them both like a tidal wave.
If last night was a one-off, if it never happened again, Stuart could live with that. And if it wasn’t, if it was the start of something more substantial, he could live with that too.
He was, he realised, content. For the first time since Sofia and Jake died, he was at peace.
Mal’s serene sleeping face told him she was too.
Pity that today was scheduled to be -
A tremor shook the room.
Not just the room.
Stuart could feel it — the entire underground edifice shuddering around him.
“Huh, whuzzat?” said Mal foggily.
“Don’t know.” He leapt out of bed. “But I’m pretty sure it’s not good.”
The tremor subsided.
Then came another, fiercer, more violent.
“Earthquake?” said Mal, swinging off the bed and pulling a sheet around her.
“I don’t think we’re in a seismic activity zone.” Stuart danced into a pair of underpants. “And even if we are, earthquakes feel like waves on a rough sea. This is more like — ”
A third tremor overwrote the second. Everything in the room vibrated and shook.
Stuart disappeared the door. Distant shouts of alarm echoed along the corridor. He dashed out, Mal following. The first of the pantheon they encountered was Azcatl, who was scurrying along like one of his beloved arthropods.
Stuart grabbed him. “What’s going on? What is this?”
“Unhand me!” snapped the Red Ant. “We’re under attack is what’s going on. Tezcatlipoca’s forces. They’ve found us somehow. I must marshal my best shocktroops.”
He hurried onward. Stuart looked at Mal. “Armour time.”
“Where is it?”
“Toci’s lab. Which is… this way, I think.”
In truth, he had no idea. But as they ran, he hoped they would bump into another of the gods who would give them directions.
In the event, they bumped into Itzpapalotl. Stuart didn’t know it was her, having never seen her sans armour. All he saw was a tall and impossibly athletic female, almost as dark-skinned as Mictlantecuhtli, moving with obvious urgency but not in a blind panic. He made a deduction and called out her name.
“We need our armour, too,” he said. “Where do we find it?”
Without breaking stride, the Obsidian Butterfly made a gesture: follow me.
Two levels down, near the bottom of the inverted ziggurat, lay a chamber that was part armoury, part laboratory. The equipment that filled it was mostly unrecognisable to Stuart and Mal, a plethora of sleek machines and subtle instruments whose nature and purpose they could only guess at. What was familiar was the jumble of it all. Offcuts and oddments littered workbenches. There were disorganised shelf-loads of tools and spare parts. Everywhere, a sprawl of unfinished projects and experiments-in-progress. Scientific chaos was scientific chaos, no matter if the scientist who generated it was also a goddess.
Itzpapalotl went straight to her suit of midnight-black armour and began clamping it on. Huitzilopochtli was already here, doing the same. A woman with a thatch of blonde hair and keen, beady eyes — Toci, it must be — was busy loading flame spears into the rack the Hummingbird God toted on his back.
“Toci, please, our armour…?” said Stuart.
Toci wagged a finger distractedly towards a corner of the room. The Serpent Warrior suits were set out on armatures, no longer as snake-featured as before. The helmets had been reshaped, their fronts flattened and the eye lenses joined up into a single bulbous visor. All of the sections had been recoloured, not mamba green now but a silvery blue that would afford some camouflage in the daytime sky. There were other modifications, such as l-gun attachments on both arms and the tips of blades projecting from the wrists.
“Been busy on those all night,” Toci said. “You’ll find them very much improved, although there’s a limit to what I could do, given the crudeness of what I had to work with. Tezcatlipoca was never much of an engineer, and I discern human touches everywhere — shortcuts, quick fixes, general bodging, no finesse. The lightning guns are activated by studs on the palms of the gauntlets. They recharge more rapidly than you’ll be used to, and last longer too. The blades extend to full length with a flick of either arm and retract the same way. Both of you, I understand, are proficient with swords. Of necessity, these ones are short, but they’ll cut through anything short of a forcefield.”
“Forcefields,” said Stuart. “Any chance we have those?”
“Exclusive to Quetzalcoatl. Mictlantecuhtli has his gauntlets, Xipe Totec his knives, Huitzilopochtli his flame spears… Each a particular suite of capabilities, to fit each’s individual style and temperament. There is no sharing or crossover. That is not our way. Be grateful for what you’ve got.”
Another tremor rocked the gods’ lair. It felt less potent than previous ones, but Stuart assumed that that was because they were deeper underground.
“Hurry,” said Itzpapalotl. It was the first word Stuart had heard her utter, and he wasn’t sure if the remark was directed at him and Mal or not.
The two humans helped each other into the customised Serpent suits, fast as they could manage. When only the helmets remained to be put on, Mal said, “Here we go. Can’t say I’m not dreading this.”
“You’d be crazy if you weren’t.”
“So much at stake.”
“We’ll just do what we can, leave the heavy lifting to the big boys like Huitzilopochtli.”
“Stuart…”
He shook his head. “Last night was last night. I get that.”
“No, what it is, is, I don’t understand how I can have spent so many weeks wanting to see your heart cooking on a brazier, and now, suddenly, all that’s gone. Now I’m actually worried about you.”
“Maybe Ometeotl was right. We’re meant to be together but until now the circumstances were against us. I mean radically against us.”
“It’s almost like some kind of joke, isn’t it? Like the world was doing its very hardest to keep us apart.”
“If ‘apart’ is another way of saying ‘at each other’s throats,’ then yes, I’d agree.”
“If I don’t make it through this…” Mal began.
“In that case,” Stuart said, securing his helmet on, “it’s unlikely either of us will make it. The point is moot.”
Mal had her helmet on too, so they were now talking via the strange intimacy of the comms link. “You don’t want to hear what I have to say?”
“I do,” Stuart replied. “And I will. But afterwards, all right?”
Itzpapalotl and Huitzilopochtli were leaving.
“Right now,” he went on, “we’ve business to attend to. The world’s not just going to save itself, you know. It’s time for the new, improved Conquistador to go out there and shine. Oh, and his sidekick Jaguar Girl too.”
“Call me your sidekick again, and I’ll kick you in the side,” Mal growled. “Fucker.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Fucker, fucker, fucker.”
“Eloquent as always. Let’s go.”
Taking flight, they followed in the wake of Itzpapalotl and Huitzilopochtli, up through the centre of the ziggurat to the hatch. When they emerged onto the surface, it was like entering some fiery, howling maelstrom. There were Serpent Warriors everywhere, swooping, swarming, shooting. The rainforest around the hatch was ablaze. Flames crackled. Smoke churned. The air was thick with falling ash and embers. L-gun fire streaked between the burning tree trunks, and now and then huge, not-so-far-off explosions erupted, seeming to shake whole acres of landscape.
Itzpapalotl and Huitzilopochtli wasted no time in engaging the enemy. Within seconds, Serpents were being blasted out of the air or sliced to ribbons.
It took Stuart and Mal slightly longer to gather their wits. A pair of Serpents came zooming at them on an
