Part 2 (2/2)

She blew out her cheeks with an explosive puff of air and followed. The pace was much less rapid now as the boy hacked his way through the tangled ma.s.s of greenery, wielding the machete with consummate grace. Mac had more time to consider how hot it was, and notice the black flies that seemed to have suddenly discovered the presence of easy prey. She considered digging out her insect repellant and giving herself another dousing.

But it took concentration to keep up with her guide, who exhibited a preference for scrambling through the roughest and swampiest patches of ground. Mac had been careful to come to Guatemala during the canculaa”August's two-week ”dry” period in the midst of the rainy seasona”but there was still plenty of mud. And mosquitoes. And plants whipping her in the face.

Any number of things to discourage all but the most intrepid of adventurers.

After almost an hour of walking, Mac was beginning to feel rebellious.

Homer, are you watching? This had better be worth it.

It was. One moment she was floundering in her guide's wake, and the next she walked into a tiny clearing and came face-to-face with a vine-covered ruin.

The place bore little resemblance to the great ruins of central Tikal. A thousand years ago it had been part of the great Maya city-state, which had sprawled over fifty square miles. Now it was a crumbling collection of unexcavated minor buildings. Such places dotted the Petn, Guatemala's lowland jungle, a dime a dozen.

But it had a very peculiar effect on Mac. She stopped and caught her breath, mesmerized. She forgot to slap at flies and mosquitoes, or brush the sodden hair from her eyes. She eased out of her backpack and crouched where she was, taking it all in.

Wild. Ancient. Untamed in a way Tikal proper no longer was. And Mac's heart came alive as it hadn't done in the spectacular but well-trodden Maya city.

This was what Tikal had been like when Perry and Liam O'Shea had come to the Petn. This must have been what they felt when they made a discovery, knew they could be the first Americans to see what the jungle had hidden.

Hah. That's not you, Mac. The kid's probably brought plenty of tourists here. But nothing could dampen her strange excitement.

This was exactly the place to enact her little ceremony of contrition for Sinclair transgressions. This could even be the place where they found the pendant. Another crazy thought that no longer felt quite so crazy. She wiped sweaty palms on her khakis and reached for the piece of carved stone that hung around her neck.

It was warm. h.e.l.l, everything was warm herea”but she'd expected stone, at least, to be cool.

She released the pendant and stood. ”I never caught your name,” she said to the guide, who'd moved off somewhere behind her. ”Do you know what this place is called?”

Overhead a macaw shrieked. Mac turned around. The boy wasn't there. She pivoted. No sign of him at all.

”Great,” she said. ”h.e.l.lo? Hola?”

A mosquito whined next to her ear. She waved it away and started back down the path the boy had cut. Not a single swaying leaf hinted that he'd been there any time recently.

”Oa kay.” She planted her hands on her hips and looked up through the forest canopy at the sky. Still light for several more hours, anyway. At least the kid had made her a trail to return, even if he hadn't considered an escort back to Tikal part of his five-dollar fee.

”I should have paid him ten,” she muttered. But this way he wouldn't be witness to what the crazy gringa was about to do.

She turned to the ruins once more. Here she was, living an adventurea”alone, in the jungle, with a piece of three-dimensional history smack-dab in front of her. Homer would be proud.

And Liam O'Shea was waiting.

The thought sobered her. She walked toward the ruins, picking her way over rubble and low brush. She crouched to examine ma.s.sive fallen stone steles, patterned by Maya glyphs. Beyond was the first of several buildings, blackened by time, covered by moss and lichen and every kind of tropical vegetation that could gain a foothold.

She walked around the nearest building. From the rear she could see something that hadn't been completely visible beforea”another, larger structure, and the gaping black maw of an entrance. Temple or palace; she wasn't enough of a Maya scholar to know what the building might be. The narrow-stepped stairway leading to the top of its platform did not rise very high as such buildings went. The rear of the building was b.u.t.ted up against a limestone ridge, and jungle growth had nearly obscured the roof and walls.

The black square of the entrance seemed to lead right into the steep hillside. She knew that the Maya had considered their temples to be artificial sacred caves, their portals gates to the world of the G.o.ds. The doorway drew her with its mysterious promise of secrets hidden from daylight.

On impulse she crossed the hundred yards to the building and paused at the entrance. Cooler air brushed her cheeks. She leaned against the stones and peered into darkness. There was no hint of light inside, but obviously the way had been cleared by someone, and not too long ago. That meant anything of value within would have long since been looted.

But there was a feeling deep in her gut that her ritual must be enacted here, a place held sacred so long ago. She had to go in.

Mac squared her shoulders and clasped her pendant. It was no longer merely warm, but almost hot to the touch. The stone must have remarkable properties of heat transference if it could take on her body's temperature so quickly and hold it so well.

She considered removing the pendant to see if it would cool off again, but somehow she felt the need to keep it where it was until she was ready to consign it back to the earth. Superst.i.tion, she thought. But what if it was? No one was around to know she'd taken the first dangerous step from solid reality into a realm of uncertain fantasy.

The next step was physical. She dug out her flashlight, switched it on, and started into the entrance. She didn't expect to go very far. There would probably be a series of smallish rooms, all dark and damp, where once priests or lords had carried out sacred ceremonies. She s.h.i.+vered a little in spite of the heat, remembering tales of human sacrifice and self-mutilation. Maya lords had routinely drawn their own blood from body parts as gifts to the G.o.dsa ”Okay, Homer. You used to love telling me those stories when I was a kid, but they don't scare me anymore.” She swung the flashlight beam back and forth, surprised that she still hadn't reached the rear of the building, or even a part.i.tion. Instead the walls came closer together the farther inward she advanced, until she was in a long, narrow tunnel.

By now she had to be under the limestone ridge itself. She stopped to run the flashlight beam behind her, along the uneven floor and up and down the walls. Plain and bare, as she'd suspected. Disappointment washed over her.

What did you expect? There wasn't likely to be some fantastic altar conveniently available for her ceremony. Still, the urge to keep going was too strong to resist.

”I know what you'd say, Homer. Get to the end before you turn back.” At least the flies and mosquitoes hadn't followed her. She focused the flashlight dead ahead and kept walking. And walking. Something was definitely crazy here. She'd never in her life read about underground tunnels among the Maya ruins. If such a discovery were to be made, it would have been done long since.

She glanced at her watch, grateful for the illuminated dial. Ten minutes she'd been walking, albeit at a very plodding pace. This was crazy. If she didn't hit a wall or something in the next few yards, she was going back.

At the requisite few yards, an instant before she turned away, her flashlight beam splashed against a wall. Stone rose in front of her, solid and implacable.

And not plain. No, definitely not plain. The entire surface was crowded with Maya glyphs. Undefaced, unchipped, uncracked, as if time itself had stood still within this strange hallway.

There was no other word for it than awesome. She didn't have an expert's ability to decipher the ancient symbols, but she recognized the glyphs that represented the pa.s.sage of time, and dates, and the vaster measurements by which the Maya had calculated the march of eons. They had been obsessed with time, those ancient onesa”time far before their first civilization, and time to come long after they had vanished.

She stroked the light down the surface of the wall to the more conventional relief carved under the rows of glyphs. It showed a mana”a lorda”in full-feathered Maya regalia. But though everything else in the scene was perfectly depicted, there was something wrong with the man's figure. It seemed to be cleanly cut off halfway through the body. He was shown walking purposefully, in profile, directly into a wall. And the wall bisected his body, as if half of him had melted into it. She'd never seen anything like that before, not in any book or exhibit or in Tikal itself.

She moved cautiously forward again; her toe brushed something that rattled and rolled under her foot. Instinctively she aimed the flashlight down, expecting rubble, though the floor here was clean of it.

Instead, she found bones.

Human bones.

Mac had never been the flighty sort. She didn't jump back or scream. That kind of stereotypical female behavior had been left out of the mold that had shaped her st.u.r.dy, too-rangy body.

So she only looked. That the bones had been here for some time was evident by their condition. There was not a sc.r.a.p of flesh left on any of them, and only traces of rotted fabric that must once have been clothing.

She followed the loose trail of leg bones to where the torso had collapsed close to the wall. Somehow the rib cage, vertebrae, clavicles, and skull had fallen in almost a straight line. Or perhaps someone had laid them out there.

Morbid curiosity brought her closer. The bones were large; masculine, she guessed. Someone who'd been tall, well built. She winced at the grinning skull. Why did people refer to them as grinning, when there was nothing funny about the end of a once-vital life?

She gripped her pendant again, comforted by its inexplicable heat. Who were you? A guide like that boy who led me here? A tourist who made a fatal mistake in the jungle?

She knew there were things that could kill, even so close to a tourist center. Jaguars were too shy, and there were few predators, but nature could set traps for the unwary. And diseases. And violence, for Guatemala was not yet an easy nation.

Mac found herself rapidly losing her enthusiasm for the adventure. Wasn't she here to mourn the death of someone who'd died in a place just like this? Whose bones might be lying, untended, where no one would ever find thema”

Her thoughts dwindled to incoherence as the beam of her flashlight came to rest at the base of the skull. Something lay among the vertebraea”something slightly darker, more regular. Familiar. A stone chip, drilled through the top, the remains of a rotted leather cord twisted through it.

Mac dropped into a crouch and leaned closer, careful not to disturb the bones.

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