The Cursed Key

Chapter One

I had come to a dangerous place, eagerly and with abandon fully latched to my soul. Stepping out of the mud-splattered jeep, I mentally cursed the wretched thing for the banging and jostling I had received on my way up through the trees. After a quick check that I had my knife and packs, I walked into the treacherous mysteries of the Vale do Javari.

The Amazon rainforest was vast, many portions of it unexplored, this place least of all. The ground was sodden and soft, rain-soaked leaves licking my pants as I passed. The possibility that it could have been thousands of years since humans had lived here thrilled me to the point of such utter disbelief that I didn't hear the person behind me, at first.

"Olivia, are you listening to the man?"

I tore my eyes unwillingly from the vine-laden trees, branches twisting toward me like they were reaching for me, beckoning me to explore their depths. Sighing sharply, I glanced over my shoulder at Kelby. He was the newbie on the team and in my opinion took too much stock in precautionary measures. No doubt the Brazilian official standing near his shoulder had been touting exactly that.

My silence giving him answer enough, Kelby shook his head. "He warns us that the area is heavily populated with an unusual amount of jaguars and to be cautious."

Grinning, I touched the knife hanging on my belt. It was a beautiful number, eight inches with a mahogany handle worn from use. "Jaguars are nothing Chaucer can't handle." I slid the knife out a few inches, the cold steel still gleaming like moon-kissed glass after so many years. "Besides, those cats aren't what I'd worry about. The Brazilian wandering spiders are harder to spot."

Kelby knew this, and I probably shouldn't taunt him, but I was eager to continue and didn't need lectured on local wildlife, however dangerous.

The man beside my team member began speaking in Portuguese, and I raised my eyebrows. I had known, of course, that there were a couple of other teams that had been granted the rare and one-time opportunity to traverse this vast and largely untouched wilderness. I just thought that my team would have been here first. Upon further inspection, my eyes caught the slightly trampled underbrush and a narrow path leading to the very recently discovered ruins that had brought me to the Amazon.

Thanking the man in Portuguese, I hurried down the trail, leaving the rest of my team behind to gather their equipment. I caught snippets of conversation as I neared the dig site, my steps quickening. The massive trees and dense wall of plant life broke open, and I paused at the shaded edge to take in the reason I was here.

A wide open space was patterned with squares of grass rimmed with carefully set stones, smoothed with age. Already, another team seemed to have found a way in as a man disappeared in a gap near the edge of one of the squares. Not as grand of a discovery as Machu Pichu or La Ciudad Perdida, but I was still itching to get into the depths of the ruins before me. Slapping a mosquito, I stepped into the full sunlight, a rare thing this far into the rainforest, and farther into the ruins where I could get a full view of the other two competing groups.

"Late to the party, eh, Perez?"

I had never favored the man leaning on the small folding table several yards away, grinning like a boy who had set bait out for a mouse. Who favors competition, anyway?

Raising my voice so he could hear me across the expanse of grass and rock, I said, "Shouldn't you have your head buried in the sand somewhere, Williams?"

"I left Egypt as soon as I'd caught wind of this. No more dusty bones for me." He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. Greedy ass. He was more 'careless treasure hunter' than 'esteemed archaeologist.'