For Richer (Vampire Assassin League Book 24) (2 page)

They were bringing him a sacrifice?

Interesting
.

Mikhal watched the duo approach. They hadn’t brought a sacrifice in enough years it qualified as decades. Perhaps a half-century. Time held no value in Mikhal’s existence. One year goes by. A dozen. A century. What did the passing of years matter? But it was the Twenty-First Century now. A sacrificial offering in this day and age intrigued him. He didn’t think there was anyone left in the highlands that remembered their gods. And none who followed the old ways.

He’d risen at the first sounds of approach. They’d been in the trees, heading towards his steps, with but one possible objective. Reaching his hidden fortress. Their arrival was hampered time and again by human frailties against both exertion, and encroaching plant growth, and the elements. The time gave him an opportunity to select things for the biggest impact.

He had options on apparel. Positioning. Stance. Vocabulary.

They’d brought him a woman. Mikhal wasn’t picky about that. He didn’t care about gender. He wasn’t thirsty. He’d fed less than a week ago on some Amazonian tribesmen who’d probably gone to their shaman over weakness the next morning. But sustenance was sustenance. She wasn’t young, though. That was a shame. He liked them young. She didn’t look like a beauty, either. She had dark hair of an indeterminate length. It was damp, and stuck to the shoulders of her cape in chunks. She was in a rain poncho, and didn’t appear to have many curves to her. If she did, they were hidden beneath her dark-colored cape. She definitely didn’t carry any excess weight, either. That was another point of disfavor. He liked his victims plump. Their blood lush and thick and tasty. She was definitely a foreigner. Australian maybe. Perhaps Russian? English? American? She could be from any European country. She was definitely not Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, or Asian. Nor was she African, South American or even Meso-American. Mikhal pondered language options he might try just before he drained her. Of course, he could always use his native
Chachapoya
language that nobody spoke. And be completely misunderstood.

It depended mainly on her.

The closer they came, the less Mikhal liked this. His upper lip lifted in a sneer. She probably had insipid brown eyes to go with her nondescript brown hair. If the humans thought to placate the gods with a sacrifice, they’d picked a poor one. They must not expect a great favor. They were supposed to send their best. Not...

Words failed him.

She looked up at his home, her face blocked from view by her hand. Mikhal barely had time to duck beneath an archway. And then she started speaking. He could hear her voice carried on the mist. It grated on his ear. He couldn’t decipher words. She was questioning the man? Perhaps...even arguing? That was even less pleasant.

What was this? They were bringing him a shriveled-looking, pale-skinned, argumentative spinster? What kind of nonsense was this? Mikhal’s displeasure grew larger. They were really pressing their luck. She was probably a vegetarian on top of everything else. If her blood tasted anything like he suspected, he was tempted to wrap her in a mummy bundle, haul her to a summit, and let the elements freeze-dry her. And then he’d take a foray into the valley and make certain the villagers knew of his displeasure.

They’d reached the lower plateau of his mountain home. Both winded. Her cry carried a bit of awe. He assumed it came from looking over the fitted stone buildings, terraces, and staircases of the site. That muted his discontentment slightly. Mikhal slid around to the back of a pillar and watched the man bring her up the stairs to the royal plateau before pointing to a stone-shaped bench. The woman pulled her cape over her head, folded it dry-side out, and placed it atop the stone. They had their backs to Mikhal. They were very near the throne. Mikhal tensed involuntarily. Had the bearer of this gift directed her to sit on the throne, he wouldn’t have been allowed to speak a bit more to her, and then walk away unscathed.

Such sacrilegious behavior netted consequences. Putting that woman on the throne, where only a king was allowed to sit, meant instant death for the man who’d brought her. Mikhal would have obliged, and probably found pleasure in it.

The man darted through an archway farther along the royal terrace, slinked behind a few rocks, shimmied down a bit of the cliff face, dislodging small rocks and a stream of dirt, and then reappeared back onto the path below, where he’d been earlier. He didn’t appear hesitant as he raced back down the steps, leaving the woman behind.

And that was the end of Mikhal’s interest in him.

He turned his attention back to the offering. And narrowed his eyes. There was something odd about her. He didn’t know what it was. She wasn’t much to look at, although she appeared to possess a nice-sized bosom, very small waist, and extremely long legs. Her hair had lightened, too. It looked to be dark blond, and hung in coils to her shoulders.

She was sitting atop her cape, her legs crossed with the upper one swinging occasionally. She checked her wristwatch. Moved the dial a bit. Concentrated. Clicked her tongue. Straightened her legs. Pulled her pack from her back and fished through it before slinging it back over her shoulder. She got out a small aerosol can. That was interesting. He wondered if it was hairspray, and why she’d bother. He watched her pat the bulging pockets on her trousers at her lower legs next.

“Joe?”

She turned her head in the direction her guide had disappeared. Her voice wasn’t the grating sound he’d heard earlier. It was young-sounding. Hesitant. And had a lilting quality. The mist must have altered it.

“Okay, Becky. Give it three minutes.”

Ah. She addressed herself. She was Becky. Entertaining name. He wondered if it was short for Rebecca. She’d also given him a language. English. And a dialect. She sounded American. Solidly east coast. Mikhal watched her check her watch again. Then she folded her arms, and started rocking. Maybe she was cold. She should carry some extra weight. Not only would it make her blood tastier, but she would be warmer. They were high in the Andean Mountains. The sun wasn’t out today. And now that he thought of it, the mist did have a chilling quality to it.

That was another oddity.

“Damn it. Joe! I am not waiting a second longer!”

She stood. Turned away from Mikhal to shout it into the portal her guide had exited through. It hadn’t been three minutes. The sundial couldn’t function today, but he could tell time. How long it took to pass. How empty it all seemed. He didn’t have a wrist watch on today. Nor did he have any means to carry a VAL slim phone. He’d selected ceremonial ancestral attire. Because sometimes, he let the humans below catch a glimpse of him.

It made them pliable.

And it was fun.

He wore a black leather long-cloth, tight about his hips. His only weapon was a silver handle knife with a very sharp mica blade. His ornamentation consisted of arm and leg bands, crafted of leather thongs that were studded with silver. He’d pulled his hair back with a strip of braided leather. He’d foregone the feathers and jaguar skins.

“Joe! You moron!”

She plucked her cape off the stone and started folding it into a tiny square, muttering to herself as she did so.

“No, Becky. He is not the moron. You are.”

Mikhal walked from behind the pillar. And just stood there. Watching. Absorbing. It occurred to him that she was a lot taller than he expected. Her head probably grazed his chin. And he’d been wrong on her age. She was maybe mid-twenties. He’d been off on her looks as well. She was very pretty, perhaps even beautiful if she spent some time in a beauty salon chair. She resembled a statue he’d once seen. And then she looked over and saw him.

He’d been completely wrong about her eyes. She had amber eyes. Like liquid gold. Mikhal was stunned. Electrified. Her glance hit him with the force of a fist. Right at his chest. Where the first hint of a heartbeat started as if that was possible.

And that’s when he decided to have fun with her.

Holy shit
.

There was totally unbelievable, and there was totally, holy shit, in-your-face unbelievable. This was the latter.

Becky’s mouth dropped open. It wasn’t the only thing that dropped. She lost her hold on the pepper spray can. She heard it rolling along the rock until it came to a rest somewhere. She didn’t look. Her eyes were wide and fixed on the sight of a man. One who’d materialized out of nowhere. If she’d been holding anything else, she’d have dropped it, too.

The guy who stood there looked like he was emerging from mist. It surrounded and framed him. He was looking down at the rock beneath them. And he was not real. He couldn’t be. She blinked several times in rapid succession. Nope. He was still there. If anything he looked nearer.
Holy shit again
. She was looking at an Incan sun god. A real one. Or something close.

Anything else was impossible to consider.

He wasn’t wearing much. A calf-length kilt-thing. Open down the sides. Hanging low on his hips, and showing off a lot...and damn! Nobody had a body this sculpted. Not that she had any knowledge, but even the soccer stars on every billboard throughout Lima paled in comparison. Biceps and abs and pecs like his deserved their own hash tags. And his skin tone!
Wow
. She had to be seeing things. A tan that perfect and golden could put any tanning booth out of business. If the sun was out, this guy probably glowed.

Becky had to get her mind to work. She wasn’t the type to ogle gorgeous man-torsos. Then again, she’d never been this close to one. She forced her eyes up to his face.

Oh
. Holy shit again. And she really needed another mental adjective here.

The rest of him was unbelievable as well. He had Andean features. Long, lean nose. Sharp cheekbones. Full lips. Not a hint of whiskers. And then he looked up. Shock sent tingles through her as she got a full dose of his attention. His eyes were an intense shade of sky blue.

Blue?

There was a severe deficit of oxygen at this level. It hadn’t been noticeable before, but it sure as hell was now. The sound of her heart rate ticking up a notch combined with the sound of cascading water over a very large fall. And from somewhere she heard the mournful sound of pipes joining in, as if a piper played them on the next summit or something. She had to force her gaze to move from his. And it wasn’t easy.

There wasn’t one part of this guy that wasn’t unbelievable. Not one. He had straight, black hair. If she had to guess it was probably mid-back length. She couldn’t tell because he had it pulled back with a headband thing. Like a ‘60’s cult member. Or a ‘70’s rock star. And he was tall. How was that even possible? He topped her by at least six, maybe seven inches, which was damn near perfect if she considered it.

Oh, no. No, Becky. No
.

What was the thinking? She was on a scholastic mission, a quest for enlightenment and knowledge, a dig for truth. She was not here to have sex with the locals. Even if she’d had a Hepatitis C shot, it was out of the question. Completely against character. And with this guy, it was probably illegal.

She was looking at the definition of hot.

And even that word failed. This guy was beyond hot. He was completely wasted up here in the middle of some undiscovered ancient site. He should be down on the streets of Lima, pulling in billions of tourist dollars toward the economy, just for the chance of having a picture with him. They had statues throughout the Andean area, most depicting war chiefs or the like. The men on those statues had seemed a bit over-the-top to her. Sculpted just a tad better than nature could have blessed them.

Now, she knew those statues weren’t just inaccurate. They weren’t even close.

She’d been about ready to stomp down the mountain, overtake Joe and every guy who looked like him, kick some major ass, but then something like this shows up? Well. Hell. If this was a
khipucamayuq
? She’d just died and gone to heaven.

He said something. The sound bounced off the rock face all about them. It came at her like a heavy metal drum riff. The sound was deep. Low. And throbbing. Pretty much matching her lower parts at the moment.

Becky shook her head. It didn’t help much against the sound of running water. The soloist on pan-pipes. And now a throbbing deep drum beat that dragged her pulse into rhythm with it.

“What?” she asked.

He took a couple of steps toward her. Becky instinctively backed one. She couldn’t go farther. The rock bench was against her legs. Oh.
Holy shit and shine-ola
. He hadn’t made a sound, either. And why? Because he didn’t have on shoes. Or sandals. And that kilt had slit open to upper thigh with his movement. Apparently Mister Sun-god had legs that matched the rest of him. It didn’t appear he was wearing a damn thing under that skirt, either.

He said the phrase again. The same thing happened, only she got what felt like a burst of effervescence through her veins, too. Rebecca forced her mind to listen. This was ridiculous. She wasn’t some sex-starved ninny from the States. She was a scholar. She’d studied since middle school to learn anything about South American culture. Including the languages. She’d studied Spanish although it rarely helped when talking to a local. She knew
Quechua
, the language of the Inca. She could piece together some Mayan. Some of his words sounded recognizable. Maybe.

Was it a greeting? His body language said it was. Becky answered back in
Quechua
for hello.

“
Rimaykullayki.
”

His expression didn’t alter. Nothing much changed, although something rippled through his chest, tightening his pecs. And she could have gone without noticing that! He answered it with another burst of words. She could pick out some familiar-sounding words. Maybe. One of them sounded like ‘trespassing’. That wasn’t good. Becky fished around in her backpack without looking. Pulled out the knotted
khipu
she’d shown at the market and started unraveling it.

“Are you
khipucamayuq?
” she asked.

He fired off a bunch of words, interspersed with facial expression of displeasure. They matched the way his biceps bunched up. He looked menacing, or gave off a good impression of it. And he had a very sharp-looking knife in one hand. She should probably try and locate her pepper spray.

“
Mana hapisanichu.
” She tried again, lifting a hand and trying to give an expression of confusion to match her words for not understanding.

Whatever he replied sounded like the same words as before. Only this time he interspersed it with a huffed sound. Becky translated them to herself from what it looked like he said. She said it aloud, lowering her voice as if he were the one speaking, although she could never achieve the bass tones. What the hell? It wasn’t like he could understand.

“Look lady, does it look like I sat on my ass knotting strings my entire life? That was the duty of scribes. Priests. Weaklings. I am the incarnation of the sun-god,
Inti
, here on earth. I can kill with one slice of this knife. And you are trespassing.”

Uh oh.

He’d turned his head away. A nerve was knotted in his cheek from what she could tell. Well. One thing was obvious. She was wasting time. His and hers. She might as well leave before she ran out of daylight. Or whatever was going for daylight today. She could reach her hotel, have a nice supper of
jamon
- thinly sliced ham
-
with whatever else they’d prepared, and put this experience in her journal where nobody would read it. Because she wasn’t putting it on her BLOG. Who the hell would believe that?

Wait. Maybe he’d let her take a picture with her cell phone.

What a dumb thought. Becky started rolling her
khipu
back into a roll. He hadn’t looked like he was amenable to much of anything. He turned back to her before she’d finished with the
khipu.
Her hands kept rolling without watching what she was doing. He didn’t seem as menacing as before and he was back to giving her an enigmatic expression. He’d moved even closer somehow. How had she missed that? He was probably six feet away now. He looked even finer up close. There wasn’t a hint of body hair to mute any of that heaven-sent physique and face. Nor help with the impact from those incredible blue eyes. Wow. This guy had been blessed, and over-blessed. She almost sighed in appreciation.

Stop that, Rebecca. Just stop.

“I guess I’ll just be on my way, Mister Sun-god. It was uh...interesting meeting up with you. But I have to go. You know. Daylight is burning and all that.”

“
Hola
.”

The word bounced off the rocks again. Becky’s eyes went wide again and not just at the sound.
Man!
The guy had the ability to stop traffic with the scope of his voice. And she recognized the word he’d spoken. Easily. It meant hello. What the hell? He knew Spanish?

“
Usted habla espanol?
” she asked.

“
Si
.”

She was flabbergasted. Times two. No. She needed to square that reaction before even trying to describe it. Becky’s heart rate went into hyper-drive, adding to her other physiological reactions.

This just wasn’t possible.

She mentally went through her studies. He lowered his chin and regarded her while she did it. She had to look away more than once. His eyes belonged to the realm of fantasy. They were such a vivid sky blue. Looking into them gave her a feeling akin to the instant between sleep and wakefulness. She couldn’t hold his gaze.

Actually, she daren’t look long enough to hold it.

She had to go back through her history studies. While she still had the ability to function.
Think, Becky!

The
Chachapoya
nation had been described as tall people. Fair-skinned. Blue-eyed. It was considered a myth until a cache of mummies was discovered during the last century in a
Chachapoya chullpa
- or cliff cemetery. Those mummies had proved it. They’d been known as cloud people. Overtaken in 1470 by the Incan ruler, Tupac Inca Yapanqui, just before the Spanish arrived. Once that happened, the cloud people had sided with the Spanish. It hadn’t helped their culture. Once the Incan nation was subdued, all the Spanish allies got repaid with slavery. But before all that happened, a Spaniard chronicler had noted that the
Chachapoya
were a: “light-skinned race...famously beautiful.”

Well. That description certainly fit Mister Sun-god here.

Was she looking at a real
Chachapoya
descendant? It could explain why he didn’t speak the Incan language. But, it just wasn’t possible. They’d all disappeared in the sixteenth century. Been absorbed into the local population. It was beyond unbelievable. Even totally, way-out-there, in-your-face unbelievable.

Then again, everything about this encounter fit that definition. And why was she even questioning it mentally? She could just ask. Becky cleared her throat and spoke to him in Spanish.

“You are...
Chachapoya?
”

He grinned. He had perfect teeth, even, and very white. His smile was as devastating as his eye color. Becky gasped.
Oh, dear heaven
. That smile was enough to cause swooning. Lack of oxygen was making it a distinct possibility. She had to sit down before she fell. It was more a collapse, however. She was in luck that the stone bench was right behind her. The rock felt harder than before. Maybe that was from dropping onto it. It was also colder than it had been.

Becky bent forward and put her head between her knees and watched the stone below her rotate and whirl and heave. She sucked for air in short gasps. This was ignominious. But she couldn’t be the first. Women probably fainted every time Mister Sun-god showed up. Men, too. And she really shouldn’t stay much longer. Maybe he’d be amenable to meeting up at another location.

Like her hotel room.

Becky nearly groaned at the instant thought. What was wrong with her? This wasn’t remotely like her. She wasn’t the lustful type. She’d never even seen a porno flick. And yet thoughts of Mister Sun-god and her kept flashing through her consciousness. Without one bit of warning. It was so completely random. Out of left field. Out-of-character. And a few other clichéd bits of crap.

The rock came into focus beneath her hiking boots. Oh. Good. She hadn’t completely lost consciousness. Becky surreptitiously turned her wrist over and checked her watch. She seemed to have lost two-and-a-half hours up here.

Two-and-a half hours?

How was that possible? And with the sequence of events, why did she even bother asking it? She’d stepped through some time portal or something. That was one explanation. Maybe it was the only one.

Mister Sun-god appeared at her feet. Crouched on one knee. That put one of his legs on perfect view in absolutely perfect masculine definition. Oh. Holy shit. Again. The guy should have some kind of warning on him somewhere.