Words of Love (13 page)

As she and Brett slowly turned, taking in the chamber, Frederico kept his gun trained on her but his eyes darted all around.

The room was the size of a small bedroom but one wall was completely covered in Olmec Blue jade. The others were three different shades of jadeite: white, lavender, and finally a deep green like that of the ocean. It was stunning.

In silence, the three of them could only gape. Jesse had no idea what Brett was expecting but this was definitely not how she had pictured it. Other Maya kings were buried in tiny chambers hardly big enough to fit the sarcophagus. The most ornate part of the stone coffin was the cover but it was always made of limestone–and
this
was only the antechamber.

As usual, the glyphs started to come to life.

Jesse stared at the blue jade wall. There was the Red King on his throne, Blood Gatherer sitting cross-legged on his low platform. Whether it was her or the image, she couldn’t tell, but there was a haughty tilt to his profile and his eye seemed to be looking at them.

‘Bring me your confession,’ echoed in her head.

The Blood Gatherer wanted the ultimate confession, the pain and bloodletting typically achieved with a sharp cactus spine. He didn’t want the Jester God and the key that Frederico held was surely going to bring catastrophe.
 

But how?

And how could they escape it?

She quickly scanned the rest of the room.

There was the Red King’s daughter on the adjacent lavender wall. Also in profile, she wore the ornate headdress and clothes of her lineage. She knelt in front of a large bowl. The gleaming panel reflected the light of Jesse’s lantern and, with Brett’s help, she turned toward it.

The hands of the princess were near her mouth and suddenly Jesse realized what they were seeing. She was pulling a barbed rope through her outstretched tongue–she was letting blood. The bowl at her knees would be lined with paper that would catch the drops that fell and then later they’d be burned as an offering. As Jesse reached out a hand, she felt Brett’s arm tighten on her waist. He had recognized it as well. The barbs in the rope were
cactus
spines.
 

Suddenly, all of the myriad other symbols and glyphs in the room fell away, completely unimportant. Beneath the princess, the final riddle glyphs pulsed into Jesse’s awareness.

“My son, show me the light complexioned woman with her skirt bound up who sells squash,” it read but that’s not what it meant.

“Who sells squash,” Jesse repeated. “But not squash. Not that
cah
.”

“What?” Frederico said from behind them.

“Not that
cah
,” Jesse repeated.

“What’s she saying?” Frederico said, his voice echoing in the chamber.

Jesse’s mind raced.
Cah
was also the white, flint, knife blade but white was also north.

“Nothing,” said Brett, as he and Jesse turned to face him.

Frederico was glaring at them and the pistol was still pointed at her.

“Where’s the Red King?” he said, nearly panting with anticipation.

Brett pointed to the blue jade wall behind him.

Frederico stood to the side so that he could keep them in his peripheral vision. Recessed into the blue panel was the outline of the blue jade tablet he held. Frederico’s eyes got big.

“Where is north?” Jesse whispered to Brett but Frederico had heard in the deathly quiet chamber.

Although he’d been approaching the blue wall, he stopped and looked at her.

“Why do you want to know?” He eyed them both. “What’s important about north?”

It was the only safe place to be, Jesse, thought, but she couldn’t say that.

“On the map,” Brett quickly said. “I had bet that the Red King would be in the north.” He looked at Jesse. “But I was wrong. North is behind us.”

“So the Red King is in the south,” said Frederico, glancing at the blue wall and down at the puzzle piece in his hand.

“Exactly,” said Brett.

Brett understood. Something awful was about to happen and Brett understood.

“Exactly,” Frederico echoed.
 

Slowly, he brought the tablet forward. As he fit it into the slot with a clicking sound, she felt Brett’s arm tug her backward and they pressed into the north wall, the white one.

An awful, high-pitched, grinding sound filled the chamber. Frederico jumped back and looked up at the panel. He started to turn to them as the floor under him suddenly tilted.
 

Jesse felt Brett clutch her to his chest.

The stone slab where Frederico stood was rapidly pivoting, tilting into vertical position as Frederico slid down it into the cavity that waited below. He screamed as he fell and then his scream was suddenly cut off.

Jesse covered her own mouth so she wouldn’t scream as well. But the grinding noise hadn’t stopped. Like a domino effect, the first floor panel triggered the next, in the middle of the room. It pivoted as well and rose to a vertical position. She felt Jason brace himself against the back wall as they waited for their floor panel to do the same but finally the grinding stopped.

Her ears rang in the sudden silence and neither of them moved. The upright middle floor panel in front of them blocked their view of the new cavity that had opened.

“Stay here,” Brett said as he let her go.

“No way,” Jesse said, as she clung to his waist.

Brett looked down at her.

His face, bruised and with a black eye, looked as rattled as she felt but he managed to smile at her.

“Right,” he said, squeezing her tight.

As he leaned, trying to see around the vertical panel, he slowly led them around it. Cautiously, with small steps, they moved toward the new hole in the floor. Brett led them to its edge and they looked down together.

They both gasped.

The first thing she saw was the jade mask. Staring up at her with inlaid eyes of black and white, a perfectly smooth blue mask stared up at the ceiling. It presumably sat on the face of a skeleton lying on its back, but the bones were completely covered with green jade ornaments, jadeite armor, dark green pectoral ornaments, and strands and piles of beaded jewelry of every color. Above the head lay two gold tablets engraved with glyphs and, surrounding the upper body, were the most exquisite incense burners and pottery she had ever seen, perfectly preserved. On each side of his legs were two skeletons, curled on their sides, who were similarly decorated but without masks. Their enormous ear flares lay on exposed white bone. Then Jesse saw what lay at his feet.
 

There, near the first vertical panel was Frederico. He had fallen into a field of obsidian blades. They were enormous, some two feet in length, planted into the stone floor, only inches apart. There must have been hundreds, roughly leaf shaped, pointing upward. Their surgically sharp tips and edges had sliced cleanly through him.

“Oh god,” Jesse whispered into the silence.

The floor where he lay must have had a slight slope to it because his blood ran into two channels that then flowed toward the Red King, split apart at his feet, and then traveled past his torso to unite above his head.
 

“The Blood Gatherer,” Brett whispered. “He’s lived up to his name.”

Suddenly, she began to tremble. Before she knew what was happening, Brett had picked her up.

“Brett, what–”

“We’re going back to camp,” he said.

As Brett had carried her back to camp, Jesse hadn’t realized how utterly exhausted she was. Though she had protested at first, she’d quickly looped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. At some point her eyes had closed but as he laid her down on the mattress, she couldn’t help but remember Frederico and her eyes flew open.

She was laying on Brett’s bed and he was bent over her.

“I’m going to get the med kit,” he said, standing up.

“
No
,” she said, catching his hand. “Don’t go.”

He stopped and took her hand in both of his.

“I need to look at your foot,” he said quietly, rubbing her hand.

She tugged at him.

“Please,” she whispered. “Just stay here. Just…just hold me.”

She scooted to the side to make room, still holding on to him.

He seemed torn and she saw his eyes glance toward the tent flap but finally he climbed onto the bed and laid down facing her. She immediately curled into him, burying her face in his chest as he wrapped his arms around her. The intense emotions of the day washed over her as she closed her eyes tight–the fear and the pain, the total shock at the Red King. As the trembling began again, she quietly started to cry.

“I’m so sorry, Jesse,” Brett whispered into her ear as he drew her closer. “You’re safe now.” He rubbed her back. “I won’t ever let anyone hurt you again,” he whispered hoarsely. He kissed the top of her head. “I’m
so
sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she managed to say. “It was the looters. It was them.”

He stopped rubbing her back.

“I’m sorry about the looters too but that’s not all I’m sorry about,” he said, quietly. He paused and she tried to stop crying. “I’m
so
sorry for what I said.”

Jesse blinked her eyes against his chest and then had to look up at him. He looked down at her and she felt his hand caress her cheek, wiping away the tears.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You had to tell him where the Red King was.”

He smiled, a little sadly now.

“Not that,” he said. “I meant when I said…that we couldn’t be together. That was wrong.”

Wrong?

“When you left,” he said, his eyes drifting toward the tent fabric as though he were looking into the cavern. “I saw life without you. It was… It was…” He looked into her eyes, their faces close. “
Empty
.”

She remembered now when he’d told Frederico about the Red King. He’d said he was sorry then but not about the Red King. He’d tossed the blue jade tablet as though it’d been a brick. He hadn’t hesitated.

“I know how this must sound,” he said, with the sad smile again. “You’d have every right not to believe me. To never forgive me but–”

She kissed him–with tears still coming down her face and her lips trembling, she lightly kissed him. As though she’d stunned him, he didn’t move. She pressed her lips softly against his and slowly his eyes closed. Finally, he kissed her back–almost imperceptibly at first. His lips clung to hers, barely moving, lingering. And then, though she didn’t want him to, he drew back. She looked at his lips as they began to smile and she watched as the most impossible words came from them.

“I love you, Jesse,” he whispered.

She looked into his eyes, the one slightly red and puffy. He gazed at her intently as though he was trying to read every emotion–but there was only one.

“I love you, Brett,” she said. “I think maybe from the start.”

He truly did smile now but, rather than kiss her, he drew them closer together. She tucked her head under his chin and felt his chest against her face. His heart was racing and she smiled against the thrumming. They stayed like that for minutes until finally he drew back.

“The med kit,” he said quietly and, this time, she let him go.

When Brett came back with the med kit, Jesse was already asleep, but this couldn’t wait. An infection in the jungle could be deadly, even if they’d be heading for civilization in the morning.

As he started to remove her shoe, she jerked awake.

“Sorry,” he quickly said.

“Oh, Brett,” she said, as she sat up with a hand to her chest, blinking at him. “No, that’s okay.”

He was crouching next to the foot of the bed, the med kit box on the ground next to him.

“I really do need to do this,” he said, laying his hand on her leg.
 

He waited for her to get her bearings.

“I know,” she said, lowering her hand. “I know.”

He’d started with the good foot, just to check it. The shoe came off easily and, as he expected, there was nothing wrong. Then he untied the laces of the other shoe and slowly tugged at the heel. As it came off, she sucked in a breath and gripped the blanket on both sides of her. Finally, it pulled free and they both breathed a sigh of relief.

It looked like the puncture hadn’t gone deep but Brett knew it needed to be cleaned.

“Okay,” he said. He washed his hands with a wad of gauze and a bottle of purified water, mixed with a little alcohol. Then he picked up a new piece of gauze and looked at her steadily. “Here we go.”

She nodded, still gripping the blanket.

This was going to hurt. Anything on the foot was going to hurt. That’s why Frederico had picked it. Brett felt his muscles tighten at the thought. If the Red King hadn’t killed him, he’d have done it himself, beat him, and put a blade to
his
feet.

There was no sense in delaying this.

He held the gauze below the wound and poured the water and alcohol into it.
 

Again, Jesse sucked in a breath and slowly blew it out. Brett kept pouring water until all the dried blood washed away and the wound looked clean. When he finished, he looked up at her. She’d closed her eyes but now she opened them, her lips pressed into a straight line.

“Done with the bad part,” he said, putting down the water. She exhaled and hunched over. “You okay?” he said, laying a hand on her leg. She nodded. “Good,” he said. “Some antibiotic cream.” He squeezed a little on his finger and gently smoothed it over the puncture. She winced a little and her foot jerked. “Done,” he said, putting the cream away.

He quickly wound her foot with gauze, cut it, and tied it off.

“That feels better,” she breathed, relaxing.

He picked up the tube of first aid cream.

“If you thought that felt better,” he said standing up. He showed her the tube and smiled. “Lay back,” he said, sitting next to her on the edge of the bed.

Although the cream only had a little bit of pain relief medication, it had to help.

Slowly, she lay back.

As he lifted, the bottom of her tank top, she tensed. It suddenly occurred to him what this might remind her of.