He admired her for that. He’d almost welcomed it when she ensnared him on Tower Bridge. Cunning. If he were to be arrested – and he’d known he would be eventually, there had to be an end to it all – then at least he had been arrested cleverly, by someone with the wherewithal to outwit him. Mal Vaughn had proved to be his equal. It had been a short contest, but he knew almost from the start that he’d met his match. Maybe even – whisper it – his better.
And yes, Chel was right, he was ever so slightly infatuated with her, too. She was extraordinarily sexy. She didn’t seem to realise it, which helped. Made her even sexier, in fact. Many good-looking women swaggered through life all too aware of their attractiveness, expecting men to fall at their feet, disappointed if they did, offended if they didn’t. Mal Vaughn was not that banal. She didn’t put on airs, didn’t live by illusions. She was who she was, take it or leave it.
Stuart would have liked to take it. All of it.
THE ANTISEPTIC SMELL wafted in on him again. Stuart came to, feeling weird, quite unlike himself. All the pain was gone, but that wasn’t the difference. He felt... refreshed. Yes, refreshed, although that didn’t quite cover the whole of it. As though his mind had been transplanted into a new-minted body.
He pulled himself off the narrow bed he was lying on. He got to his feet. He bounced springily on the balls of his toes.
Invigorated. That sort of described it, too.
He stretched from head to toe. Nothing creaked or cracked. His tongue went to the molar Mal Vaughn had loosened with one of her punches. The tooth was firmly rooted in place again, not giving him gyp any more. The lumps and abrasions left by his scuffle with Zotz were gone. Even his many mosquito bites were no longer bothering him. All the little bumps of inflammation had subsided, and with them the aggravating itching.
The blonde woman’s words returned to him. Repairs. Good as new.
Yes. He hadn’t felt this spry in ages.
This hungry, either. He was famished.
He took stock of his surroundings. It was a small, plain room without windows. Almost everything was made of a dull platinum-grey metal. There were no ornaments of any type and no furniture other than the bed, not even a chair or a cupboard. It could have been a single-occupancy hospital ward. Or, equally, a prison cell.
The smell was strong now, and Stuart realised why he couldn’t place it. It was actually no smell at all. The room was entirely odourless, as though nothing that carried any kind of scent was permitted here. Even bacteria were forbidden. He bent and put his nose to the bed mattress, which was made of a grey, form-fitting foam. Nothing came up from it, not even a whiff of his own body, although he had been lying on it for several hours at least.
The room was beyond antiseptic; it was sanitised to the nth degree.
His stomach growled. The hunger was getting bad, but he could see nothing to eat.
He went to the door, only to find it lacked a handle. No opening device of any sort was evident, nor any keyhole.
A cell, then.
He thumped on the door. “Hey! Anyone out there? What’s going on?”
Nothing from the other side.
He thumped harder.
“Hey! Somebody must be able to hear me. I don’t know who the hell you are but you have no right to be keeping me here.”
If his captors were Serpent Warriors, they did in fact have every right. But Stuart wasn’t going to let a small detail like the rule of law bother him.
“Come on! Let me out. You’re making a big mistake. I’m really not the sort of person you want to be holding against his will.”
An impotent threat, but it was all he had.
Still no one came.
He stepped back, took a run-up and barged the door. It didn’t so much as shudder within its frame. He tried again, launching himself as hard as he could across the meagre breadth of the room, rebounding uselessly off the door. A couple more times, but he was left with nothing to show for his efforts except an aching shoulder. The door would not budge.
“Shit,” he hissed. “All right,” he called out. “At least bring me something to eat. I’m bloody starving. You can’t deny a captive a meal. You’re going to torture me later, fair enough, but in the meantime you could show a bit of common decen–”
At that instant, the door vanished. It was as if the metal had turned to thin air.
And standing the other side was a skinless man.
Stuart recoiled in revulsion.
The man was over six feet tall, and every fibre of sinew and muscle could be seen, clear as day, except at his nether regions which were swathed in a loincloth. Eyeballs stared from skull sockets. Flesh flexed wetly. Veins pulsed with blood. Here and there were pallid glimpses of bone.
Stuart wanted to believe this was some ghastly life-imitating statue, an anatomical effigy designed to give prisoners a heart-stopping fright.
Then it spoke.
“Who said anything about torture?”
Stuart may have said something in reply, he wasn’t sure. Right then, his thoughts were skittering in all directions, like panicked rats.
“Oh, wait a moment,” said the skinless man. His voice was a low, sibilant rasp. “I’ve done it again. I’m see-through, aren’t I? Everything on display. Let me opaque myself.”
In the space of a few seconds, skin formed all over his body. It appeared in patches, which spread and merged, until the man was fully covered in his proper sheath of epidermis. The skin hadn’t grown from scratch, Stuart thought. It was more a case of the invisible becoming visible.
“That’s better, eh?” Though the man looked markedly less horrifying now, there was still something disconcerting about his appearance. Possibly it was because he lacked hair of any kind. Right down to the eyebrows, he was baby-smooth and follicle-free. “Don’t know what was going through my head,” he continued. “I usually save that look for when I’m in combat. Scares the living daylights out of the opposition.”
He said it deadpan, but with a hint of disingenuousness. Stuart was in no doubt he had done it on purpose, this “glass skin” trick of his or whatever it was. He liked the effect it had on people. Relished the disgust and helpless horror it evoked.
“So, you could do with a bite to eat, could you? Always the way after one of Toci’s treatments. They take it out of you. You need to replenish the system. Why don’t you come with me to the refectory? I believe everyone’s having lunch.”
He made an ushering gesture. Stuart hesitated, then stepped out through the now doorless doorway. He gave the frame a quick inspection as he exited. The jamb was solid all round and he could see no slot that a door could have retracted into. There’d been a sheet of metal firmly in place, and then not. How was that possible?
He had a different question, however, for his escort. “You said Toci. As in the goddess, yes? The patroness of midwives?”
“None other.”
“But people aren’t named after the gods. It’s not allowed. It’s considered blasphemy.”
“Then it’s a good thing Toci isn’t named after Toci,” said the hairless man. “Just as it’s a good thing I’m not named after Xipe Totec. Mustn’t have blasphemy, must we?”
Stuart couldn’t fully fathom the meaning of the remark. He was, however, beginning to glimpse the shape of something here. Something he couldn’t quite wrap his head around yet, mainly because he was loath to. It was too huge, too extreme. Too insane.
A short corridor led to a terrace that ran round the rim of a vast open area. The terrace made four right-angle turns, describing a square, and there were more such terraces above and below, linked to one another by staircases. Stuart seemed to be inside an inverted ziggurat, its hollow interior forming an immense atrium. The whole was capped with a ceiling which glowed with light, enough to turn the interior into day. You could have stuffed the largest ziggurat on earth, upended, into this space and still had room to spare.
“Where are we?” he asked the hairless man.
“Halfway there.” Stuart’s query had been misconstrued deliberately. “Just a little further along.”
They arrived at a door larger than the one to the room Stuart had been in, but just as devoid of obvious unlocking system. The hairless man simply rested a palm on it and the door was gone in a blink.
“So that’s what you do,” Stuart said, bemused. “Touch it and it’s gone. Why didn’t that happen when I hit the other one?”
“It wasn’t keyed to your bio-data, that’s why. You’re not one of us.”
They entered a dining area complete with tables and chairs that were all wrought from the same dull metal as everything else. There was decoration here, at least. The walls carried designs that were similar to the carved murals on display in any temple or hieratic building: pictograms, hieroglyphs, symbols, all pertaining to the gods, or to sacred animals such as lizards or hummingbirds. The difference was that these were drawn in patterns of bright light, and weren’t static. Colours and imagery shifted constantly, a series of tableaux that flowed one to the next. It was mesmerising to watch and Stuart could have gazed at it for hours were it not for the fact that, seated at one of the tables, was the oddest assortment of human beings he had ever laid eyes on.
They were all tall, like the formerly skinless man. They had that in common, but little else. A couple of them were extraordinarily old, withered to the point of desiccation. Others were young and almost impossibly healthy-looking, vibrant with life. One man was so dark-complexioned he seemed to have been hewn from black marble. Another man was clearly quite physically incapacitated, his twisted frame showing deformities of all sorts, from a club foot to tumorous growths. Next to him was a person who could have been male or female, with sensuous lips and swept-back hair. Loose clothing draped his or her physique, making gender even harder to determine.
Seated at the head of the table was a very handsome, olive-skinned man with eyes that were both kindly and grave – the eyes of someone who knew the worst but tried to see the best. He rose, pushing back his chair, and nodded to Stuart.
“Nice to see you up and about. Glad you’re feeling better. Take a seat.”
This was the man Stuart had overheard earlier talking to Toci, the one who’d incapacitated him in the forest with an explosion of light. The one Toci had addressed as Kay.
The androgynous man-or-woman drew out an empty chair next to him or her in invitation. Stuart sat down. One of the other people at the table, the dark man, grumbled: “Shouldn’t be here. No right.” His neighbour, an elderly woman with a regal bearing and a spectacularly sumptuous bosom, hushed him.
Food lay heaped on dishes in the centre of the table. A plate was set in front of Stuart. He helped himself. It was good fare, simple, classically Aztec, centred on the twin staples of maize and agave. He stuffed his belly, aware of everyone’s eyes on him, not caring. They seemed, most of them, to regard him as an interloper. Well, so what? He never asked to be here.
“So,” said the one called Kay, as Stuart cleared a second plateful of food. “I expect you have questions, Mr Reston.”
“Are you going to answer them honestly?”
“Yes.”
“Then I do. First off, what is this place? It feels like we’re underground. Partly that’s an instinct, but also an inverted pyramid makes no sense otherwise, in practical architectural terms. Am I right?”
“Very good. We are underground. As to our location, we’re not far from what your friend Mr Chel described as his forward operating base. A few miles to the west, within spitting distance of Lake Texcoco.”
“Should you be telling him this much?” griped the dark man. His body was massively muscled, of bodybuilder proportions, while his voice was like gravel grinding on granite. “Should you be telling him anything?”
“I don’t see why not, Mic,” Kay replied. “Mr Reston is our guest. We brought him to our lair. So why hide the truth from him?”
“You brought him here.”
“He was hurt. He needed our help. I had no choice.”
“But we’re not ready to make our presence known. This could ruin everything.”
“I’m sure we can rely on Mr Reston, a.k.a. the Conquistador, to be discreet. He, perhaps more than anyone else on earth, understands the value of keeping secrets.”
“Oh, yes,” said the person who was either a feminine man or a masculine woman. His or her voice was pitched mid-range, indeterminately husky. “He has led a double life. He has balanced on the tightrope between what is and what seems to be. He knows how to appear one thing and be the other.” The androgyne placed a slender hand on Stuart’s arm and caressed it approvingly.
“Of course we could always kill him,” said the hairless man matter-of-factly. “I can do it right now if you like. Fork, table knife, bare hands, whatever you prefer.”
“Enough, Xipe,” Kay rebuked him. “Save the resident-psycho act for when it’s really needed.”
“Just saying.”
“No one is killing Mr Reston. He is under my protection. I’ve been keen to meet him. I was hoping he and I might have a quiet chat in the forest last night, but that was not to be. I blame myself for that. I should have anticipated his reaction to the sight of Xolotl reiterating his own words, in his own voice. Anyway, he’s here now, among us, and that’s just how it is. All of you accept that and move on.”
“Why me?” Stuart asked. “That’s my next question. You’ve singled me out for some reason, some purpose. What?”
“Because you’re mixed up in this Xibalba business, this plot to assassinate the Great Speaker. But unlike the ringleader, Chel, you strike me as someone who’s open to debating matters – someone who’s less committed to a certain course of action than the rest of them are – someone I can deal with on a polite, diplomatic level.”
“I’m not as hell-bent on suicide as the others, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s the impression I get from our surveillance.”
“Okay, so I’m beginning to get a handle on what’s been happening this past couple of days,” said Stuart. “You people have been trying to warn Xibalba off, haven’t you? We’re in your neck of the woods, on your turf. We’ve strayed into the middle of something that’s already in progress. We’re treading on your toes and you don’t appreciate that. Hence stalking us through the forest. Hence, also, that business with the ants. That was something you lot arranged, wasn’t it? Hoping to frighten us away.”
One man at the table, sporting a shock of red hair, held up a hand in acknowledgement. “Guilty as charged. Did you like my composite-colony figure? I thought it an impressive piece of ant wrangling. Great deal of finesse required to get it to wave its arm like that. You didn’t have to go and blow it to bits, though. My lads weren’t going to do you any harm. The colony’s pretty upset so many of them got vaporised. I spent the whole of yesterday having to soothe them and get them to calm down.”
“Your ‘lads.’ You talk to ants. And they have feelings.”
“Yes, I do,” said the redhead. “Not talk talk, of course. That would be absurd. Ants lack ears. It’s more... pheromonal and vibrational. And yes, they do have feelings. They may look all hard and military on the outside but they’re sensitive, too, underneath it all.”
“All right,” Stuart said sternly, slapping the tabletop, startling several of the people around him. “That’s enough. Let’s drop the charade. I get what this is now. I know who you’re pretending to be. It’s a clever act. The props are good, too. Doors that disappear, someone whose skin goes transparent, a dog that can talk... I’ve no idea how you’re doing any of it, although I suspect the dog was some sort of high-class ventriloquism act. But bravo, well done. Spectacular work. Round of applause.”
“Pretending to be?” said Kay, eyes crinkling. The rest seemed offended by their guest’s sudden outburst, but he was amused.
“Yes, Kay. Or should I call you Quetzalcoatl? And you.” Stuart pointed to the redhead. “Azcatl. The ‘red ant.’ Th
e messenger. And you.” He turned to the androgyne next to him. “Ometeotl, the dual divinity, opposites reconciled. Not forgetting Xipe Totec over there, the Flayed One. And Mictlantecuhtli, if I’m not mistaken.”
The dark man just blinked slowly, otherwise impassive.
“The pantheon,” Stuart declared. “Pardon me if I can’t put a name to every face, but that’s who you’re all supposed to be, right? The gods and goddesses. It’s blindingly obvious, really. I was a bit slow on the uptake but I was disorientated and my blood sugar was low. Penny’s finally dropped.”
“Go on,” said the regal-looking woman.
“Coatlicue, I presume?” The matriarch, the earth mother, giver and devourer of life, mother of Huitzilopochtli.
A necklace of jewelled hands, hearts and skulls bounced on the woman’s deep cleavage as she nodded. Two bulky metal snake earrings clinked slightly.
“Well, I’m surrounded by some sort of religious re-enactment group, aren’t I? A society of role-players holed up in the Anahuac rainforest, fancying themselves the Aztecs’ long-gone deities, dressing the part, acting the part, even throwing in a few parlour tricks to add to the illusion. All very entertaining. I’m sure you all have super fun doing this in this splendid clubhouse of yours. You’ve spent some money on the place, too, so I imagine you’re pretty well off, or maybe just one of you is. But if you’re after me to join, the answer’s thanks, but no thanks. It’s a neat piece of performance art you’ve cooked up, and I’m grateful for the grub and everything, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
Just plain barking, he nearly added.
“And now, I really should be going.” Stuart stood. “If someone could point me in the direction of the nearest exit...?”
“He speaks like that?” snapped the oldest person in the room, a wizened white-haired crone with a peevish cast to her features. “To us?”
Age of Aztec Page 18