He squinted up into her flashlight beam. “The good news is, I think I found the rest of the bones that go with the stack of skulls outside the wall.”
“Oh, God.” The beam from her flashlight danced on the floor all around him. “Is that what those are?”
“Yep. Many are broken. Or chewed on.”
Her light returned to him. “What’s the bad news?”
“You picked a shitty time to profess your love.”
Click, click, click, click.
Louder now.
She scoffed. “Because you broke your mouth in the fall and can’t tell me that you love me back at the moment?”
“No, because I might not be alone down here in what might soon be my own damned tomb.”
He shined his light around the floor, searching through the rubble and dirt for themacuahuitl.
There!
He grabbed the handle sticking out of the rubble and pulled, stumbling backward. The weight of the weapon was wrong.
Unfortunately, only half came out—the handle with just a few inches of blades along one side. The most dangerous half was under a flat, large rock. That explained the sound of splintering wood he’d heard.
Dammit!
A loud screech rang out from the darkness behind him.
“What was that?” Angélica cried from above.
Quint spun around, light aimed at the hole, brokenmacuahuitlheld out in front of him.
“I think I’m about to have company.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I’m coming down there,” Angélica said, shining her light around the ragged edges of the hole in the floor. “Don’t do anything crazy until I get there.”
She looked down through the hole again, coughing on the dust still churning in the air. Quint wasn’t much more than ten feet down, fifteen at most. If he could clear a flat, rubble-free spot for her …
“No,” he said in a quiet voice. “Don’t come down here.”
“Quint, I’m not going to—”
“You need to figure out how to get me back topside, and you can’t do that from down here.”
She rubbed her neck, scanning the tunnel around her, her fingers brushing over Quint’s protection charm and her mom’s locket. She had to find some way to get him out of there, dammit.
There were no vines, no ropes, or any sort of tools she could use to reach him. Panic welling in her throat made it hard to swallow. Maybe she could tie her pants and shirt together to use as a … No, they were thin cotton and would barely hold her weight, let alone his.
What about Pedro and Bronko? They could cut some root vines from a strangler fig and come help pull him out.
She looked back at the partially open wall, shining her flashlight into the darkness beyond. Where the hell was KuTu? She stood and slid through the opening in the wall, taking several steps deeper into the shadows.
“KuTu,” she called out. “Come back!”
Crap! She forgot to switch to Mayan.
