they had once been, the grass and vines encroaching even here, beyond the reach of sunlight.
The others followed, just a few steps behind them—and were stopped dead at the open doorway.
“What the fuck?”
Chapter 55
Teresa spun around to face the man who had forced them here. He looked stunned as he once again tried to walk into the temple—and once again came up against an invisible barrier.
Miguel’s features twisted in fury as he slammed his hands against air and found something solid. “What is this, Teresa? What the hell are you playing at?”
Teresa didn’t answer—she was shocked herself. She just left him shouting furiously as she tugged Rune farther back from the doorway. Everything made sense now. Why her abuela had sacrificed her life for them.
“My grandmother sent us here, Rune.” She looked around and above her, gaze sweeping over the cold stone as if seeing an old friend after a long separation. “The whole site of Palenque was sacred to the Mayans, but this particular temple is the one built to the moon.” She smiled for the first time in hours. “And I was the moon priestess. It’s welcoming me, Rune. I can feel the power here strengthening me.”
He scrubbed his big hands up and down her arms and the heat of him was a welcome rush.
“The temple is warded magically,” she said, shivering as another wave of mystical power eased inside her. “Protected by powerful magic. Nothing evil can get in.”
As her words sunk in, Rune turned to watch Miguel throw one of his thugs against the barrier, only to see the man bounce away like a rock off the surface of a lake. A few more tries were just as unsuccessful. Rune smiled, slow and wide, keeping himself between Teresa and the doorway. “Your grandmother, Teresa, was almost as amazing as you.”
She grinned back at him, feeling the mystical energies swarming around them. The chilling cold of the white gold was muted as power rushed through her. “Do you feel that?”
Outside, men were shouting and a gun was fired. Bullets, too, bounced off the energy barrier, ricocheting from its surface to other targets. Someone screamed.
“The magic is pure here,” Rune said, taking a breath as though a heavy weight had been rolled off his chest. “Rich and timeless. Even the white gold won’t hold us in here.”
“I know.” Teresa could already feel the truth. That her powers were bubbling back to life as though the necklace around her throat didn’t even exist.
She looked down at her hands and willed the lightning to life. At first, there was simply a sputter of sparks dazzling the tips of her fingers. But as the power of the temple soaked into her skin those sparks flared and grew, in spite of the white gold’s dampening effects.
“Can you get the gold off my neck?” Rune asked.
“Yes.” She lifted the chain and felt the cold of the metal against her skin, trying to dwarf what was inside her. But Teresa held on, and with the surge of strength she had gained from the temple’s interior, she succeeded.
Concentrating her power, she shot a small blast of lightning at the links of the chain around Rune’s neck and sighed in satisfaction as the thing shattered. Quickly, she dropped the white gold and watched as it fell to the dirt at their feet.
He stretched his arms out wide and pulled in a great breath, as if he had been released from a box three sizes too small. Smiling, he said, “Now you.”
Rune used the fire of his touch to melt the links at her throat, then brushed the offending necklace aside and let it land on the floor beside the first one.
Only then did he turn to face their enemies again. Miguel hadn’t given up. He kept firing at the doorway, despite the ricocheting bullets that continued to endanger both him and his men. The barrier held, permitting no entry. Miguel’s men were gathered into a knot, hiding from the bullets and from a power none of them understood but all of them feared.
“We need to leave, Teresa,” Rune told her, face grim but determined as he narrowed his eyes on the man still screaming threats and obscenities at Teresa. “I’m going out there to clear the danger. Then I’ll come back for you.”
But she grabbed his hand and shook her head. “No, there’s a better way.” Threading her fingers through his, she looked up at him and let him read the idea in her eyes. Rune