Sorry, buffalo, Alex thought, for dying in your coat. But I guess you did, too.
Rhonda slid into view beside Alex. She was kneeling, holding one of those giant wooden swords over her shoulder, and she was covered in blood.
“No!” she said. “Alex, breathe! Open your eyes!”
They’re open, Alex thought. Aren’t they?
But they weren’t.
12
Grievous Meeting
DOWN BELOW THE PYRAMID WITH THE TWIN TEMPLE heads, holding hands on the far side of the square, Old Sam and Glory pushed through the hot night air, made hotter by the slick and sweating crowd. Far back in the rear, the men and women were the poor and enslaved. Along with torches, their weapons were ironwood spikes and hoes and sharpened forked sticks—the tools of planting and harvest. Their clothes were simple and undyed, and faces had been left unpainted, hair unfeathered. Pressing forward, they had drawn a few stares, but no more. The crowd’s attention was firmly focused on the two temples that crowned the massive step pyramid at the other end of the square.
One side of the pyramid was surrounded by a small army of men in European armor. From a distance, that’s all Sam could tell. But he knew they were Spanish, and he knew the infamous Hernán Cortés was up there somewhere. What he didn’t know was where his son might appear, or what kind of ambush Dervish may or may not have planned. What would his son even look like? To them, he was still an infant. But they must be looking for a teenager. With watches chained to his heart.
From the front of the crowd drums suddenly began to roll. A weird pale cowboy with red feathers in his hat reappeared on his half of the pyramid, accompanied by two warriors and another sacrificial victim painted blue. It was the sixth since Sam and Glory had arrived on the other side of a canal, near a low tower of human skulls all mortared together like bricks. But they had been within eyesight of the elevated slaughter from the beginning.
“It makes me sick,” Glory said behind him. “I could have lived my whole life without seeing this. I wish we could change everything.”
Sam didn’t answer. He didn’t disagree, but wishing and doing were two different things. Even if they were able to change everything about that night, he and Glory had made enough mistakes together to learn that some of the darkest deeds in history accidentally handed victory to goodness. And when he had randomly doled out preemptive justice to villains before their villainy occurred, trying to make every past moment a paradise, he could accidentally tip the scales the wrong way. Retribution was for the end of time, and final justice was well beyond both his wisdom and authority. He and Glory had learned to touch the past with a deft and cautious hand, but still, he knew that if he was within range now, he would absolutely put a bullet in that pale-skinned killer on the pyramid before he could gut another child. Even if the next child ended up growing into an even worse human monster . . .
As Sam pushed forward, he saw the anticipation on the faces around him, and he looked down. He didn’t need to see the ritual again. It had already scarred him. The heart would be removed and burned in one of the toady fire bowls. The small blue body would be thrown down the hundred-yard staircase to the eager crowd below, where those in the front rows would carry the bloody business even further.
The killer cowboy shouted. The crowd murmured a response, the drums accelerated, and Sam knew the deed was done. Another soul lost. He looked back up as the warriors threw the body down the high stairs. The vile little man disappeared from view, but if he kept up his pace, it wouldn’t be long until he returned with his next victim.
Sam found a gap in the crowd and paused. Glory wedged in beside him.
They’d reached the beginning of the wealthier set—painted and feathered bare-chested warriors. Tattoos, but no intricate bejeweled masks, and very little gold.
“What’s the point of the killing?” Sam asked.
“Maybe they’re trying to inspire their gods to give them victory over the Spanish,” Glory said. “Historically, La Noche Triste was a messy night. I’m sure that’s why Dervish picked it. Cortés will kill Montezuma and this place will come unhinged. We don’t want to be down here when that happens. Most of those conquistadors will die.”
With no priestly show going on up top, the men around them turned at the strange sound of Glory’s voice. There were a lot of them. All with suspicious eyes.
Sam smiled at them and pushed up his sleeves and let Speck and Cindy twist. Hopefully, snake arms would classify him as non-Spanish.
Eyes widened.
“I hope you have your scythe ready,” Sam said. “Still got a long way to go if we’re going to get up there.”
“Are you sure Alex isn’t going to be one of the sacrifices?” Glory asked. “I can’t imagine better bait to draw us in, if that’s her goal.”
A big man pushed his way directly in front of Sam. He was almost tall enough to go eye to eye, but not quite. Sam didn’t need to know the language to know that his growl was a challenge. He raised both his hands to eye level, and let Cindy and Speck look into the warrior’s eyes. And then he rattled. Both shoulders. Rattlesnakes could communicate a warning in any language.
“I don’t think she wants Alex dead,” Sam said. He was holding Cindy back. She wanted to strike the man in the face. “She could have killed him already. I think she wants him evil.”
In amazement, the warrior dropped to his knees. “Quetzalcoatl,” he said. Drawing a stone knife, he slashed his own chest and held up the bloody blade toward Sam’s hands. “Quetzalcoatl.”
“Stop it!” Sam knocked the knife away. “No!”
Others began to drop to their knees, as well, but then the drums began again.
“Sam!” Glory grabbed his right arm. “Look!”
The cowboy with the red feathers reappeared on top of the pyramid, but this time he stood beside a taller man Sam and Glory had both seen before. A man with dark hair and a dark pointed beard, dressed like a wealthy gambler from the old west and wearing a two-gun rig beneath a long buffalo coat.
“The Vulture,” Sam said, and his heart skipped like he was thirteen again. “She brought him back.”
“No,” Glory said. “Sam . . . he’s different. He’s ours. Sam, that’s Alex. It has to be. He’s El Buitre’s heir.”
While they watched, high above them, warriors stretched another victim on the altar and the cowboy assumed his position.
“DER-VISH!” the cowboy bellowed and the crowd below echoed the name back in response.
Sam and Glory barged forward, shoving and slithering through the tightly packed crowd.
Glory’s heart went ice cold. Despite the heat, despite bodies around her, the sorrowful chill spread outward from her core. She had known she was looking for her son, that finding him would be unpleasant, but she hadn’t been prepared for seeing her baby stand beside such evil, dressed like the carrion bird who had hunted his own father. She had failed her son. Somehow, he had been taken, and now he was grown and firmly rooted in damnation. If Dervish had wanted to wound her, a frozen blade in the chest could not have hurt more.
“Alex!” Sam yelled in front of her. “Alex!” But they were still hundreds of yards away, and down among the mob with the drums. And then her heart skipped. Heat returned. The Vulture, no, her son, jumped to the child on the altar, and threw his arm above him.
In front of her, Sam laughed out loud and accelerated. They’d made a mistake. They’d worried about an ambush so they had started too far away. But her son wasn’t evil. Not all the way. Not yet. Not even with El Buitre’s clothes, not even facing down a crazy killer in front of thousands he could never hope to defeat. Alex had stopped the sacrifice, and joy and pride overwhelmed Glory’s sorrow.
As Sam and Glory approached the foot of the pyramid, Alex and the cowboy disappeared from view.
But Glory heard the gunshots, and she and Sam began to climb.
RHONDA LEANED OVER ALEX’S BODY AND SWUNG THE HEAVY sword at the legs of the two warriors. They jumped b
ack, and then glanced over at Kit, where he was rolling beside the altar fighting two shrieking owls. The sounds of battle were deafening—stone on steel, muskets firing, thousands of roaring voices, and the cries of death and pain.
“Just stay back!” Rhonda yelled. “Go fight the Spanish! Cortés is dead! You can beat them.”
But the men refocused on Alex, eyes dancing over his sprawling watch chains, his buffalo coat, his gun.
“Oh!” Rhonda finally processed what they wanted. Dropping her sword, she tugged the gun away from Alex and raised it. “I’ve never even shot a BB gun before, but I’ll start right now if you two don’t get back!”
The men both inched forward, and then both of their eyes widened in surprise. But they weren’t looking at Rhonda or her wobbling gun barrel. Gripping their swords, they backed away.
Rhonda turned, looking back at the temple behind her, the temple she and Alex had first entered. From thousands of miles away, across time and space, Mrs. Dervish had emptied her tower of its undead army. She was pouring it into this night, this fight, this chaos. Men and women, mummies and beasts were pouring out between the stone columns. All of them were broken and decayed, all were at least partially made of water. Armed skeletons wrapped with clear liquid flesh, lion carcasses with roaring liquid heads and broad liquid wings. Wolves and winged vipers and massive two-headed vultures. And in front of them all, Dervish’s two generals in black—the young one with the white hair, and the old, broad bald one, both with liquid eyes. The two of them were sprinting across the platform, straight for the owls.
Rhonda tried to shrink from view, hunkering in tight to Alex’s body, pressing one hand against Alex’s wounded throat. She’d seen doctors do that in movies. Pressure the wound. But she didn’t know why.
The owls released Kit Carson’s body, flapped into the air, and then dropped back down into the shapes of tall lean men.
Kit was motionless, bleeding from his throat.
“So dies a human serpent,” Manuelito said. “Although too late for my people.”
Turning away from the dying man, both Manuelito and his son, Baptisto, drew long knives with their left hands and guns with their right. And they began to fire into the liquid invaders who were pouring out of the temple.
Rhonda wished that she could close her ears. She wished that she had been nicer to the boy next door. She could have played him her Michael Jackson albums and taught him how to moonwalk. And not just him. She would have given anything to be back with her unhip parents, even if that meant cooking octopi. She didn’t need gold or fame. More breaths, more heartbeats, more life would be enough.
“Please don’t die,” Rhonda whispered into Alex’s ear. “We have to get out of here. We have to get out of here right now.”
Alex opened his eyes. “Watches,” he gasped. “Home.”
Rhonda looked down at the chains and timepieces scattered around her. Would they work for her? Could she slow things down and drag Alex past the liquid army back into the time room?
No way.
YOUNG SAM LET THE MOTORCYCLE IDLE BESIDE THE RUINED pyramid and wiped the sweat off his face onto the back of his left arm. Cindy tried to twist away, but he didn’t let her. She hated sweat.
Well, too bad.
He was grateful that the ride from Neverland through the darkness between times to Mexico was over. It had been particularly rank and particularly long. And his mind was still trying to shake off its cobwebs of confusion. Now they were in the right place. But still the wrong century.
The tropical sun was high and much hotter than he’d grown used to on his island in the Pacific Northwest. His body had come a long way since his time on the youth ranch in the Arizona desert, and it had clearly forgotten how to handle heat.
While tourists flowed around the motorcycle with flat cameras on long sticks that Sam had never seen before, Glory leaned around behind him and held up a brochure with an artist’s rendering of the square before the Spanish conquest.
“This is the one,” she said, tapping the picture of the biggest pyramid. “We have to go back almost five hundred years, but given how much killing happened that night, I should be able to find it pretty easily. Actually, it would be hard not to. Death leaves such deep ditches.”
“This doesn’t feel right,” Sam said. “We’re going in pretty cold, here. We should have talked to Peter. How are we even supposed to recognize the guy?”
“The Vulture’s heir?” Glory shrugged. “Maybe start by looking for the guy with watches chained to his heart. Hopefully he’s not any good with them yet.”
Across the square, Sam made eye contact with two Mexico City cops. After a moment, they began to approach.
“Well, do it,” Sam said. “Or let’s leave.”
Glory put a hand on his shoulder and stood up on the foot pegs behind him.
“Ride out onto the ruins. I’m hoping we’ll end up on top of this thing. It looks like it was huge.”
“It’s huge now,” Sam said, looking at the cops. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” said Glory, leaning forward. “Just don’t knock me off.”
Sam clicked the bike into gear and opened the throttle. As he bounced up onto a tourist footpath, the cops shouted and began to run after him. Veering off the path, he rattled the motorcycle down small stone steps, dropped into the curved bottom of what may or may not have been the bottom of an aqueduct, and launched up the other side. The sidecar almost bounced off, and the bike swerved, but Sam managed to bring it back under control as he approached an incredibly steep but short and ruined flight of stairs.
“Launch out as close to the middle of this thing as you can!” Glory yelled.
Sam stood on his foot pegs, but the stairs were much too steep. His chest slammed into the handlebars as the bike bucked up, and Glory slammed into his back. But they were both still on. When he opened the throttle completely, they shook and bounced up the stairs, and then launched into the air above the ruin.
The bike twisted sideways, and Sam looked down. They were floating over an enormous pit, dotted with archaeological tents.
While they dropped, someone screamed.
It might have been Sam.
In a flash, Glory cracked a scythe-shaped whip of hissing sand into a curtain of glass around them. For a moment, Sam and Glory and the falling bike were motionless. And then nothingness swallowed them.
“Glory . . . ,” Sam said. “Are you—”
“Hush,” Glory whispered in his ear. “And hang on.”
Sam gripped the handlebars tight and clamped his knees together on the gas tank. And then the stone side of the no-longer-ruined pyramid heaved below them, and the bike launched straight up. Sam’s stomach dropped into his legs. Sandy glass shattered, firelight pierced the darkness, and the sound of drums overwhelmed the motorcycle engine. The air below them was replaced with the steep side of the very real and very intact pyramid. The bike slammed down on stone steps. And then it began to tip over backward.
“Jump!” Glory yelled, but Sam was already lunging over the handlebars, grabbing at steep stone steps. His legs slammed against them, but he managed to hang on.
Twisting, he watched the bike crunch and flip down the man-made mountainside. Just below him, Glory turned to watch, as well. Hundreds of feet down, a battle was raging. Men in armor, on foot and on horses, were trying to defend loaded wagons against thousands of brightly feathered warriors. As far as Sam could tell, the Spaniards didn’t stand a chance. And the motorcycle wasn’t going to help.
The bike and sidecar flipped higher and higher as it tumbled and flames licked the sides of the engine. It landed squarely in the center of the wagons, all mounded high and covered with cloth. And when it landed, it exploded.
A ball of fire rose into the sky, plumed with black smoke. Horses screamed and galloped away into the crowd, with and without riders. The painted warriors roared with joy, and the wagons began to burn.
Sam looked at Glory.
??
?I think we just picked a side,” he said. “Not a good start.”
She winced. “Oops.” Then, keeping her weight low, she began to climb up the pyramid on all fours.
“I’m going to miss that bike,” Sam said as she passed him.
“I’ll get you a new one for Christmas. Now hurry up!”
“But it won’t be that one!” Sam said. He scrambled up after her. They probably had another thirty or forty yards to the top. Despite the bike mishap, he was glad they weren’t climbing from all the way at the bottom. “We got that one in the desert,” he gasped. “In Arizona. From Old Peter.”
“I remember!” Glory shouted. “I’ll get you a faster one. But only if you hurry up!”
Glory slapped at the rough stairs for balance, but she was using her legs for thrust. She couldn’t explain to Sam why they had to hurry, how many freshly dead she had sensed in the darkness between times, but she was worried that they were too late, that her future son had already made whatever changes to the past Dervish wanted.
The tips of her fingers were raw and her calves and thighs were pumping fire, but she didn’t want to miss this moment. They’d received a clear tip. When would they get another?
“Glory!” Sam gasped behind her. “Hold up!”
Glory didn’t hold up at all. “Check the watch, Sam!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Is he still here? Is he gone?”
Twenty more yards. She pumped her legs quickly, and then began skipping stairs.
“Sam?” she asked. Fifteen yards. Ten.
“He’s here!” Sam’s voice had fallen even farther behind. “The watch is pointing up and to the right! It’s strong!”
Gritting her teeth, Glory dug in harder. Quick steps, quick steps, fingertips scraping on stone, and then breathe, big step, big step, big step, breathe. Her lungs felt like they were going to explode, and she pushed them even harder.
“Glory!” Sam yelled, but she was already at the top. She staggered over the lip and braced her palms on her wobbling knees. There was blood on the ground between her feet. And feathers. Directly in front of her on the broad, flat platform, there was the first of two temples. Brightly dressed and heavily jeweled women and children peered out of it from behind huge warriors, all glaring at her—bodyguards ready to defend their surviving royals against all comers. And they already had. The ground was littered with dead Spanish conquistadors, each armored body marked with a dark sticky pool reflecting the firelight.