Xibalba Moon: A Vampire for Hire Story (Latin Moon Book 2) by J.R. Rain & Matthew S. Cox

Author:J.R. Rain & Matthew S. Cox [Rain, J.R. & Cox, Matthew S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rain Press
Published: 2023-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

7.

As soon as I look straight ahead, I can see why.

We’re less than twenty feet away from a river of scorpions. They range in size from ordinary scorpions to ones as big as tigers… all flowing in a river of chitinous shells and dangerous tails. I can’t tell if there’s water under them or if ‘river’ here is more metaphorical.

To be fair, Allison screams, too. Tammy lets out a startled yelp—part whoa, part the noise someone might make if they stepped barefoot in cold cat vomit at two in the morning.

Once the initial shock of seeing such a thing wears off, Paxton ends up staring at the scorpions.

“Wow, you’re pretty calm,” says Tammy. “A tiny spider and you usually lose your mind.”

Paxton shakes her head. “They’re scarier when they’re tiny. Don’t ask me why.”

“The river of scorpions,” says Vittorio. “The first trial.”

Tammy looks over at him. “Wait. We have to swim across that?”

“Nope.” Paxton takes a step back. “I’ll just go back to the hotel, get kidnapped, and end up on a made-for-TV movie.”

I squeeze her hand. “Relax, kiddo. We’re not wading into a river of scorpions.”

“Oh, thank God.” Paxton leans against me.

“Unless someone can give me a good reason why I shouldn’t teleport us across?” I gaze around, mostly at Allison and Vittorio.

Neither says a word.

We all hold hands, except for the ghost. He’s apparently past this trial already, so doesn’t need to worry about the river. I call the dancing flame, focusing my power on a spot of clear ground on the opposite side of the ‘river.’ Teleporting to a place close enough to directly see is a trivial thing. Camilla doesn’t even appear to realize we moved. Via my mental link with Allison, I catch a basic translation of her mild freakout. She thinks the scorpion river shifted behind us to trap us here. It might be a little cruel of me, but I’m going to let her continue thinking that. I really should try working a bit harder to keep my paranormal abilities more secret.

Meanwhile, Vittorio appears ahead of us and waves for us to follow him again.

This place is simultaneously beautiful and scary. Most of the scary comes from the complete lack of wildlife sounds. Rainforests should not be perfectly silent. One unfortunate side effect of the total silence is that we can still hear the scuttling of massive scorpions behind us. It’s a real surprise for me how Paxton didn’t completely lose her mind at such a sight. Like, how can a tiny spider scare her into climbing furniture but scorpions so big a ten-year-old could ride them like horses don’t?

I don’t have very long to ponder such deep mysteries of the universe… or question myself for dragging her into the Guatemalan land of the dead. There certainly isn’t any time to reflect on the apparent truth of there being yet another realm of the dead. Wow, two underworlds in as many weeks. My life.

What I do know is that we’ve reached an enormous ziggurat.

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