Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lost Crow
The gasp that left my mouth was impossibly loud.
But there was no way to cover my surprise.
My only saving grace was the splash he made as his powerful body broke the surface of the water before sinking.
The divers jumped in quickly afterward, adding their quieter and cleaner splashes to the noises.
The temptation to jump after them, to drag his heavy ass out of the murky depths, was strong.
I should have asked him what would happen if he drowned.
How could he possibly drown yet remain alive until someone cut his head off?
Self-preservation kept me in place, but only just. Chaac’s gaze burned the skin on my face.
I looked up and met him straight on. A sinister smile met my challenge, but then he turned away, dusting off his hands as if he had completed a satisfying task.
“Coming, darling?” he asked me, turning back to the path before I had a chance to answer.
I stood in place, torn about what to do.
Would Ixtab walk away without supervising?
She seemed like someone who micromanaged the people around her, but then again, I had a narrow sliver of experience from which to pull.
Stalling, I looked around, realizing like an idiot most everyone had gone.
If it hadn’t been for the divers, with their equipment that looked impressive to my inexpert eyes, I would’ve believed this whole caravan out to the middle of nowhere had been so Chaac could dump his archenemy into a deep, wet hole in the ground.
Only he hadn’t bothered to watch him sink to the bottom.
“It’s going to take them at least an hour to find the right cavern. Don’t worry, we left him a stockpile of canned food. At least he can put those talons to use.”
He kept walking, and I wondered if his words were meant to reassure me.
I had two options: go after my lover now or wait until the caravan was hours away to do so.
The second option was safer, but only if he had not drowned in the meantime.
Last I saw, his head hadn’t been removed, but could I trust Ixtab’s words that he wouldn’t drown?
Would they stage this whole extravagant road trip only to let him drown when they could have achieved the same effect in the pool back at the house?
All rational thought said no. So, I turned and followed the man I needed to convince for another few hours I was his lover.
That I no longer cared about my one-time husband he had flung into a wet grave.
If Chaac was testing me, this was one hell of a test. I would drive back, go back to her room, turn into a bird, a fast one, and come back.
He slowed to wait for me, and I took his hand as we walked back.
It felt clammy and all sorts of wrong against my skin.
I thought of my fellow parrot when he nibbled my skin when we thought these people had been watching us.
How good it felt, how intimate. I thought of the two nights we spent together, a half-week ago now, but more like light-years in the past.
“We’ll go visit him in fifty years. What do you say, love?”
“He’ll either be a shell of himself or a raging bull.”
Chaac chuckled. “I’m looking forward to finding out. We’ll finally have the answer to our great experiment.”
I bit my lower lip, keeping my disgust tamped down.
He glanced in my direction but kept quiet.
The hut was in sight, and we sped up, eager to get out of the dust and heat.
Good thing I would be flying soon. Sweat poured off me.
I released his hand to wipe my forehead just as we rounded the path around the abandoned hut and caught a glimpse of the cars.
Most of them were gone. The last few engines roared to life as their occupants saw us return.
I headed toward the vehicle we had arrived in, but something grabbed my arm, pulling me off into the jungle.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, sounding more like my real self than a goddess.
“Drop the pretense, now,” commanded Chaac, eyes boring into mine. He looked every inch a demigod, flames dancing in his eyes.
“What are you talking about?” I tried to shake him off. “This is ridiculous.”
“She trained herself to stop sweating hundreds of years ago.” He pushed his meaty hand against my forehead, wiping it against my wet skin. “Whoever you are, you are not her.”
I stepped back, eager to get away. He held me so tightly, even if I shifted into a bird, I wouldn’t be free.
“Is it him?” asked a voice behind me. Rune stepped closer. “Then who did we throw overboard?”
Chaac’s eyes narrowed. His energy pushed into me, overpowering my feeble efforts to get the upper hand.
“Change back,” he commanded. My body shuddered, the cells reorganizing once again, and yet he did not let go.
My vision didn’t alter, so I was still human.
I glanced down to see my familiar shape testing the seams of Ixtab’s clothes and looked up at two surprised faces.
“Who the fuck are you?” one of them yelled.
A loud explosion shook us apart, coming from the direction of the cenote. I didn’t hesitate, pulling all my cells into the familiar shape of my crow and flying straight up into the sky.
I vaguely registered Micheline’s form down below as she joined the other men. But my heart was in my throat. Had they killed him? Dropped him in the water and brought the earth down around him?
My worst fears were confirmed when I reached the cenote.
Once a symmetrical circle carved by time down into the limestone caverns below the earth, the watering hole had been blown in on itself, now a smoking heap of rock with no way out.
The closest trees to the edge had toppled over the rubble.
There was no animal I could transform into strong enough to excavate him out of there.
I flew to the tallest tree still standing at the edge, landing near the top. What now? Half expecting Chaac and his fellows to come after me, I scanned the area. The only creatures passing my way were birds, chattering amongst themselves in their own languages.
I fluffed my feathers, trying to cool down.
It wasn’t easy being a black bird under the full heat of the sun.
And yet, I did not change my shape in any way.
What I wouldn’t give to hear him call me Corvus in that amused voice.
No matter how much I fussed, he knew the outrage was fake.
Knew how much I loved his strange pet name.
A gust of wind rocked the top of the tree, and my talons gripped the branch tighter. Gutted and desperate, I struggled to reshape my reality. What now?
The wind blew some dust in my face. How had they managed to blow up limestone without me even seeing a stick of dynamite, a pack of explosives?
Or was that an ability I had not mastered yet?
Or worse, was it something only one of them could do?
Micheline looked innocent enough, but I never locked eyes with her once, never glimpsed the monster lurking beneath the refined outer shell.
What I should’ve done was make sure these other monsters were gone for good.
I should’ve flown up into the sky, watched them melt into the forest, be certain they were on their way back to find Ixtab.
My brain told me, Go, make sure the threat is gone.
At least for now. Instead, my grip tightened on the branch.
My wings refused to thrust me into the sky.
My heart dictated I remain here. Figure out a solution. Save him.
But no solution presented itself. It would take a great amount of time to excavate this site, even if I were able to find such equipment out here in the middle of the jungle and then learn how to use it. All while I was a sitting duck for when they came back for me. The idea was laughable.
I could leave. Fly north, maybe stop in at our abandoned hotel room, grab the keys to my new identity, and start someplace fresh.
Or keep flying north, all the way to D.C.
, and slip back into my old life. Then again, they knew my face, these new enemies of mine. I would need to start over regardless.
But what about him? asked my breaking heart. You can’t just leave him. What if…
Thoughts of him led me to his home, a place I could sense on the horizon.
Since becoming a bird, something I had taken for granted was the increased awareness of my place on the earth.
Every spot I had visited, by air or by land, since my first transformation hovered outside of my line of sight, like pins on a giant map.
If I wanted to find any of them, I knew without question I could simply flap my wings until I reached that spot.
Instead of north as my point of reference, the biggest pin, the loudest draw, was my new home up on top of his mountain.
The triangle of the Yucatan, the round Gulf of Mexico, and the Southeastern states, all filled in the map in the colors of my school years.
But the pins, places I had been since being turned into a crow, Tennessee, D.C.
, Atlanta, and Cancun, were all spots I could easily find without a GPS or map.
North Carolina, my home state, perched off to the east. The rest of the globe was hazy.
I could not pick a spot I’d never been to before and fly straight there.
It would take trial and error and triangulation.
But the roads I had already traveled were clear, impossible to miss, easy to find.
Ixtab’s house was the closest, especially from the sky. Hiroshi’s house was nearby too. Not close exactly, but not far.
An idea percolated. I held my wings out, barely reaching for the next breeze, hopping on as it arrived and floating upward. The thrill shot through me, a mixture of adrenaline with a pinch of hope. And with renewed determination, I flew straight to the shaman’s house.