the vision, but still she remained. He reached for her. She retreated.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did you do it?”
Hayden swallowed. This can’t be happening . It’s the heat. His thirst, this evil place playing tricks on his mind.
“I thought you loved me. You told me you loved me.” Tears streamed down her cheeks, glistening in the bright sun.
“You’re not here. You’re not real.” Hayden clenched his jaw.
“Is that what you think? That I don’t feel the pain you caused me?” Her sorrowful expression turned as hard as the stone obelisk they stood beside. Rosy lips drew into a cracked gray line. Her eyes turned to slate. “You think you can’t hurt people simply because, to you, they aren’t real. I know who you are, Hayden Gale. I know who you are!”
Hayden’s heart thundered in his chest. He was going to be sick. Tearing away from her, he ran up the stairs of the temple and plunged into the darkness after Graves. Thoughts dashed in his mind, racing past impossibility. Someone had to be playing a trick on him. But nobody knew about Katherine. Nobody but him.
Darkness enveloped him and with it came another kind of heaviness. It pressed on his shoulders as if the air weighed more inside the building than without. A light fluttered from a dark corner.
“Ah, you’ve gained your courage, I see.” Graves’s voice echoed over the stone walls. “Come here. I’ve found something quite interesting.”
Hayden squinted as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. The room extended so far back he couldn’t see the end. Rotting chairs, tables, and bowls littered the cold, stone floor, along with dirt and dried weeds. A collection of handmade axes and swords hung on one wall. Hayden glanced over his shoulder and scanned the courtyard but Katherine was gone. Just an illusion. Of course. Hadn’t he just been thinking of her? No doubt his guilt had gotten the better of him. He drew a deep breath of dank air that smelled of mold and agony.
The flicker of Graves’s torch drew Hayden’s gaze, and he headed toward him with one thought in mind—to drag the madman out of here and leave this place posthaste. A rancid smell much like rotten fruit assailed him as he passed a large pond circled in stone. Steam spiraled off the dark water like misty fingers rising from the grave. Apprehension twisted his gut and he hurried along, his gaze drawn to metallic engravings that decorated the entire back wall. Torch light glinted off a golden crescent moon surrounded by stars that hung above what appeared to be a stone altar. Thinking this must be what drew Graves’s attention, Hayden faced him, intending to make a joke that they shouldn’t tell Dodd about the temple or he’d strip the place of all its gold. But Graves wasn’t looking at the golden moon. He was staring at words etched into the stone above an opening to the side of the altar.
“Do you know what this says, my friend?” Graves held the torch up to the lintel.
Hayden glanced at the words. Latin? How had Latin words come to be written in the middle of a Brazilian jungle? “No.”
“It says ‘Beware, the Catacomb of the Four.’ ”
C HAPTER 4
B ack in New Hope, Hayden slid his knife across the bark and watched the mahogany curl beneath his blade. One of the many wonderful things this jungle possessed was a variety of rare, exotic wood. His good friend, a furniture maker from Savannah, would be happier than a beaver in a woodshed with such abundance. Smiling at the thought, Hayden carved another slice, carefully shaping the wood like a potter molding clay. The smell of roasted fish and fried bananas stirred his stomach to life, and he looked up to see several of the farmer’s wives hovering about the massive brick fire pit at the edge of the meeting shelter. At least that was what the colonists were calling the large pavilion left by the previous settlers. Based on the table and several chairs scattered beneath the palm-frond roof, Hayden assumed