Unless I managed to grab one of the quetzal feathers from his royal crown. I shuddered, despite the warmth flowing through me. Was I really thinking about stealing from the lord of the dead? The last god who’d tried that had his heart cut out. I didn’t imagine I’d fare much better. But I had to try.
You must distract him, Valerius said. Lower his guard by completing the ritual.
I nodded vaguely, still strangely numb. A deathly silence filled the stadium, a moment of shared apprehension. Ewan was dead. It took me a moment to realize they were afraid of me.
“My Lord Mictlantecuhtli,” I said coolly. “Would you do me the honor of allowing me to use your blade to carve out the demon’s heart?”
There was a murmur of approval throughout the gods, that rose into a thunderous applause. Dimly I was aware the crowds of shades and gods were cheering for me. I found Dom’s face in the audience and he smiled at me. I grinned back tensely. He didn’t know what I was about to do, what I was about to risk, to ensure our future.
The skeletal king rose from his chair and offered me a regal bow.
“I would be honored, warrior.”
“And send down my friends. I would like them to witness this as well. At a distance of course, so your sacrifice is not tarnished.”
He seemed to float rather than walk down the stairs. I watched him with the keen glare of an eagle, judging how far was far enough to allow my friends to make their escape. Dom, Findlay, and Sienna followed in his wake, looking distinctly out of place in this arena.
The Lord of Mictlan withdrew an obsidian dagger from his belt and offered it to me, handle first. My hand closed around it and it took conscious effort not to attack him with it. There was only one thing left to do and then the danger was over. For the world anyway. For me, the danger was only just starting.
I scooped Ewan’s body from the ground in one easy move, throwing his dead weight over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He was lighter than a dream, lanky as he was. I strode over to the tall altar, quickly depositing him on the flat, sacrificial tableau. I unknotted the pelt of the lion and waved Findlay over.
“Take this,” I said quietly. “I have a feeling the Greek gods are going to have a problem if it remains in this underworld.”
Findlay drifted over to my side and took the pelt gently, folding it over one arm like a butler’s towel. Then he bent to retrieve the rest of what I’d taken off of Ewan. I turned my attention back to Ewan’s ashen corpse, moving the plaid fabric of his shirt out of the way for a more precise strike. The first slice from the knife went in deep, and I pulled it ruthlessly down his body, pretending he was nothing more than a hunk of butchered meat. I just have to carve out the heart. That was it. Just carve out the heart.
After peeling back the first several layers of skin, I spotted a shining portion of white rib bone and seized it, snapping it as easily as a Christmas wishbone. I passed the blade back to Mictlantecuhtli, my hands now dripping with blood, and kept digging, accumulating a tidy sum of bloodstained bones around my ankles.
And then, at last, I had it. The heart was larger than I’d expected, blackened, and unbeating. I reached into the exposed cavity, scooping the organ from the bloody viscera. Several snaps later, I held it aloft.
“Now burn it,” Mictlantecuhtli said, leaning over my shoulder, his eyes thirsty.
I almost reached into Ewan’s pocket for his lighter, before I remembered I could melt stone with my bare hands. It was hard to believe we were sharing cigarettes just a few hours ago. Flames flickered from my palms, lighting the heart on fire. To my surprise it burned easily, like a dried bird’s nest. The cheering of the crowd grew louder as I set it on the stone altar. The flames spread to Ewan at once, consuming the lanky cowboy in record time. All I could do was watch numbly as he disappeared into nothing but ash.
The heart, meanwhile, began to beat with unholy fire, shining with a light so brilliant I had to shield my eyes.
“Well done, warrior,” the Lord of Mictlan says, patting me on the back.
The feathers waved from his headdress, inches from my hand. It was now or never.
I reached behind him and grabbed one, pulling it out sharply.
Then I grabbed my wand and tapped Ariadne’s thread.
“Now!” I shouted to the others. I felt the line slacken immediately, and I shot into the air like a rocket, the thin thread practically pulling my arm out of my socket.
Even so, we weren’t fast enough. I felt a sharp pain in my ankle, and looked down to see Mictlantecuhtli’s skeletal grip around my leg. He scowled up at me, raising his bloody blade to strike.
Findlay’s spirit was whipping by my side like a flag in a storm. Apparently the thread worked on ghosts. I kicked down at the lord of death, but couldn’t shake his grip. We were suspended, hundreds of feet off the ground. Around us, a great wave of dead souls rose from the deep abyss surrounding Mictlan, followed by the armies of the dead, screaming and gnashing their teeth, like a giant tsunami.
Mictlantecuhtli grinned as the wave of undead soldiers licked my heels, skeletal limbs reaching out to tug at my armor, slowing my ascent. One caught me by the leg, clawing up at me, drawing blood.
Above me the threads were tangled, drawing us all closer together.
I wasn’t going to make it. As I slowed, so did the others.
Someone had to hold them off.
“Listen to me, Findlay,” I shouted. “Tell Cat and Sophia I love them, okay? And make sure Phyllis and Halcyon are taken care of.”
He shook his head sadly.
“Nat, whatever you can say to me isn’t going to reach anyone else.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I countered.
I seized his hand in mine and shoved the blue feather into his ghostly palm.
His eyes widened with understanding.
“Don’t do it,” he said. “Dom will never forgive me.”
“He’s a big boy,” I said. “He can take care of himself.”
“What happened to until death do you part?” Findlay asked, glancing at the ring on my finger.
“I was dead when he married me. But at least one of us can live.”
Then I severed the thread and watched them shoot off into the night.
Dom and Findlay were jerked out of sight in an almost cartoonishly fast movement. I came crashing down like a meteor, slamming into the ground by the Lord of Mictlan, who towered over me, in an arena filled with spectators and gods who were only just realizing the trick that we’d played on them.
The serpent sword slithered off of me, returning to its irate owner in the stands. My plated armor crumbled off my shoulders, leaving me exposed. Hundreds of angry gods stared me down, each of them with murder in their eyes.
“You little bitch!” the Lord of Mictlan hissed. “You have stolen from the king of death. I’ll have your heart for this.”
“Come and get it,” I taunted.
I reached into my back holster, withdrawing my weapons. A Beretta in my right, a CZ-75 in my left, engraved with magical seals that lit up at my touch. I suddenly felt much more like myself.
“Ready for that revenge I promised, Valerius?” I muttered under my breath.
My demon raged to the surface, surrounding me with a halo of fire.
And then I fired point-blank into Mictlantecuhtli’s skeletal face.
chapter
24
Dom
THE STRING SNAPPED TAUT AND pulled, nearly dragging my shoulder from its socket with the strength of our departure. The sounds of the crowd beneath us morphed from cheers of elation at Nat’s victory to a rising cry of outrage at our sudden departure. I got a better grip on the thread and held steady, evening out the pressure on my body. Some of the blinding pain eased when I was able to twist my body into the right position to follow the thread.
The thread had been an invisible, almost weightless tether that held us to the entryway. Now that it had been
pulled taught, however, it felt as strong as a garrote. A shape streaked behind me and I breathed a sigh of relief. Nat had managed to keep her tether throughout the battle. I hadn’t been sure that it would hold.
Worry twisted my insides into knots, competing with the speed we were going. I was probably going to spew as soon as we made it back through the portal. I could only imagine what Nat’s mental state was going to be like when we reached the real world. She’d just been forced to crack a man’s chest like a walnut and scoop his heart out in front of a crowd cheering for blood. Was there a therapy course out there that could even begin to touch that?
The deserts flashed by in a patchwork of color. Red, orange, gold, rose, and dull browns burned into my eyes in a flash of visual disharmony for a few seconds before we flew past. I had a flash of acid green in my periphery as the venomous green snake and lizard we’d faced at the beginning attempted to bar our way past. But too late.
My foot barely clipped the last mountain and then, with a sickening lurch, it was all over. I landed with a smack against the hard stone of the temple we’d entered over a week before. I turned my head just in time to keep from spilling my last meal all over Cayman Bello’s thick black combat boots and cuffed fatigues. It came out sticky, black and steaming. Apparently the food of the dead didn’t agree with mortals.
I crawled onto my hands and knees, retching for a solid minute before I could get control of myself. It was embarrassing to do, and probably worse to watch. I lifted my head, wiping the sick from my chin, ready to apologize to Natalia.
She wasn’t there. I blinked once in confusion and then swept the room with my gaze, catching Sienna’s ghost winking out of sight just before the gate snapped shut. My desperate search turned up nothing, even when I spun around twice, risking another bout of sickness. The room was small, dark, and cramped, but I should still be able to spot her.
“Nat,” I croaked. Then louder, “Natalia Maria Finch.”
There was no answer.
“Valdez?” It was the last-ditch effort, the last hopeful thing I have to offer.
She was nowhere to be found. Cayman knelt by my side even as I began to hyperventilate.
“She didn’t come through the rift, Finch.” Cayman’s soothing, sonorous voice was the last thing I wanted to hear at this point. There is no way in hell I was going to be calm about this.
“She had the thread.”
I struck the stone floor with a fist. The bracelet she’d given me flared upon impact, its sigils glowing white-hot before winking out against the copper background, as if they were saying goodbye.
A great, spluttering sound drew my attention away from the last tangible piece I had of Natalia and back to where the archway ought to have been. A gray mist settled over Findlay’s body and sank into his chest. The second it was fully inside, the spluttering sound came again and I realized with horrifying clarity what Nat must have done.
She’d mentioned more than once just how much Findlay’s death had bothered her. Just how guilty she felt leaving Cat without her fiancé and Sophia without a father. And now she’d done the only thing she could think of to rectify it. She’d somehow sent Findlay back in her stead, giving him a second chance at life.
There was only one problem with that plan. It didn’t heal the wound that had killed Findlay in the first place. If I didn’t do something, and fast, Nat’s sacrifice would mean nothing. I scrambled over to Findlay’s side, yanking his shirt up so I could get a good look at the wound. A jagged line about an inch across spurted blood. Sienna may have been a bureaucrat at heart, but she’d still served as an elite member of our team once upon a time. She knew how to inflict a deadly blow if she had to. She must have struck the Mesenteric artery when she’d stabbed him.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I hissed. What did I do now?
Without surgery, he was going to bleed out what little blood he had left and die. Again.
I slid the bracelet absently and noticed the faint echoes of Nat’s tattoos on its surface. The ideograms wound together in an entrancing pattern. Fire. Darkness. Blood. Death. And the final ideogram to have appeared, one that Nat never had time to explore, life.
A wild stab of hope seized me. She said she’d imbued the charm with a tiny portion of Valerius’ powers. Maybe it would be enough.
I focused on that well of hot power Natalia had loaned me, pressing my hand roughly over Findlay’s wound. He choked out a gasp of pain, but I ignored it. He’d thank me if this worked. It took crucial seconds for me to sort out how the power worked and I found it not so different from an alchemical exchange. In order to create something, something of equal mass had to be given for the transformation. For my attacks, it was usually energy from an object or, failing that, myself.
I found myself muttering words I didn’t understand, wincing as my hand grew warm. This magic wasn’t mine, and I feared it was going to burn me to a crisp before it was done. I couldn’t contain a scream when the fire burned hot enough to actually bring smoke curling from my fingers. And then, suddenly, it was over. When I drew my hand away to examine Findlay’s wound, I found a line of white scar tissue and a slightly smoking patch where my fingers had pressed into his abdomen. My own hand had fared far worse. I could barely feel it, which meant my hand had probably cooked as I healed Findlay. I needed to get to a magical healer soon, or I’d lose it completely.
“What the hell did you just do?” Cayman asked in a hushed whisper.
“Doesn’t matter right now,” I snapped. “How long was he dead?”
That would make a big difference. If we’d been gone for weeks, what I’d done to Findlay was more of a curse than a favor. It should have been my first question to the big man, but I couldn’t stop myself from reacting. Nat had wanted Findlay saved, so I’d save him, damn it.
“A few hours,” Cayman answered, brow furrowing. “I take it was longer on the other side?”
“Weeks,” I confirmed. “Maybe longer.”
Findlay stirred and then finally his eyes opened. He stared up at the ceiling for a confused second before his eyes shot wide open. He sat bolt upright and felt at his chest, muttering obscenities. A tattoo of a blue feather shimmered behind his left ear.
“Fuck,” he hissed. “No. I told her not to!”
Findlay’s fury at Nat took some of the sting out of my own and I chuckled lightly.
“Since when has Nat ever listened to any of us?”
Findlay struck the ground in frustration. Furious tears streaked from his eyes. “She shouldn’t have done it. I deserved to die for everything I did. For everyone I killed.”
“Don’t,” I warned him, climbing to my feet. I offered him my good hand. He stared at the steaming ruin of my right in horror. I got into his face then, making sure that he heard every damn word I was about to say.
“She sacrificed herself for you, for your daughter and her sister. I may have just ruined my hand for life. So you’re going to live. You’re going to go back to your family and you’re going to be the best damn father and husband you can be. Nat deserves that much.”
Findlay’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously and he nodded after a second of hesitation. I stared out at the entrance to the temple and the sky beyond. It was just the way I remembered it before we entered.
What came next? We’d entered this temple with five, and we’d left with only two. This had definitely been the worst mission I’d ever gone on. We had to hike through the Yucatan to make it back to that remote airstrip. If we were lucky, we’d be able to find a plane. If not, we’d be stranded there until God knew who picked us up. And there were probably vampires still out there, just waiting to ambush us in the jungle.
I was too absorbed in my failure to immediately notice the distant beat of chopper wings. But when it finally registered, it sent chills through my body, raising every hair I had to offer. Someone was coming. A lot of someones, if I wasn’t mistaken. The question remained, was it ours, or theirs?
> Trust, or House Grieves?
With our rotten luck, we’d be slaughtered by a phalanx of undead before we had a chance to leave this sweaty nightmare of a place. I reached into my waistband, feeling oddly light without the layer of lightweight armor surrounding my torso. It must have been limited only to those in Mictlan. I found the extra CZ-75 Nat had charmed for me exactly where I left it, tucked into my back holster. I gripped it tightly, and maybe I was imagining it, but it felt almost as if her hand slid into mine, the cool, measured feel of her magic sliding against my skin.
Cayman pulled himself up to his full height, drawing his machete from its sheath at his waist. His eyes narrowed and sunlight glinted off of his many piercings as we faced the oncoming threat. His left hand stirred the air and I knew the largest part of his concentration would be on fishing as many spirits from the surrounding area as he possibly could.
Findlay took a shaky breath and then closed his eyes, power leaving him in a gust of warm wind. It wasn’t as potent as usual, and I’d have bet everything on my person that he was seconds from passing out again. The drain on his magic would last until his life forced balanced out.
The whop-whop of chopper blades grew louder when we left the security of the temple and descended the many stairs to the base of the ruin. The helicopters were almost upon us now, and I squinted up to see three Boeing AH-64 Apache bearing down on us. Some of my tension eased at the sight of them. Two-seat attack helicopters meant that there were only six possible enemies we’d be facing when or if the things landed. Only three if they wanted to keep themselves airborne. Either way, there’d be an opening for an attack.
I wasn’t as sure of my aim with my left hand, though I’d trained with both.
It was going to be an interesting fight.
Agent of Magic Box Set Page 62