“Thank you,” Lesley said. The microphone on her lapel boomed her already commanding voice out across the Mound. Bathed in the blue, she was looking especially demonic tonight.
“It was nearly five hundred years ago that Hernán Cortés and his conquistadores landed in the Americas.” An antique map of Mexico without its current borders flashed on the projector screen. “There, in what is now modern-day Mexico, they infamously laid siege to the Aztec empire, leaving its cities in ruins and its people in disarray.
“Years later,” she continued, “when Cortés returned to Spain, he would claim that the Aztec people had received him as a deity—that they believed him to be their own wind god, Quetzalcoatl.” The image on the screen transitioned to a yellowed painting of a warrior-like figure with the body of a man and the head of a snake. His garb was luxuriously adorned with feathers of every color. “But to the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl was a symbol of life and resurrection, a good creator of the people. He was never intended to be a symbol of foreign invasion and a harbinger of doom.”
Lesley crossed in front of the projector, so that the gleaming image of the serpent warrior’s eyes briefly overlapped her own. “What Cortés didn’t realize was that Quetzalcoatl—the true Quetzalcoatl—was walking the earth at that time as a mortal . . . and that the two of them had actually met.”
The screen transitioned to a picture of a stone carving. Much like the painting before, the relief was a sculpture of a fanged snake’s mouth with a corona of feathers. “Using sonar technology, my archaeological team discovered this grave site buried under thirty feet of soil on the Yucatán peninsula. Within it were the mummified remains of an Aztec man, laid out on an earthen altar within. His hands and feet were ceremoniously staked to the four corners of the altar with the fangs of a large snake.” She paused dramatically. “But that is not how he died.”
The illustration on the screen morphed into a bloody battle in a large plaza. “According to the artifacts the team excavated, the man most likely came from the city of Cholula, and was one of the many thousands of unarmed noblemen massacred in the city plaza one night by Cortés and his men. His body shows evidence of two lacerations on his thighs and then a sword wound that penetrated through his back and exited the front of his chest cavity.”
Ash pursed her lips. After her meet and greet with Thorne, the thought of him skewered by a conquistador wasn’t so horrible an image.
“We believe that his body was secretly moved to the tomb by high priests from the cult of Quetzalcoatl, and the feathered serpent that marks the entrance identifies the man within as the wind god and creator himself.” Lesley clasped her hands and grinned fiercely. “I’m pleased to announce that, thanks to the latest in preservation advances, Vanderbilt Estates has brought him here to you tonight.”
She crossed over to the curtained object. With a grand flourish she ripped down the white sheet and cast it to the ground.
The audience collectively inhaled, Ash included. Encased in a clear unit with his arms and feet pinned at the four corners in the same way that Lesley had described, was a mummified corpse. Feathers had been gathered around his skull in a mane, and his jaw gaped open in an eternal scream.
“Recently my team has developed facial mapping software that allows us to scan the bone structure of any skull, full or partial, and develop an accurate representation of what the subject’s face would have looked like in life.” Lesley gestured to the projector screen, where a close-up of the mummified skull had materialized. “I give to you the face of a living god.”
On the screen Ash watched as the skull’s wrappings digitally unraveled, and the decomposing flesh beneath rotted away, leaving only the skull. Once the skull was clean and white, veins and muscle and cartilage quickly populated its surface, then on top of that, skin, lips, eyes, and hair.
When the digital transformation was complete, the image of Quetzalcoatl’s face remained.
It was Thorne, and his dark eyes stared like lances out into the crowd. A murmur ran through the audience, and Ash heard someone a few rows back whisper, “It’s like one of those paintings where the eyes follow you no matter where you go.”
Lesley waved her hands to hush the crowd. “Now, moments ago I said that Vanderbilt Estates had brought Quetzalcoatl to you tonight. What you don’t know is that I wasn’t referring to the mummified remains from his tomb. I wasn’t referring to the digital recreation of his face you see on the screen.” She pointed to one of the blue-lit archways of the casino behind her. “I was referring to him.”
The real Thorne emerged from the structure. No longer in his tuxedo, the wind god now wore full traditional Aztec garb. A loincloth, ornately woven with black, crimson, and gold, had replaced his tuxedo pants, and a similar cape covered his shirtless chest, knotted at his left shoulder. He wore a golden headdress with feathers, identical to the headpiece worn by the mummy.
There were rumblings of confusion in the audience.
And then the audience began to laugh and point.
Ash couldn’t help a grin herself, especially seeing the impatient confusion written all over Lesley’s face. True as her story was that Thorne was Quetzalcoatl in the flesh, how could she have possibly expected the audience to take her seriously?
Thorne, however, didn’t look the least bit perturbed. He stepped calmly out to center stage, set his feet, and in a fear-inspiring voice shouted, “Silence!”
The blast of wind that accompanied it sent everyone’s hair fluttering back, and the hysterical crowd died back to mumbling.
“You don’t have to believe now,” Thorne said, his voice quieter but still carrying over the Mound. “But in time you will believe. And for the present, you will hear the news that I’ve brought for you. A warning.”
“Is this guy for real?” the woman next to Ash mumbled to nobody at all, but Ash noticed that she’d whipped out a handheld voice recorder—must have been a reporter.
“You see, my mortal friends, the gods do walk among us. I am not the only one. Hundreds of us, from mythologies around the world, from Egypt to Peru to the shores of Polynesia—are all here as flesh and blood. Some of us are here to protect you, while others . . .” He paused. “Well, to them you are ants beneath a magnifying glass to be burned, to be trampled . . . to be eradicated.”
Some people even dared to laugh this time, but the cold silence was taking over the audience like a plague as Thorne continued. “Despite the imminent danger presented by these forces crushing in around you, I come before you tonight to tell you that there are four among us who have sworn to protect you. As the demons from around the globe assemble to wage war on the defenseless, feel safe in knowing that you can weather the storm beneath the umbrella of the Four Seasons.”
One brave soul in the front of the audience, who hadn’t yet heeded Thorne’s steely warnings, stood up. “The Four Seasons?” he jeered. “I love that hotel!”
Thorne’s head slowly rotated around to look at his critic. “No,” he said finally. “I mean Mother Nature herself.”
A heavy wind picked up over the casino and slammed into the heckler. He toppled back into his chair, flattening several of the people around him in a mess of limbs and folding chairs. Some of the audience nearest them rose to their feet, but nobody in the crowd dared to flee the premises.
“You may call me Fall,” Thorne said, and nodded to the fallen heckler, “a name some will learn well. Let me introduce you to the other Seasons.”
“Summer,” a deeper voice called from the back corner of the Mound. Ash turned in unison with everyone else. Rey rolled his sleeves up and held his arms out over the audience.
It started as a pinwheel of light, floating over the central aisle for all to see, but it quickly spiraled into a burning orb. Soon a miniature sun blazed overhead, sending waves of heat fanning down onto the masses. Ash wiped her brow out of instinct, even though her own supernatural resistance to heat kept her from sweating. The temperature blazed hotter than even the native Floridia
ns around Ash seemed comfortable with.
“Winter.”
Bleak climbed out of the bushes in the northwestern corner and extended her hands toward the fiery sun. The air crackled, and the heat on Ash’s face instantly cooled, then turned bitterly cold. A collective shiver rolled through the spectators.
The white-hot sun quickly died through several shades of tangerine and red, until it was reduced to a soft glow. A shell of ice crept around the bottom hemisphere of the orb, starting at its southern pole, then working its way up to the equator. By the time the ice had coated the orb, the fire within had died to a single, pulsing baby star, a fiery nucleus gently glowing inside the floating glacial sphere. Ash caught Rey casting Bleak a lustful look from the opposite side of the Mound.
“And of course,” a strangely familiar woman’s voice announced from the back, “winter always turns to spring.”
“Spring” finished climbing the stairs in the back, a middle-aged Japanese woman with dark hair, even darker circles around her eyes, and a lopsided grin. Though Ash had seen her face many times before, she’d seen it only once prior in its aged state, shortly after this same woman had murdered one of Ash’s best friends.
Lily Mayatoaka knelt down in the central aisle, stopping just beneath the slowly rotating ball of ice. From this close Ash could make out the crow’s-feet at the corners of the blossom goddess’s eyes. Ash’s hands tightened around the edge of her chair.
The ground rumbled. Shrieks erupted throughout the audience.
From the ground underneath the ball two tendrils of ivy penetrated the stone surface, sending rocks and soil showering over the nearby observers. The appendages blossomed leafy fingers that snaked around the orb, lashing around it from all angles.
When the vines stopped sprouting, the ivy had encircled the orb at every latitude and longitude. Then, as one, the vines all contracted, hard, and the ice shattered instantly, extinguishing the fire within.
The remains of the ball landed at Lily’s feet, a mass of shattered ice, cinders, and withering plant life.
Even the crowd members who had stood up before now slipped back into their seats. No one seemed so eager to depart any longer with the Winter, Summer, and Spring Seasons blocking their path.
Ash was trembling. She felt the old tang of fire lapping at her innards, rage igniting within the deepest pockets of her soul. Nothing burned quite like the opportunity for vengeance. Her first priority was supposed to be rescuing her little sister, and deep down she knew that revealing herself now could jeopardize that . . . but Lily had caused so much suffering for Ash and her friends that Ash had become a slave to her vengeful instincts. With the taste of retribution on her tongue, the part of her that was still a normal sixteen-year-old drifted to the back burner, and Pele, the volcano goddess, seized control.
With the audience sitting, Ash knew she’d be instantly recognized the moment she stood up. Then she’d have only a short window of time to trample over the seated bystanders between her and Lily. Could Ash get her hands on Lily and incinerate her before the plant goddess realized something was afoot?
“Undoubtedly,” Thorne said, drawing attention back up to him, “tomorrow some of you will write in your newspapers of the ‘parlor tricks’ that happened here today, chalking up the miracles you’ve just witnessed to high-priced special effects. Rest assured that this has all been real . . . and these parlor tricks will one day soon save your life.”
Ash was going to need a distraction if she was going to get to Lily unnoticed. And if she could disrupt Thorne’s presentation at the same time, all the better. What was this crap he was saying about “saving lives” supposed to mean, anyway? Given Thorne’s personality, he seemed more likely to use a strong gale to blow someone in front of a speeding bus.
“A cold and merciless force is coming to Miami. In just a few nights’ time, the Four Seasons will have to face the threat of another god, a god who would have you all suffer.” Thorne walked out into the center aisle toward the mound of debris. “The world will watch as we neutralize that threat.” His cape billowed out behind him. “And then you will believe.”
Ash slipped off her heels. Fortunately the reporter next to her was too transfixed on Thorne and Lily to even notice her. Ash gripped each of the heels in a separate hand. Turned the valve connecting her to the sacred fire. Felt the juices of a millennia-old volcano building within her.
The heels ignited. Fire lapped around the straps, spreading fast from the soles up to the clasp. Then, as inconspicuously as she could, she lobbed the first one over her head and into the crowd.
The projectile landed somewhere near the center aisle not far from Lily. It was noticed immediately, because it landed in a man’s lap.
He released a girlish screech as he slapped wildly at the heel, interrupting Thorne’s bombastic conclusion to his speech. The woman next to the heel’s victim, in true helpful fashion, pointed at the heel and screamed “Fire!”
Everyone within a five-row radius stood up immediately, and then, like the wave at a baseball game, the rest of the crowd rose to their feet as well. This was exactly what Ash had intended. The standing audience would provide enough cover and confusion for her to make her way to Lily.
With two hundred people already on the precipice of panic after what might have been the strangest fifteen minutes of their lives, Ash fired the second heel over the crowd, toward the front of the stage. This time the crowd erupted into chaos, and they funneled into the center aisle, washing around the gods like an unstoppable tide.
Ash spotted Lily through the fray and began to weave her way through the shuffling masses in Lily’s direction. If she could sneak up from behind the blossom goddess and wrap her flaming hands around her neck, Ash might even be able to kill her and escape unnoticed. Revenge propelled her through the maze of people and folding chairs.
But when she reached the place in the crowd where Lily had been standing before, there was only a strand of withered vine in her stead.
Ash searched around frantically. At first she spotted only Rey and Bleak attempting to corral the milling crowd back toward their seats. Toward the north end of the Mound, however, she noticed a head of dark hair fleeing down the staircase.
Ash bagged her stealth approach and shoved through the crowd. At one point she knocked over an oblivious reporter who was filming the chaos with his handheld camera.
When Ash reached the back of the Mound, she didn’t even have time to take the stairs. She leapt onto the multitiered waterfall, dropping from platform to platform and sending plumes of water up behind her. She hurdled over the final pool and hit the stones below in a roll in time to watch Lily trailing off into the statuary walks.
Ash breezed by two stone sphinxes and then vaulted over the balustrade onto the grass below. On the opposite side of the path, Lily’s dress fluttered down a narrow passage leading into the mangroves. Ash was gaining ground, but for a woman who was now in her late forties, Lily could still run damn fast.
The evening released its last scraps of daylight as Ash sprinted down the path. She didn’t have far to run, however. The trail emptied out into a circular garden, a corral of dense trees with nowhere else to go but the harbor. Ash could hear the waves lapping at the roots of the mangroves.
From studying the villa map, Ash recognized that she was standing in the maze garden, named after the broad circular maze landscaped out of the low shrubs. In the middle of the labyrinth was a single lamppost.
Ash didn’t hear the rustling until it was too late. By the time she turned, Lily had already cocked back the vine that had sprouted out of her wrist. The whip struck Ash right on the ear. The impact snapped her head to the side enough to give her whiplash, and her ear exploded with church bells.
The whip came down again, but, discombobulated as she was, Ash thrust out her forearm to protect her face. It absorbed the blow intended for her head. Then Ash wrapped her wrist around the vine before Lily could draw it back and pulled with all of her mi
ght.
Off balance, Lily stumbled toward Ash. As the two goddesses collided, Ash’s hand clamped around Lily’s neck. Thorn claws slipped out over Lily’s fingernails, and she pressed the sharp tip of her pointer finger into the skin over Ash’s jugular.
“Stalemate, bitch,” Lily rasped.
“Making chess analogies?” Ash asked. “Shouldn’t you be playing backgammon or bridge at your age?”
“Better to be in early retirement than playing dollhouse in that stifling hellhole you call a school. Speaking of which . . .” Lily looked around dramatically. “Where is the merry widow?”
“Somewhere safe.” Ash curled her fingers just a little tighter and let the slightest breath of warmth tingle from her palm into Lily’s throat. “I’m sure she’d be more than pleased if I turned your head into a teakettle. See if steam really can come out your ears.”
Lily laughed from the back of her throat, husky and thick. “If I’d be a teakettle,” she wheezed, “then I guess that makes Rolfe a pincushion.”
That got to Ash. She pounded Lily in the chest with her free arm, sending her sprawling over one of the hedges and onto her back.
Ash touched her throat where Lily’s thorn had been digging into the skin. She felt a drop of blood dribble down to her collarbone. “I just don’t understand how you could go from the Lily we all went to the bar with to . . . to this! How do you take away a boy’s life as though it were yours to take?”
Lily’s entire face convulsed as she untangled herself from the hedges. “You don’t know what he did to me!” she screeched. “The things I let him do with me, all in the hopes of a time when he wouldn’t stuff me back into the shadows, back into silence. The quiet torture of the months I spent waiting for him to come around. Then that little death-monger swoops in, and in no time at all she has him practically lapping up the milk at her feet.”
Embers and Echoes Page 10
