Passion (26 page)

Cleaving.

It was the only way.

He rol ed back his shoulders, unleashed his trembling wings into the darkness. He could feel them catch the wind at his back. An aurora of light painted the sky a hundred feet above him. It was bright enough to blind a mortal, bright enough to catch the at ention of seven squabbling angels.

Commotion from the other side of the boulder. Shouting and gasps and the beat of wings coming closer.

Daniel propel ed himself o the ground, ying fast and hard so that he soared over the boulder just as Cam came around behind it. They missed each other by a wingspan, but Daniel kept moving, swooped down upon his past self as fast as his love for Luce could take him.

His past self drew back and held out his hands, warding Daniel of .

Al the angels knew the risks of cleaving. Once joined, it was nearly impossible to free oneself from one’s past self, to separate two lives that had been cloven together. But Daniel knew he’d been cloven in the past and had survived. So he had to do it.

He was doing it to help Luce.

He pressed his wings together and dove down at his past self, striking so hard he should have been crushed—if he hadn’t been absorbed.

He shuddered, and his past self shuddered, and Daniel clamped his eyes shut and grit ed his teeth to withstand the strange, sharp sickness that flooded his body. He felt as if he were tumbling down a hil : reckless and unstoppable. No way back up until he hit the bot om.

Then al at once, everything came to a stop.

Daniel opened his eyes and could hear only his breathing. He felt tired but alert. The others were staring at him. He couldn’t be sure whether they had any idea what had just happened. They al looked afraid to come near him, even to speak to him.

He spread his wings and spun in a ful circle, tilting his head toward the sky. “I choose my love for Lucinda,” he cal ed to Heaven and Earth, to the angels al around him and the ones who weren’t there. To the soul of the one true thing he loved the most, wherever she was. “I now reaf irm my choice: I choose Lucinda over everything. And I wil until the end.” FIFTEEN

FIFTEEN

THE SACRIFICE

CHICHÉN ITZÁ, MESOAMERICA • 5 WAYEB’

(APPROXIMATELY DECEMBER 20, 555 CE)

Ŧhe Announcer spat Luce into the swelter of a summer day. Beneath her feet, the ground was parched, al cracked earth and tawny, dried-up blades of grass. The sky was barren blue, not a single cloud to promise rain. Even the wind seemed thirsty.

She stood in the center of a at eld bordered on three sides by a strange, high wal . From this distance, it looked a lit le like a mosaic made of giant beads. They were irregularly shaped, not spherical exactly, ranging in color from ivory to light brown. Here and there were tiny cracks between the beads, let ing in light from the other side.

Besides a half dozen vultures cawing as they swooped in listless circles, no one else was around. The wind blew hotly through her hair and smel ed like … she couldn’t place the smel , but it tasted metal ic, almost rusty.

The heavy gown she had been wearing since the bal at Versail es was soaked with sweat. It stank of smoke and ash and perspiration every time she breathed in. It had to go. She struggled to reach the laces and but ons. She could use a hand—even a tiny stone one.

Where was Bil , anyway? He was always disappearing. Sometimes Luce got the feeling the gargoyle had an agenda of his own, and that she was being shuf led forward according to his schedule.

She wrestled with the dress, tearing at the green lace around the col ar, popping hooks as she walked. Thankful y, there was no one around to see. Final y she got down on her knees and shimmied free, pul ing the skirts over her head.

As she sat back on her heels in her thin cot on shift, it hit Luce how exhausted she was. How long had it been since she’d slept? She stumbled toward the shade of the wal , her feet rustling through the brit le grass, thinking maybe she could lie down for a lit le while and close her eyes.

Her eyelids flut ered, so sleepy.

Then they shot open. And her skin began to crawl.

Heads.

Luce nal y realized what the wal was made of. The bone-colored palisades—halfway innocent-looking from afar—were interlocking racks of impaled human heads.

She sti ed a scream. Suddenly she could place the odor being carried in the wind—it was the stench of rot and spil ed blood, of putrefying flesh.

Along the bot om of the palisades were sun-bleached, weathered skul s, whipped white and clean by the wind and the sun. Along the top, the skul s looked fresher. That is, they were stil clearly people’s heads—thick manes of black hair, skin mostly intact. But the skul s in the middle were someplace between mortal and monster: The frayed skin was peeling back, leaving dried brown blood on bone. The faces were stretched tight with what might have been terror or rage.

Luce staggered away, hoping for a breath of air that didn’t stink of rot, but not finding it.

“It’s not quite as gruesome as it looks.”

She whirled around, terrified. But it was only Bil .

“Where were you? Where are we?”

“It’s actual y a great honor to get staked out like this,” he said, marching right up to the next-to-lowest row. He looked one head in the eye.

“Al these innocent lit le lambs go straight to Heaven. Just what the faithful desire.”

“Why did you leave me here with these—”

“Aw, come on. They won’t bite.” He eyed her sidelong. “What have you done with your clothes?” Luce shrugged. “It’s hot.”

He sighed lengthily, with a put-upon world-weariness. “Now ask me where I’ve been. And this time, try to keep the judgment out of your voice.”

Her mouth twitched. There was something sketchy about Bil ’s occasional disappearances. But he was standing there now, with his lit le claws tucked neatly behind his back, giving her an innocent smile. She sighed. “Where have you been?”

“Shopping!” Bil gleeful y extended both his wings, revealing a light-brown wraparound skirt hanging o one wing tip and a short matching tunic hanging of the other. “And the coup de grâce!” he said, withdrawing from behind his back a chunky white necklace. Bone.

She took the tunic and the skirt but waved of the necklace. She’d seen enough bone. “No, thanks.”

“Do you want to blend in? Then you’ve got to wear the goods.”

Swal owing her disgust, she slipped it over her head. The polished bone pieces had been strung along some kind of ber. The necklace was long and heavy and, Luce had to admit, sort of pret y.

“And I think this”—he gave her a painted metal band—“goes in your hair.”

“Where did you get al this stuf ?” she asked.

“It’s yours. I mean, it’s not yours-Lucinda-Price, but it is yours in a larger cosmic sense. It belongs to the you that is part of this lifetime—Ix Cuat.”

“Ix who?”

“Ix Cuat. Your name in this life meant ‘Lit le Snake.’ ” Bil watched her face change. “It was a term of endearment in the Mayan culture.

Sort of.”

“The same way get ing your head impaled on a stick was an honor?”

Bil rol ed his stone eyes. “Stop being so ethnocentric. That means thinking your own culture is superior to other cultures.”

“I know what it means,” she said, working the band into her dirty hair. “But I’m not being superior. I just don’t think having my head stuck on one of these racks would be so great.” There was a faint thrumming in the air, like faraway drumbeats.

“That’s exactly the sort of thing Ix Cuat would say! You always were a lit le bit backward!”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean?”

“See, you—Ix Cuat—were born during the Wayeb’, which are these ve odd days at the end of the Mayan year that everyone gets real superstitious about because they don’t t into the calendar. Kind of like leap-year days. It’s not exactly lucky to be born during Wayeb’. So no one was shocked when you grew up to be an old maid.”

“Old maid?” Luce asked. “I thought I never live past seventeen … more or less.”

“Seventeen here in Chichén Itzá is ancient,” Bil said, oating from head to head, his wings humming as they ut ered. “But it’s true, you never used to live much past seventeen or thereabouts. It’s been kind of a mystery as to why in the lifetime of Lucinda Price you’ve managed to stick around so long.”

“Daniel said it was because I wasn’t baptized.” Now Luce was sure she heard drums—and that they were drawing closer. “But how can that mat er? I mean, I bet Ix Ca-whatever was baptized—”

Bil apped his hand dismissively. “Baptism is just one word for a kind of sacrament or covenant, in which your soul is more or less claimed. Just about every faith has something similar. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, even the Mayan religion that is about to go marching past”—he nodded toward the drumming, which was now so loud that Luce wondered if they should hide—“they al feature sacraments of some kind in which one expresses one’s devotion to one’s god.”

“So I’m alive in my current life in Thunderbolt because my parents didn’t have me baptized?”

“No,” Bil said, “you’re able to be kil ed in your current life in Thunderbolt because your parents didn’t have you baptized. You’re alive in your current life because, wel … no one real y knows why.”

There must have been a reason. Maybe it was the loophole Daniel had spoken about in the hospital in Milan. But even he didn’t seem to understand how Luce was able to travel through the Announcers. With every life she visited, Luce could feel herself get ing closer to t ing the pieces of her past together … but she wasn’t there yet.

“Where’s the vil age?” she asked. “Where are the people? Where’s Daniel?” The drums grew so loud that she had to raise her voice.

“Oh,” Bil said, “they’re on the other side of the tzompantlis.”

“The what?”

“This wal of heads. Come on—you’ve got to see this!”

Through the open spaces in the racks of skul s, ashes of color danced. Bil herded Luce to the edge of the skul wal and gestured for her to look.

Beyond the wal , a whole civilization paraded past. A long line of people danced and beat their feet against a broad packed-dirt road that wound through the bone-yard. They had silky black hair and skin the color of chestnuts. They ranged in age from three to old enough to defy guessing. Al of them were vibrant and beautiful and strange. Their clothes were sparse, weathered animal hides that barely covered their esh, showing o tat oos and painted faces. It was the most remarkable body art—elaborate, colorful depictions of brightly feathered birds, suns, and geometric designs splayed across their backs and arms and chests.

In the distance, there were buildings—an orderly grid of bleached-stone structures and a cluster of smal er buildings with at thatched roofs. Beyond that, there was jungle, but the leaves of its trees looked withered and brit le.

The crowd marched past, blind to Luce, caught up in the frenzy of their dance. “Come on!” Bil said, and shoved her out into the ow of people.

“What?” she shouted. “Go in there? With them?”

“It’l be fun!” Bil cackled, flying ahead. “You know how to dance, don’t you?” Cautiously at rst, she and the lit le gargoyle joined the parade as they passed through what looked like a marketplace—a long, narrow strip of land packed with wooden casks and bowls ful of goods for sale: dimply black avocados, deep red stalks of maize, dried herbs bundled with twine, and many other things Luce didn’t recognize. She turned her head this way and that to see as much as possible as she passed, but there was no way to stop. The surge of the crowd pushed her inexorably forward.

The Mayans fol owed the road as it curved down onto a wide, shal ow plain. The roar of their dance faded, and they gathered quietly, murmuring to one another. They numbered in the hundreds. At the repeated pressure of Bil ’s sharp claws on her shoulders, Luce lowered herself to her knees like the rest of them and fol owed the crowd’s gaze upward.

Behind the marketplace, one building rose higher than al the others: a stepped pyramid of the whitest stone. The two sides visible to Luce each had steep staircases running up their centers that ended at a single-story structure painted blue and red. A shiver ran through Luce, part recognition and part inexplicable fear.

She’d seen this pyramid before. In history-book pictures, the Mayan temple had fal en to ruins. But it was far from ruins now. It was magnificent.

Four men holding drums made of wood and stretched hide stood in a row on the ledge around the pyramid’s top. Their tanned faces were painted with strokes of red, yel ow, and blue to look like masks. Their drums beat in unison, faster and faster until someone emerged from the doorway.

The man was tal er than the drummers; beneath a towering red-and-white-feathered headdress, his entire face was painted with mazelike turquoise designs. His neck, wrists, ankles, and earlobes were adorned with the same kind of bone jewelry Bil had given Luce to wear. He was carrying something—a long stick decorated with painted feathers and shiny shards of white. At one end, something silver gleamed.

When he faced the people, the crowd fel silent, almost as if by magic.

“Who is that man?” Luce whispered to Bil . “What’s he doing?”