But she could still hear the river.
The hole created was roughly three meters deep and a meter and a half across. The mud and detritus spat up was plastered against tree trunks and scattered in the undergrowth. She withdrew a long, thin rope from her pack. Tying it around the base of the shagbark, she clipped it to a belt hook, tested it. Then she pulled out another charge, slipped down the hole, and placed the charge. Even with the rope, exiting the hole was difficult, making hand- and footholds in the soggy earth, slipping, grabbing onto roots, and finally pulling herself over the edge. She took cover behind the shagbark. Another double-thump, this one softer.
Another three meters down and a bit wider.
It was risky, making noise like this, especially repeatedly. But the adrenaline was pumping and she couldn’t bear to put this off. She only prayed the cat creature wouldn’t return to investigate.
Her breath came faster and the air smelled sweeter, though she might have just imagined the latter. Agata waited, the silence prolonged. She listened carefully, and when the birds started to converse, she set one more directional charge. Not wanting to be too weighted down, she’d only brought four of them, plus a few sticks of TNT. The TNT was too non-specific for delicate jobs like this, but could pull double duty against cartel soldiers.
Safe on the surface again, she set off the third explosion. Then back to the bottom of the hole. Agata pulled out her metal detector. The reading of precious metals persisted—a meter to go—as did the much greater reading nearly four below that. Maybe there was a cavern between the readings; her detector hinted at that. Too risky to expend her last shaped charge for only a meter of dirt. She’d already made too much noise, and she didn’t want to risk damaging any treasure.
The ground trembled, and for a heartbeat Agata thought someone nearby was using explosives, too. But then rain started to fall. Thunder. She’d been looking for the lost city too long to let a summer storm delay her.
A manuscript Agata glimpsed a handful of years before during a visit to the national library in Rio de Janeiro claimed a Portuguese explorer had found a lost city in the rainforest in 1753, but he gave no precise directions and no notes other than that there was more wealth than he could remove. Intrigued, she researched further in the years after that. She found other reports from centuries past, some in the convent’s archives, others in city libraries or on the Internet when it worked. One of the most detailed accounts was that of a British surveyor named Percy Fawcett, who called it the Lost City of Z, and searched extensively but futilely for it in the early 1900s. Agata spent many hours after abandoning the sisterhood piecing together these and other legends and plying archaeologists with ancient pottery in exchange for information.
All of those efforts and more had brought her here.
Agata hung her night-vision goggles and infrared illuminator around her neck. She put a flashlight in a pocket and climbed to the gloomy bottom of the hole. She lost scent of the river here; it was all musty dirt mingled with rotting wood. She started digging, the rain pattering against her head.
“Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?” Again, she quoted Blake. She fanned the air in front of her face, a futile endeavor to keep the earthy odor from settling at the bottom of her lungs. “Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in a golden bowl? And can I find me the lost city and more golden bowls than I can carry?”
She dug until her shovel clanged against shale.
Agata was sodden from the rain. She couldn’t hear the birds anymore, but she could hear her heart beating in anticipation. She chiseled at the shale with the tip of the shovel for quite some time, until her arms were so tired they felt like lead weights she could barely lift.
But then the shale cracked through, a piece falling away into darkness. She shone her flashlight through the hole, revealing a cavern below.
All shiny.
She blinked her eyes and stared.
The floor where the circle of light hit it was littered with gold.
She sucked in a breath and rubbed furiously at her eyes, smearing mud all over her cheeks. Closed her eyes and counted to ten. Opened them and the gold was still there. A little more than four meters below her. It was a veritable carpet of gold coins, jewelry, figurines. She had to get a close look at it. Now.
She broke away more of the shale, opening a hole wide enough for her to squeeze through. Agata nearly jumped down, but a part of her brain held her back. The underground was ruled by Darkness. She stuck her head into the hole and breathed deep. Stale air. Her heart leaped at that—stale, not the putrid odor of carrion that would signal that spawn or other Dark creatures had been this way. The cavern below would be safe.
Agata climbed up and retrieved some folded canvas bags from her pack—for her first trip. It would take dozens of trips to remove everything, and most likely she wouldn’t be able to claim it all. Maybe she should be selective and only take the choicest pieces. Agata couldn’t leave and bring back a car or truck; probably couldn’t navigate through the weave of trees. She could bring a boat down the river, tie it up, and come inland. The river was so close. That thought stuck; a nice flat-bottomed boat. She couldn’t look to others for help—there was the issue of sharing and the probability of being backstabbed. So she’d take the dozens of trips, cover the hole in between, sell the gold in different markets to avoid drawing too much attention.
Agata’s mind danced with all the possibilities.
She lowered herself down the rope to the floor of the cavern. The walls of the great room were painted with faded images of fantastic beasts. The ceiling was plated with gold, explaining her detector’s initial reading. The floor—that was the heart stopper, and she sat amid the wealth and ran her fingers over the treasure. The light from her flashlight set everything a-glitter.
“Is this real? Am I dreaming?” She squeezed her arm and felt the pressure. Agata sobbed with happiness. “Saints be praised, I’ve truly found it.”
When she swung her light the beam reflected from a smooth sheet of metal, pitted in a few places, attached to something larger that was imbedded in the wall.
Agata crept toward it. Her light struck the mirror-smooth metal and she blinked. It was a throne.
She cocked her head, hearing something. Thunder, muted so it sounded like the ground whispered. Something else, too. She returned to the rope. Music? Voices? Would have to be loud up top for her to hear it this far down. Maybe it was nothing—her imagination. Best to check, though.
Agata clipped the line to her belt and pulled herself up. Near the top, she slowed. As stealthily as she could, she raised her head until her eyes were just above the lip of the hole—and saw them.
“Mira! Una sorpresa!” A short, broad-shouldered man in fatigues shouted from a couple meters away. He waved a rifle in her direction. Harsh, dissonant music flowed from a player attached to his belt. He thumbed it off.
“You were right, amigo. Someone was down that hole. A dirty little woman! And one with explosives to do her digging. I wonder what the dirty little woman was looking for.” It was an ugly voice attached to an ugly person. Agata assumed he was in charge.
She could see six of them, all soaked by the rain. Definitely a cartel band. They wore camouflage fatigues and each carried a rifle and had a second slung over a shoulder.
“C’mon. Out of there! Out of the hole!” the ugly one snapped, free hand on his hip, scarred chin thrust out, sleeves rolled up showing tats of serpents. There was anger and hunger in his eyes. He sneered, “She’s a scavenger. Soon to be a dead one.”
“Maybe we should have some fun with her first,” another suggested.
“In this rain?” Ugly spat a gob of something he’d had stuffed in his cheek.
Agata climbed out to stand in front of him, her thoughts swirling. She had a gun, but it was in the pack. Idiot! She’d never been stopped by a cartel patrol before. She’d seen them, always avoided them. They’d heard her explosives and come to i
nvestigate, and now they were going to kill her and claim Z.
Maybe she could find her way out of this and still net at least some of the treasure. Or come back with friends and lots of weapons.
“You’re gonna need me,” she said. Buy some time, work things through.
Why hadn’t she waited until night to plant the charges? In the darkness, they wouldn’t have found her. Her impending demise was her own fault, but she could fix this. She could— “Yeah, maybe need you for some fun,” the leader said to his fellows. To Agata: “Whadya find there, dirty little woman? Something valuable in that hole? Something from before the Apocalypse? There’s ruins in the trees. We know.”
Agata needed to give him some answer, but—
“Won’t talk?” he persisted, taking a swaggering step forward. “I can make you talk.”
“She won’t talk, huh?” One of the six was a woman. She’d been hanging back until this moment. The woman soldier had dark hair, unnatural—it was an intense, shiny purple that looked like plastic. “Mujo poco sucia. She’s a digger, Karlo, a thief or archeologist. Same difference, eh? Didn’t think we’d be out in this weather. I think she won’t talk ’cause she doesn’t want to tell us what’s in her hidey hole.”
“No importa. Doesn’t matter what she is,” Karlo returned. “We’ll find out ourselves what’s down there. Tesoro cártel. That’s what’s down there, Maria. From some Mayan ruins.”
“It’s not the cartel’s treasure,” Agata growled. It’s older than Mayan. “It’s—”
“Ah, sucia, you answer after all,” Maria said. She tilted her head, the purple hair twisting unnaturally against her shoulders.
“Something good is down there,” Karlo said. The others nodded when he looked over his shoulder at them. “Maybe drugs. Maybe she’s planting drugs she stole from us. Would explain what’s gone missing. Maybe Mayan trinkets. Trinkets, dirty woman?”
“Trinkets?” Maria said. “Something better than trinkets. Too many holes dug along this river. She’s been looking for something. I think you guessed right, Karlo. Something from before the seraphs.”
“No trinkets,” Agata admitted. “It’s Z.”
“And what is that?” Maria shook her head and aimed her rifle at Agata, making the pretend motion of firing.
“Nothing you would understand . . . or deserve,” Agata returned.
“Urlo!” Karlo barked.
One of them stepped forward. He was tall, thin. His faded green pants hung low on his hips, the pant legs too short, striking about mid-calf and contrasting with his parchment-white skin.
“Urlo, go find out what the dirty little woman is hiding from us.”
The lanky man stepped toward the hole. He stopped and looked at Agata. She saw his face, all planes and angles, and when he grinned, his eye teeth extended in vampiric fangs. A daywalker—apparently they weren’t just rumors.
His gaze turned into a stare, as if his glowing violet eyes were trying to peer into her brain. Agata shivered.
“Maria, you look in the pack. Maybe there are more explosives. Maybe we will blow up the dirty little woman.” Maria obliged, although the look on her face suggested that she didn’t like being ordered around.
“You’ve no right.” The words hissed out between Agata’s clenched teeth. “The pack is mine. Be careful with it! You don’t understand what you’re doing. You’ll need my help to—”
“Oh, we understand, all right,” Karlo said. “We’re dealing with a trespasser.”
“You don’t own the forest.” But Agata knew that in the way that counted the cartel did.
“Urlo! See what’s down there, I said!” Karlo snapped. “I will not tell you again.”
Looking at the size of the hole, the daywalker stripped off his bulky pack and rifle, and leaned them against a tree. Then he unhooked the clip from Agata’s belt and fastened it to his own. A heartbeat later he disappeared into the hole; Agata didn’t see a light turn on below, but after a few minutes Urlo hooted up that he’d found gold.
“Let me go,” Agata said. Z lost to her, at least for the moment, she needed to get away to think, to come up with a plan. “You’ve got the gold. You don’t need me. Leave me—”
“You’re mad as a rat if you think I’ll let you go.”
“I won’t tell. I—”
“Karlo,” Maria cut in. “Maybe others already know about it. Other diggers. Maybe more are down in that hole. We saw signs along the river of digging. Maybe—”
“No. She is alone.” Urlo was sitting on the shale roof of the golden chamber, his legs dangling in the hole. “I smelled only her. It is a ruins down there. Ancient. Well before the Apocalypse.”
“Ancient?” Karlo raised his chin and let the rain splash against his face. He laughed loud and long, the sound odd and grating in this place. “Gold for the cartel!”
“She’s got a gun in the pack,” Maria said. “And a bunch of maps.” She stuffed the machine pistol in the band of her pants, pulled out the maps and dropped them, the rain smearing Agata’s notes. Next, she removed a stick of TNT, waved it in the air, dropped it on the ground, too, and then pulled a grenade from her own pocket. “I say we blow her up real good.”
Karlo drifted so close to Agata that she was forced to share his foul breath. She coughed, and he grinned as if pleased he’d offended her. “Digger, tell me all about the treasure hole. How did you find it? Who else knows?”
“No.” There was no force behind Agata’s voice. “I’m not going to tell you anything. You’ll need my help, to tell what’s valuable, what’s—”
“I need nothing from you, perra.”
Agata jerked the switchblade from her pocket, flicked open its four-inch blade, jammed it into Karlo’s gut. If they were going to kill her, she’d take this one’s soul to a dark place with her.
The daywalker’s unattended rifle was an arm’s length away, and she used the moment of surprise to snatch it up, swing it around, and fire at Karlo, who was grabbing at the knife in his belly, a spreading blossom of blood around it. “Perra! Shoot—” A second shot from Agatha finished him.
Maria howled, dropped Agata’s pack and raised her gun one-handed, grenade still held in the other. Agata was still firing, and a bullet tore into Maria’s leg.
Maria screamed, parrots exploded from the trees, and something large snarled.
Everything else happened at once. One of the thugs swept his rifle around and fired, Maria, the farthest away, fell to her knees and dropped her gun so that she could pull the pin from the grenade. As she raised it to throw, the cat creature sprang through the foliage. The grenade tumbled from Maria’s fingers as the cat slammed into her.
Another soldier fired. Agata’s arm felt like it’d been speared by lightning.
A strangled “Help!” came from Maria.
The grenade rolled on the ground.
An arm reached up from the hole, a hand grabbed Agata’s ankle and yanked her downward . . . just as an explosion tore through the forest above.
It was a painful tumble, bouncing from side to side down the vertical shaft, dead roots tearing at Agata’s clothes and hair, mud filling her mouth. A weight landed on top of her. She spat out the mud and struggled to get up. There was another explosion up top, and another. Then the stone beneath her, the ceiling of the chamber below, collapsed. She hit the floor hard on her back.
Then everything was black.
The weight—the daywalker was no longer on her, and she heard him nearby. She could see the glow of his eyes moving around her in the darkness, appearing and disappearing. Agata couldn’t move, couldn’t feel her fingers, couldn’t hear anything through the ringing in her ears. The explosion—the fall—did she break her neck? Was she going to die down here, her corpse eating itself and her skeleton becoming river bones?
The great river wasn’t far away; the familiar smell of it came faintly to her. Or was that her imagination?
Agata felt the strap of the night-vision goggles around her neck and
wished she had them on, desperately needing to see something.
It hurt to breathe.
Another scent intruded: the stink of dirty clothes. The daywalker was nearby. She could hear him say something, but she couldn’t make it out.
So tired. So hard to breathe.
Just die, she thought. Let’s see what waits on the other side of life.
Instead, she saw a beam of light—her flashlight thrust in her hand, her fingers forced to wrap around it.
“Urlo,” he said, the word sounding rich like a musical note. “My name is Urlo.”
“What—”
“Your back was broken. A bullet went through your arm. I have cured your maladies. You are welcome.”
“I didn’t say thank you.” Agata tightened her grip on the flashlight and pain flickered down her arm. She cautiously pointed the flashlight towards the voice. The beam caught the striking face of the daywalker.
“Then you have poor manners.”
“I wouldn’t have needed—” she stopped herself, didn’t finish the sentence: I wouldn’t have needed healing if your band of thugs hadn’t come along. He’d knit her bones together, healed her wounds. The daywalker—Urlo—could have easily let her die, but he’d saved her.
“Agata,” she said after a moment. She still smelled his sweat and the stink that clung to his clothes. She also smelled the old fustiness of this chamber, and still, faintly, her beloved river. That hadn’t been her imagination. Deep below ground, she still smelled the Amazon. It was a deep river with so many tributaries, some part of it was close. She tried to focus on that favorable scent. “My name is Agata D’Cruz.”
She expected him to quiz her: what she was doing in the rainforest, where she’d come from. Instead, he looked away, worried at a thread on his shirt. She thought of questions for him: how a daywalker came to be with a cartel band, why he’d spared her, what other magic he possessed. She tamped her curiosity down; the less she knew of him, the better.