The Graves of Saints (33 page)

But the head of Maximón had not been buried with his body.

Less than an hour’s drive away, a mile outside the small village of Lanquin, there lay another remote tourist destination, an extensive system of limestone caves that had never been
properly explored. Lights were strung along a half mile or so of the main cave and visitors braved the guano-slicked surfaces every day during welcome hours, but there were signs everywhere that
warned spelunkers not to go far on their own, as no maps had ever been made of the system’s furthest and deepest reaches.

Had local authorities ever been bold enough to attempt it, they would have found that the vast underground hollows went far longer and deeper than anyone imagined, and that the furthest and
deepest of them ended abruptly in a wall that geologists would have at first mistaken for hardened volcanic lava due to the way the stone seemed to have flowed in to close off a segment of tunnel
that lay deeper still.

At the base of that strange wall lay a small cairn of three black stones, each etched with symbols whose meaning had been lost with the death of the last Mayan sorcerer centuries before. Beneath
that cairn lay a flat, unremarkable stone obelisk, the lid of a stone box that had been sunken into the floor of the dead-ended cave. And beneath the obelisk lay the severed head of the demon monk
the locals had first called Brother Simon and later Maximón.

A river flowed out from the main Lanquin cave entrance, creating a place of beauty and serenity that drew tourists even beyond those who wished to explore the subterranean mystery. On this
night, the sun had set shortly after six p.m. and now, several hours later, the only people in the vicinity were a group of eight British university students who had set up a trio of tents in the
camping area not far from the river and the cave mouth.

Two of the students were in their tent making love while the other five sat around a small fire they had built to heat their coffee. They talked of the beauty of Guatemala and argued over
whether it was possible to be homesick while also being tempted to stay forever. Of them all, only Meg heard the sound that issued from the mouth of the cave and carried over the burble of the
river onto the wind.

‘What is it?’ one of the others asked when she frowned and turned toward the water.

‘Not sure,’ Meg replied. ‘An animal, y’think?’

Screaming
, she thought.
Something is screaming.

But the screams did not come from an animal. They rose from beneath the obelisk lid of a stone box set into the floor of the furthest, deepest part of the cave . . . from the severed head of
Maximón. The caves began to tremble and the black rock atop the cairn slid to the stone floor.

The strange wall blocking the tunnel began to bubble and then to drip, and soon the rock started to flow like molten lava, melting and spreading along the cave floor. With a hiss, an opening
appeared at the top of the wall, growing quickly wider. Air rushed through from the cave into the darkness beyond, but only for a moment before the depths behind the melting wall seemed to exhale a
sulfurous steam.

The caves quaked and the earth groaned.

Above ground, the British campers fled, clutching at one another. Meg called back to her mates, the two who had been making love inside their tent.

When the entire cave system cracked open, releasing a blast of heat and the steam of an underground river evaporating, the entire campsite tumbled down into the rocky maw. Like the jagged mouth
of the planet itself, the huge break in the earth went on for miles, but Meg could only stare at the spot where her two closest friends had been swallowed up by the stretching, roaring fissure.

The unexplored depths of the Languin Caves had been laid open to the sky.

She could only watch as gigantic, impossible things began to emerge from the stink and steam and stone.

Meg fell to her knees in prayer, though whether she prayed to her own God to protect her or to these ancient, terrible gods to spare her, even she could not be certain.

Airborne

Octavian stared out the window of the airplane into the night, its blue-black hue a shade of darkness only found above the clouds. After a moment, he turned to Commander
Metzger.

‘You’re sure about this? The legend says the entrance to Xibalba is in Cobán.’

Metzger still clutched his phone. He’d received a call moments before and now he held the object out as if it were evidence.

‘I’m only telling you the reports that are coming in,’ Metzger said. He glanced at Allison and Charlotte, then back at Sergeant Galleti. ‘Twenty-seven minutes ago –
more like thirty, now – massive seismic activity was recorded in the Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala. An earthquake, yes, but impossibly localized, very much like what happened in
Saint-Denis.’

Octavian nodded. ‘All right. So it’s not Cobán. Where did you say—’

‘A place called Languin,’ Metzger replied. ‘There’s an unmapped cave system that draws tourists to the area. I’m told it’s only an hour or so from
Cobán.’

‘It does make sense,’ Allison said. ‘You said yourself that the entrance to Xibalba was supposed to be underground.’

Octavian took a deep breath and turned to look at the people on the plane – two Shadows and a handful of soldiers who spent most of their time hunting vampires. If there were demons
pouring out of a hole in the ground, they’d be as good as dead unless he could take the brunt of the battle upon himself. It would take hours for the local military to get troops to such a
remote location, and even longer for any UN forces to arrive. The UN security forces were already stretched thin, and Octavian realized that Cortez had been counting on that as well. This unseen
enemy, unknown to him until so recently, had been planning for a very long time, but Octavian still did not understand the end game. Did Cortez really think he could make himself some kind of
modern death god?

‘I knew there would be a breach,’ he said, addressing everyone on the small plane. ‘But I’d hoped we had figured out what Cortez had in mind in time to get here before it
happened. Well, now it’s happening. We’re going to land as close as possible to the location of these caves and then we’ll be right in the thick of it. We will be the First
Responders here. I guess I don’t have to tell you all how ridiculously outnumbered we’re going to be.’

He let that sink in for a moment and then he looked at Metzger.

‘Some of us have been here before,’ Octavian said. ‘Not literally here, but in situations as large and as grave as this one. Allison and I, and to a lesser extent,
Charlotte—’

‘We’ve all been here before,’ Commander Metzger said.

Octavian frowned and studied the faces of the soldiers who sat silent and grim.

‘You were there for the Tatterdemalion, Commander. I’ll give you that one. But for the rest of you, unless you were also in that battle, or in Salzburg when Liam Mulkerrin came back,
you can’t know what you’re walking into. I won’t ask you to stay back, because I know that’s not what good soldiers do. But I will ask you to fight smart, to rely on
Allison, Charlotte and myself, to use us well. The three of us will be very difficult to kill.’

He let the second half of that sentence go unsaid, knowing they would all hear it regardless. They were fragile. Mortal. Ordinary.

‘I insisted on finding Cortez before I worried about these breaches,’ he went on. ‘I never figured the two could possibly be connected.’

‘Nobody did,’ Charlotte said, more tenderly than Octavian believed he deserved.

He tipped a slight nod toward her in silent thanks, and went on.

‘It’s my belief that Cortez is here somewhere. He wasn’t at Bannerman’s Arsenal or in Seattle and we can assume he wasn’t in Saint-Denis or Siena or Oriyur, either.
But if our theories about Maximón are right – and I think they are – then whatever’s going on here has been his purpose all along. I don’t know him—’

‘I do,’ Charlotte said, her eyes dull and reptilian. ‘He’s a cunning, ruthless son of a bitch. And he’s proud. If whatever he’s doing is coming to a head, he
wouldn’t miss it.’

‘I’m counting on it,’ Octavian said. ‘You keep your eyes open. You spot any vampires you think might be giving orders, you give me a shout out on your comm unit. I will
take him out.’

Commander Metzger sat up straighter. ‘We talked about this. If you kill him before we can find out what he was planning—’

‘Then he can’t finish whatever he’s starting,’ Allison put in.

Octavian dropped his gaze, logic fighting his hunger for vengeance. At last he nodded.

‘The commander is right,’ he said, glancing at Allison and then at Charlotte.

‘Peter—’ Charlotte began, a warning in her voice. He didn’t blame her. After all Cortez had done to her, she had as much reason to want him dead as Octavian himself.

‘If he’s set something in motion that only he knows how to stop, we’ll have to hold off killing him until the crisis has passed,’ Metzger said.

‘And then he dies?’ Charlotte asked, fixing her gaze on Octavian rather the commander.

‘Screaming,’ Octavian promised.

Charlotte said nothing, but the hard edge of her gaze said that she would hold him to that.

‘How much longer?’ Allison asked, breaking the moment.

Sergeant Galleti asked the same question, this time on her comm.

‘Less than thirty minutes to touch down,’ she said. ‘They’re just confirming that there’s room enough on the road for us to land.’

‘On the road?’ Allison asked.

Octavian felt the plane begin to bank and descend, and as it did – and they moved closer to Cortez – he let the grief and fury that he had held in abeyance begin to flow back into
his heart.

The flesh of his hands prickled with the dark, murderous magic that simmered inside him.

Almost time, Nikki
, he thought.
Almost time.

Cobán, Guatemala

Charlotte felt herself caught in the current of fate, as if it were a deep river carrying her over rocks and hurtling her downstream without any hope of her making it to shore.
She knew that was foolishness; at any moment she could step back from this and simply walk away, not engage in any further conflict. She could leave war and vengeance to Octavian. But when the
explosion at Bannerman’s Arsenal had scattered her atoms and she had spent so long drawing her consciousness back together again, she had also surrendered herself to destiny. She had no
experience with war, but she knew how to fight and how to reach deep into her heart to muster the strength to go on.

Her heart felt like cold black stone in her chest, now. And yet the hollowness she felt was an illusion, for she was not entirely devoid of emotion. Hate remained, as did – if she allowed
herself to admit it – just the tiniest sliver of hope. If she survived this crisis and saw Cortez dead by her own hand, or by Octavian’s if fate decreed it must be so, then perhaps she
would find a spark of light still remaining in her, and a way to live without the revulsion and rage that now ate at her.

‘You all right?’ Allison asked.

Charlotte flinched, startled from her reverie. She glanced at the other woman – the other Shadow – and gave a small shrug.

‘What does that even mean?’ she asked.

Allison frowned. ‘What it always means. Is there something wrong?’

Charlotte arched an eyebrow. ‘I appreciate the concern. Really, I do. But are you fucking kidding?’

For a moment Allison looked worried, but then she gave a small laugh. ‘Yeah, I guess it’s a pretty stupid question. Just do me a favor?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Whatever you’ve got stewing inside you, keep it reined in,’ Allison said. ‘When the fighting starts, we’ve got to be able to rely on you. Peter’s put his
faith in you. Try not to be so distracted by whatever’s haunting you that you get somebody killed.’

Charlotte’s first instinct was to utter some kind of cutting reply, but she thought better of it. Allison’s eyes revealed her tenderness and understanding and Charlotte knew her
words were genuine.

‘Don’t worry, okay?’ she asked. ‘I’m focused, that’s all.’

Allison nodded and the two Shadows fell silent. Not far off, Octavian and Metzger were talking while Sergeant Galleti seemed to be having difficulty with her comm unit. They were on the tarmac
at Cobán Airport and they were not alone. Metzger had been in touch with the Guatemalan government moments before they had taken off from Philadelphia and though they had been just over four
hours in the air, there had been four companies of Guatemalan soldiers awaiting them when they landed. There were Jeeps and other rough terrain vehicles, as well as four army helicopters which
stood black and silent on the broken tarmac.

Considering the condition of the airport, Charlotte liked the idea of helicopters. They could take off and land without having to roll down the rutted runway. Metzger’s pilot had done his
best but their landing in Guatemala had been rough and frightening. At one point the plane had shaken so badly that Charlotte thought the landing gear might be about to tear right off of the
undercarriage. They’d made it without that kind of damage, but she wasn’t sure how easy it would be for the plane to take off again.

Instead, she was about to have yet another helicopter ride. A few days ago she had never been on a helicopter, but suddenly climbing into one of the machines felt almost ordinary.

‘Uh-oh,’ Allison said. ‘This doesn’t look good.’

Charlotte glanced up just in time to see Octavian and Metzger glaring at each other, practically nose to nose. They were arguing about something, but kept their voices low. Whatever Octavian had
to say, he finished saying it and spun on his heel, marching over to Charlotte and Allison.

‘Let’s get aboard a chopper,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong?’ Allison asked.

At first, Charlotte thought he wouldn’t answer. He strode grimly toward the nearest of the black, unmarked helicopters and she and Allison followed him, wearing equally grave expressions.
But when he had slid open the door in the side of the helicopter and stepped back to let them board before him, he shook his head in frustration and glanced at them.