Blood Sun

ch’ulel can be sent back to the otherworld.”

Max twisted his head, trying to appeal directly to the boy, wanting eye contact. “Don’t let him kill me! Come on, mate. Help me out here! Come on!”

“I cannot,” the boy said, lowering his face to Max’s. His mother’s pendant swung close to Max’s eyes. Max struggled, but the men held him firmly. It couldn’t end like this!

“Your mother came here, by mistake. She was going to join your father on the other side of the mountains. At the sea. Have you seen the ocean?”

“What?”

“I have never seen it. Your mother told me many stories about it. I was sick. Your mother helped me. I was only a boy.”

Max had to concentrate more than he ever had before. He had to understand what was going on-what had happened. This wasn’t a nightmare he was going to wake up from. This was moments before his own death.

Max cried out in despair and fear. He could not move a muscle. Now the men put their weight on his legs as he bucked again. The shaman said something to the boy, but he responded with a stinging reply, and the shaman obediently waited for the moment when he could plunge the knife into Max and cut out his heart.

“My mother! Tell me!” Max begged.

“Before the people came here and took the children’s parents away, everyone lived together. We are the last royal family of the Maya. We are descendants of the great kings. Many of those warriors do not belong in this valley. They were brought here by the outsiders. They made us their prisoners. It is because our people have something in our blood these men want.”

The boy gazed away across the darkening sky, as if seeking a way for his memories to escape. He quickly slipped the pendant over his head and curled it into Max’s open palm, his wrist held tight by the shaman’s henchmen.

“Your mother got sick. She saved me, but we could not save her. There was a white man here, the one who controlled everything. He had a helicopter, but he would not take your mother. He left her to die. He did not want her to speak of him. Two of our people took her through the Cave of the Stone Serpent, but only one survived. Your mother told us that if we could find your father, he would get her to a doctor.”

“My father?” Tears welled in Max’s eyes.

The boy nodded. “She said he was beyond the mountains. Your father carried her for days through the jungle. He ran until he could run no more. At the place where the white stone stands at the ocean. That is where he buried her. That is all we know.”

Dad ran. He ran to save her! Farentino lied! I got it wrong. Dad had run to save her!

The boy touched Max’s forehead. “It is the time we call blood sun, when the sacrifice must be made. Go to your mother. She is waiting for you in the otherworld. Do not be afraid.” He stepped back.

This was it.

The shaman raised the knife, the light glinting on the blade; a wave of sound came from below as the children, Flint and Xavier screamed for Max’s life.

Max lifted his head. Tears stung his eyes. He gripped the pendant until it cut into his skin. Mum, Dad. I’m sorry! Please help me. Then that moment of pure love and desperate fear deserted him.

Anger erupted like a volcano unleashing its power. He would not die like a lamb; he would not show how scared he was-he wouldn’t! He would leave them with the foul taste of a curse in their superstitious lives. Thunder rolled around the mountain peaks. The air was still. He sucked in a lungful and spoke each word with as much force as he could muster. “I am wayob! I am Eagle-Jaguar! And my father will kill you all!” he snarled.

He spat as hard as he could into the shaman’s face. The shaman’s head snapped back, blood splattered the group and the guards released their grip.

The sacrificial priest was dead.

25

Riga lowered the rifle. No one but him was going to kill Max Gordon, and the kid deserved a better death than having his heart cut out or getting a long-range bullet through the head. The gunshot had been swallowed by the rolling thunder and torrential streams that splashed down the hillsides. Riga moved; his injured leg slowed him down, but he had figured out that Max had only one escape route.

On top of the pyramid, Max was the first to react. The shock of seeing the shaman’s blood splatter across their fine clothes stunned the group into silence. In the past, Mayan kings saw death as an honor and offered their own blood to appease their gods, but for these people to hear a shouted curse and see one of their own die threw them momentarily into disarray. Had the wayob struck the shaman down?

Max realized what had happened, but there was no time to work out who had shot the priest. Maybe Flint had broken free, found a rifle. From where? It didn’t matter. Max was alive.

The guards were the first to recover. Whatever they believed about the supernatural, they did not lack courage. They were there to defend the boy and his family. Max was already on his feet. There were no weapons to hand except the shaman’s censer. He swung it. The incense plumed and the men ducked back, shielding their eyes. He felt it connect with one of the guards’ heads. Like an ancestral killing when bodies were thrown down from the top of the pyramid, the man tumbled into space, his cry cut off abruptly as his bones shattered on the steps and his rag-doll body fell limply toward the bottom.

The rod holding the incense burner snapped. The men lunged at him, but Max sidestepped and grabbed the boy, whose look of confusion turned to fear.

Max yelled at the men. “Stay back!” He felt a pang of sympathy for picking on the boy who had tried to help him, but he was all Max had as a bargaining tool. The guards ran at him, but Max’s snarl as he half pushed the boy over the edge made his intention clear-Come for me and the boy dies. Max held him over what was almost a sheer drop. His heels slipped; he nearly fell. One of the elders raised a hand and the guards stopped. Max wasn’t sure what to do next. He would not be able to manhandle the boy down those steps, and the moment he released him, the guards would be on him.

The boy whispered fearfully, “Behind you.”

Max looked. There was a narrow arched doorway with steps inside leading down. He pulled the boy with him and entered the cool shelter of the pyramid. The stone stairway twisted downward, and he pushed the boy in front of him until light from another doorway spilled into the building. They had quickly reached the first level of the pyramid, where the kings of old would have entered and moved up to the top, showing themselves to the people, convincing them that they were descended from the gods. No more than a magician’s trick.

But there were no tricks that could make Max disappear; he would have to make a run for it on his own. He held the boy away at arm’s length, letting him feel the security of the wall against his back, then released him. The boy may have told him about his mother, but he had also been prepared to stand back and let them cut out Max’s heart.

One last question. Max pointed toward the satellite dish. “Does that belong to the men who came here, who imprisoned everybody? The man who arrived in the helicopter?”

The boy nodded. “We cannot go there; it is where they take our blood. It is protected. No one can go there.”

Max had to know if that place held any other answers to his mother’s death. He couldn’t see an obvious way in through the jungle; it seemed to be blocked by a jagged scar of a ravine.

“What sort of protection?”

“They took one of our people and sent him through that place to show us,” the boy said, pointing to the building next to the pyramid. “It is the Razor House. We heard him scream before he was cut to pieces. Go. You must run. I will tell the guards you have gone toward the jungle.”