun and waved the wide brim in front of herself, ignoring the buzz of mosquitoes that flitted nearby, confused by the intermingled scents of human flesh and bug repellent.

She took another swig of water, then splashed some across her neck, moaning appreciatively at the refreshing trickle of coolness down her shirt. They had to find the coins soon, if for no other reason than to save her from melting. Not just physically, but emotionally. Like it or not (and she decidedly did not), Rafe Forsyth was starting to get to her.

“Mariah.”

His voice made her jump. She twisted around but saw, appropriately, nothing. Rafe sounded distant, as if he were only marginally tethered to the stone she’d dropped into her lap.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Follow me.”

The stone rocked against her thighs. Knowing somehow that the GPS tracker was no longer necessary, she shoved it and Rogan’s marker into the bag and marched toward the northwest, wielding the machete with renewed vigor. She must have hiked a half mile before she felt Rafe’s invisible hand on her elbow, tugging her deeper into the jungle than she thought one measly blade could penetrate.

Amazingly, the thick wall of leaves began to rustle, undulate and part. A tremor vibrated through her—whether from the excess of magic or something else, she didn’t know. Machete at her side and the dilly bag with the stone and extra water and supplies on her shoulder, she walked into the utter darkness, propelled by Rafe’s continued assurances that she was moving in the right direction.

When a break finally came, the trees behind her folded inward and trapped her in a scene that might have come straight out of an archaeologist’s dream.

A flat-topped pyramid rose up to the top of the jungle canopy. The apex was just shy of the height of the tallest branches, as if the jungle itself wished to keep this amazing find hidden from the outside world. Thick vines crept up the tall, thick blocks of sun-baked limestone, and the carvings, though darkened by moss, remained visible.

What she saw next made her stumble.

Rafe emerged from a doorway that had been hidden by an illusion of the stone.

He shimmered. He was not solid as he was in the night, but his body was outlined in light that did not come from the sun, which barely mottled the overgrown clearing with specks of golden light. The colors that surrounded him—vivid greens and deep blues and warm coppers—nearly hurt her eyes.

“What…?”

His smile stole her breath.

“The magic here is powerful,” he said, and his voice shook the leaves around her, as if imbued with command equal to the supernatural forces. “From the land, the sky, the jungle itself.”

She chanced a step forward.

“How are you doing this? I can see you.”

He raised his chin, bathing his face in the light that came from within rather than from above. “I’m drawing on the native magic. Tenuous threads weave together the spirits in this jungle with the structures they built centuries ago. Civilization has broken some of the connections, but the path here was strong. I simply followed the strands. Use your device now, Mariah. See what you find.”

Device? The splendor of Rafe’s appearance stunned her. More than anything, she wanted to touch him and be touched by him. Almost absentmindedly, she slipped her hand into the bag as she walked up the stone steps of the pyramid, which had alcoves and indentations at many different levels, as if statues had once stood as sentinels for this ancient place of worship. Or perhaps hid soldiers from the tribes, caked with limestone mud so that they blended in. Her hand brushed against Rogan’s marker, which, while still warm, had cooled considerably. She found the GPS tracker, but could barely muster the energy to hold it in her hand.

She approached him cautiously. She raised her fingers to his face, but did not touch him.

“May I?” she asked, unsure why she sought permission. Even amid the wash of light, his eyes glowed with his need to be touched by her.

“Please,” he responded.

His flesh was not solid, but he wasn’t ethereal, either. His skin reverberated with warmth, and the vibrations traveled across her nerve endings until she was nearly engulfed in the magic. He took her moment of surprise to wrap her in his translucent arms, pull her tight against his chest and kiss her.

In that instant, Mariah experienced sensations beyond her wildest imagination. He was against her, inside her, behind her, above her—all at the same time. Heat flooded through her, and her senses exploded so that she could smell not only the musk of his skin, but the scent of the flowers blooming on a vine hanging yards above them. She tasted his tongue against hers with the same deliciousness as the flavors of the moist jungle wind. Unbidden and unexplained, tears filled her eyes from the conflagration of emotions she couldn’t begin to process—euphoria, deep despair, intense need and complete surrender.