Throat aching, she forced herself to ask. “What truth?”
“Once they got you down here, they’d never let you escape. Help me with the translation. I swear to you that I won’t allow anyone else to hurt you. Please, if you love me even a little, help me.”
“Okay.” Playing along, she forced a shaky smile. “But don’t let them hurt Ruin.”
“There’s not much I can do about the priest.” Sam’s face hardened to flat, cold stone. “When they convince him to turn, he’ll be much more powerful than me.”
“He won’t turn.”
“He will.” Sam’s shoulders shook and his hand fluttered up to touch the feathers once more. He jerked his hand away and began pacing. “Eventually, he will. No one can bear their methods for long. Do you trust him? If something happens to me, can he protect you?”
He moved close enough that she got a whiff of his vest. It smelled…She couldn’t even form the thought. The color was fleshy, tanned, some kind of leather. Still…wet. Bile burned up the back of her throat. Something dripped from the inside of the vest, dark and wet. Blood. The vest was…
Gagging, she turned away, her hand over her mouth to hide her reaction. He was wearing skin. Human skin. Her mind clamored and her jaws ached to keep back the shrill scream that roared in her throat.
His hand settled on her shoulder and she flinched. “I love you, Jaid. I’ll get you out of here. I swear.”
Her throat felt like sandpaper, but she forced words out. “What do you need?”
“Tell me how to open the Gate, or they’ll kill us both.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I know you’re alive again.”
Ruin held his breathing slow and steady despite his brother’s voice. He didn’t even try to move; he could feel the weight of modern steel chains banded around his body. If he opened his eyes, they’d glow like gold, for the jaguar paced just beneath his skin, snarling and clawing.
Jaid. They had Jaid. What would they do to her?
He felt her spirit moving through him like a constant sweet breeze. He knew she was bent over his codex, pretending to study it and her notes, even while he knew she had the answers she would need. She’d seen him use the Gate twice now. Her brilliant mind didn’t need too many examples to solve the rest of the puzzle. For once in his long, cursed life, he was glad.
If she used the Gate, she could escape.
“The woman is yours, and for that reason alone, she must die.”
Despite his determination to play dead, he felt his heartbeat quicken. His muscles tensed involuntarily. How could he protect her? How could he save her?
“Did you think I would let you have love when you destroyed mine?”
The ragged strain in his brother’s voice forced him to respond. “I didn’t understand how much you loved her at the time. I saw only the war it would cause if you took our enemy’s daughter.”
“Duty. Always you spoke of duty. So easy for you, brother, priest and not king.” Wrack laughed, and the sharp edge of his desperate madness sliced through Ruin’s heart. He’d caused this agony.
“When you gave me Bright Parrot to be my wife, did you love her?”
He had cared very much for the woman. Her warm eyes and smile had melted his heart. Yet she was destined to be a queen. She would bring their city alliances instead of war, and she deserved the king. Besides, she’d always feared his mystical side. If she’d ever seen him transform to the jaguar, she would have run screaming into the night and never returned. So he’d not spoken of his love and had given her to his brother instead. “I cared for her a great deal.”
“I didn’t,” Wrack said in a hollowed, haunted voice. “Even when she died trying to birth my child, I did not love her. That’s what you doomed me to, brother, with your duty and gods’ will. She should have been yours, if only you’d listened to your heart.”
Shame pierced him, but also the unfairness of his brother’s accusation. “It was my heart that drove me to save you.”
“I didn’t want you to save me!” Wrack leaned over him so their faces were inches apart. “I died for my love. What more could I want? I would have sheltered her on the White Road and seen her safely to the shade of the Great Ceiba where we’d sit at the feet of Kukulkan for eternity! Instead, I’m doomed to walk this earth endlessly, killing in my rage. I cannot die, for I have no heart. My heart is with her. Why couldn’t you let me go?”
“I couldn’t bear to see you die by betrayal. Your great love betrayed you!”
“No.” Wrack suddenly sounded tired. After all these centuries, they finally spoke of their shared doom. “You misunderstood so much, brother. Her father and newly sworn husband betrayed me, but she truly loved me. She would have dishonored herself and them to be with me, if only you—and they—had let us be. Her own father sacrificed her.” His voice broke at the memory. “They made me watch. They knew you’d come. They laughed when I escaped to live with the shame and horror of her death to haunt me. They never dreamed you would break your vow to help me, but the Lords of Xibalba had it all planned long beforehand.”
Ruin’s stomach tightened with dread. “No. They couldn’t have known I would open the Gate so you could go after her.”
“I was their lure to gain the Gatekeeper’s knowledge. They planned my betrayal and death all along. And you, dear brother, they knew you best of all. Of course you came to retrieve me, and of course you helped me avenge my enemies. The only mistake you made was leaving my heart and my love behind to suffer for all eternity.” His voice rose like a hurricane, lashing winds of fury. “They torment her in the lowest level of Xibalba! Endless agony, bound by her endless love for me! She cannot pass without me, and I’m bound to this world with you!”
He slammed his fist against the rock and the ground shuddered. “I didn’t know what they’d done to you until it was too late. I couldn’t leave you there to suffer when I had the magic to save you!”
“You’re a hypocrite.” Wrack laughed, a grim sound close to tears. “Because you loved me, you broke your vow to the gods and opened the Gate to Xibalba not once but twice. You risked unleashing Xibalba on earth for me, even while you condemned me for loving her so much that I abandoned my city and people to save her.”
Stone by stone, centuries of guilt and shame stacked on top of Ruin’s heart to match his people’s highest pyramid. His true torment had not been the endless death without peace, but the constant reminder that his own heart had led him to this doom.
“And now, I have the perfect opportunity to pay you back in kind as well as end my torment.” Wrack smiled, and even in the darkness of the cave, that look chilled Ruin’s blood. “The Lords of Xibalba have agreed to make a trade: my love for yours. Butterfly Star and I will at last be rejoined and I shall see her safely to First Five Sky, while you and your love take our place. Your only hope, brother, is to join them. Cooperate fully. Become their High Priest and work the Gate magic at their will. Otherwise…”
His voice fell, crumbled to dust. “If you love this woman, don’t condemn her to Butterfly Star’s fate.”
The demon was getting restless. With Sam constantly hovering at her back, his revolting vest smelling more and more rotten, Jaid knew she was running out of time. She flipped another page of the codex and allowed her mind to capture its snapshot. She’d never taken the time to look at each page. She’d been too determined to make that great discovery for her father. Now, she agreed with Ruin. The codex must be destroyed. She couldn’t take the time to translate everything now, but when they escaped and were safe, she’d wallow in his every word.
We will escape! Somehow.
Standing in the Temple of Days made her feel like a child again. Twenty years ago, she’d crept through a hole in the wall of an overgrown ditch that surrounded the ruins, the crack barely big enough for a five-year-old child to squeeze through, and ended up in the secret tunnel that had led her father to discover this very temple.
Her whole life had changed in th
at one moment of exploration. In many ways, she’d become an orphan that day.
On the last bark page, the glyphs blazed in her heart and mind. She’d translated the matching glyphs on the cover as blood, and portal or gate, and so they’d dubbed it the Bloodgate Codex. After meeting its creator, she had a different translation. The ol glyph could also be “heart of,” and the heart of his magic revolved around blood. Not the blood of innocents, but his own. He’d given his heart and soul to the Gates.
He’d given his heart and soul for her.
All her life, she’d been consumed with making her father proud, while keeping her heart locked away. She’d played it safe in love, never giving herself for fear of finding out that in the end, she was just as cold and heartless as him, driven to abandon everything in search of the next great quest.
Heart aching, she closed the codex and stroked her fingers over the glyphs.
Ruin hadn’t abandoned her, even though it meant he must disobey his god. He’s my heart, now, and I’m done playing it safe.
“Well?” Sam asked, his voice vibrating with tension. With a sigh, she forced her thoughts back to the puzzle.
The Temple of Days contained a relief map similar to the ones she’d studied in Chich’en Itza and Chi’Ch’ul. She knew it must also have its own key, but nobody knew much about Iximche. Even her father had known very little, because she’d run through years and years of his journals and hadn’t found anything but the Temple of Days in his notes. He’d gone on to other great cities, piecing together the clues one by one from those he knew better and had been more widely studied.
The only thing that had made Iximche famous—a Maya capital that became the first capital of the Spanish invaders—had also destroyed it. Years of plague, warfare and fires had taken their toll and Alvarado’s invaders had initially been welcomed into Iximche. However, soon the city had been abandoned by its people, and later the Spanish had burned it.
The few surviving pyramids and temples above ground were insignificant compared to Tikal’s or Chich’en Itza’s grand scale. Few archaeologists had spent much time here. Squinting her eyes to bring the map into focus, she traced the dark green barranca that enclosed the main city on three sides, stared at the modest plazas looking for some hint to the key, and tried to ignore her pounding headache and sweaty palms.
She knew all too well what would happen if she made a mistake in the key.
Wait a minute. She closed her eyes to block out the dizzying map so she could concentrate. If the key was wrong, she’d open the Gate to Xibalba, which is exactly what the demon—and she, indirectly—wanted. The trick would be making sure nothing passed through that she didn’t want.
Thanks to Ruin’s blood trick at Chich’en Itza, she knew how to pass through the Gate without anyone but him able to follow.
“Do you have it?” Sam whispered, but his voice was so shrill she winced. He moved constantly, pacing, his hands gliding up to the feathers, to the vest, only to flinch away. “Please, Jaid. Hurry. You don’t want to know what he will do to you. He told me if you don’t cooperate that there’s a way to steal your knowledge against your will. He’ll make me…”
The man who’d flayed people in Santiago Atitlan whimpered. Her stomach churned with bile. She didn’t want to know what could possibly make Sam that afraid.
A smell of rotting corpses even worse than his vest warned her that the demon had returned. Her first instinct was to flee, but there was nowhere she could go. Trembling, she flattened her back against the wall of the cave and tried to slow her breathing. The last thing she needed to do was hyperventilate and pass out.
“Do you know which Lord I am?”
The glyphs on the demon’s forehead were unmistakable. “Blood Gatherer.”
“Interesting. Your friend, here, did not know me. You will be a fitting High Priest.”
Sam snarled. “Never!”
The demon screeched out a laugh that sent shards of pain piercing through her. “We sacrifice the heart for courage and honor, but we sacrifice the brains for knowledge. If they’re eaten while the victim is alive, all knowledge will be transferred to the host. The only question that remains is whether I should allow your friend to perform the ritual, or simply do it myself.”
Her knees wouldn’t hold her up any longer. Slipping down to huddle against the wall, she threw up in the corner until every muscle in her body ached. How could she stop them? What choice did she have?
Ruin should have let me die in Chi’Ch’ul.
His jaguar filled her, rumbling out a growling purr while it rubbed fur inside her like a cat winding about her ankles. “Never say such a thing, Jaid. Do whatever you must to save yourself. Use the Gate. Allow the bowels of Xibalba to escape. I don’t care, as long as you live.”
Despite the horrors of this place and the darkness of their future, she felt his touch and knew the truth. “I never dreamed that I would find my heart in Guatemala.”
It might have been her imagination, but she could almost feel his jaguar’s sandpaper tongue swiping her tears away. “You are precious to me, Jaid. If we somehow fail to escape this doom, I shall meet you beneath the Great Ceiba. We’ll walk hand in hand to Kukulkan’s Pyramid and I’ll show you all the wonders of First Five Sky. Now use that wickedly sharp mind of yours and see if you can find a way to trick them into giving us exactly what we want.”
Straightening, she wiped her mouth and forced some steel back into her spine. He was right. She had a brain, she knew the codex better than anyone but him, and she’d passed through the Gates not once but twice. She refused to sit here blubbering like a baby any longer.
Harrison Ford may look better in khaki shorts, but no demon is going to outsmart this professor. “I’ll open the Gate.”
Sam’s face sagged with relief. “What can I do to help?”
“I need Ruin’s knife.”
Practically skipping with glee, the demon rushed from the cave to do her bidding.
Sam’s eyes tightened and he fisted his hands at his sides. “Don’t kill for them, Jaid. I’ll do it.”
She recoiled so hard she smacked her head on the rock. Trembling, she rubbed the sore spot. “Do you honestly think I would ever do such a thing?”
By his lingering frown, he did. After all, they’d brought him to murder. Why not force her to do the same?
“The Gate doesn’t require human sacrifice, Sam.”
Even after all he’d seen and done, her harsh words still managed to startle him. He blinked and shook his head slightly, as though he’d awakened from a stupor. “I’ll bring the codex for you.”
“I don’t need it for this. The words are ceremonial only. Magic doesn’t come from the glyphs, but from the heart.”
Only now did she truly understand. She’d sat in the library for years, translating glyph after glyph, and she’d never known the magic in her work. It had taken a jaguar priest to give her the magic.
A warm, deep throb echoed through her, a reminder of his power.
Blood Gatherer returned and offered a blade to her. The ivory blade looked like Ruin’s but she couldn’t be sure.
Reluctantly, she edged closer to the demon and tried to ignore her churning stomach. Breathing shallowly, she could still smell its rotting corpse stench. Her skin crawled, itching with urgency with each step. She gingerly took the knife, ever so careful to avoid touching the skeletal fingers upon which it rested.
The demon lunged and wrapped that disgusting hand around her throat. Lifted off her feet, she blindly plunged the blade into the demon’s body.
Blood Gatherer laughed. “If you were aiming for my heart, you missed dreadfully, for I have none.”
Agony pounded in her head. The pressure on her throat was unbearable. Surely the bones in her spine were close to shattering. She couldn’t feel her arms and couldn’t get enough air to curse the foul creature, so she kicked out frantically, hoping to dislodge its grip so she could breathe. She felt her boot slam into something soft…and
kept sinking deeper with a wet, fleshy sound.
“She’s mine!” Sam roared. “You promised not to hurt her!”
The demon hurled her backward. Her boot stuck and she fell awkwardly. Her skull slammed against stone. Chest heaving, she concentrated on breathing and not passing out. When she managed to crack open an eye, she stared up at Blood Gatherer looming above her. A boot-sized hole was slowly filling back out in the demon’s abdomen.
“Then ensure she opens the Gate to Xibalba or I’ll feast on her brains and open it myself!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jaid gripped the knife in her right hand so tightly that its carved feathers and scales dug into her palm. She stared down at the map inlaid in the temple floor. Terror was a cold, slimy ball churning and rolling in her stomach.
Even if she managed to key the Gate to her blood and escape through to Xibalba without any demons escaping or following, how could she get back? How could she hope to protect herself in hell? What if her father had died the very first night?
Deep rasps and low muttered curses jerked her gaze to the entry on the far side of the cavern. Wrack alternately carried and dragged his brother into the Temple of Days and dumped Ruin against the wall. They’d bound his arms and legs in heavy chains, and his golden eyes blazed with the jaguar’s fury.
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