“You won’t go?” she asked sleepily.
He kissed her forehead and brushed his fingers over her eyelids. “Sleep.”
The caballos charged into the village, nostrils flared and teeth bared like the fangs of the jaguar ready to slaughter its prey. Their riders were gods of destruction and malice, helmets and weapons flashing as they trampled the villagers who came to meet them.
Itzel stood at the door of her house, mouth open to cry out. No sound would come. Men she had known all her life collapsed into the dust, great gaping wounds spilling blood bright as forest flowers. Women screamed and fled, some falling under the horses’ hooves, others dragged by their hair to be violated and cast aside. Children wept. And yet the conquerors slew on, laughing and merciless.
Filled with despair, she turned to the one who stood behind her. She begged Andrés to stop those with whom he had once ridden, to save the village from their murderous rampage.
But Andrés didn’t move. He stared, his skin the color of bleached bone, his eyes no longer the hue of clear water but swallowed up in obsidian black. He had become like some forgotten stone idol, unable or unwilling to interfere in the fates of men. Only when one of the conquistadores, his hair golden as the sun, drove his huge mount toward the house and reached for Itzel did Andrés act. He pushed her behind him and looked up at the man on the horse. He spoke words in the enemy tongue. Hair-of-the-Sun laughed again, spun his beast about and rode away, his followers behind him.
Itzel staggered from the doorway, her eyes glazed with horror. She knelt beside the lifeless body of her brother and stroked the matted hair from the terrible gash across his forehead. There were a few others left alive; they, like her, wandered from one body to the next, searching for those they had loved.
Much time passed before Itzel turned back to the house. Andrés still waited there, empty as one whose heart had been given in sacrifice to the gods.
She had loved him. She had made the others see that he was not like those he had abandoned. But she had been wrong. He was no different.
“Itzel,” he whispered, his voice a broken husk. But she felt no pity. She came to stand before him, fists clenched at her sides.
“You have betrayed us,” she said.
“No. I…”
“You did not stop them. For this…” She closed her eyes. “For this you must pay.”
For the first time in many suns she drew upon the powers her grandmother and mother had passed to her, powers bestowed by the earth and the sky. “You will suffer as you have watched the people suffer,” she said. “Your kind are bound to the great beasts you call caballos. Now you shall run as such a beast for all the days of your life, walking as a man only at night. But you shall not die. You shall have no relief until one of my blood forgives you for your cowardice this day.”
Andrés heard her, but he did not believe. She saw that in his eyes. But a few minutes of daylight remained; he grew taut, the curse beginning to work its way through his body.
Itzel turned her back on him and walked away, ignoring the wordless cries of agony and terror as Andrés lost his ability to speak with a human voice. The last she heard of him was the drumming of his hooves as he fled into the forest.
Cat shot up in the bed, her heart hammering and her breath locked in her throat. It took several moments before she recognized the room around her.
Andrés stood by the window, his shoulder propped against the wall as he gazed outside. Tension had turned the muscle of torso and buttock and thigh to sculpted stone. He still looked exactly the same as he had in that other, ancient world. Not even his name was different.
He had begged her forgiveness. She had given it, unthinking, never questioning why he had asked. From the very beginning he’d tried to seduce her while revealing as little about himself as he could get away with. Suddenly she had a reason for his behavior.
Incredulous laughter roiled in Cat’s stomach like an over-rich meal. It isn’t possible. But Andrés had appeared only when Trueno had vanished. And the black stallion hadn’t returned until daylight.
Coincidence, no more. Yet the anger from the dream was a bleak knot in Cat’s chest. She felt Itzel’s despair, the agony she had experienced when she’d placed the spell on the man she loved.
If it were true—if, in spite of every rule of logic, Andrés and the black horse were one—then he had deceived her from the first moment they’d met. The only reason he’d have asked her to forgive him was if he’d believed that Itzel’s “blood” ran in her veins. He’d arrogantly assumed that the way to control a female was to give her a good banging. He’d made her so helpless with passion that she’d hand him anything he asked.
Even her love.
She got out of bed, dragging the top sheet from the mattress and wrapping it around her body.
“Trueno,” she said. “It’s almost daylight.”
Andrés looked at her…only for an instant, barely long enough for her to see the flash of shock in his eyes when he recognized the trap she had set. He smiled, though it was too late.
“Mi gatita,” he said. “You have been dreaming.”
“Yes.” She walked toward him, righteous fury flowing through her body. “Very vivid dreams. Dreams of a man who would not defend those who had welcomed him.”
The color drained from Andrés’s face. “Catalina…”
“Don’t lie to me.” She stopped inches away, holding his gaze. “I saw it all. I saw her.”
“Itzel,” he whispered.
“Yes.” She let her heart become a block of ice. “You are Trueno.”
He must have known then that denial would do him no good. “Yes,” he said, despair weighting the word like an anchor thrown to a drowning man.
Cat didn’t falter. “You must have been looking for centuries…looking for someone who could lift the curse. Then you discovered me. Somehow you knew that Itzel was my distant kin. You needed to win my forgiveness by any means necessary.”
“No. It is not so simple, queri—”
“Do you have an excuse, Andrés? She loved you, and you let them destroy everything she cared about.”
“Have I not paid enough?” He reached out to touch her face. “Listen to me. It was five hundred years—”
She jerked free. “Maybe if you’d been honest, if you’d really tried to atone…but you set out to use me instead.”
“No. When I first saw you…your grace, your strength…I could not help…could not help but—”
“It’s too late, Andrés. I won’t play.”
“Catalina. I beg of you…” His voice thinned, and he grabbed at his throat. His skin began to ripple as if every muscle and tendon beneath were attempting to assume a new shape. He fell against the wall, pushed away violently and staggered toward the door, his hands extended before him.
Cat rushed after him, ready to take back every word she’d spoken. But Andrés flung open the door and rushed onto the landing. He stumbled downstairs into the parking lot. Cat dashed back into the room and threw on jeans and a shirt. She practically fell down the stairs. The black stallion stood trembling among the trucks and SUVs, his coat shining with sweat.
“Andrés!”
He looked toward her, ears flat against his head, and spun on his hind legs. Before she’d taken another step he’d set off at a wild gallop toward the weedy field that backed the smattering of motels, fast-food joints and garages to the west. Dawn had just broken; cars on the road were sparse, and only a few early-rising souls noticed the saddleless horse charging across the street.