“Gabrán. They call me, Gabrán.” The man’s voice was filled to the brim with don’t-fuck-with-me tone. Antonio approved and handed over the bag.
They followed Gabrán inside, down several long hallways, through the estate and finally to a set of enormous, hand-carved double doors. A loud ruckus radiated from the other side.
Antonio heard Penelope’s voice. “Shhh. They’re here.”
Gabrán opened the door and there, standing around a giant stone slab table was a group of very odd-looking circus types—a tall man with long silver hair down to his ankles, wearing a giant jade headdress; another man with a large round belly, wearing nothing but a pair of white underpants; another woman had an enormous beehive atop her head; and a few others who were ready to attend a costume party. If it weren’t for Penelope and Kinich standing at the head of the table—who he’d already met, along with Fate—Antonio would have believed that these were not in fact deities, but people who’d escaped from the insane asylum.
“Is that a burro with a sombrero standing in the corner?” Antonio asked the cold-faced soldier holding open the door.
“’Tis,” was his only reply.
Diablos. Qué locos. “After you, Ms. O’Hare.” Antonio gestured to the woman, who now wore a plain baby-blue sweater and a denim skirt his Kirstie had given her. She looked like she should be attending classes at college, not orchestrating an epic blackmail of the gods to free her “king.” Of course, nothing ever appeared as it should in this world.
“Maggie, call me Maggie.” She smiled at Antonio, though he was in no mood to smile back.
“Hello, Maggie. I’m Penelope Trudeau and this is—”
“I know who you are.” Maggie’s eyes swept the rooms as she held out her palm, signaling for silence. “Kinich, Belch, K’ak, Fate, Bees, Akna, A.C., and that lady—I forget her name.”
“How do you know who we are?” Kinich asked.
“I’ve been trapped inside that portal since 1934,” Maggie replied. “And though you could not see me, I saw just about everything from the realm where I was trapped.”
Belch chimed in, “Did you see this?” He sprang from his chair and showed everyone his backside.
“Yes! We’ve all seen it!” everyone screamed.
With a satisfied grin, Belch sat back down in his throne and returned to his jumbo martini glass—the kind most people used as a decoration to hold candy and such.
Penelope cleared her throat. “My apologies, Maggie. Please continue. Why have you requested an audience?”
Maggie’s dark eyes shuffled around the faces in the room. “As I explained on the phone, Cimil has betrayed you, all of you. Not only am I here to set the record straight and demand justice, I’m here to ensure you free my mate, Chaam.”
A collective gasp erupted.
“Then you’ve wasted your time, woman,” replied Kinich. “He will never be freed. He is evil.”
“Yes. He is. But it’s not Chaam’s fault, nor does he wish to be; that’s why”—Maggie looked right at Antonio—“Ixtab is going to cure him.”
Hisses and objections filled the room.
Maggie slapped her hand on the rough stone table. “Enough! My patience ran out decades ago. You will listen to everything I have to say. You will free Chaam and you will punish Cimil.”
“If you’ve been spying on us, you…pest, then you are aware we do not take orders from mortals,” Fate pointed out, cleaning her nails with an arrowhead she’d plucked from her quiver.
“Then you won’t see Ixtab, Guy, and the others again,” Maggie said.
“Silly mortal, we have the tablet.” Fate sighed her words as if she were much too important for this conversation.
Gods, what a snotty woman. How had Ixtab put up with her for seventy millennia? He’d only been in Fate’s presence a collective hour at best, and already he wanted to lock her in a closet. In fact, her snobby attitude was the reason he’d rejected Fate’s repeated pleas to assist him in his lab when he had met her in New York. Sorry, but he liked his women with a little humility. He liked Ixtab.
Maggie shook her head. “You’re all idiots. The tablet can’t free your men; while they are trapped inside another dimension, it’s a Maaskab spell that holds them there. You must free Chaam and make the trade with the Maaskab if you want them back. But you must cure Chaam before you do it or he’ll return to his evil ways. Ixtab is the only one who can help him, and I’m the only one who knows how to get her back.” She looked at Antonio. “Like I said on the plane, you’re welcome to rebuild your equipment and try, Mr. Acero, although I can guarantee, you will fail. There is only one way to invoke the tablet’s powers.”
Antonio’s mind ran with that statement. He remembered the portal opening at the precise moment Ixtab had entered the room with his father. Was there another variable?
“We will not free Chaam,” Kinich declared.
“Fine. Then our conversation is over. And so is everything else. You! Your baby.” She pointed at Penelope. “Everything! Because I can guarantee that this path you’re on, the path that Cimil created, is leading us all to a very, very bad place.” Maggie turned to leave.
“Wait,” Antonio said to Maggie and then looked at each of the gods. “Ixtab is your sister. Isn’t she worth a few minutes of your goddamned precious time?”
Penelope gently stroked Kinich’s arm. “He’s right, my love. Let’s hear Maggie out.”
Kinich grumbled, but accepted.
Penelope moved to the side and gestured toward the large throne at the head of the table. “Sit, Maggie. We’re all ears.”
Maggie looked around the table, and Antonio couldn’t help but wonder what sort of insane story she was about to tell. For the record, prior to meeting Ixtab, he’d thought his world was pretty damned strange. On the outside, he looked like a rich playboy from a privileged Spanish family, who owned the most prestigious wineries in Spain. In reality, his father was a monster who killed women for sustenance, including Antonio’s own mother. Antonio’s public and private lives couldn’t be more contradictory or bizarre. That’s what he believed, anyway, until he became a vampire—the least eventful part of this story—who loathed the thought of drinking blood before finding out evil Mayan priests made a tasty snack. Add that Ixtab, the Goddess of Suicide—a damned ridiculous title for such a lovely creature—was the love of his life and trapped with his demonic father in another dimension. Sí. Pretty fucking strange. Yet somehow, he knew they were only getting started as Maggie cleared her throat and lifted her chin.
“About eighty years ago,” she said, “I accompanied my father, an archaeologist, on a dig in southern Mexico. It was a terrible time in our lives; my mother had passed away only a few months earlier, and unknown to me, my father had become obsessed with bringing her back. Also unknown was that the tablet he’d discovered”—Maggie looked at Antonio—“was no coincidence. Cimil planned for him to find it and made sure he believed it could resurrect the dead.”
“Can it?” asked Penelope.
Maggie nodded. “Yes. It can, though not the way you think; the tablet has the ability to open portals to other points in time in addition to other dimensions. So if one wanted, they could go back and save someone before they die. The problem is returning. The portal only stays open for a short while. So if one doesn’t carry another tablet or have someone to reopen the portal from their point of origin, they might not return. That said, my father never got far enough to figure any of that out. He died before he had the chance to open it.”
“Did Cimil kill him?” Penelope asked, appearing horrified.
“No. Chaam did.” Maggie dropped her head and appeared to be struggling not to cry. “My father had been missing for several days, and I’d been searching the jungle for his excavation site—he’d kept it a secret. Then I got lost and, unfortunately, bumped into a very angry jaguar. When I ran, I fell and hit my head. That’s when Chaam found me.
“At first I thought I’d lost my mind. He told me h
e was a god, and while I didn’t believe him initially, every time we touched, I saw things. Visions. It took less than one day before I realized the truth; we were meant to be. He knew it, too. But what we didn’t know was that our meeting was all part of Cimil’s plot.”
Antonio now began to feel anxious. There were simply too many parallels to his story, including Cimil’s direct involvement with his finding the tablet, which ultimately led him to Ixtab.
“The details aren’t important,” Maggie explained. “However, Chaam eventually found my father. He’d gone mad and was about to kill a young woman—a friend of mine named Itzel. Chaam was forced to kill him, and Cimil made sure I was there to witness everything.”
“Why would Cimil want all this to happen?” Kinich asked.
Good question. Because apparently whatever Cimil was up to definitely involved him and Ixtab, too. Bottom line, he didn’t like where this was going.
“Because the events triggered the portal, which sucked me in,” Maggie explained. “Then Cimil told Chaam I’d died only to make him suffer more. Everything she did was so his bond with the Universe would sever. Then she got inside his head and made him do horrible, horrible things, including trying to end the world—which she’s still planning to do. That’s what this is all about! Everything she’s ever done was always about this.”
Antonio found it very difficult to believe that finding the love of his life, Ixtab, would in some way contribute to the end of the world. No, something felt very… off.
“Do you have proof of anything you’re saying?” Kinich asked. “Your accusations are extremely serious.”
“I have another witness.” Maggie turned toward the door of the room and pointed. “Máax saw everything, too.”
The entire room gasped.
“You!” Fate screamed. “How dare you bring him here! He is not to be spoken of by anyone! He is dead to us!” She turned her back.
“Who the hell is Máax?” Antonio didn’t see anyone.
“Máax is just another victim in all this,” Maggie exclaimed. “How many deities will you allow to fall victim to Cimil? Huh? First Máax, then Chaam. Even Kinich and Zac. How about when you were imprisoned inside your own cenotes! Seventy years! While Cimil roamed free. Why can’t you see? She’s been playing with everyone. Listen to Máax. He will tell you the truth! He’s incapable of lying!”
“Who the hell is Máax?” Antonio demanded loudly.
“He is the God of Truth,” Maggie replied.
“No! He no longer bares that title,” Fate barked. “He is the One No One Speaks Of. He broke our most sacred law. He is dead to us. Banished forever.”
“Enough!” Kinich commanded. “We will listen to what Máax has to say. We need to know the truth.”
“You are no longer a deity, brother. You do not command us,” Fate said to Kinich.
“Yes, he does!” Penelope chimed in. “He is my husband. He and I are bound. Therefore, we are one and now share the role of Ruler of the House of Gods.”
“I love being a deity. This is getting interesting.” Belch poured another martini and leaned back in his chair with a giant grin.
Interesting? Interesting is what one might say about a person with two thumbs on one hand. This was a fucking circus. And they all seemed to be sharing the same goddamned delusion, fighting about someone named Máax who wasn’t there.
“When did you marry?” asked Bees sweetly.
Penelope blushed. “Yesterday. We stopped over in Vegas on the way here. We wanted to wait to tell everyone since there’s so much going on.”
“That is lovely news,” Bees said. “Have you registered yet?”
“No. We haven’t had the chance,” Penelope replied.
“How about a llama? Everyone needs a llama,” Belch offered with projectile spittle.
“Are you people for real? You’re like children on a sugar bend,” Maggie said. “Can we please get back to the conversation?”
“Puta madre! I couldn’t agree more,” Antonio added impatiently.
Penelope cleared her throat. “Sorry. That’s how they roll around here. I guess it’s rubbing off on me. Yes. We would like to hear what Máax has to say. Where is he?”
Máax’s deep voice rang out across the room. “I am here.” Penelope jumped out of her skin.
“What the hell?” Antonio said.
“Máax was banished and therefore invisible,” Kinich stately calmly.
Yes, a pinche loco circus, complete with invisible clowns.
“The girl speaks the truth,” Máax said. “I have witnessed Cimil’s actions.”
“Traitor,” Fate hissed at Máax, paying no attention to what he was trying to say.
“I did what I must. I do not regret it.” Máax’s deep voice held no intonation, no emotion, no room for debate.
“What did he do?” Penelope asked Kinich.
“Time travel,” Kinich replied. “And vows he will do it again.”
“Okeydokey, then,” said Penelope. “Is he really incapable of lying?”
Kinich nodded yes.
“What next?” Penelope asked.
“You must free Chaam, and Cimil must be stopped.” Maggie turned to Antonio. “I will tell you how to free Ixtab, and in exchange, she will cure Chaam.”
Antonio wasn’t sure he liked Maggie’s plan. Not only did this Chaam sound dangerous, but opening the portal and freeing Ixtab only solved one problem. The other fact remained that his father had gone in with her.
“What about Guy, Niccolo, and the men?” Penelope asked.
“Once Chaam is free,” Maggie stated coolly, “the Maaskab will remove the hex; they will free your men. They want to fight you like Emma’s grandmother said.”
“Cimil convinced them this was their path to victory,” Máax added.
“Then it’s settled, we free Chaam,” Kinich stated.
“It must be put to a vote,” Fate stated dryly. “Despite how Chaam became evil, the fact remains that he did many terrible things and is, in fact, very dangerous. Releasing him is a risk and there is no guarantee Ixtab will be able to cure him.”
Penelope sighed. “I understand that, but if we can cure him, it could be the turning point for us; we’d have the Maaskab leader on our side. No war. No apocalypse. Done. Over.”
“You all assume,” Fate said, “that the apocalypse will be brought by the Maaskab. But that is not what Cimil predicted. She said the end was coming, not by whose hand.”
“Who else could it be?” asked Penelope.
Fate picked a piece of invisible lint from the front of her white dress. “That is for fate to decide.”
A loud groan erupted.
Penelope rolled her eyes. “All in favor of freeing Chaam and hunting Cimil?” Belch, K’ak, Fate, Akna, Bees, and A.C. raised their hands. “And Kinich and I vote yes, too.”
“I will volunteer to bring in Cimil,” A.C., God of Eclipses, said in a dark voice.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Everyone gasped and turned. Standing in the doorway was Cimil and a vampire. A very, very pale vampire who looked as though the thought of living one more second might bore him to death.
Maggie instantly lunged for the goddess, but an invisible hand reached out and held her back. “Her time will come, Margaret. Do not waste your efforts on her,” Máax stated calmly.
Cimil, who wore what appeared to be a pink-checkered square-dancing outfit, smiled. “Máax, sweetie. So glad to see you!” She burst out laughing. “Get it?” She turned to her vampire who made no reaction whatsoever.
“Yeah. I know. It’s totally true,” Cimil replied, though he hadn’t said anything.
“Cimil, what do you have to say for yourself? Did you turn Chaam evil? Have you been plotting the end of the world?” Kinich asked.
“Is that all you’ve got on me? ’Cause, I can tell you right now, my list is way longer.” She looked at her vampire. “Right, Roberto, baby?”
Roberto, who wore a black cape, r
ed satin shirt, and leather pants, nodded at Cimil and then swooped out of the room with a twirl of his cape.
“Tootles!” Cimil chuckled and shook her head. “Vampires. They’re so dramatic with the whole entrance and exit thing. Did you notice? His cape is completely wrinkle-free. I’m getting really good at ironing. Aaahh… domestic bliss at last.”
“Cimil!” Kinich screamed. “Yes or no?”
Cimil jumped and then smoothed down her straight red hair. “Yes. It’s true. Every word. Before I say anything else, I demand a lawyer and fair trial. And a fruit basket. But instead of fruit, I want it filled with bagged blood. It’s for Minky, my unicorn. You do allow unicorns in prison, right?”
“A.C.? Can you deal with her?” Penelope asked.
Antonio blinked and suddenly Cimil was on the floor, sawing logs, her pink petticoat a tangled mess around her waist and her shiny, pink hot pants on display.
Kinich nodded at his brother A.C. “Thank you. Do you mind taking her to our special holding cell?”
A.C. bowed his head. “My pleasure. I’ve always wanted to use my gift of sleep to shut her up.”
“Well, that was certainly unexpected,” Penelope mumbled to no one in particular, then looked at Maggie. “I’m sorry, Maggie. Truly sorry for what you’ve been through.” She looked at Antonio. “The tablet is in the vault, so whenever you’re ready, let us know.”
“I’m nowhere near ready,” Antonio replied. “We cannot release Ixtab without risking that jodido demonio from escaping as well.” Gods, this was the most infuriating situation, because there was nothing he wanted more than to get Ixtab back. There had to be a way to do it without freeing that bastard father of his.
“Oh! Man! I looovvvee this channel. It just keeps getting better and better.” Belch poured yet another martini and burped.
“You’re vile,” Bees hissed.
“Christ almighty.” Kinich shook his head.
Penelope reached out and stroked his forearm. “What, honey? What’s the matter?”
He grumbled and then sucked in a breath. “The only deity capable of dealing with a demon is Cimil—the underworld creatures are her domain.”
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