snapped back into its mouth like a recoiling tape measure. It let out a high-pitched howl when the dart sunk into its green chest; yellowish goop oozed out through the wound. It yanked the blade out with its claws and hissed at them, displaying its rows of sharp teeth. In pain, it fled.
Two more chupacabra’s sprang into the courtyard from the exterior walls of the palace, growling as they crept closer.
Priest Quisac snatched the sacred flashlight from his belt and turned it on, beaming it into their eyes. The creatures squealed like vampires burning from the light of the sun. “Run!” Priest Quisac shouted. “To the King’s chambers!”
William raced up the steps and down the hall, with the Serpent Priest just behind him. The chupacabras followed; their clawed feet scraped along the plaster floor as they charged after them.
Upon reaching the King’s chambers, they shut and barred the heavy wooden door. The chupacabras slammed into it and began digging at the door with their sharp nails. William heard the sound of wood curling as it was shaved off the door in strips. William applied all his weight to hold the door in place. “They’ll tear it down!”
Priest Quisac pushed Yax’s throne to the side. He grabbed a handle on the floor and lifted a stone slab that exposed a chamber below. “This way,” he said, motioning for William to get in.
The creature’s claw broke through the door and swiped at William’s face, just missing him. He rushed over to the opening and jumped into the cramped chamber below. The Serpent Priest followed him in and slid the slab back in place. As Priest Quisac bolted the hatch, William heard the door to the King’s room crash down. The chupacabras yanked at the slab from above, but they could not lift it.
After listening to the creatures screech in frustration above them for several minutes, Priest Quisac turned to William and said, “We are safe here. Try to sleep.” He turned off the sacred flashlight.
William was still too freaked out to respond. Sleeping didn’t seem like an option either, with the creatures stirring about and clawing at the floor above them.
After a long restless night, the noise from the chupacabras abruptly ceased. “It must be dawn,” the Serpent Priest said. “They don’t like the light. We will be safe until the evening.”
They opened the hatch above them and crawled out, noticing the shambles the beasts had made of Yax’s room, like a tornado had swept through the place. Upon making their way out, they came across Priest Hexel’s corpse near the palace entrance. William grimaced when they turned the stiff body over; the priest looked like a big piece of dried fruit dressed in Mayan clothing.
After a moment of silence, they searched the area around the palace, hoping to find a dead chupacabra-the one that had been wounded by Priest Quisac’s dart. They followed a trail of yellow blood into the jungle, but there was no sign of the creature.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
“For now, we must attend to the priest’s body,” Priest Quisac said. “Then we will prepare for our next encounter.”
Standing along the steps of the King’s palace, William watched Priest Hexel’s body burn up in a blazing fire. Priest Quisac had rejected William’s idea to speed up the process by giving the priest a simple burial. He explained that a priest of the Solar Cult-a Serpent Priest-must always be returned to the earth in ashes to prevent the body parts from being used with spells. The cremation turned out to be a quick process anyway, as the dried-out corpse disintegrated before the pile of burning branches beneath it.
Priest Quisac turned to William with a vengeance in his eyes that he had not seen since Bacalar. “Now to the preparations we discussed earlier. They will come again, but this night we will be ready for them!”
They proceeded to the courtyard beneath the Temple of Lintels to a spot where the plaster surface had been removed and dug twenty feet down-the large pit was one of the first traps they had dismantled days before. Priest Quisac said they needed to make it operational again, but with a slight variation. Knowing the chupacabras could come from any direction, they would have to bait them from inside the trap.
William spent most the morning chopping down trees, cutting off branches, and hauling timber over to the pit. They worked from the base of the pit, propping up the tree trunks like a big teepee, and tied them together with ropes. Priest Quisac used branches to build a platform near the top of the structure, at the same level as the plaster courtyard, while William put all the spikes back into place-burying them into the ground with the tips of the sharpened ends sticking up.
The platform was stocked with some food and water, in case they had to wait there all night. They armed it with spears, daggers, and swords. Finally, the sacred weapon was brought up, charged and ready to deliver two powerful blasts. As dusk neared, they placed bamboo shoots across the surface of the pit and covered them with palm leaves to conceal the trap.
“What do you think?” William asked from the platform at the center of the pit; he appeared to be standing in the middle of the courtyard with leaves scattered around his feet.
“It will have to do,” the Serpent Priest said. He held a green box in his hands. “Come now, we must secure the bloodstone… in case we do not survive this night.”
After William placed the bloodstone in the jade box, they went to the Temple of the Owl and entered a chamber beneath it, hiding the bloodstone in a secret compartment behind the wall. While beaming the sacred flashlight around the room, William noticed a sarcophagus and asked about it. He recalled how a body had been discovered there in his time.
“It is the body of the Queen,” Priest Quisac said. “She died giving birth to Yax.”
“You mean Teshna’s mom?” William asked. He had never questioned Teshna about her mother. He assumed she was already dead-for the topic never came up-and he didn’t want to stir up old wounds. He knew from personal experience just how painful the loss of a parent was.
On the way back to the trap, they lit torches around the courtyard, along the steps to the temple, and at points near the jungle’s edge. They climbed into the pit, tiptoed around the spikes, and shimmied up the poles to the platform above.
“Take this,” Priest Quisac said, handing him the sacred weapon.
“Don’t you want it?”
“I have not used it to kill… you have,” he said with a huff, referring to when William blew Honac-Fey into oblivion with it. “Once the creatures fall into the trap, we must attack. Do not hesitate.”
“Do you really think they’ll just come charging at us like that?”
“They are stupid beasts. They will be drawn to us with the same compulsion that a vulture is to a carcass.”
Nearly an hour passed while they waited on the platform, staring into the darkness beyond the torches. A clicking sound resonated from the edge of the jungle. William spun around, gripping the handles of the sacred weapon.
“They’re here!” the Serpent Priest exclaimed. He readied a spear in a throwing posture over his right shoulder and grasped another spear in his left hand.
“Where?” William asked, his eyes darting everywhere. He powered up the sacred weapon, causing it to hum. He felt for the dagger at his side, ensuring its position.
The clicking noises seemed to come from different directions. Shadows streaked by as the creatures moved through the light of the torches. Abruptly, the clicking stopped.
“Over there,” Priest Quisac whispered pointing at the silhouette of a chupacabra near the steps of the temple. It let out a screech that sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and the beasts charged at them from three different angles.
The entire surface of the trap crashed down. Shrill howls bellowed from the pit. William aimed the sacred weapon below, but he couldn’t see beneath the mess of the brush. “Where are they?”
Priest Quisac launched his spears into the pit. “There!”
William fired the sacred weapon at the same spot where Priest Quisac threw his spears, casting an energy blast into the pit, vaporizing all the brush in a flash of fire that sizzled the hairs off his outstretched arms. Yellow goop and chunks of green fuzz splattered across his face when the beast exploded.
“Over there!” Priest Quisac pointed at another chupacabra crawling out from the brush near the base of the tower.
The beast hissed at them as it pulled a wooden stake out of its side. It crouched, about to leap, and William fired another blast at the creature, blowing it into pieces. The tower caught on fire and rocked back and forth before
