Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

The Maya had believed the cenotes were entrances to the underworld; they had probably thrown sacred offerings into the sinkhole. The magic of those now-buried sacrifices would have accounted for a normal power surge. But there was nothing normal about the darkness Anna sensed. Power hummed through her hiking boots, feeling purple and black and discordant. Drawn by the magic, simultaneously fascinated and repelled, she approached the cenote, testing each step before she put her weight down.

‘‘Don’t.’’ Red-Boar’s single word was less of a command than a plea, as though he already knew what she would find.

Then again, so did she. The air stank of death.

It wasn’t until she reached the center of the depression that she sank into the dirt beneath her feet, not because the cap sealing off access to the subterranean river was giving way, but because the ground itself had been disturbed. She didn’t need to see the churned-up earth beneath a scattering of leafy camouflage to know that she was standing atop a human grave. She could tell by the smell of death, of violence.

Her heart ached for a man she’d barely known.

‘‘It might not be Ledbetter,’’ she said, knowing it probably was. The makol had beaten them there, taking away a valuable resource.

Red-Boar didn’t argue, simply made a wide berth around her, knelt, and used the flat of his machete to scrape away the soft covering at one end. He didn’t have to go far. Only a few inches down, he uncovered fairly fresh human remains that started at the neck, with dark, raw flesh and a severed vertebral column.

The head was gone, no doubt taken elsewhere to add to the makol ’s skull pile. His powers weren’t at full strength yet, but they were growing fast. She could feel it.

Red-Boar uncovered the torso and abdomen, and she felt an unreasonable wash of relief to find them intact. He hadn’t had his heart cut out. Somehow, beheading was so much less gruesome to contemplate than vivisection. And if that didn’t prove how screwed-up her priorities were these days, she didn’t know what would.

‘‘Wallet.’’ Red-Boar flipped the leather bifold. ‘‘Money’s here. Cards. License.’’ He cut a glance at Anna. ‘‘Ambrose Ledbetter.’’

‘‘Oh,’’ she said faintly. Just oh , as the world took a long, lazy spin around her and she dropped down onto a nearby log. ‘‘Damn.’’

They hadn’t exactly been pals—Ledbetter was prickly on a good day, downright bitchy the rest of the time— but they’d known each other in passing. And now he was dead because of what he’d known. Because of what the ajaw-makol didn’t want them to know.

Red-Boar stared down at the headless corpse but said nothing. Not that she should’ve expected anything more, but a pithy ‘‘Poor bastard’’ would’ve been nice.

Then again, the Nightkeeper didn’t waste sympathy on the living; why would he give it to the dead?

After a long, shuddering moment, she forced herself to focus on the practicalities rather than the raw stump where Ledbetter’s head should’ve been attached to his shoulders. ‘‘We should bury him properly. Animals will dig him up if we leave him like this.’’

There was no real reason to bring the body back to Skywatch, and she had a feeling he wouldn’t mind being planted near a sacred cenote. Gods knew she wouldn’t.

And where had that thought come from? When had she started thinking like a Nightkeeper rather than a wannabe soccer mom?

Since the barrier woke up and the pee stick started refusing to turn pink month after month, she admitted bitterly, at least to herself. If she couldn’t be a mother, and she was a pretty sad excuse for a wife, she might as well be a princess.

There was little joy in the thought.

‘‘He have any family?’’

It took her a moment to process Red-Boar’s question, another to frown. ‘‘Since when did you get sentimental?’’

‘‘Just wondering if anyone’s going to raise a stink when he doesn’t come home.’’

‘‘The university will notice, and his students. But friends and family? Um . . .’’ She frowned. ‘‘I’m pretty sure he mentioned a woman once in passing.’’

‘‘Girlfriend?’’

She shook her head. ‘‘I don’t know.’’

‘‘You think anyone stateside is going to make trouble?’’

Anna lifted one shoulder, staring down at the headless torso. ‘‘There’s always a risk when you come down here for fieldwork. Families get used to it.’’ Or they fell apart, which happened more often than the community liked to admit. ‘‘Besides, Ambrose was even more eccentric than the norm, and had the rep of disappearing for months at a time. Most likely this woman, or one of his students, will go to the university when they realize he’s overdue. They’ll contact the consulate, and either there’ll be a quick search or the government will pretend there was, and everyone will wave their hands and have benefit dinners. ‘Very sorry for your loss, he was a pioneer. Died the way he would’ve wanted, doing what he loved, blah, blah . . .’ ’’ She trailed off, staring at the hacked-through vertebrae and ragged flesh. ‘‘We can’t bring him back with us. We’ll have to rebury him here.’’

The question was, where?

They couldn’t leave him where he was, first because the grave was far too shallow, and second because if another researcher discovered the site in the future, odds were that he—or she—would eventually want to punch through the cenote cap and study the artifacts that’d been tossed into the sacred well. The discovery of a modern burial atop the cenote would trigger way too many questions.

‘‘Let’s put him at the edge of the trees.’’ She gestured to a sunny, pleasant-looking spot she thought the dour old researcher might’ve liked, assuming he got pleasure from anything other than making other researchers look like idiots.

Gods, she was going to miss knowing the old coot was somewhere on the earth plane with her, she thought, then winced again at hearing herself think like a Nightkeeper. In that moment, Dick and her real life seemed very far away.

‘‘Grab his shoulders,’’ Red-Boar ordered. ‘‘I’ll get his feet.’’

‘‘Can’t we—’’ Anna broke off, realizing that no, they couldn’t. There really wasn’t a better way to get Ledbetter from point A to point B.

Holding her breath, she grabbed Ledbetter’s shirt near the collar, and nodded. ‘‘I’m ready.’’

He snorted. ‘‘Don’t be such a girl. Get him by the pits.’’

‘‘Fine,’’ she said. ‘‘Pits it is.’’ She forced herself to dig under and lift as Red-Boar tugged on the ankles, and the body came up from its thin covering of leaves and soil with a faint resistance and a noise she didn’t want to think about. As they carried him across the clearing, she tried not to breathe through her nose. Not that mouth breathing was a big improvement, but she told herself the heavy, oily taste was purely her imagination.

‘‘He’s lighter than I expected,’’ she said when they were about halfway across. Alive, Ledbetter had been nearly Red-Boar’s size. Now she could handle her half of his weight without too much trouble.

‘‘Ground’s dry in the direct sunlight,’’ Red-Boar said. ‘‘He’s partway to mummy already.’’

‘‘Any idea how long he’s been here?’’

Red-Boar pulled a small, collapsible shovel out of his pack, assembled it, and got to work digging a hole at the site she’d chosen. The ground was moist at the edge of the rain forest canopy, and the flimsy shovel cut through the humus with little effort.

Still, Red-Boar was puffing lightly when he answered, ‘‘You said he’d left the States a month ago?’’