Aztec Gold by Caridad Piñeiro Page B

closest to the light and the cot, a picture of her in a protective leather frame.
    The presence of the photo gave her hope but still left too many questions to which she needed answers.
    “Why, Rafe? Why are you here? Living like this? Hiding?” she said as she faced him completely.
    “You wouldn’t understand.”
    “Why don’t you at least try to explain?” she challenged.
    With a long sigh, Rafe stepped closer to the circle of light and grasped the hem of the coarse cotton tunic he wore. His hands shook on the ragged edge of the cloth as he hesitated for just a breath’s length, but then he snatched the garment up and over his head, exposing his upper body.
    She gasped with shock at the viciousness of the scars marring his once perfect physique. Deep ridges cut across his ribs on the left side of his body. At his right shoulder, two thick-scarred irregular circles led to more ridges, shallower this time, but no less painful to behold.
    No doubt existed in her mind that such wounds might have been fatal. Should have been fatal, she realized as she stepped up to him and laid her hand on his side. Experienced the depth of the wounds beneath her fingers before she skimmed her free hand upward to his shoulder.
    There she traced the edge of the ragged and heavy circular scars with her thumb and he sucked in a breath at that caress.
    “She did this to you?” She laid her hand flat against the other deep scars at his shoulder. They were a sickly pink color, too new to have faded to the silver of fully healed wounds. Very visible against his skin, which had been tanned to a golden color by the tropical Mexican sun.
    “She was trying to take me away, but I fought hard after she sank her talons in me. Somehow I managed to get her to release me and I hid in the underbrush. The screams—”
    “I know. Believe me, I know.”
    He cradled her jaw and stroked his thumb across her cheek. “I could never really imagine what it must have been like for you. How you suffered.”
    Her throat tight with emotion, she managed to say, “You survive. You have to…for them.”
    Rafe nodded and continued, finally understanding. “I heard David cry out. I wanted to go help him, but I was too weak. All I could do was lay there, praying for help, but none came.”
    “What about the villagers?”
    Rafe shook his head. “The villagers have lost too many of their own to the demon. They had to have heard the attack, but wouldn’t come out until the morning to see what had happened.”
    “But they took you in? Tended to your wounds?” He became stiff as stone beneath the seeking touch of her hands as she kept them on his flesh, experiencing that odd sense of energy along his skin.
    “I was near death,” he confessed and laid a hand over hers at his shoulder, stilling the motion of her hand. “I would have died if the calpulli hadn’t gifted me with part of his spirit.”
    “Gifted you?”
    “He is a nahual ,” Rafe explained.
    “A sorcerer? And you believe—”
    “I didn’t at first. Besides, I was half mad with grief and the pain of the injuries,” he confessed.
    “But you believe in his powers now?” she challenged, not as ready as he to accept such supposed claims.
    “How else can you explain this?”
    With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and stretched his arms wide, his hands spread open. At the centers of his palms came the first shimmer of something coalescing. A hum commenced, like that of a low electrical current, and as he exhaled slowly and then took another deep breath, held it, the power’s buzz seemed to grow beneath her fingertips on his skin.
    The light in the room intensified and she jerked away from him. Uneasy awareness rose that the glow was coming from Rafe.
    Small pinpricks of light now danced along his outstretched fingers and cavorted up to his wrists, static electricity winding around his extremities.
    “Rafe?” she questioned and the light called to her, so she stepped toward him again, laid her