by J; P Voelkel
Nasty pulled Lola behind a pillar, out of the line of fire.
Down, down, down the incense burner swung, with Lady Coco riding on top of it to control its trajectory. As it hit the bottom of its arc and started to rise again, she grasped the rope with her tail and used her knife to cut the censer free, so that it plummeted straight toward Landa. The guard dove across and pushed him out of the way, taking the hit himself. Guard and censer crashed into the old wooden pulpit, igniting it and showering Landa in burning coals.
Smoke billowed everywhere.
The congregation erupted in panic and headed en masse for the doors, screaming and coughing.
Landa was livid, his eyes blazing like the coals from the incense burner. “This will not happen!” he screamed.
He unsheathed his sword. The Toledo steel glinted red in the light of the flames from the burning pulpit. He hadn’t worked out where the darts were coming from, and he jabbed randomly into the air. Then he saw Lola and Nasty, hiding behind the pillar, and tried to pull Lola out. Nasty wouldn’t let go of her, and Lola became the rope in their tug-of-war. Landa went to run Nasty through with his sword, but Lola stood between them.
By this time, Nasty’s parents had fought their way to the front of the cathedral. Mrs. Smith-Jones screamed at Landa and hit him with her umbrella, while her husband dragged their reluctant daughter away to take cover in a side chapel.
Landa pulled Lola back to the altar steps. He used his sword to flush out the officiating priest from his hiding place under the altar table. “Finish what you have started!” he commanded.
His pulpit smoldering and his precious incense burner wrecked, the terrified priest began to stammer out what Max assumed was the wedding liturgy. Whether it was in Latin or Spanish or Mayan or some language of the priest’s own invention, he couldn’t understand a word of it.
Lord 6-Dog and Max could now get a clear shot at Landa, and they fired simultaneously. As the darts whistled through the air toward his throat, Landa smiled for the first time that day.
He held up his hand. Both darts stopped in midair and burst into flames.
Max groaned. He’d seen that trick once before, on the Black Pyramid, when Lord 6-Dog had confronted his ruthless archenemy Tzelek.
Tzelek!
“I told thee he would come, young lord,” whispered Lord 6-Dog.
“But how did he get here?”
Max backtracked through the events of the last twenty-four hours to work out how Lord 6-Dog’s power-crazed foster brother could have escaped from Xibalba and turned up at Lola’s wedding.
He would have needed a portal … opened by a Jaguar Stone.…
And suddenly it was clear to Max why Ah Pukuh had gone to such lengths to intercept the necklet—and why he’d forced Landa to go through with that humiliating lineage ceremony.
Ah Pukuh needed to activate the Yellow Jaguar to open the portal for his crony Tzelek. Landa’s lust for power had played right into his hands. Now Tzelek was hiding in Landa, as he had once hidden in Hermanjilio.
As Max replayed the masquerade ball in his mind, he realized that the clue had been there all the time. Tzelek had a twisted foot, which he dragged behind him as he walked. Landa had walked normally before the lineage ceremony. But later, in the library, he’d been limping—just as Hermanjilio had done after he’d opened the portal at Itzamna.
While Max was working all this out, Lord 6-Dog took a flying leap off the plaster head of Saint James, all the way to the cathedral floor.
“Have at thee, Tzelek!” he challenged, waving his blowpipe like a rapier.
“6-Dog!” sneered Tzelek/Landa. “Still trapped in that moth-eaten fur coat, I see. At least I chose the body of an aristocrat.”
“Aye, a cowardly, vain aristocrat. This howler has more nobility in one of its opposable thumbs than thou and thine host put together.”
“Is that so? Well, let us see how nobly thy howler body dies.…”
Ah Pukuh, who’d been lolling in a pew eating popcorn and watching the action as if it were a movie, clapped his hands with pleasure. “Splendid! Splendid! Just before things get messy, may I be first to welcome you back to Middleworld, dear Tzelek? I told you it would be easy to arrange your passage. That vain fool Landa was putty in my hands.”
He let out a loud, smelly fart of pleasure.
“Greetings, Lord Ah Pukuh,” said Tzelek. “I must confess that I had planned to keep a low profile until after the nuptials, but once again 6-Dog has stuck his stinking monkey posterior into my business. With your permission, I propose to silence him once and for all, here and now.”
“Proceed, by all means,” said Ah Pukuh, wolfing down popcorn.
“Thou wilt have to catch me first,” said Lord 6-Dog, scampering up a pillar. “Bananas to thee, Tzelek, BANANAS!”
It was a strange insult, but it was the password Max had been waiting for.
“You confounded coward!” screeched Tzelek. “Get back here!”
While Lord 6-Dog lured Tzelek farther and farther away from Lola, Max tiptoed down from the chamber and made his way around to her.
“Run!” he mouthed.
She ran to him, and together they made a break for the main door of the cathedral. They could hear slashings and cursings and crashings behind them as Tzelek pursued brave Lord 6-Dog.
Only when they reached the massive golden organ halfway down the nave, did Lola and Max dare to look back.
It was clear that a howler monkey, no matter how brave, was no match for Tzelek.
As they watched, Tzelek’s sword chopped Lord 6-Dog’s blowgun in half, as easily as slicing a salami. For a few moments the monkey was unarmed, until a red sleeve in the shadows was seen tossing him a long metal lamplighter, which was used to light the highest candles. Lord 6-Dog’s strong arms wielded it like a flamethrower, as Tzelek’s blows rained down.
“Tzelek will kill him,” said Lola, with tears in her eyes.
“He wants you to escape,” said Max.
“But we can’t just leave him.”
“He’s a warrior, Lola, a great warrior. You have to trust him.”
Lola looked anguished.
“We have a mission, remember?” Max reminded her. “We have a planet to save.”
Lola nodded. She straightened her shoulders like a soldier. “Okay,” she whispered.
They turned for the door and ran straight into the rubbery body of Ah Pukuh.
“Not so fast, missy,” he said. “You have something that belongs to me.”
“Get out of my way, you fat pig!” said Lola, trying to push past.
It was, perhaps, an unwise mode of address to use with the god of violent and unnatural death.
“I think not!” he boomed.
Lola aimed a punch at the rolls of lard that encircled his abdomen like so many inflatable life belts. Her hand disappeared into the soft fat of his belly, and her arm followed up to her elbow.
Ah Pukuh pursed his lip-glossed lips. He raised one impeccably plucked eyebrow. All the eyes in his headdress focused on Lola.
“Big mistake!” he said.
Then he thrust out his chest, so that his wedding suit and too-tight white shirt ripped open to reveal his hairy, wobbling flesh. As Lola withdrew her hand, there was a squelching noise, and his navel unraveled to spill rotting guts on the floor in front of her. The sight of it was so disgusting that she turned away, retching.
“Works every time,” crowed Ah Pukuh, sucking his innards back in like a movie in reverse. “Now give me the Yellow Jaguar. I lent it to that idiot fiancé of yours to open the portal for Tzelek, and now I want it back.”
“Landa gave it to me,” said Lola. “And I’m keeping it.”
“You stupid child!” bellowed Ah Pukuh. He hooked his fat fingers into the necklet and tried to pull it off her. His fingers went right through it. Again and again he tried to get a grip on the beads, but they slipped through his fingers like water.
“I command you to relinquish the neckle
t,” screamed Ah Pukuh, and the organ pipes whistled with the volume of his anger.
“Leave me alone, you bully,” replied Lola. “The people of Middleworld aren’t scared of you. The Yellow Jaguar is mine. And I’m keeping it.”
In retrospect, Max described what happened next as the biggest temper tantrum he had ever seen.
First of all, the eyes in Ah Pukuh’s headdress started twitching with tension, and a few popped altogether, spattering him with eye goo. Then his body began to tremble with fury, like a mountain of Jell-O sitting on a washing machine in spin cycle.
“Give it to me!”
“No.”
Ah Pukuh stamped his foot, and the cathedral shook to its foundations.
A statue of Saint James riding his horse toppled from a pillar and crashed onto Tzelek, knocking him to his knees just as he was about to gain the upper hand and deal Lord 6-Dog a deathblow. He dropped his sword, and Lord 6-Dog kicked it out of his reach. In seconds, the monkey had dropped his lamplighter, grasped the sword with both hands, and held the point up to Tzelek’s throat.
Tzelek spat in his direction, and the saliva sizzled and burned on the stones where it landed. “Go ahead!” he murmured. “Slit my throat. You haven’t got the guts! Twice before, you’ve had the opportunity to kill me and twice you’ve lost your nerve, so—”
Tzelek’s ranting dissolved into gurgles as Lord 6-Dog pressed the sword harder into his throat. A thin line of blood trickled onto his white neck ruff.
“Let us be clear,” snarled Lord 6-Dog. “I could kill thee now as easily as a snake crushes a mouse. And yet …” He smiled and pulled back the sword a little. His voice became softer. “And yet, how can I kill my erstwhile brother on his wedding day? Tzelek in love! What a delightful notion.”
“What trickery is this? You know I was marrying the wench only to unite the royal houses of Middleworld and Xibalba. I will rule on earth for Ah Pukuh.”
“Come now, Tzelek, admit it!” called Lord 6-Dog. “Thou art truly in love! I see the flame of passion in thine eyes. Bring back the bride! Let us proceed with the ceremony. Perhaps a good woman can reform thee.”
Tzelek stared at Lord 6-Dog in disbelief.
Max and Lola stared at Lord 6-Dog in disbelief.
Ah Pukuh broke off from his tantrum to stare at Lord 6-Dog in disbelief.
So shocked were they all that not one of them noticed a small brown figure sliding silently down the rope that had held the incense burner. Nor did they see it quickly tie the end of the rope around Tzelek’s ankles and pull it tight.
“All yours, son,” called Lady Coco.
Lord 6-Dog raised his sword and smashed the flat of the blade on Tzelek’s skull.
“This is an outrage!” moaned Tzelek, as he lost consciousness.
“No,” said Lady Coco calmly. “It is an outrage that you were ever born. It is an outrage that you killed my husband, the man who brought you up as his own. And it is an outrage that, once again, my 6-Dog has shown you mercy.”
“I have merely granted him a stay of execution, Mother. If I slay him in this body, I will exterminate Landa—but Tzelek himself may escape. Our final battle draws nearer. But this is neither the time nor the place.”
A creaking noise alerted Max to the movement of the pulley above his head. The red-robed acolyte who’d hit the guard was heaving on the control ropes. Max and Lola ran to help, and soon the unconscious Tzelek was hoisted off the ground and cranked high up into the roof of the cathedral, where he hung upside down like a serrano ham in the window of a Spanish restaurant.
“Well, this is awkward,” said Ah Pukuh.
He waddled up the aisle until he stood under the swinging Tzelek.
The remaining eyeballs in his headdress copied him as he looked up at his senseless cohort and back down at Max, Lola, Lord 6-Dog, and Lady Coco. Then the eyeballs swiveled around and focused on Ah Pukuh himself, waiting to see what he would do.
“Normally,” he said, “at this juncture, I would slay you all in my usual grisly manner! But I find myself somewhat stymied.” He gestured around the cathedral. “This is hallowed ground. Like it or not, I am required to show professional respect.”
The eyeballs looked at one another in surprise.
“Unless, of course, any of you would like to step outside?”
The eyeballs looked expectantly at Max, Lola, and the monkeys, who all shook their heads vigorously.
“Have it your way,” said Ah Pukuh, “but much good it will do you.” He (and the eyeballs with him) focused on Max. “Enjoy your last day of life, Max Murphy. By this time tomorrow, you will have taken the road and entered the water. And I will take great pleasure in personally devising the manner of your final demise.” With that, Ah Pukuh turned on his heel. “Meanwhile, if anyone wants me,” he called over his shoulder as he lumbered out of the cathedral, “I will be sucking on tentacles in that restaurant across the square. I hear they serve excellent octopus.”
Max had frozen in fear at Ah Pukuh’s words, and it took him a few seconds to thaw out. “What road? What water? What’s he talking about?” he spluttered.
“Taking the road and entering the water are both metaphors for death,” growled Lord 6-Dog.
“Don’t scare the boy,” Lady Coco scolded her son.
“Too late,” said Max.
“That bully Ah Pukuh is all mouth. You won this round, fair and square, young lord,” Lady Coco assured him. Her voice sounded weak.
“You were magnificent …,” agreed Lola.
“Really?” Max grinned. Perhaps it was worth receiving a personal death threat from the god of violent and unnatural death himself, if it won him praise from Lola.
“But what are you wearing, Hoop?”
He followed her eyes to his mud-spattered navy blazer with anchors on the buttons.
“It’s a long story.…”
And before he could tell it, Nasty came over, looking stunned. “What just happened? Why is the bridegroom hanging from the ceiling? Who was that fat guy with all the eyes? And what’s with the talking monkeys?”
Max took a deep breath and plunged in. “Well, we didn’t know it, but Tzelek was hiding in Landa, and Ah Pukuh is like Tzelek’s boss and he’s taking over the world, and the monkeys aren’t really monkeys because Lord 6-Dog is actually an ancient Maya king—”
“You know what?” said Nasty, shaking her head in confusion. “E-mail me when you get home.”
“Thank you so much for helping me, Nasty,” said Lola. “You were very brave. And you’d never even met me before.”
“Well, any friend of Mac’s …” Nasty shrugged. Max opened his mouth to protest, but she winked at him to show she was joking. “Besides,” she continued, “I always wanted to be a bridesmaid.”
“I don’t suppose this was quite how you imagined it,” said Lola.
“No,” agreed Nasty. “I always thought I’d wear a pink dress.”
Lola laughed and took Nasty’s hands. “Seriously though, if you hadn’t offered to keep me company out there, I don’t think I could have gone through with it.”
“But what were you thinking of?” Max asked her. “It was such a bad plan. If I’d have obeyed your note, you’d be dead by now.”
“I had no choice about the wedding,” said Lola. “Landa was going to kill you. And as I’d rather die than marry him, I figured I had nothing to lose by giving you the Yellow Jaguar and a shot at Xibalba. Besides, I knew I’d escape somehow.”
“Anastasia!” Mrs. Smith-Jones’s voice echoed through the cathedral. “Come away from those terrible people! We’re catching the first flight back to Boston!”
“I was just congratulating the actors, Mom!” She winked at Max again. “Weren’t the special effects amazing? We were so lucky to see this! Apparently it’s the latest thing in performance art. Massimo knew all along it wasn’t a real wedding! It’s given me so many ideas for our next production at drama club.…”
Mrs. Smith-Jones staggered over. Her hat
was adrift, her hair was bedraggled, and she was missing one shoe. “I’ve never been so frightened in all my life,” she said. “If this is how European high society behaves, you can keep it!”
“Quite right,” agreed Mr. Smith-Jones. If not for the violent shaking of his hand as he mopped his brow with a polka-dot silk handkerchief, he would have looked as dapper as ever. “I told you we should have stuck with Florida.”
“If you don’t need me,” said Nasty to Max, “I think I better go and look after my parents. They’ve had quite a shock. So e-mail me—okay? Remember, you owe me pizza and a movie and a full explanation when you get back to Boston!”
“You got it,” said Max. “Ciao.”
“Ciao for now!” replied Nasty. She giggled. “At least I can tell my friends that I met an Italian aristocrat with a palace in Venice. They won’t believe any of the rest of it!” She followed her parents demurely toward the door, turning at the last minute to give Max a wave and a Ty Phoid tongue waggle.
“She seems nice, Hoop,” whispered Lola.
“She is nice,” agreed Max.
He studied Lola’s face. Did he detect a hint of jealousy?
No.
Sadly.
He didn’t.
Not a trace.
She was looking around anxiously. “Where’s Lord 6-Dog? Why did you tell me he was dead?”
“I thought he was,” said Max. “The last time I saw him, he’d been shot at close range and he was lying in the road in a pool of blood.”
“So how did he get here? And Lady Coco?”
“Beats me. But I’m glad they did.”
They found the monkeys slumped by the altar steps.
“Thou wast invincible, Mother,” Lord 6-Dog was saying. “When I saw thee riding on top of that incense burner, it was all I could do to keep from cheering!”
“Thank you, son. It was a job well done, even if I do say so myself.” Lady Coco winced in pain.
Lola inspected the queen’s hairy little arm. It was matted with blood. “It looks bad,” she said, mopping it gently with the hem of her wedding dress. “What happened?”