Blood Sun

him through a terrifying experience. Max understood what it meant to feel your body turned inside out, to experience the sensation of becoming an animal. Some things you can’t explain. The subtle energies that moved through his body were a mystery, but he had stepped into that maelstrom on more than one occasion. If he were able to, he would beckon it at will, but it was beyond his capability. Something triggered it-he didn’t know what-so he accepted Flint’s explanation. The room was stiflingly hot, but he closed his eyes and let the exhaustion take him into the fractured world of dreams.

Outside, the jungle bristled. Max and the others had been seen by more than the cave-guardian warrior.

A hundred pairs of eyes gazed through the darkness toward the hut.

As daylight broke in the City of Lost Souls, it was the women who came to Charlie Morgan. Half a dozen pickup trucks with armed men had torn up the muddy street as they headed toward the jungle. Charlie wiped the sweat from her neck, tugged her clammy T-shirt away from her body, swallowed the last of a cold drink and crunched ice between her teeth as she waited for the dozen women who had gathered in front of her to speak. They were nervous. One nudged another forward, but the women seemed either shy or afraid. Charlie smiled. Time to be nice.

“?Hola!” she greeted them.

“You are English?” the woman asked. There was no trace of hesitancy. Obviously, Charlie reasoned, they had all been educated.

Charlie nodded. That seemed the right answer, as if it comforted and reassured the women.

“No one, no woman, has ever stood up to the men.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything. Slimeballs need a bit of housecleaning once in a while.”

The women hesitated, seeming uncertain, until their spokesperson translated this into what Charlie assumed was Mayan. The women smiled, nodding. Charlie didn’t usually get on that well with other women, but this seemed to be going OK.

“I’m looking for a boy,” she said. “An English boy.”

“Yes. He said someone would come after him.”

“Max Gordon was here?”

“We do not know his name,” the woman replied.

Charlie tugged out Max’s picture. “Is this him?”

The picture was quickly passed around, and the accompanying shake of their heads answered Charlie’s question.

The woman handed the picture back. “The boy had long hair. He was tall. He had heard of a woman who had gone into the rain forest four, maybe five, years ago.”

Charlie nodded. “His name was Danny Maguire, and he was looking for a scientist called Helen Gordon.”

The woman shrugged. That part they did not know about. “And this boy you are looking for?”

“Her son,” Charlie said. She watched their faces register what it must be like for a young boy trying to find his mother. “The boy with long hair-Maguire-did he go into the jungle?”

“It is forbidden,” the woman said.

Charlie had to tease the answers out of them. “So is standing up to violent men,” she said.

They smiled again. “Yes, the boy got inside, but he became very sick. There is a place where they take supplies through. The man who drives that truck-he is a farmer-he helped him. The man is not like the others. He is Maya. He understands the old ways. He does not like the way these Creoles have been bought by Westerners.”

“Westerners?”

“Si. They come into the mountains in their helicopter. They are important, and they have bought the men here who run drugs, who kill and threaten us, but there is nothing we can do. You should not stay here. We came to warn you. You have shown how strong you are, but they will not forget. The reason they have not killed you is because they are unsure about you. No one has done to them what you did.”

“Where have the men gone?”

“We do not know. They do not tell us.”

“But something has happened. They’ve pulled out in a hurry. Are they after someone, do you think? Did they chase the Maguire boy when he was here?”

“We took a big risk when we helped that boy escape. Some of us were beaten badly, but we did not tell them how we got him to the city.”

“So they were after him?”

“Si. They are paid to kill.”

“And Helen Gordon?”

“Some years ago, we heard of a woman who passed through one of the villages. She said she was looking for old ruins, but everyone knew she was an environmentalist. They live a dangerous life. We do not know what happened to her.”

Charlie Morgan considered her options. She was so close to unraveling the mystery and knew that Max Gordon had to be out there somewhere. He was close. All her instincts told her that. But they also told her that she, too, could “disappear” once she ventured away from this town.

But imagine if she pulled it off. How cool would it be to find Max Gordon, to dig out the mystery and find out what Danny Maguire had discovered? She might even uncover the truth behind Helen Gordon’s disappearance. That would be a real coup. But could she do it on her own? She felt her heartbeat quicken.

“Can you take me to the man who drives the supply truck?”

The women fell silent, and then each of them shuffled past her; they touched her arm, as if they were already grieving at someone’s funeral.

“We can take you,” the woman said. “But we do not wish to be responsible for your death.”

Riga used a handheld flare when he ran into the cave. It helped him to see the tracks made by Max and the others. The grotto of saw-toothed images absorbed the light and became a snarling creature. Riga was not afraid of the shadow-riddled cave. He had never believed in myths and legends; they were lies told by storytellers to scare people or to make them feel good about themselves and create false heroes. Life was not a story. It was hard and unforgiving, and if you did not think for yourself and make your own decisions, then you became one of the followers, one of the herd. If you did not test yourself, you might be easily deluded into thinking you were better than you were. And that was where so many men entered the realm of fantasy. Riga had tested himself time and again. If he failed, he learned the lessons and became better; if he felt fear, he faced it, controlled it and mastered it. No one was going to make Riga a loser.

But the gunshot took him by surprise.

Searing pain creased his leg muscle and he fell, which saved him from further bullets that impacted dully against the damp walls. He rolled instinctively, found cover behind a stalagmite and saw the muzzle flash as his attacker kept firing blindly and stupidly at where he had been. The flare had distorted Riga’s body with shadow, and the gunman had shot wildly. They were the actions of a scared man, who betrayed himself as someone who thought he could kill without stealth.

Riga closed his eyes-it was nothing to do with the pain; he wanted them to adjust quickly to darkness when the flare he had dropped spluttered and died. Lying still, he listened for every movement. A boot crunched the limestone gravel floor thirty or forty meters away. He did not open his eyes. He saw the man’s approach in his mind’s eye. He had stopped and turned slightly, checking the area, his boots twisting into the grit; then he moved again. Riga could hear the man’s breathing. He opened his eyes and gazed into the darkness, his night vision clear, the subtle tones of black showing the dark-smudged features of the cave.

He knew he could not move quickly enough to take the man with his hands and make him confess who had ordered the attack. That was obvious enough. None of the gunmen used to patrol the forests would want to enter the Cave of the Stone Serpent, and none would dare attempt to kill Riga unless they faced something or someone more threatening.

Cazamind.

Riga lifted the rifle to his shoulder, waited, saw the slightest of changes in the darkness and fired. One shot. A body fell. Another couple of seconds and he heard the man’s last breath. He waited again.