Ex-deity turned mortal, turned vampire. Hypnotic. He is… hypnotic.
He lowered his head toward her neck, and her will suddenly snapped back into place. “No! Kinich, no!” She squirmed under his grasp. Without her hands free, she couldn’t defend herself. “I’m pregnant.”
He stilled and peered into her eyes.
Pain. So much pain. That was all she saw.
“A baby?” he asked.
She nodded cautiously.
Then something cold and deadly flickered in his eyes. His head plunged for her neck, and she braced for the pain of having her neck ripped out.
“Penelope!” Zac sacked Kinich, knocking him to the floor. “Go!” he commanded.
Penelope rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled from the room as it was overrun with several more of Kinich’s brethren: the perpetually drunk Acan; the Goddess of the Hunt they called Camaxtli; and the Mistress of Bees they called—oh, who the hell could remember her weird Mayan name?
“Penelope! Penelope!” she heard Kinich scream. “I want to drink her! I must drink her!”
Penelope curled into a ball on the floor in the hallway, unable to stop herself from crying. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
Helena appeared at her side. “Oh, Pen. I’m so sorry. I promise he’ll be okay after a few days. He just needs to eat.” She helped Penelope sit up. “Let’s move you somewhere safe.”
Penelope wiped away the streaks of tears from her cheeks and took her friend’s hand to stand.
The grunts and screams continued in the other room.
“I can’t believe he attacked me, even after I told him.” Tears continued to trickle from Penelope’s eyes. Why hadn’t he stopped? Didn’t he love her?
“In his defense, you really do smell yummy. Kind of like Tang.”
“Not funny,” Penelope responded.
“Sorry.” Helena braced Penelope with an arm around her waist and guided her to a bedroom in the other wing of the house.
Helena deposited Penelope on the large bed and turned toward the bathroom. “I’ll get you a warm washcloth.”
Ironically, Penelope’s mind dove straight for a safe haven—that meant away from Kinich and toward her job, which generally provided many meaty distractions, such as impending doom and/or anything having to do with Cimil, the ex–Goddess of the Underworld.
“Wait.” Penelope looked up at Helena, who’d become her steady rock of reason these last few weeks. “What happens next?”
Helena paused for a moment. “Like I told you, Kinich needs time to adjust.”
Penelope shook her head. “No. I mean, you heard Emma’s grandmother; without Niccolo and Guy, we can’t defeat the Maaskab. We have to free our men.”
“Well—”
“I know what you’re going to say,” Pen interrupted. “We can’t release Chaam, but—”
“Actually,” Helena broke in. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”
“What?”
“We’ve been looking for another way to free them, and I think we found it.”
“Found what?” Penelope asked.
“A tablet.”
Chapter Uno
New Year’s Day. New York City
“Save me. Please save me.”
“Dammit. Where are you?” Thirty-four-year-old Antonio Acero frantically searched the dark, empty, cavernous room, helplessly listening to the woman’s cries.
“Time is running out. You must work faster,” she wailed.
“I am doing everything I can,” he called out, his voice bouncing off the bare, smooth walls. “But I can’t get to you. If you just tell me…” Two catlike eyes punched through the darkness, sucking the words from his mind. He wanted to see more of her, to touch her. He felt like he might become the one who needed saving if he did not.
“Save me. Please save me,” the woman repeated. “Time is running out. I have the answers you need, but you must work faster. Destiny—”
Antonio catapulted from his deep slumber, dripping in cold sweat. “Puta madre, ” he whispered and flipped on his stainless steel reading lamp. It had been the same damned nightmare every night for the last month. Ever since he’d found that fucking tablet in Mexico. Or had it found him?
Doesn’t matter. It’s what you were looking for, the answer to your prayers.
“Everything all right, baby?” A silky arm slipped out from beneath the steel-gray satin sheets and rubbed his bare thigh.
“Uh… yeah. Sure.” He looked down at the mop of brown hair. Her face was as obscure as her name.
Mierda. What was he doing? It didn’t matter how many women he brought home, he couldn’t wash her—the woman in his dreams—from his mind.
He slid from bed and plucked his discarded tee and boxer briefs from the floor. On his way to the kitchen, he slipped them on and tried not to punch something.
Dammit. The dreams were only getting worse, more vivid, more frantic with every passing night.
He yanked open the fridge, pushed past the Odwallas and beer, and grabbed the soy milk. He knew this madness didn’t make sense, but what the hell did that matter? The dreams kept coming. Scotch—the good stuff—sex, hypnosis didn’t matter. Every night she came. Every night he woke. Every day he worked and didn’t stop until his mind reached exhaustion. And even then, he couldn’t stop thinking about the tablet.
Or her…
Shit. What was happening to him?
He went to his lab, a room at the back of his sparsely decorated apartment, and flipped on the phosphorescent lights, stopping briefly to remove the black stone tablet from a rat-filled cage. He carefully unwrapped it from the plastic sleeve and shook his head. The damned thing was like a goddamned Mayan Rubik’s Cube.
“You think you can win, don’t you?” No fucking chance, pinche jodida tablet. He laid it down and stroked its rough surface. “You and I, we finish this tonight.”
Yes. He was close to unlocking its secrets. And when he did… then what? Would she be there? The woman with the haunting eyes? The woman he knew in his soul he was destined to meet?
Goddammit, he fucking hoped so.
He placed a welder’s mask on his face and leaned over the tablet, a pair of long tweezers in hand. He reached up and adjusted the overhead light, focusing the powerful beam on the corner of the object. This had to be it, his last test to prove out his theory.
“Steady hand, coño. Steady hand.” He carefully scraped off a tiny particle and placed it on a glass slide. He removed the mask and wiped his brow.
“Coming back to bed, baby?” a silken voice purred from behind. A soft pair of arms reached around his waist and a set of full breasts pushed against his back.
Is she still here? Doesn’t she have her own bed to sleep in? He placed the slide under his microscope. “Yeah. Be right there.”
Yes. Just as he suspected. The black jade had again transformed. He’d left it encased for ten hours with his two most aggressive rats. The day before that, he’d exposed it to his goldenzelle orchid. The day before that, frogs. Each life-form, plant or animal, rearranged the configuration of the microscopic crystals and the hieroglyphs.
“It’s like the damned thing is alive,” he muttered to himself. And now he knew for certain his hypothesis held water. Subjecting the tablet to the right combination of elements would unlock its power and, hopefully, open the portal. A portal that could access any dimension at any point in time.
“I’m alive, baby. And if you come back to bed, I’ll show you how much,” Betsy—or was she Brenda?—whined. He hated whiny women. They were so… whiny.
“Look, Bre—Señorita.” He turned and stared down at the attractive brunette wearing too much mascara and his favorite polo shirt. “I have work to do. If you need to cuddle, my cat Simon is around somewhere.”
Fury flickered in her brown eyes, and she stomped off, mumbling some profanity about Don Juans. “And my name is Belinda!” she screamed from somewhe
re inside the spacious apartment.
“Mujeres!” He shook his head. Why did women always behave that way? So damned irrational and needy. It wasn’t as if he hid his true colors, either. In fact, he made it a rule to be transparent. “I don’t date anyone but my work, and she and I are happy together. Alone,” he’d say.
Couldn’t get much clearer than that. Yet they always came home with him. They always wanted more. They always left angry.
Well, too damned bad. He knew what mattered: cracking this code, saving his brother from a terrible fate, and if he were lucky…? He would finally meet this woman.
An image of her flashed in his mind. He saw himself in a dimly lit bedroom, the light from a fireplace flickering over the walls as he thrust himself between her thighs and stared at her obscured face.
A loud crackle suddenly came from the microscope. What the…?
He bent his head and looked through the lens. The molecules shifted again, but this time they moved with such fluidity that he could swear it was a liquid, not solid. “Qué diablos?”
The black crystals swirled on the plate and a tiny black hole opened up as if the center had disintegrated completely.
“Caray. It’s amazing,” he mumbled as an earsplitting snap cracked through the air. The tablet vibrated on the table and jumped as if hooked up to a lowrider suspension system.
“Coño!” He lunged as it reached the edge and fell to the floor with a crash. An explosion threw him across the room, the wall breaking his momentum.
Antonio felt his body slide down the wall, the air sucked from his lungs. The room flickered from bright white to red to darkness. But he wasn’t unconscious. No. Not at all. The pain he felt was not a dream.
And he could not see.
Chapter Dos
January 3. Time: 6:00 p.m. Rec Room of Valley Hills Elementary, Sedona, Arizona
“Hi, everyone. I’m Ixtab. My friends call me… well, I don’t really have any friends, so it’s just Ixtab, I guess.”
“Hi, Ixtab,” said the middle-aged group of twelve men and women sitting on foldout chairs in a circle.
Ixtab stared through her black veil, down at her feet. “And it’s been twenty-two days since I caused the death of an innocent mortal.”
Applause.
“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. That had been easier than she’d thought. Normally, she wouldn’t stop to join in a wishy-washy human gathering, but she’d happened to be in the neighborhood on a job and suddenly felt the urge to share.
Of course, it was normal for Ixtab to go with the flow; that’s how the Universe directed her toward the humans most in need. Though sharing like this was a definite first, and she enjoyed it in some weird way, even though she’d compelled them all.
Ixtab sat and took a sip from her Styrofoam cup. The coffee was bitter and cold. Good. She didn’t deserve anything warm and comforting. “It hasn’t been easy steering clear of accident-prone men; though, I have been improving. But even with the extra effort, I still can’t avoid them completely. Last month, for example, I went to the fabric store—spring is coming, so I thought I’d make a new dress—pink linen or pale yellow cotton with white daisies.”
The crowd stared with perplexed faces.
Ixtab looked down at her shapeless, flowing black dress through her black lace veil. “Oh. I like to wear summery things underneath.” Why? That was a very long, emotional detour of a story.
The group nodded and murmured a collective “Aha.”
Ixtab sighed and then placed the cup at her flip-flop-clad feet. “Even though I waited just before closing time, and I swear there was no one left in the store besides the clerk, boom!” She clapped her hands together. “I rounded the corner near the pattern section, and the man ran right into me.”
What came next was always the hard part: watching them die after they touched her. Why? Simple. She was poison. Dark, bitter poison—most of the time, anyway.
“Go on,” urged one of women wearing a red sweater and name tag that said Anne. She had a bright, soothing smile. “What happened next?”
Ixtab held back the urge to cry. “Before you could say ‘Singer’ he shoved an entire McCall’s M6466—a really nice off-the-shoulder dress pattern—right down his throat.” She shook her head and sighed. “Such a shame. Such a shame. He was so good-looking, too. The accidental kills always are. Always hot. Always men. Why do you think that is?” she asked the group.
The crowd shook their heads. They didn’t have a clue, either.
“It’s not right. Why do I have to be so… deadly?” Ixtab reached under her veil and whisked away a tear. “Is it too much to ask? To touch a handsome man without killing him? I mean, really. Just once. Just one damned time, I’d like to bump into a nonevil guy and have him smile at me, maybe give me his number. But noooo. Their eyes haze over like a week-old fish, and then they find the nearest deadly object.”
Anne reached for Ixtab’s shoulder to comfort her, but then snapped her hand back. “It’s not your fault, Ixtab. And remember our first rule? Acceptance. We must accept the things we cannot change. And sometimes we can’t change the fate of others. Sometimes, their time is simply up.”
Ixtab shrank on the inside. That’s what Francisco used to tell her. Don’t think about him. Don’t think about him. You promised yourself you wouldn’t do this anymore. Surely two hundred years of suffering for accidentally causing the death one’s soul mate had to be long enough. Wasn’t it?
Ixtab didn’t know, but she desperately wanted to move on. It was time. Maybe that’s why she was here tonight, trying to take a step forward.
Or maybe she was there for another reason: justice.
Ixtab cleared her throat. “The only thing that really keeps me going is that in between the accidents, I really do save lives.” With the right amount of concentration and a little help from the Universe, she had the ability to extract the darkness from a good soul. “Just this afternoon, for example, the Universe led me to a very sad girl—sweet as bag of kettle corn. She’d obviously been feeling down lately—lots of bad energy buildup around her heart—and thought it would be fun to try these pills her boyfriend gave her.” Ixtab opened her hand and showed everyone the pills. “She would’ve died and not gone on to fulfill her destiny of being a pediatric surgeon.”
Murmurs of approval erupted.
“See, Ixtab. There’s always a ray of sunshine to be found in every situation,” said the other woman to her left named Jess.
Ixtab smiled appreciatively at the two young ladies. “Yunno, I’m really glad I found you guys. It’s nice to have someone to talk to for once. And, yes. You’re right. There’s always a silver lining.” Ixtab got up, walked across the circle, and stood before a shabby looking man in his early thirties. His head was too small for his body and his bulging brown eyes matched the stain on his wrinkled T-shirt.
“What the hell are you looking at, freak?” he said.
“Jerry, right?” Ixtab’s heart tingled with giddiness.
He shifted in his chair. “Yeah. That’s right. Jerry’s the name.”
Ixtab slid off her veil.
The man jerked his head back and then flashed a lusty grin. “But hey, baby, you can call me anything you want.”
Ixtab leaned down, putting them at a breath’s distance, and stared into his pupils. Ah, the eyes. They never lie. Sometimes they showed an image of what one might become later in life, but this guy?Nada. The only thing to gaze upon was his bleak soul and the reflection of her own turquoise eyes.
“Baby, huh? Aren’t you sweet?” She smiled and placed her index finger on the tip of his chin. The man’s mouth dropped open and she popped the pills inside. He instantly convulsed and frothed from the mouth.
“How about I call you dead?” she seethed.
The man leaned forward, pulled a knife from his boot, and stabbed himself in the heart. He dropped to floor.
“That’ll teach you to sell drugs to children, you shit.” Ixtab turned toward
the crowd who sat motionless in their chairs. “Wow. I really do feel better! Thanks for letting me crash your Road Ragers Anonymous meeting. Same time next week?”
The group nodded.
“Excellent.” Ixtab turned to leave. “Oh. Everyone will be kind to their fellow drivers from now on. You’ll also forget you ever saw me. And Jerry there? He flipped out and ended his life after taking his own smack. ’Kay?”
The crowd nodded with an absent gaze.
Yes, being the Goddess of Suicide wasn’t all shits and giggles—it was mostly shits—but it did have its moments.
Chapter Tres
An Hour Later, Kinich’s Estate
Ixtab looked at her pastel yellow watch and frowned. Dammit. She was ten minutes late to the gods’ summit meeting and would be left with cleanup duty. Again. She only hoped her brother Belch, God of Intoxication and Wine, hadn’t brought his keg this time. Or the donkey with the sombrero. And that he’d remembered to wear pants.
As Ixtab hurried through the modern, southwestern-style estate toward the summit room, she wondered what would become of the place. With its large skylights, indoor cactus gardens, and warm desert colors, Kinich, her brother, would likely want to move. But where would he go? He’d always loved the desert and the tropics.
Ixtab shivered imagining him living in a gloomy, depressing vampire lair, which made her wonder, How can humans like vampires so much? They’re so… icky—except for Kinich, of course. Poor guy. But surely if humans knew how horribly morbid vampires were, they’d come to their senses! Maybe she should start a list and publish it.
Vampires are icky, reason number one: they hate sunshine.
Reason number two: they’re not really alive.
Reason number three: they drink blood.
Yes, but many creatures live on blood: mosquitos, flees, Cimil’s unicorn…
Okay, skip that reason.
New reason number three: vampires are violent.