The Bloodgate Warrior (7 page)

“Yes. If you hurt her, I’ll find a way to make you suffer.”

“Her suffering would give me pain a hundred thousand times greater. I shall never hurt her.”

Natalie didn’t look convinced. The best way to defuse her concerns was humor, so I leaned over and whispered into her ear. “You wouldn’t begrudge a friend getting laid tonight, would you?”

She spluttered, laughing but trying to maintain her fierce demeanor. “Is that what this is, Cass? You’re going to get lucky tonight? Well, by all means, take her away, Mr. Studly.”

He inclined his head, but we didn’t head straight upstairs, to my relief and disappointment. Instead, he led me over to the garden courtyard. A subtle jerk of his chin sent the rest of the men backing away. One of the Rojases offered Natalie his arm. “May I see you to your room, miss?”

She shot a sultry wink my direction and took the man’s arm. “Absolutely, Mr. Rojas. I’m feeling a little shaky. You might have to carry me.”

Everyone disappeared, leaving me alone with the man I’d been dreaming about for months. An awkward silence descended as he seated me in a bench beside the central fountain. He remained standing, close, but not touching me.

I searched his face, trying to figure out what he wanted, but the shadows let him keep his secrets. He was here. Alive. Walking and talking just like a normal man.

The Guatemalan national hero who died hundreds of years ago.

A Mayan god.

Here. Looking at me like a man ready to savor every naked inch of me. Yet he remained aloof, watching me with those dark eyes.

I must have made some small sound of disbelief, for he asked, “What is it, Cassie?”

“I thought we went over my dislike for that name.”

He tilted his head. “So we did. But then as you were pulled from the dream, you shouted that I was free to use this name. Would you rather I call you something else, Ms. Gonzales?”

“No.” I blew out a disgusted sigh. Arguing about what he called me was beyond stupid. He could call me baby or sugar or honey bunch for all I cared, as long as he…

“Although you are very sweet, I don’t particularly care for any of those names for you. But if that’s your wish, I shall endeavor to call you honey bunch.”

I winced and shook my head. “I forgot you could do that. Honey bunch is the absolute stupidest thing you could call me. Cassie is fine.”

He finally sat down beside me, still not touching but closely enough I could smell the tropical scent of his hair. “Cassie,” he breathed out softly. “What’s wrong?”

I started to deny that anything troubled me, but the awkwardness still hung between us. In dreams, I’d wallowed all over this man, but now that he was here, breathing and walking and talking… “I guess I don’t know what to do with you.”

Now it was his turn to laugh. “That’s not a concern that we share, Cassie. I know exactly what to do with you, when you’re ready. But you’re not ready at this time, and I don’t know why.”

“I don’t either. Not really. It just feels…”

“Too real, perhaps?”

Silently, I nodded. He was
here
. As thankful as I was not to be crazy, I didn’t know if I could deal with the reality.

“In dreams, you could do whatever you wished with me, and on the morrow awake and go about your life as though nothing had happened. Now I’m real, here, in the flesh. You’ll have to open your eyes when you awake and see that I’m there beside you. You must then acknowledge what we’ve done. This isn’t a dream, where you were free to be what you want without worry of judgment or misunderstanding.”

My hands started to tremble, so I clutched them together in my lap. Panic made my palms sweat, my heart race. I’d yearned for him with every fiber of my being, dying a little each time I woke up without him, but now…
I don’t know if I’m brave enough to let him really see me like that. So…vulnerable, needy…weak, and why the hell am I thinking like this when I know full well he can
—

“You’re far from weak.” His voice hardened, heavy with a hint of thunder. “No weak woman would have left her life behind to come to a foreign country and track me down. A weak woman wouldn’t have believed in the strength of our dream and risked her friendship and life to find me.” He gripped my chin and pulled my face around, forcing me to look into his eyes. “Even when you surrendered your will to mine in the dream, you did so only after challenging me in every way possible. Please, lady, never regret giving me such a great, incredible gift.”

The trembling spread up my arms to my shoulders. “What gift?”

“Do you know why I’m considered a hero to these people? Not because I won the great battle, because I didn’t. I died. My people were obliterated. The once great Maya were destroyed tribe by tribe, city by city, until we’re nothing but crumbling pyramids lost in the jungles. Yet the survivors of those once mighty generations still remember the day that I lost my battle. Not with shame or pity or even anger that I failed, but with pride. Why is that, Cassie?”

“Because you gave them hope that you would come back again?”

“They hope, yes, but that’s not why they look to me as their hero. They’ve always had the hope that Kukulkan would return and bring the Maya back to full strength and honor in this land. We gave them the promise of our Return thousands of years ago. Técun was only a man to these people, a man who failed and died at the hands of Alvarado. Why revere him?”

I didn’t know. I shrugged slightly, trying to figure out what he meant.

“When I came to the battle and stared down at the valley of El Pinal, I felt the weight of approaching death. I knew my time here was over. We had the greater numbers, but the Spaniards’ weapons were so advanced that they might as well have been magical. More magical than what I could do alone.

“The time for magic had come to an end. Most of my kind had already retired through the gates, taking many of their people to live in peace in a new world. Some stayed to fight, though, to stand and remember all those who died. All those who suffered and delayed the battle in order to give the rest time to flee through the gates.

“Don’t you see, Cassie? Técun was a hero not because he won, but because he stood and fought,
even knowing he would lose
. As you fight me.”

Startled, I jerked my gaze back to his face.

“A woman smaller, physically weaker than a warrior honed by battle for countless centuries, yet you fight me with all your will. That is courage, honey bunch.”

I couldn’t help but snort then. “That’s different. You fought for a cause, for your people. I fight because…” My cheeks burned and I averted my gaze.

He leaned closer so his breath fluttered against my bare shoulder where his mark glittered in the moonlight. I swore the tattoo moved, wings rustling beneath my flesh. Goose bumps raced down my arms.

“You want me to defeat you before I lay you down, which makes me getting very lucky indeed.”

The modern slang Natalie and I had whispered spoken in his distinct accent made me laugh, taking away my lingering embarrassment and doubt. Without my mind in the way of his advances, though, my body went shivery with alarm, damp with arousal and tense with the urge to fight.

“Shhh.” He smoothed his hand up and down my bare arm, so gentle yet now fully assured of his right to touch me. “Not yet, Cassie. Tell me about the creature. There’s something bothering me about finding it here, just as I came to you. Did it hunt you?”

I frowned, trying to remember. “No. I don’t think so. It was just there, shambling along. I grabbed Nat and we ran toward the door. That’s when it turned and started to follow me. Now that I think about it… It seemed surprised.”

He stood and scanned the garden. “So if you were not its original target, there’s only one other thing the demon could have sought. Where was it headed before it came after you?”

“It came into the dining room and was headed straight for the other door. We ran for the side door and it came after us instead.”

“But both doors eventually would have led it… here.” He turned to face me, his dark eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “Have you a favorite place here in the courtyard?”

Surprised, I started to shake my head, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered. I’d loved this garden from the first day of our stay. It was beautiful. Why shouldn’t I? “We’ve only been here a few days, but Natalie and I often come out here to sit by the fountain.”

“Then perhaps there’s magic here, something that drew the creature.”

Magic. That made me remember one of Leonor’s entries about the fountain. “I think something might have been hidden in the fountain by Luisa’s daughter. She wrote about it in a journal that’s been passed down to my family. What made Alvarado famous in
La Noche Triste
?”

Técun gave me a grim, hard smile. “The
Salto de Alvarado
. He used his spear to leap across one of the causeways in the retreat from Tenochtitlán. If only our brothers had been able to kill him then…” He shook his head. “If that spear is hidden here, we must retrieve it.”

He reached down to his calf and pulled a slim but wicked-looking knife out of his boot. “Let’s see if I can find the creature’s prize. If her magic is concealing it, you may be the only one who can free it.”

He drew the knife across the pad of his thumb, and my mind locked up. I’d never seen anyone deliberately cut himself. He made a low sound more a moan than anything I’d ever heard from him before, drawing my eyes up to his face.

Eyes closed, head tilted back, his body braced in a wide stance, he looked like he was in the throes of some really good head, not bleeding.

I edged closer, drawn irresistibly as the moon calls the tides. “Are you okay?”

“I’d forgotten.” His voice vibrated and hummed, low and bass.

“Forgotten what?”

He shook himself out of the daze enough to give me the cocky warrior smile that made me want to punch him in the solar plexus and then seize his bottom lip in my teeth. Holding his injured hand out above the fountain, he dripped blood into the water.

Uh-oh. I was starting to realize exactly what he was doing. “Are you opening the gate again?”

“Precisely. Not a traveling gate, though. Do you see anything in the water?”

It’d never dawned on me that this fountain very well could be original to the
palacio
and Leonor’s secret safe. Could she have really hidden something here for over five hundred years? The bottom circular tier contained flood lights beneath the water. A smaller, higher tier spilled into the lower, providing a beautiful water feature for the garden. Perfectly trimmed hedges combined with palm trees and lush growth, a semiprivate oasis in the midst of Antigua.

“No. If Alvarado’s spear really is here, why do you want it?”

“Any weapon that bears my blood is a powerful tool. The spear that took my mortal life will possess a destructive force greater than any weapon your technology could create. With it in my hands, I could hold back all the powers of Xibalba.”

I hesitated, wondering if he’d really thought about my heritage. I was a very distant descendant of his greatest enemy. “The woman who built this hotel was Alvarado’s daughter, and my great-great-something-grandmother.”

“Did you ever wonder why Xicoténcatl came to be with Alvarado, a man all Maya despised?”

I couldn’t help but wince at his choice of words. Turning my attention to the fountain so I wouldn’t have to see his reaction, I trailed my fingers in the water. Still warm from the day’s sunlight, the water felt uncomfortably alive, clinging to my skin like a glove. “I assumed she was tribute, given to him to save her people.”

“She was given to their enemy to save her people, yes. But she possessed a secret that Alvarado never knew, which allowed her to protect and save as many people as possible.”

I could feel his gaze on me, heavy and intent. His nearness made me think about our conversation earlier about fighting, but I didn’t really want to challenge him that way. However, tormenting him sounded like a pretty good idea.

My cheeks and neck felt too hot, so I splashed a little water on me. He sucked in a breath, encouraging me to keep teasing him.

“Xicoténcatl was a powerful sorceress specializing in a particular kind of magic.”

I sat on the edge of the fountain and scooped more water to splash the tops of my thighs bared by my dress.

“You do realize my blood is in that water?”

I reached for him, threading my fingers through the belt loops of his jeans to bring him closer. “I don’t care. It’s just a drop or two.”

“My blood carries magic.” His voice thickened, rough and low, doing terrible things to my insides. I felt shaken, stirred and more than ready to be guzzled down. “Mixed with her magic in the water, you’re playing with a veritable explosion.”

I smiled up at him as I inched my fingers over to his zipper. “I’m counting on it.”

His hands closed over mine. “You’re not worried about being seen?”

I glanced up at the hotel surrounding us on all sides. The place had gone still and quiet after the zombie attack. According to José, there hadn’t been many visitors to the area thanks to earthquakes and the viral scare down at Lake Atitlán. If anyone was still here other than Natalie, I’d be shocked.

I tugged at my fingers, but his grip didn’t lessen. My sultry smile slipped, my eyes narrowing. “There’s hardly anyone here and the trees are thick and tall enough that no one would see anything.”

Soothingly, he rubbed his thumbs on my palms, even though he didn’t release me. “You’re affected by the magic of this place, whether you know it or not. I cannot take advantage of what you’re unaware of.”

“I’m not…”

“So you often play in fountains?”

Without even realizing it, I’d slipped back deeper into the water. The lower half of my dress was soaked, my rump decidedly soggy.
And I didn’t even feel it.

Or maybe I did, because warm, molten heat flowed between my thighs. The more I looked up into the harsh angles of his face, the more I ached.

He pulled me up out of the water. I clung to him, pressing against him even though I was soaked. His erection thudded against me and I groaned out loud. “I have some decidedly wicked things I want to do to you.”