by Kim Curran
JD threw the keys to Connor, who snatched them out of the air and clicked the doors open. Now wasn’t the time to bicker over who’d drive and although he was the youngest Connor was the best behind the wheel.
They all clambered in and buckled up. It was six hours till sunrise. Six hours to get to the temple, stop the ritual and save the world. Six hours to save Milly.
Connor started up the van and they sped off into the night, not knowing if they would ever see another dawn.
Milly had no idea how long she’d been in the back of the van. Minutes slipped into hours. Time lost all meaning. Finally, the van slammed to a halt. Parched, hooded and tripping over the long robe, she was dragged out of the vehicle, up some stairs, over a hot sandy floor, through what felt like a tunnel and then down a rough slope. All the time, she felt the knife pressed against her neck by the jaguar-man who insisted on calling her “clever clogs”. One wrong move and she’d be dead. She ran through various escape plans in her head. But when it came down to it, she wasn’t trained for any of this. She wasn’t JD or Tom or any of the boys. She was Milly. And she was scared.
The golden-eyed man threw her against a solid, cold wall, wrenched her hands above her head and strapped metal cuffs around them. Then Milly heard footsteps walking away. And a door slamming closed. The bag clung to her face, her sweat and saliva sticking it in place. She sucked in a mouthful of the material, ignoring the fact it tasted like feet, and tugged at it with her teeth. It gave, just a little. She repeated the process again and again, till finally, the bag slipped off her head. She spat it out onto the ground and stamped on it a few times for good measure. Now she could see again, she took in her surroundings.
A large room, illuminated by the flickering light of candles. The walls were lined with… Milly blinked to make sure she was seeing it right. Yes, they were lined with skulls. She twisted around, trying to see as much of the room as possible. It was a square room built from large stone slabs placed one on top of the other so perfectly that you could hardly see the gaps. Milly had to give it to the people who had built this place, they sure knew a thing or two about angles. But even their precision had been worn down by the pressure of time. The ceilings were low and held up by three square pillars and, in one corner, a metal prop. The entire room looked like it might collapse at the slightest provocation. Death by sacrificial ritual or crushed by rocks. Not a choice she was willing to make.
“Ah, my child.” Milly recognized the voice only too well. Zyanya walked through a narrow doorway and down the rough steps, running her hand against the skulls embedded in the walls.
“Don’t do this, please let me go, Ma—” Milly said, feeling a gut-punch of sadness as she almost used the word for “mother”.
Having to see her mother’s body still walking around, looking into her mother’s eyes and seeing only darkness, made it almost impossible to accept the truth. But she had to. Her mother was dead.
“Oh dear, still holding on to the hope that your mother is in here. So innocent. And I am afraid I can’t let you go,” Zyanya said. “We need you. And isn’t that what you’ve always longed for? To be needed? To be wanted? To be loved?” The demon priestess reached out and stroked Milly’s cheek.
Milly twisted away, growling. “You touch me again and I’m going to…”
“Going to what?”
“I don’t know yet. But it’s going to be really bad,” Milly said, letting her head drop again.
The demon laughed. Milly didn’t know if the glow in her black eyes was a reflection of the flickering candles or coming from somewhere deep inside her. “Before, we had no need of chains,” she said, stroking the metal binding Milly’s hands. “Before, when my people ruled this land, before the Spaniards” – she spat the word – “we would make a sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca every year. As a child, I would watch the ritual with wonder, as a beautiful young man would walk up the steps of the pyramid and put himself in the hands of the priests. Willingly giving his body over to the god. It was a great honour to be chosen. And the priests would open his chest and rip out his heart and set a fire in the place where his heart had been. And all the time, they sang. Oh, child, I wish you could have heard the singing. It was like the gods themselves breathing. When I was chosen to be a priestess and conducted my first ritual, you can’t imagine the power I felt when I held the knife in my hands…never had I felt closer to another human being. But that, that was as nothing compared to the ritual I will finally finish tonight. There are no conquistadors to stop me. Tonight, Tezcatlipoca, the Lord of Shadow, shall walk again, and the world shall be made anew.”
“You have no idea what you’re doing!” Milly shouted, yanking on her chains. “Can’t you see? Tezcatlipoca is going to use you and destroy you and then destroy the world. Which bit of ‘god of death and destruction’ are you not getting? If you summon him and let him into that body, you’re gone. Dead. You get that, right? You won’t be around to see this great new world of yours.”
“Oh, but, my child, I won’t be Tezcatlipoca’s host. I will be the one who nurtured him, who gave birth to him. I will walk at his side as his mother.”
“Mother? But…then who…?” Milly knew it before Zyanya smiled. “No…no, you can’t. I won’t be his host. I know the rules, you have to be willing, you have to invite the demon in. I won’t.”
“Wait, my child, you will see. Tezcatlipoca can be so persuasive. Everything you’ve ever wanted will be yours. Your every dream fulfilled.”
“But I’ll be dead!”
“Oh no, you will live on. Two souls entwined in one.”
Milly didn’t want to believe what she was hearing. The boys had told her that once a demon stepped in, the human soul was thrown out. But if the soul was still in there…
Zyanya tapped her heart. “Yes, your mother is in here, or an echo of her. At first she tried to fight, especially when she thought I was going to hurt you. It was quite distracting. Back in the museum, when I was weakened by Diaz’s little game, your mother managed to drag me away to save you. I punished her for that. Whatever was left of her is broken. I am in control. But you will learn all of this for yourself, when Tezcatlipoca comes.”
Tears flowed, coursing down Milly’s face. “I will fight. You and your stupid god. You were stopped last time and you’ll be stopped again.”
“Silence!” Zyanya roared. It sounded like a thunderclap and felt like a punch to the face. “I will have my revenge! And those who dare stand in my way shall be crushed beneath the feet of my god!” Spittle flew, her black eyes bulged. She composed herself. “So, you see, there is no way out. You may as well submit quietly, like a nice little girl.” She smiled and made her way out of the chamber.
“Yeah, not my style,” Milly said, once the demon was out of earshot.
The black van rolled to a halt, kicking up a cloud of yellow dust. The gates guarding the pyramid site were brand new and locked with a thick black chain. A fence ran around the perimeter and various warning signs told people to stay away in both Spanish and English, threatening trespassers with prosecution or, judging by one sign, electrocution. The area was thick with trees and vines. There was no way through for the van; they’d have to go the rest of the way on foot.
JD jumped out and adjusted the scabbard on his back. He waited as Niv cut through the wires electrifying the fence with a pair of cutters, and then began climbing. When he reached the top, he threw himself over, avoiding the barbed wire, and landed on the other side, knees bent, fingertips brushing the ground. One by one, the others followed, landing either side of him. Only Connor had trouble with the barbed wire, managing to leave a chunk of his T-shirt behind. But other than a nasty scratch on his back, he was okay. They set off, running down the track cut through the jungle that would lead to the ancient Aztec temple.
The area was overgrown and JD felt like they were being watched every step of the way. Stone statues stared out of the trees at them: figures with bird heads, snakes with gaping mouths and skulls w
ith rolling tongues. Everything seemed like a warning to stay away. He heard the insistent hiss of cicadas in the distance and the howling of creatures he couldn’t identify. The heat was almost tangible, as if even the air was trying to stop them getting to the temple.
As they got closer, he could make out grey, crumbling buildings breaking through the trees, all radiating out from a central square that was covered in grass. Up ahead, a step-pyramid cast a shadow across the ground in front of them. A flash of lightning picked out the jagged shape against the roiling, purple clouds. It looked like a stairway to another dimension.
“Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s the temple,” Zek said, pointing to the looming pyramid with his curved sword.
It was easily thirty metres tall, made from nine stone platforms stacked on top of each other. Perched on the very top was a small, square building with doorways leading inside. Carvings of plumed snakes and snarling jaguars covered the building, which was illuminated with flaming torches. JD couldn’t tell if the snakes were chasing the jaguars or the other way around.
Crumbling staircases ran up each of the four sides of the pyramid. Three of the sides were still mostly covered in plants and grass as the nearby jungle tried to reclaim the building. But the central staircase was clear and waiting.
JD stopped at the base of the pyramid and looked up. And up. At the very top of the steep steps, a figure walked out of one of the doorways and onto the upper platform. She raised her arms, holding up something so black, so dark, it looked like a tear in the very air: the Blade of Shadows. Even from down here, JD could see she wore a huge feather headdress and a long cape of jaguar skin. Zyanya in full priestess regalia. He could say one thing for her, she knew how to make an entrance.
Behind her was a large slab that couldn’t be anything other than an altar, and lining the four edges of the platform stood rows of hulking creatures. Their eyes glowed gold in the dark.
Connor spun his sais. “More of the jaguweres!”
“Stop trying to make ‘jaguweres’ happen, Con,” Zek said, readying his scimitar.
JD drew his katana and adjusted his grip on the ray-skin hilt, feeling the heightening of his senses that came with the adrenaline rushing through his system. They were outnumbered ten to one by demon beasts with razor claws and shredding teeth. A demon priestess with an unbreakable blade had their friend. And they had less than an hour to stop the ritual. His brain was giving him two options: fight or flight? There was only ever one choice.
The five boys stood in a V formation with JD at the front, Tom to his right, Connor to his left and the twins taking up the rear.
“Sure,” Connor said, “we’ve faced worse.”
“Actually, I don’t think we have,” Zek said, spinning his blade around his shoulder. “But you know what they say?”
“No, Zek, what do they say?” Connor asked, his sais dancing between his fingers as easily as his drumsticks.
“When going up against an army of demons, the wise man wears brown trousers.”
“Sometimes,” Tom said, stretching out his shoulders, “I get the feeling you just make these things up.”
“This”, said Connor, “is going to be fun.”
As JD placed his foot on the bottom step, Zyanya raised her hands to the sky, opened her mouth and began to sing.
Milly was smart. People told her that almost every day. Some meant it as a compliment, others not so much. She was a straight-A student. The best in every class she’d ever been in. But as she gazed around the chamber, she’d never felt dumber. This was one situation she couldn’t think her way out of. She banged her feet against the rock in frustration and heard the stone creak. She looked up and tugged at the chains binding her hands. They were fixed tight, but the column itself was old and had been bearing the weight of the roof for hundreds of years. The metal support propping up the cracking ceiling looked frail, as if it was struggling under the burden of the stones. She looked from pillar to pillar, calculating the angles. It was a half-baked idea at best, and if her maths was out by even a little… But what other choice did she have?
She lifted herself up on her aching arms, twisted her body around as much as she could, and slammed her feet against the metal brace. Nothing happened. She kicked again. Dust flew and the brace shifted a fraction. Milly closed her eyes, drew up all the strength she had and kicked again. The brace slid out of place and toppled to the sandy floor with a muffled clang. Milly waited. And waited. Then, with a sound like a stone coffin lid being opened, a crack appeared in the roof. And grew. It raced across the ceiling towards the pillar Milly was chained to. A fissure branched out of the crack and grit rained down. As slowly as an iceberg breaking off a glacier, the pillar itself started to shatter. Milly closed her eyes, hoping she wasn’t about to get herself killed.
“Oh, sh—” she shouted as both she and the pillar went crashing into the one next to her. Like a giant row of dominos, each pillar smashed into the one next to it, till all that was left was a pile of rubble. Milly coughed, breathing in the dust, and rolled away from the heap of stones. It wasn’t exactly what she had intended. She’d been hoping just to crack the column enough to free her chains, but it had had a slightly more dramatic effect.
“Ha!” she said, jumping to her feet. “Take that, everyone who told me not to waste my time on maths.” She tried to punch the air, but her wrists were still bound by heavy metal links. The collision had shattered the stone holding her, but not the chains. One thing at a time. Dust fell from the ceiling and more cracks were appearing. She wouldn’t have long before the whole place caved in. The only way out was through the door at the top of the room. Zyanya would surely have guards waiting somewhere beyond. There had to be another way out. A hidden door maybe? She moved around the room, looking for any helpful levers. Nothing.
“You’d think a place like this would have at least one secret door. What good is an evil Aztec chamber if it doesn’t have a secret door?” It reassured her to say it out loud, made her feel like she was in a movie, talking for the benefit of the audience rather than living through this nightmare. The grinning skulls looked like they were laughing at her. “Yeah, I don’t know what you think is so funny,” she said to one. “You’re dead.”
She pulled torch brackets, pushed at carvings, anything that might be a hidden lever or button. Nothing budged. Which left only the door. She placed her bound hands on the door, readying herself. She had no idea what she would find on the other side.
“Ready?” she said, to her imaginary audience. “On three. One. Two. Three!”
Milly shoved the door open, expecting to find someone, or something, waiting. But there was nothing. Only a small corridor sloping upwards. Torches lit the way. She stepped into the tunnel, swearing to herself that if she made it out of here alive she was going to spend the rest of her life running through sunlit fields, like in yoghurt commercials. She’d always been told that she needed to get out more. I promise, she thought to herself, I’ll never waste a day indoors again.
Like the walls of the chamber, the corridor was lined with skulls. Whoever had built this place really, really liked dead things. Skeletal heads peered down from alcoves dug into the rock, their empty eyes boring into her. In the torchlight, Milly could see symbols carved into the bone, similar to the marks she’d seen in Mourdant’s diary: geometric patterns that made her head spin just looking at them. She tripped on the uneven ground and had to stop herself from falling by grabbing one of the skulls. Her fingers slipped inside its eye sockets and met something wet and squelching. She squealed and wiped her hand against her robe, telling herself not to think about what it was.
She’d never been more grateful when she finally came to another door at the end. Before opening it, she pressed her ear against the smooth wooden surface. Through it she heard the sounds of shouting, growling and screaming. That meant only one thing.
She turned to one of the skulls and grinned. “Just you wait. Slay are here.”
They were halfway up the steps. Torchlight reflected off Tom’s bow as he dispatched demon after demon. Niv and Zek moved like tornados, slicing and dicing. Connor threw salt grenades blasting anything in his path. And JD spun and rolled, his silver blade flashing. It was almost like a dance. They all moved as one: fluid, furious and unstoppable.
Two Jaguar Warriors threw themselves at JD. With a smooth swoop of his blade, he took out one while Zek finished off the other. Another stopped in front of them, snarling stinking breath.
“You guys really need some mouthwash,” Zek said.
It looked between the two boys, but before it could decide who to attack first, they struck. JD went high and Zek went low. The Jaguar Warrior’s head went rolling down the steps, while its torso and legs lay where they fell. JD stepped over them and charged at the next attacker.
All the while Zyanya sang. Notes so pure and perfect that JD felt them wrap around him and lift him up. But the words…the strange twisted words she sang were anything but human.
He was maybe ten metres from the top platform when the singing stopped and was replaced with a cold, terrifying laughter. JD looked up to the altar and could see why. Lightning flashed again, illuminating Zyanya so perfectly JD wondered if it was coming from an overhead rig. It was her spotlight and this was her moment. She held the Blade of Shadows up, gazing at it with a look of utter adoration. Next to her stood Milly, held in the fierce grip of one of the Jaguar Warriors. She looked so weak, like a rag doll ready to be thrown away.
As JD started towards the altar, Zyanya’s hand flashed. The blade stopped a centimetre away from Milly’s heart.
