Tomas looked at Sarika. “Could these people have come from a different planet?”
“I don’t know. They were highly intelligent and very advanced. Very peaceful people. They wanted to stay to themselves and live out their lives in harmony with the earth, sky and below. The temple was the connection between all three dimensions.”
“Was it a female-dominated society?” Lojos asked Sarika. “Thejaguar statue feels feminine, and you have the ability to bind power to you.”
“They worshiped the jaguar,” she said. “I was a shifter in those times and regarded as a sort of priestess. My life was one of service to the people.”
“Were they shifters?” Mataias asked.
Sarika shook her head. They were entering the temple. On the outside, the building looked as if it were broken and sunken into the ground, but the moment they entered, walls shimmered around them, great blocks of stone. There were two chambers one could conceal themselves in, but Sarika pushed on what appeared to be a solid wall, knowing the actual temple was belowground. She did it instinctively, as if she’d done so many, many times.
She led the way with confidence, down the narrow stairs and through the various rooms used for rituals. They were looking for the weapon she had stolen from Mitro. She hadn’t had time to take it down into the extensive underground tunnels. She had hidden it there in the chamber where Mitro so gleefully tortured and murdered the innocent, peaceful people she had come to love.
No one spoke. The chamber was far too soaked in blood and death. Heaviness invaded their minds and hearts. The Carpathian males automatically shut down their feelings, but Jubal and Sarika had no choice but to endure. She couldn’t help admiring the strength in Jubal. He had come to pay tribute to these people as well as to Solange’s. When he knew Solange was making her pilgrimage, he joined her to give her support and to let her know that her people would not be forgotten. He was making that same statement about Sarika’s people.
With each step leading to the platform where her life had ended, Sarika found herself going further back in time. The coppery scent of blood that had permeated the ritual chamber. The stench of the fires Mitro had scattered around to throw live children into to watch them burn for his own amusement. The flicker of the orange-and-red flames built on the walls of the chamber. She felt the stone under her feet.
Her fingers circled the amulet until it grew so hot it burned the image of the jaguar into her palm just as it had done once before. She barely felt it as she deliberately took a deep breath and stepped from reality to her past. Her goal was to find the hidden piece of the weapon that could destroy the Carpathian people.
She felt the impact of connecting with her two best friends, women she called sister. Both wore the same amulet, and both carried the immense power of the jaguar. Even together, they could not defeat Mitro. They weren’t prepared for such evil, or for the trauma their too-sensitive hearts would have to endure seeing the brutal torture and murder of a peaceful people.
She had to get past what was happening all around her and to her sisters, to focus completely on Mitro and the pie-shaped metal he had shoved inside his shirt. While her sisters distracted him, she had to steal the weapon and hide it before they suicided. They could never chance telling him where they had hidden what he considered the ultimate prize.
Her mind worked at rapid speed. She was all too aware of Mitro defiling Litza while Sarika combined their power to remove the weapon. With only seconds to hide it, she used every ounce of power she had to embed it deep in the hieroglyphics on the wall behind Mitro. As she did, she replicated the design throughout all the walls, inside and out of the temple. The hieroglyphics told the stories of the past, the star people who had come to live in peace and died in a horrendous and senseless slaughter.
As she relayed the information to the others, all eyes went to the spot behind where Mitro had stood to see that the wall had been broken open, as if someone had taken a hatchet to it. Small and large pieces of stone were scattered all over the floor, along with dirt and particles of dust. Great cracks ran up and down the wall, fanning outward from the gaping hole where the piece had been ripped from the wall.
Sarika collapsed on the platform, dissolving into tears,overwhelmed with grief, with too many memories, but uppermost, guilt. They’d given their lives for that small piece of a weapon. All three of them. How had it been found? Why hadn’t she allowed herself to see into her nightmares and know they were real? This catastrophe was on her.
Chapter
20
“It’s my fault.” Sarika couldn’t stop sobbing.
She became aware of Tomas holding her in his lap. Somehow, he’d gotten her back to the safety of Luiz’s tree house, but her reality continued to flicker between the past and present.
“If I hadn’t been such a coward and had just accessed my memories instead of hiding from them, we would have the first piece of the weapon they plan to use to destroy your people. Now your enemies have it.”
Tomas rocked her gently, his arms providing a fortress, but even he couldn’t stop the flood of tears and condemnation she heaped on herself. He let her cry for a long while, and then he caught her hair and tipped her head back.
“Enough,sivamet. There is only so much of this I can take. You know you aren’t responsible for any of this. You take on too much. You began having nightmares as a child and believed those memories to be just that. In your human world, most don’t believe there are past lives. And for many people there are not. There was a significant reason for you to be born over and over. If you must place blame, put it squarely on my shoulders.”
She blinked at him, her long lashes wet and sticky. “Why wouldyou even say that?” She hiccupped as she tried to stop the sobs choking her.
“I didn’t find you. I looked, but I couldn’t find you. And I opted to remain alive.” His answer was simple—and truthful. She had to be born, live her lifespan, die and be reborn with his soul until he was gone from earth. He hadn’t given her the chance at peace.
Sarika shook her head and pressed trembling fingers to her lips. “This is a huge mess because I couldn’t face my past, Tomas. I didn’t even know there was a weapon that has the potential to destroy your people until you told me. I had no idea I was the one who stole it from Mitro until you gave me the courage to face the memories I had buried and turned into nightmares. If anyone isnotto blame, it is you.”
“There was evidence of Justice being in the temple. I am very familiar with the few tracks he leaves behind. But he wasn’t alone, or someone else was in the temple before him. Lojos and Mataias are insistent that Justice is the mastermind behind organizing an attempt to kill Prince Mikhail and Gregori. I still think we need to reserve judgment. What do you think?”
Tomas needed her to focus on solutions. He had little time to convert her and get them both in the ground so they could follow Justice and hopefully figure out where the second piece of the weapon would be. With all that, the most important thing to him was getting her to realize she had no blame for the weapon getting into the hands of the enemy.
He had talked it over with the others, and they hadn’t wanted to draw attention to the temple by going there. Had they recovered the weapon, they would have had to leave the area immediately, and he couldn’t leave without converting his lifemate. The Carpathian ancients had all agreed they would go to the temple after the women had their party. If they were able to recover the weapon, Luiz would carry it to the Carpathian Mountains, and it would be guarded until they figured out a way to destroy it.
Blaming herself wasn’t going to help, especially since it wasn’t truethat she had anything to do with the fiasco of them arriving too late. Sarika had been pulled back in time, thrown into the abyss of the worst times in her life cycle, yet she’d done it to aid the Carpathian people. She had to do so selflessly, letting go of her present self in order to access the past, and she’d done so knowing what she would be facing.
“I’m proud of you. Proud that you’re my lifemate. Proud of your strength and courage. The way you allow yourself to be vulnerable, that you trust me enough to show that to me.”
