Effigy (49 page)

Derek dove behind the temple wall again and held his panting to listen.
Nothing.
The ruins were slumbering as though absolutely nothing had happened. When he looked back, the chacmool remained undisturbed. The stranger was nowhere in sight.

He smiled, overcome with relief. He’d gotten the effigy back. Lori would forgive him. The university would forgive him. Not only had he just risked his life recovering a priceless artifact, he’d rescued his future. Just the thought of it made him laugh with uncontrollable euphoria. Let the bomb blow! He was invincible!

He kissed the effigy to celebrate.

What an article this story will make!

With the stress of losing the effigy now a forgotten memory, Derek could hardly wait to show Lori. One look at the effigy and she was sure to forget their little spat earlier. And with her faith in Quickie Peet in utter ruin, she was sure to play along with his scheme when they returned to the university. What he’d just done took guts. It was heroic. Any doubts that might arise from his little threat could be easily written off as an unfortunate lapse of judgment caused by the stress of the situation. Not even Lori could argue against that with her precious effigy back in her arms.

Anxious to return with his prize, Derek turned and started back along the shadow-ridden wall—back to Lori. He suddenly realized the sky had grown a shade darker, the sunlight a trace dimmer. He remembered the eclipse, the primordial debut of Shaman Gaspar’s New Age.

Derek was impressed. Impressed with Shaman Gaspar, impressed with the new age, but more than anything, he was impressed with himself.

He was the epitome of a strutting peacock until a bolt of lightning crashed into his face.

* * * *

Shards of broken mirror fell around Mateo’s feet like silvery droplets of sky. The boy dropped unconscious to the ground as the effigy jarred free from his arm. Together they landed with a heavy thud.

After abandoning the chacmool, Mateo had circled back to the temple ruins to seek out whoever was following him. He’d barely concealed himself behind a crumbling stone pillar when he saw the boy race out from behind the temple walls. While he was relieved to see he wasn’t about to be ambushed by the police, Mateo cursed the AFI for not effectively clearing every civilian out of
Tula
. Somehow they missed this boy, and why he thought he could simply remove the sacrifice from the Jaguar Chacmool was beyond reasoning.

Mateo was admittedly surprised by the bold move. He could only admire such acts of courage, or was he merely appreciating a measure of stupidity? He didn’t have time to quibble over details for this courageously stupid boy had brought the effigy right back to him. He’d disrupted Mateo’s ritual and with the sky already dimmed by the approaching eclipse, there was little time to lose.

A moan escaped from the boy’s bleeding lips. His nose was smashed against his face and the cuts around his chin were oozing with blood. A piece of the glass had imbedded into his cheek. Mateo grabbed him by the arm and drug him to the end of the temple wall crowning the edge of the sloping hill.

“Stupid boy,” he said as he pushed the unconscious thief down the slope. “You cannot alter the forces of fate.”

Mateo blinked up at the sun. Soon it would be darkened, altered, changed. He needed to return the effigy to the chacmool immediately if he was ever going to stop it.

He started back to the temple wall but when he got there he found only remnants of his shattered mirror scattered across the ground. The effigy was gone!

Footsteps echoed through the stone ruin. Mateo growled. He should have known there would be
two
pursuers!

He charged after the retreating footsteps, weaving through temple walls and leaping through deepening shadows. He could just see someone breaking through the colonnade of giant pillars and running into the open plaza. He cursed to himself. If the effigy reached the police, all would be lost.

Mateo bolted onto the plaza and found this latest quarry easy to catch. Perhaps it was the burden of the effigy slowing her down.

Her
.

There was no doubting his opponent by the slender bare arms and the long blonde tail whipping behind her. The idea of a woman attempting to take the effigy was amusing. What was she doing out here? It didn’t matter. Within strides, Mateo caught up with her and hurled his weight through the air.

Their bodies collided and tumbled across the ground. The girl was surprisingly light yet the effigy didn’t budge loose from the cradle of her arms. Mateo rolled her over and straddled her hips, pinning her to the ground.

“You stupid thief!” he spat as he tried to tear the effigy from her arms.

She stubbornly clung tight to it. “I can’t let you blow up the effigy!”

“You’re putting the world at risk,” he growled, wrestling for control. “The demons of darkness will come!”

The girl hung desperately to the effigy as Mateo tried to tug and twist it from her arms. “You can’t save the world by destroying a piece of its history,” she said.

He’d had enough of her ignorance. “If you don’t let go, I’ll take you with it!”

He punched her and the surprise in her face gave him pause. He’d seen that look before. He’d seen those persistent green eyes.

It can’t be!

Mateo punched her again, and this time the effigy came loose. He clambered back to his feet but as he tried to step away, the girl snagged the tail of his coat. To his surprise, she caught him off balance and pulled him back down. As he caught himself with the unoccupied arm, she reached into the inside pocket of his coat where the transmitter was flopping at his chest.

Mateo watched in horror as her fingers curled around the trigger.

“You won’t destroy that effigy!” she snarled to the sickening click of the trigger.

Eclipse

The handcuffs fell free from Peet’s wrists just as the wave hit them. There was no time to react. There was hardly time to realize it was coming. There was just a strange tingling sensation that made the hair along the back of his neck stand and in that moment of consciously feeling something gone awry, a tremendous force slammed into the van.

The crushing blow sent Peet and John diving for the floor. The windows shattered and they covered their heads from the onslaught of glass showering down. The van rocked from the blast but then, just as suddenly as it had come, the eruption faded to a retreating echo that dissolved behind the ringing in Peet’s ears.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

John trembled beside him. He looked shell shocked, his eyes as wide as the rims of the glasses he now adjusted to his face. He nodded, his mouth gaping soundlessly like a fish out of water. Together, they slowly rose back to their seats.

“What happened?” John gasped in a shaky voice.

The hot Mexican air wisped through the gaping holes once occupied by the van’s windows. The rest of the AFI fleet had faired no better and it was while observing the vehicles that Peet noticed the black cloud rising from the far end of the ruins.

“Dear God,” John whispered.

“Get out!” Peet hollered as he lunged for the open window. He climbed out of the van, his feet finding their stride as soon as they hit the ground.

“Where are you going?” John called after him.

“Toward that cloud,” Peet yelled over his shoulder. “Eva must have found a bomb!”

* * * *

The first thing Eva Gaspar was aware of was the warm, coarse stone pressing against her cheek. She felt numb, she felt stunned and when she forced her eyes open it seemed like her ears finally opened with them. A low rumble vibrated through her entire body as though it was coming from the feet of the four stone warriors towering above her. It was as though they were stomping, trembling the pyramid platform that she’d been thrown across. When she chanced a look up at the severe, dark faces of the Atlanteans, they were trembling.

That’s when she noticed the twilight.

Like a cloud passing across the sun, the whole world was steadily darkening with the rumble’s fade. In a near dream-like state Eva rose to her feet. Her father’s voice came back to her again.

Don’t let Reed One…Reed One…

Those words had been rolling through her mind since the moment Lori read them off of the matchbook in
Teotihuacan
. She’d heard them in the abandoned farmhouse. They’d stayed with her as she led Agent Diego up each step of the pyramid. The words had been branded into her head, so much so that even the force of the explosion couldn’t jar them.

Agent Diego scrambled to his feet as though ready to pounce upon whoever had knocked him down. He swiftly checked the cuffs around Eva’s wrists, scrutinizing them as though he expected the source of the explosion to lie within her hands. Only after he was satisfied she was still secure did he glance up at the sky. It was a brief check, as if to ensure the bomb hadn’t completely taken out the sun.

Eva hadn’t actually expected to find a bomb when she led Diego and two of his officers to the top of the pyramid. She was merely looking for higher ground, a place where she might look over the entire site of
Tula
, driven by those persistent words—
Don’t let Reed One…

“There,” Diego barked to his officers, pointing out across the grounds of the archaeological park.

Eva saw it too. At the far end of the ruins, now backlit by a spackling of Tula de Allende’s street lights flickering in the distance, was a giant plume of smoke rising into the ecliptic twilight.

“Come,” Diego gruffed as he snared her arm. “It appears we found your bomb.”

Eva didn’t need any prodding from Diego’s haste. They began to descend the pyramid and with each step, her father’s voice sounded more urgent now.

Reed One. Reed One.

* * * *

The pillar of fire was greater than Mateo had expected. Even in a stunned state, lying flat on his back with the deafening noise blocking his senses, he watched the column of flame extend toward the gray sky. It was magnificent, the greatest New Fire ever to banish the end times, but it had been ignited too soon. Worse yet, the power of Quetzalcoatl had not been destroyed with it.

His rage intensified in equivalent degrees to the fading brilliance climbing uselessly toward the heavens. He pulled himself up. The Jaguar Chacmool had been reduced to a fan of rubble and dust across the ground a short distance away. The old man’s heart had been obliterated with the jaguar box. The Mirrored One would be displeased to receive them without the power of Quetzalcoatl. Mateo had to complete the offering, and this time he had to do it right. He had to do it fast and he needed a new heart.

The girl lay unconscious just a few feet away, the effigy mere inches from her hand. She would have to do. In a hurry he threw her over his shoulder, swooped up the effigy and carried them to another chacmool tucked within the walls of the temple ruins.

Beneath a protective steel awning that shielded the chacmool and the wall’s colorful frescoes from weather extremes, Mateo impatiently stretched the girl out on her back across the chacmool’s offering plate and with the rope he’d used to carry the effigy, he hastily bound her arms around the altar’s neck, just above her head. There was little time to spare. She’d begun to moan with regained consciousness. Her eyes blinked open just as Mateo placed the effigy beside her.