Bride of Thunder (53 page)

Again, her head ached as she awoke. She retched, nauseated, but only water ran from her mouth. At first she could see only black laced with flame in myriad arabesques that spun away to infinity when she tried to watch them, but gradually a pair of glowing eyes dominated the patterns and a face took shape.

She retched again, bringing up bile and water. “So that's what the sight of me does to you.” Eric's coldly amused voice chipped at her eardrums, though he held her head and wiped her mouth with a clean cloth.

When the paroxysm ceased, he began to dry her body, chafing her hands and wrists and feet till her shivering grew less violent. She was lying on blankets in a cavern lit by a lantern that cast fantastic monster shadows from the icicle-like growths hanging from the top and growing from the bottom, in some places almost fitting together like irregular teeth in an immense misshapen jaw.

That's where she felt she was—locked behind the teeth of a dark prison deep inside a hidden place, unbelievably in Eric's power, yet, unbelievably, alive. Beyond that she was too nauseated from
yoyotli
and near-drowning to think.

He took off the clinging snakeskin girdle, smoothing her thighs, spreading his broad hand over her belly in a claiming gesture. Covering her with a blanket, he took off the necklaces, collar, and bracelets.

“Quite a dowry to the gods,” he chuckled, “though Xia chose it for show more than for value, of course.”

“Does … does she know?” Mercy's tongue felt huge and she moved it and her lips with difficulty.

“That you're alive?” Eric shook his head. “That's
my
secret.”

“And I suppose I have you to thank for being sacrificed!”

“The grotto
cenote
was my idea, yes. I knew about this hidden cave with a lower passage connecting it to the water. One of the general's men had told me about it; it's where I rested while he and Xia went on to the
tatich
. Xia was for burning you, but I persuaded her this way was more traditional and would have greater impact. All I had to do was wait in the passage till I saw you in the
cenote
.” He laughed softly, his face a golden mask in the yellow light. “We're well matched, my love, both of us resurrected from seeming death. I'm sure you never expected to see me again. When I finally got back to the ruins of the House of Quetzals, Celeste told me, with very convincing tears, that you were dead from the black vomit.” He placed a finger across Mercy's lip, “Don't tax yourself to conjure up an excuse for her. I won't strangle the bitch since she and Thomas are married by now, and I left him in charge of getting the estate back in operating condition. With the house burned and you lost, I wanted only one thing, revenge on Marcos Canul, and knowing that Xia was ambitious, I thought she might help. I went to her, and you can see the stakes we're playing for now.”

“You could pay off your grudge at Canul without setting fire to the whole country!”

“But this is so much more interesting.”

Pillage and death and fire and blood? Just when the people on both sides and in the middle of the War of the Castes were beginning to prosper, when there was a tacitly agreed-upon boundary, peace with pride for the Cruzob? Mercy swallowed the appeals. They'd mean nothing to him.

“You must know that Mexico can't tolerate a complete takeover by the Mayas. The only way it could work would be for the
tatich
to make an alliance with some European power. And then the United States would interfere. Better than any of the Cruzob, you know all this!”

He shrugged. “Yes, but Juárez would make many concessions before using troops and money in another costly war. He's Zapotec himself and won't mourn deeply for the rich Creoles of Mérida and Campeche who so readily joined the empire and supported a foreigner against him.”

The idea of the Cruzob negotiating formally with Mexico, paying lip service to the central government while existing as a separate entity, hadn't occurred to Mercy. It
was
possible. Yucatán, because of its isolation, was regarded by its citizens and those of Mexico as almost another country.

If the Cruzob could take
ladino
strongholds
now,
present Juárez's newly forming government with an accomplished fact and a face-saving and economically useful alliance, Juárez could hardly be blamed for accepting what would take another tremendous effort from his war-weary people to change.

“A bold stroke?” demanded Eric.

“Worthy of a butcher!”

His eyebrows raised mockingly. “Why, my love! I expected you to support the oppressed Mayas, as you were so fond of doing at my estate!”

“If the
tatich
or general of the plaza or even Xia had planned it, I could understand their feelings. But you're in it for your own benefit. You'll be making war on your friends in Mérida, your own aunt!”

“Not by blood. I'll do my best to see that she's protected. And I'm sure that any
ladinos
who don't pose a threat to Cruzob rule will be allowed to leave the country.”

“If they survive the fighting.”

“There's that, of course.”

“I can't believe you!”

His eyes changed. “You will.”

Roughly, he dried her hair, draped a dry blanket around her, and held a gourd of corn gruel to her lips. For a moment, Mercy wanted to push it away, but she stopped herself. She drank. As long as she lived there was a chance she could expose him to the Mayas or warn La Quinta. She must stay as strong as she could. If his plan worked, if Zane died, if it seemed she'd be Eric's prisoner forever, she'd do anything to escape that.

If she got the chance, would she kill him? The thought entered her mind with no accompanying revulsion. The horror he calmly planned to loose on Yucatán must be stopped in any possible way.

She'd kill him if she could.

He smiled, slipping his hand inside the blanket, fondling her breast. She tensed, then began to shake uncontrollably. “Still cold?” he asked. “Or so eager?” His fingers stroked her nipples and searched hungrily along her loins and thighs. She knew resistance was futile, but this deliberate toying drove her frantic.

She jabbed at his eyes with her thumbs and brought her knee up sharply, but he only laughed and pressed her down with his weight. “Like a frightened virgin? I know you better than that, my sweet. Fight all you want. It forces your body to me in a maddeningly seductive way. Is that what you want to do—tempt me?”

“I hate you!”

He held her spread beneath him, raised to stare into her eyes. “You still love the noble Falconer?”

“Yes!”

He smoothed her contemplatively with his hands before they tightened on her flanks with ferocity that made her gasp. “Then what are these stories about you and that
batab
who brought you to Chan Santa Cruz?”

“He was taking me to La Quinta as soon as he served his month at the shrine.”

“You believed that?”

“Yes! He was grateful to me for keeping you from beating him to death!”

“And you were grateful to him? How grateful?”

“It's none of your concern!”

“But it is. We had to argue a long time with the
tatich
to persuade him to give you to the water. He thinks Dionisio would even kill him over this, so, of course, the
batab
must never get that chance. He'll be accused of treason as soon as he returns and macheted in the plaza.”

Numb at this new horror, Mercy felt lifeless, a mere husk, scarcely knowing when Eric's questing grew more urgent. She roused at the pain of entry, screamed as he thrust, but his mouth shut off her cry. He took her in a brutal, punishing way till she lay half-fainting.

“Did that
batab
have you?” He panted, slackening a moment, staring down at her as he rocked back and forth, apparently enjoying her pain.

She stared at him wordlessly. He withdrew, then plunged so deep she closed her teeth against a moan. “Did he have you?” Eric asked again, poised above her.

Mercy closed her eyes, dismissing him, trying to capture again those colors, that floating, when not even death had mattered. She hadn't realized Eric had been quiet a long time before he spoke against her ear.

“The
batab
will die. So will Falconer. That will mean that I'm the only living man to have you, the only one who'll ever possess you again. I have you now. That's all that matters. I have you now and you'll never get away!”

As if the claim released something in him, he gripped her and pumped swiftly to his release, then lay collapsed beside her with one great arm pinioning her.

Shifting her gaze around the cave as much as she could without moving or arousing him, Mercy looked for a weapon. Some hemp sacks leaned against a stalagmite that looked like a guttering, half-burned taper. On another rock were gourds and a pail. Eric must have a knife and rifle, but she couldn't see them.

A faint hope stirred in her. He'd have to appear at Chan Santa Cruz. Unless he tied her up, which wouldn't be too practical if he had to be gone for hours at a time, she'd certainly try to escape through the
cenote
. She could swim enough for that.

And then? If she went to the city, her “resurrection” should gain her a few minutes, a chance to bring Pacal's authenticity into question. That didn't matter to the cynical leaders, but it would, vitally, to ordinary Cruzob. But what if she were silenced before she could speak? Going to the shrine meant almost certain death. She was willing to die to avert a race war, but she didn't want, in vain, to give up air, sky, sunlight, and her love.

Try to get to La Quinta or some place from which an alarm could be spread and then return to Chan Santa Cruz with enough of an escort to guarantee attention while she proclaimed the truth about Pacal? That had the over-whelming advantage of alerting the whites of their danger no matter what success she had with unmasking Eric.

The fearful part was that Dionisio should certainly return several days before she could reach La Quinta and come back here. If he came, unwarned, into the city, he would surely die.

It was an agonizing choice. And before she could even make it, she had to get out of this cavern. Eric's arm weighed heavier each second. He was crushing the breath from her, the life. But when she tried to slip out from under it, his arm tightened and he drew her closer and said, almost as if he knew what she'd been thinking, “You'll never get away.”

After what seemed to be hours, but which couldn't have been more than half of one, he yawned, shook himself awake, looked at her, and laughed exultantly.

“I can do this all I want,” he whispered, caressing her, tasting her breasts with nuzzling teeth. “When I thought you were dead, like Alison, I thought I'd go crazy. But you're alive. I have you. And when you have my baby, you'll forget the dead men, just as you forgot Philip.”

“I hated Philip!” she blazed. “But not as much as I hate you!”

“You
will
love me.” He turned her face to him so cruelly that she thought her jaw would break from his gripping fingers. “If I have to, I'll kill everyone on this earth whom you care for. It's your nature, like Alison's, to love. If I'm all you have, you'll love me.”

“No!” She could barely force sounds between her constricted lips as his grasp forced her mouth against her teeth, but she gazed into his eyes and felt as if her blood had turned to molten, fiery steel. “I'll hate you more than I ever loved everyone put together!”

“Then such a hate will be the strongest thing in your life,” he said with terrible softness. “I'll still be your center.”

Pinning her arms above her head, he took her like a storm.

I'll get away,
she thought, sending her mind away from the tearing lunges into her swollen softness. I'll get away … or kill you … or myself. But this won't go on. I'll get away.

When he had finished, he heaved himself up with a harsh laugh. “That wasn't supposed to happen. I've got to turn up at Chan Santa Cruz and meet with the
tatich
and general. I'll be back as soon as I can. There's food in the sacks.” Completely naked, a magnificent being out of a Viking saga, he paused where the chamber narrowed to a small passage. “You won't be able to follow me out. I'll close the way with a boulder you can't budge. And the other way becomes a labyrinth of underground rivers and bottomless pits twining together.”

Her resolution must have showed on her face. He stopped abruptly, swore, and strode back. “But you'd try the maze, wouldn't you?”

Reaching into one of the sacks, he brought out a length of rope, quickly tied her hands and feet, and propped a water gourd near her and another of gruel so that, she could maneuver them. “This should make you glad to see me,” he growled. “It's too bad you can't know when you're well off without such lessons!”

This time he didn't look back as he bent to enter the corridor. In a few minutes she heard the grating of stone on stone. Then there was nothing, no sound at all.

She tested the ropes, found them tight, and fought down the dread of being helpless in such a place. She must think carefully. There was a ground-level exit, since Eric had brought food, blankets, and a lantern here, but that entrance was probably sealed off with the rock, along with the way to the wellspring.

It was probably true that the other passage from the chamber turned into the deadly confusion Eric had painted, but she'd at least try to find a way out—if she could get out of those ropes! Hopefully, she remembered the stories she'd heard about underground passages connecting many parts of Yucatán: the old woman of Uxmal who guarded a subterranean route to Mérida; Dionisio's story of the passage from Tulum under the ocean. This cave might end in solid limestone, but one of the corridors
might
come out in another cave or wellspring.