Read Online The Bloodgate Warrior by Joely Sue Burkhart - Free Book Online

came to you. Did it hunt you?”
    I frowned, trying to remember. “No. I don’t think so. It was just there, shambling along. I grabbed Nat and we ran toward the door. That’s when it turned and started to follow me. Now that I think about it… It seemed surprised.”
    He stood and scanned the garden. “So if you were not its original target, there’s only one other thing the demon could have sought. Where was it headed before it came after you?”
    “It came into the dining room and was headed straight for the other door. We ran for the side door and it came after us instead.”
    “But both doors eventually would have led it… here.” He turned to face me, his dark eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “Have you a favorite place here in the courtyard?”
    Surprised, I started to shake my head, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered. I’d loved this garden from the first day of our stay. It was beautiful. Why shouldn’t I? “We’ve only been here a few days, but Natalie and I often come out here to sit by the fountain.”
    “Then perhaps there’s magic here, something that drew the creature.”
    Magic. That made me remember one of Leonor’s entries about the fountain. “I think something might have been hidden in the fountain by Luisa’s daughter. She wrote about it in a journal that’s been passed down to my family. What made Alvarado famous in La Noche Triste ?”
    Técun gave me a grim, hard smile. “The Salto de Alvarado . He used his spear to leap across one of the causeways in the retreat from Tenochtitlán. If only our brothers had been able to kill him then…” He shook his head. “If that spear is hidden here, we must retrieve it.”
    He reached down to his calf and pulled a slim but wicked-looking knife out of his boot. “Let’s see if I can find the creature’s prize. If her magic is concealing it, you may be the only one who can free it.”
    He drew the knife across the pad of his thumb, and my mind locked up. I’d never seen anyone deliberately cut himself. He made a low sound more a moan than anything I’d ever heard from him before, drawing my eyes up to his face.
    Eyes closed, head tilted back, his body braced in a wide stance, he looked like he was in the throes of some really good head, not bleeding.
    I edged closer, drawn irresistibly as the moon calls the tides. “Are you okay?”
    “I’d forgotten.” His voice vibrated and hummed, low and bass.
    “Forgotten what?”
    He shook himself out of the daze enough to give me the cocky warrior smile that made me want to punch him in the solar plexus and then seize his bottom lip in my teeth. Holding his injured hand out above the fountain, he dripped blood into the water.
    Uh-oh. I was starting to realize exactly what he was doing. “Are you opening the gate again?”
    “Precisely. Not a traveling gate, though. Do you see anything in the water?”
    It’d never dawned on me that this fountain very well could be original to the palacio and Leonor’s secret safe. Could she have really hidden something here for over five hundred years? The bottom circular tier contained flood lights beneath the water. A smaller, higher tier spilled into the lower, providing a beautiful water feature for the garden. Perfectly trimmed hedges combined with palm trees and lush growth, a semiprivate oasis in the midst of Antigua.
    “No. If Alvarado’s spear really is here, why do you want it?”
    “Any weapon that bears my blood is a powerful tool. The spear that took my mortal life will possess a destructive force greater than any weapon your technology could create. With it in my hands, I could hold back all the powers of Xibalba.”
    I hesitated, wondering if he’d really thought about my heritage. I was a very distant descendant of his greatest enemy. “The woman who built this hotel was Alvarado’s daughter, and my great-great-something-grandmother.”
    “Did you ever wonder why Xicoténcatl came to be with Alvarado, a man all Maya