Chapter One
The feel of old papers called to
Cynthia Guerrera the way a lover’s skin might.
Even with the gloves she wore to protect the fragile
documents from the oils on her fingers, she sensed the raspy
texture of the heavy parchment beneath her fingertips.
Smelled the mustiness that hinted at the fact that it had
been some time since these papers had seen the light of day.
At first she had been skeptical about the provenance of
the documents. Missouri cornfields were not the place one
expected to find a trunk filled with nearly
five-hundred-year-old Spanish artifacts. But a Missouri
cornfield was just where the trunk containing the papers,
journal and maps had been discovered when a developer had
begun excavations for a new strip mall.
Setting aside the missive—a letter from Coronado himself
to one of his seconds in command—she turned her attention to
the leather bound journal of Juan Domingo Cordero, one of
the conquistadors who had accompanied Coronado on his
adventures. Gingerly opening the cover, she traced her
fingers over the sprawling script. The first entries in the
journal had provided her with the identity of the author and
the date of the documents thanks to Cordero’s meticulous
notations.
With that information, she had been able to check a
number of other sources to confirm that Cordero had indeed
been one of Coronado’s lieutenants. When Coronado had left
Mexico City in 1540 in search of the fabled Cities of Gold,
Cordero had been at his side for the first leg of the
journey. Coronado had eventually separated from Cordero and
his contingent, ordering them to search in one direction
while he went in another.
Cordero’s entries in the journal carefully detailed their
travels throughout the south central portion of Mexico,
before his band had turned northward until they crossed the
Rio Grande. Eventually the group had drifted eastward and
reached the Mississippi, hugging the fertile banks of the
river until it landed them in the area that would become
known as Missouri.
Tired of their journeys and with their group decimated by
a number of incidents, the Spanish conquistadors had built a
small settlement a short distance from the sluggish and
fruitful waters of the Mississippi.
The notations in Cordero’s journal gradually diminished
after the establishment of that settlement, with the
conquistador’s adventures giving way to the routine of
farming and family life. It seemed that Cordero had finally
stopped writing at all.
Cynthia supposed that was when the conquistador had
tucked the journals detailing his explorations into the
small wood and leather trunk together with his other papers.
The trunk in turn had been put in a cellar, and over time,
the floods that often occurred in the area had covered
Cordero’s home and the surrounding settlement with mud.
Further flooding and natural events had added to the layers
over the former community, hiding its existence from sight
until the developer’s bulldozers had dug up the first hints
of the earlier colonization and the trunk.
Cynthia picked up the report that had arrived that
morning. The assorted laboratory tests she had requested
absolutely confirmed the age of the documents.
With that endorsement came proof of one thing, while
serious doubt remained about a series of entries in the
journals—unusual and unbelievable tales.
She rose and walked over to the climate-controlled locker
in her office and then removed a hand-wrought wood and metal
tube from within. Returning to her worktable, she untied the
laces holding the metal cap in place at one end of the
cylinder and slipped out a pliant sheet of leather that bore
a crudely drawn map identifying the sometimes circuitous
route Cordero and his men had taken from Mexico City.
In the middle of the map, more carefully detailed than
anything else, were the geographical features and path to
what Cordero had believed to be one of the fabled Cities of
Gold. A city supposedly inhabited by a demon goddess who had
taken away and killed nearly half a dozen of his men.
Cordero had decided after the incident that no amount of
lucre was worth their lives and had chosen to leave the area
in search of a safer existence.
Shortly thereafter, he and his men had traveled
northward, reached the Rio Grande, and eventually built the
small farming settlement near the banks of the Mississippi.
Cynthia could well understand the motivation for adopting
a quieter life after such hardships. Her childhood had been
a series of travails thanks to her anthropologist parents
and their thirst for knowledge.
But unlike the entries detailing Cordero’s travels, the
tale of a demon goddess was hard to believe. Yet everything
else about the documents was genuine.
Worse, something about the map had troubled her from the
moment she first unrolled it onto her workstation—its
similarity to one she had seen a little over six months
earlier. As she had compared the various features on the
drawing to a copy of one given to her by her lover, Dr.
Rafael Santiago, she realized there was too much coincidence
to ignore.
So many months ago, Rafe had detailed to her the plans
for his latest archaeological expedition—a trip to a
previously unknown and unexplored Aztec temple located in
south central Mexico. While on that trip, Rafe, his younger
brother and a team of five other men had disappeared into
the Mexican jungle.
For weeks rescuers had searched for them, but without
luck. The guides assisting them had refused to enter the
Devil’s Jungle and without their advice, finding Rafe’s
exact trail toward the temple had been virtually impossible.
For months Cynthia had been reaching out to various
contacts in the area, hoping for word of Rafe and his group
and keeping faith in the belief that they were still alive.
But with each month that passed and every clue that
evaporated into nothingness, that hope was fading along with
the prospect of discovering anything about her lover’s
disappearance…until now.