On the Hunt (Sentinel Wars #3.5)(56)
Author: Gena Showalter

Don’t talk yourself into something that isn’t there, she told herself. But warmth coursed through her as she let herself mentally replay their lovemaking: his deep rumble of sexual completion, his earthy praise, his—

Her belly knotted when she figured out what had been bothering her.

Just now, in the throes, he had said gods. Plural.

Oh. Shit.

There was nothing wrong with polytheism . . . but it was an almost unthinkable choice for a man who had grown up, as he had claimed, in a deeply religious family smack in the heart of the Bible Belt. Which meant he hadn’t, or at least not entirely.

Was it another lie? Or something that went deeper?

Her heart thudded as the getting-to-know-you stories he had shared about his childhood suddenly seemed too pat, almost rehearsed. More lies. Who was he, really? How did he fit into this place, with these creatures? He was one of the good guys, a soldier, just as he’d said—that much she was sure of. But she didn’t know who he was beyond that.

Thoroughly chilled even though she was still lying beside his big furnace of a body, she slipped out of bed and pulled on borrowed clothes, adding a sweatshirt against the bone-deep cold that had chased away the golden warmth.

Pausing in the doorway, she looked back at his sleeping bulk. "Who the hell are you?" she whispered. Inwardly, though, she was thinking, Who the hell am I ?

Was she a piece of whatever was happening in this place, or was this just the ultimate in orphans’ fantasies: that she was the lost child of powerful people, abandoned with a magic necklace that brought her back to where she belonged?

Or not, she thought, still staring at JT. She didn’t do lies, didn’t do liars.

But what was the truth?

Turning away from him, she padded out into the main room and took a long look around, not sure what she was searching for, but figuring she would know it when she saw it.

A half hour and two cups of coffee later, she found it: the seam of a hidden door disguised to look just like the rustic, exposed-beam interior of the main room. After that, it wasn’t hard to identify the pressure pad that triggered it—the disguise was cursory, more to fool casual visitors than to evade a determined search.

She hesitated, nerves sparking even as her instincts said, Do it.

Blowing out a breath, she whispered, "Okay. Down the rabbit hole we go." She wanted, needed the truth about what he was hiding, what it had to do with her.

As she opened the door and pushed through, she was braced to find almost anything. What she got was a plain, workmanlike space with a computer, filing cabinet, and other office detritus.

Not letting herself hesitate—she had already crossed the line—she woke the computer, wincing when a solar converter kicked on somewhere else in the house. But the machine was password-protected, and she was no hacker. So instead of messing with that, she searched the rest of the small space, rifling through desk drawers, and then the filing cabinet. There, she found four journals, arranged by date, going back nearly a decade.

She pulled out the oldest one and cracked it open, but then stalled at the sight of his distinctive, crabbed writing.

Did she really want to do this? He had lied to her, it was true. But reading his personal papers wouldn’t make that better; it would just make her guilty of something, too. Maybe finding the office was enough—she could call him on it and see what he said. More lies, probably. But with her body still warm and loose from their lovemaking, she wanted to give him the chance.

She moved to shut the journal, but then a word jumped out at her, and she froze. Xibalba. It whispered in her mind. Xibalba. It was the Mayan underworld, the root of evil and the source of the villagers’ bat-demons. Which most definitely weren’t the cryptic species he had claimed them to be.

Another lie.

Damn it, JT.

Taking a deep breath, knowing she wasn’t going to like what she found but unable to walk away now, she opened the journal all the way, and began to read.

When the demons first come through the barrier, from Xibalba to the earthly plane, their flesh is raw and exposed, and they’re newborn-weak. They hunt animals in the beginning, the bigger the better, because they need the blood volume to power up. They drain the bodies dry, then take the skins to cover themselves—it knits somehow, so the skin becomes theirs, everywhere except the wings. In order to fill in their wings, they need human skin.

They were sneaky this time, taking only a few animals from each herd. It wasn’t until Rez’s family went missing that we knew for certain. And even then, they hid the bodies in their damned burrow. Skinned and drained, and left there for the poor bastard to find.

We go hunting tomorrow, and I hope to hell I don’t f**k it up. Some chan camazotz. That first time was a fluke and blind f**king luck, and now they’ve gone and made a hero of me.

Mostly because they need one, and the real heroes are gone.

I don’t even know if the jade ammo will work for me. We’re still eight years out from the endtime. If things are bad now, what are they going to be like two years from now? Six?

Fuck me. I never should’ve come down here. Because now I’m trapped.

"Son of a bitch," she whispered, her skin chilling to prickles of gooseflesh as things started to line up in a patchwork of fact and fiction—or what she had thought was fiction, even though old Cooter had sworn it was all true.

Her fingers trembled as she closed the journal, then laid her hand flat on the cover. Her scientist self should’ve been electrified by the grim discovery—it was a huge find, way more important than the temple. But she couldn’t get excited, not over this.

JT hadn’t just lied about his background and the’ zotz. He had lied about everything.

"Snooping, Natalie?" he said from the doorway, voice neutral.

She looked over as her heart thudded and her stomach gave a sick churn that was mingled with heat and heartache. He was wearing a tee and jeans and had one hand braced on the doorframe, so the FREEDOM tattoo faced her. He didn’t look angry so much as haunted. Caught.

She hated that she had to blink back tears. "How much of our relationship was you keeping track of me and my team, and using us to find tunnels the camazotz might be living in?"

It wasn’t the most important question in the grand scheme, but it was the one she wanted answered first, damn him.

He looked away. "Some of it."

"How much?" The burn of tears went to a wistful ache. Give me something. Tell me the sex was about us, at least. She couldn’t have been that far off. Could she?

He didn’t answer for a long moment, just stood there staring at her. Then, finally, he muttered an oath and jerked his head toward the kitchen. "Come on. If we’re going to do this, I need some damned coffee."