Effigy (50 page)

She moaned again. “Where…”

He rounded the chacmool to get a full view of the eclipse just beyond the reach of the awning. Only a sliver of sunlight remained beyond the encroaching shadow. Quetzalcoatl was within reach. But the New Age hadn’t started yet, and Mateo wasn’t about to let Quetzalcoatl dethrone the Mirrored One, not if he had any say in the matter.

He reached for his belt. The mirror was gone, used and broken upon the boy’s face. Thankfully, the sheath was still at his hip from which he withdrew the black obsidian knife. He had to be quick. Not only was the sun nearly eclipsed by Quetzalcoatl’s presence, the bomb would have alerted the AFI who were surely charging this way.

“Please!” the girl begged, struggling against the rope. “Please don’t hurt me!”

“You’ve put us all in jeopardy,” Mateo said, watching her squirm helplessly.

Rushing footsteps echoed through the colonnade of pillars and entered the ruin walls. Mateo was running out of time. He lowered the knife. As the girl screamed the blade ripped through the front of her shirt. The fabric fell away, revealing the smooth, heaving contours of her flesh.

“Stop right there!”

The command startled Mateo. He hadn’t expected to be discovered so immediately, and certainly not by an American half dressed in AFI uniform. The image was so startling and yet so perplexing that it gave him pause.

The girl, bound half-naked to the altar seemed just as dumbfounded.

“Doctor Peet?” she gasped in disbelief.

Reed One

“Drop the knife,” the so-called Dr. Peet demanded.

Mateo’s hesitation didn’t last long. With the eclipse nearing its climax, he couldn’t afford any further delays. On the other hand, how would the world understand if he didn’t explain? How would humanity ever offer the appreciation he deserved if they were not aware of the peril they were facing?

“It must be done,” he said, watching the intruder closely. “If the eclipse is complete, the world will be dark forever.”

“It’s only an eclipse,” Peet tried to reason.

Mateo shook his head. “No. Quetzalcoatl has come to destroy the world.”

“The Age of Quetzalcoatl is one of peace, not destruction,” Peet implored, inching ever so cautiously forward.

Mateo’s thumb stroked the edge of his knife. “Don’t you see? Tezcatlipoca is ruler of the fifth age. If Quetzalcoatl removes him, the fifth age will be destroyed. The demons of darkness will come!”

“Killing Lori won’t stop that from happening.”

Mateo glanced down at the girl. The silver Kokopelli pendant of her necklace was now nestled within the hollow of her throat. Her face was turned away, watching Peet approach.

Lori.

The name meant so little to Mateo, and yet, he felt it impact something deep inside him. Somehow, putting a name to the sacrifice made it more personal, more human. It created an uncomfortable effect, like he was suddenly given a terrible omen.

“This isn’t about the girl. This is about saving the world,” he said.

He ran a hand along Lori’s ribs, resting it just below the lace covering her breast where he could feel her racing heart pound against his palm.

“We should all be as fortunate as her,” he said, now thankful she wouldn’t face him. “This girl is in a position to hold back the demons of darkness. She alone holds the honor of turning the power over to the only one capable of defeating Quetzalcoatl. The one who’d overthrown him before.”

“Tezcatlipoca.”

Peet’s voice was alarmingly close. Mateo glanced up at him, regretting that he’d not monitored his approach more closely. The man now stood just across the chacmool, within reach of the rope binding Lori’s hands.

Watching Peet more closely, Mateo let his hand drift down Lori’s cool skin to the taught hollow just below her ribs. The knife would enter easily there, like cutting through the thin rubber membrane of a balloon.

“The Mirrored One would have destroyed Quetzalcoatl by now if it weren’t for her,” he said. “Now her flesh is needed to deliver his power.”

He raised the knife. From the corner of his eye he saw Peet lunge. The man flew himself over the chacmool just as Mateo thrust the knife downward.

A pain-riddled scream pierced the air.

* * * *

Peet collided with the masked killer and rolled with his momentum as they crashed to the ground. He found his feet before the large man could gather his bearings. To his dismay, the knife remained in the killer’s firm grip, Lori’s blood now glinting from its translucent black tip.

In all honesty, Peet was shaking in his boots. Just moments before he’d raced across
Tula
expecting to find Eva. Instead, he found nothing but the scattered remains of an exploded altar. Then movement beyond the ruin’s colonnades caught his attention.

Still expecting to find Eva, Peet had wound his way into the maze of ruins, steeling himself against the injuries she must have suffered from the bomb. What he wasn’t prepared for was the shock of finding not Eva, but Lori. Not only that, he certainly hadn’t expected to find her tied down like a sacrificial lamb with the killer, complete in Zorro’s mask, standing over her with a knife. Peet was so stunned by the scene that his mind went blank, void of all plans and preconceptions, and comprehending nothing more than that knife threatening Lori’s life.

Now, the tables had shifted and it was he who was being threatened by the knife. The killer lunged, wildly slicing the air. Peet dodged the assault and caught him with a right hook. He heard his knuckles crack, felt the pain surge up his arm, but the blow didn’t seem to phase his adversary. The killer’s eyes were blood-red with rage, a striking contrast from the black mask Peet now realized was painted, not worn, around them.

“How much longer must the Mirrored One wait?” the killer asked in a voice laden in less Spanish than Peet had expected. The man landed a shocking blow of his own across his chin.

Peet had not calculated for his opponent’s brute strength. There hadn’t been time for calculations. There was only Lori whose life depended upon his actions and he couldn’t idly stand back and watch her slip away from him—not this time. Now, with his head whirling, he realized it was too late for calculations. There was only time for survival.

“I won’t let my student die for your gods!” he snarled as he attacked the man again.

He made contact but this time the killer spun away from his momentum and Peet found himself slamming into the far wall. The giant of a man pinned him there, the knife cocked for the fatal thrust. Peet grabbed hold in a desperate struggle for control. The killer punched him in the ribs, then tried for the kidneys, but Peet refused to release his hold from the weapon.

“She won’t have to die,” the killer growled, slowly twisting the knife toward his throat. “Not if you die first.”

Peet’s arms ached under the strain. The man was too strong, his weight smothering him against the wall. He gasped for air as the killer pinned an arm across his throat. The knife was inching closer.

“Dr. Peet!” Lori screamed, frantically tugging against the rope. She followed their struggle in terror, blood streaming down her side.

The tip of the knife pressed into Peet’s skin. Hot blood began to trickle into his collar.

The masked man smiled victoriously. “Say hello to Tezcatlipoca for me,” he said and sneered.

* * * *

Diego could taste in the back of his throat the acrid tang of explosives still lingering heavily in the air. Little remained of the chacmool when he and his team reached the cavity left by the bomb. The statue had been reduced to a rainbow of painted rubble.

He turned to Eva. “So much for your bomb at Pyramid B,” he growled, silently cursing himself for not having assigned some of his men to watch other areas of the ruins.

“My God!” John gasped.

The old man had joined them in their race toward the bomb’s smoky wake. How he managed to escape the van, let alone his handcuffs, was a detail Diego would have to sort out later. The mere fact that he hadn’t run away was puzzling enough, but Diego didn’t have time for that now. He had the aftermath of a bomb to worry about.

He was considering his next move when a scream shattered the numb silence. The officers responded immediately, charging toward the nearby cluster of pillars and crumbling walls. Diego pulled Eva after them, the old man waddling close behind.

When the team stopped they were lined up like a firing squad, rifles drawn, awaiting the order to shoot. None of them, however, fired a shot. Diego immediately saw the cause of their delay.

Who should they fire upon?

The young lady tied down to the chacmool wasn’t the issue, but the two men fighting behind her was. The blunt sounds of their struggle echoed toward them in waves of concentrated savagery. In the haze of the eclipse, further darkened beneath the steel awning, they looked more like two shadows dancing against a wall.

“There’s your Equinox Killer!” John declared. “Do something!”

“John!” Eva gasped.

Diego hesitated, realizing the hour of ridding himself of the wretched case had come.
The Equinox Killer
. After this day they might as well call him the Eclipse Killer. It no longer mattered to Diego. Whatever the man was called, Diego was bound to end his murderous impulses right now.

But in the dim light of the eclipse, he was unsure of how to proceed. The struggling men had fallen against the back wall, their shadowy figures fusing into one with a knife disappearing somewhere between them. Diego heard one of them groan three words:

Demons of darkness.

“What’s he saying?” Diego asked. He couldn’t make sense out of anything.

“He’s quoting an Aztec proverb, from the
Florentine Codex
,” John said in a panic. “If the eclipse of the sun is complete, it will be dark forever! The demons of darkness will come down; they will eat men!”

Diego was sorry he asked. Nothing made sense because there was nothing to make sense from.

“Do something before someone dies!” John urged.

Diego zeroed in on the dark man in the trench coat, the man largely overpowering the other. That was his Equinox Killer. That
would be
his Equinox Killer. It was time to put an end to the chase. He ripped the rifle from the nearest officer’s hands and raised it to his shoulder.

“No!” Eva screamed, hurling toward him.

Just as she lunged for the gun, Diego’s finger squeezed the trigger.

* * * *

Peet heard the gunshot at the same moment he felt his opponent’s body stiffen against the slug’s impact. For a tense moment he stared into those cold, painted eyes, the rage suddenly fading from their depths. The large man’s strength faded enough to allow Peet a gratifying breath and the chance to slip out from under him. Blood was quickly saturating the killer’s coat.

The killer took a ragged breath as another shot zipped through the air and punctured his body. Shocked, Peet reached for the withering man as the knife slipped from his hand. They collapsed to the ground together beneath the screams of a woman—and this time, it wasn’t Lori.