Lanquin, Guatemala
As seemed to be true wherever the faithful gathered, there was a small church in Coban with a legend surrounding it. El Calvario church had been founded upon a hillside, in a place where a hunter had seen a pair of jaguars resting in the sun on one day, and an image of Christ the next. Tour guides never attempted to explain the connection between jungle cats and the son of God, nor did they give much credence to the legend that Saint Simon had been buried in the foundations of the church. Their disbelief could not alter the truth, however. The grave existed and would never be discovered until the church was torn down.
But the head of Maximon 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 Maximon.
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 Maximon. 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 Coban.'
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 Coban. 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 Coban.'
'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 Maximon 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.
Coban, 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 Coban 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.
'I wanted him to let us go in alone,' he said.
Charlotte's mouth hung open. 'Why the hell would we want to do that?'
'We wouldn't want to,' Octavian said, gesturing at the soldiers who were even now responding to barked commands from their superiors, racing to their vehicles and to the other three helicopters. 'But these guys are cannon fodder and there are more on the way. For the moment, we should have the element of surprise. I'd go in by myself if-'
'Not gonna happen,' Allison snapped.
'If not for that,' Octavian said, his anger abating for the first time. 'But if the three of us go in quickly and quietly, I could cast the spell to erect the same kind of barrier they're using at the other incursion sites and get whatever's coming through the breach contained. A lot of these guys wouldn't need to die.'
'Why wouldn't Metzger agree to that?' Allison asked.
Octavian gave her a hard look. 'He wants Cortez. If I throw up that barrier and Cortez is there, odds are he's going to be on the inside. It's not a solution, just a temporary measure.'
'I get it,' Charlotte said, feeling her heart darken again. 'And I agree. We don't need a temporary solution. We need to get Cortez and kill him. If he's really running the show it'll all fall apart and we'll worry about picking up the pieces after he's dead.'
'And if we don't find him right away?' Octavian said, turning his ire upon her. 'If we don't find him by sunrise? Or tomorrow? Or the next day? How many men and women will die because we wanted Cortez dead more than we wanted them alive?'
'That's not fair-' Charlotte began.
'Charlotte,' Allison put in, 'nobody wants Cortez dead more than Peter.'
The pit of Charlotte's stomach turned to ice and she glared at Allison.
'He raped me. Killed me. Nearly killed me again,' she said.
Allison reached for her hand but Charlotte pulled back as if scalded.
'I've been there,' Allison said. 'Exactly where you are. Tortured. All of it, thanks to Hannibal.'
'Hannibal's dead, right?' Charlotte asked.
Allison nodded.
'Well Cortez is still walking around.'
Octavian had fallen silent, but now she saw that he was looking around the tarmac at the soldiers rushing into action and he had a darkly thoughtful look in his eyes. Abruptly he climbed into the back of the chopper and turned to face them from within.
'Move it,' he said. 'Quickly. And turn your commlinks off.'
Allison and Charlotte were aboard in seconds and Octavian slid the door closed. The helicopter pilots had all been sitting in the cockpits of their aircraft waiting for orders, so he greeted them but said nothing more.
Octavian rapped the ceiling twice. 'Take us up!'
The pilot gave him a dubious look, which didn't go away when Octavian repeated the order in Spanish. Allison darted forward between the seats, her flesh rippling and fur bursting through her skin as she shapeshifted into a tiger. Showing the pilot her teeth, she gave a low growl, more menacing than a roar because it was laden with purpose.
'Take us up,' Octavian repeated.
Rigid with fear, the pilot complied, watching the tiger out of the corner of his eye. The radio crackled and voices cut through, first with inquiries and then with angry shouting, but the presence of the tiger caused him to ignore anything but Allison's jaws and growled threats. Octavian told him their destination and then they were on their way, Allison remaining up front with the man, just in case his fear eased up enough to cause him to do something foolish.
'What changed your mind?' Charlotte asked as they sped through the night sky, the whump of the rotors loud and brutal.
Octavian glanced at her and then at the Allison-tiger in the front. 'I realized there was a way to keep the troops safe and still go after Cortez now instead of trapping him inside a barrier.'
'How?' Charlotte asked.
His eyes were narrowed, but she felt sure she saw golden sparks dancing across them.
'Simple enough,' he said. 'When I put up the barrier . . . we'll be inside.'
Lanquin, Guatemala
Allison thought Octavian's plan more than insane - it was suicidal. Or it would have been, had any of them been ordinary. Even with his magic and their shapeshifting, she thought it was still foolish, the kind of risk only a lunatic would take. But she didn't share these observations with him. After all, it hadn't been her partner that Cortez had murdered. And if Octavian was going to trap himself behind a wall with a bunch of demons and an open gate to Hell, then she was going to be there to back him up.
I guess that makes me a lunatic, too, she thought. But the knowledge didn't change her mind.
Fortunately for her, Octavian's plan began to unravel moments before they reached their destination. New voices had crackled to life on the helicopter's radio. The pilot continued to glance at her in fear and she had begun to grow very comfortable with the shape of a tiger, with the muscles corded across her back and the feel of her lip curling back to reveal her teeth when she growled at him.
Then she noticed that the sound of the helicopter's rotors had changed. They had an echo, now, or a parallel. Shifting at the speed of thought, she transformed into her usual guise and turned in the seat to glance out the window. Octavian caught her eye and must have seen the alarm there, because he turned as well.
'We have company,' Allison said, spotting a pair of helicopters that were buzzing after them, quickly gaining. She glanced at the pilot. 'Our friend here must have been taking his time.'
'Maybe you're not as terrifying as you think,' Octavian said.
'He wet himself,' she replied. 'I'm pretty terrifying.'
In truth, she felt badly about the pilot wetting his pants. The poor guy would carry that humiliation his whole life.
'What now?' Charlotte asked.
'Doesn't matter,' Octavian replied. 'We're here.'
Allison twisted around again and peered out the windshield. He was right. What had been the Lanquin caves was now a deep canyon, a scar on the flesh of the world. It had to go on for at least a mile, but they were descending and with only the moonlight she could not get a good view of what awaited them.
Then the lights began to go on, huge banks of them popping on at once as generators fired up.
'What the fuck?' Charlotte said, scrambling to the side window.
Long trucks were illuminated, lining the narrow way that led off of the main road, along with a dozen military transports and two enormous artillery guns on flatbeds.
'The army's been busy,' Octavian said.
'They couldn't have beaten us here,' Charlotte muttered.
'They didn't. These are reinforcements, coming from elsewhere, and they've just rolled up,' Allison said. She turned to look at Octavian. 'Our timing sucks.'
But by then he wasn't looking at her. He had slid over to peer out the port window.
'He's down there,' Octavian said.
Allison looked as well, but how he could see a single vampire amidst the horrors rising from the newly splintered earth she had no idea. The caves were a chasm and in the light, monsters were rising. Some had already emerged, massive devil-bat creatures larger than any winged animal known to man. They swept in and out of the field of illumination, casting long and jagged shadows. Huge serpents swayed in the depths as if summoned by music, and she saw one slither out of the gash in the earth and vanish into the shadows.
But other things were rising from that chasm as well. She could see huge shapes moving in the constant play of shadow and light. At first their size made it impossible for her to accept what it was she saw, but then she realized that these enormous shapes were the heads of giants, just beginning to emerge as if being born from the womb of some ancient Hell. One head gleamed in the light, the yellow of long-buried bone, and the other was adorned with a forest of sprawling antlers.
'Oh, my God,' Allison whispered, and though they were words she had not spoken in a very long time, she meant them as a kind of prayer.
'They're not your gods,' Octavian said, as if he'd never indicated that Cortez might be below.
And how could he have known such a thing with all of the horrors at play down there?
Yet even as Allison wondered, the helicopter banked slightly left and she saw what he had seen. Not far from the chasm, whose fetid odors now began to invade the interior of the chopper, she spotted a large gathering of small figures that might have been human beings if she didn't know better. Dozens of them - perhaps more than a hundred - had arranged themselves in three concentric circles with a single figure at the center. As the chopper dropped lower she saw the gleam of light on their flesh and realized that the vampires, what remained of Cortez's enormous coven, were all naked and in motion, engaged in a strange, shuffling dance.
A ritual.
And look what they have summoned, she thought.
With a flash and a ripple of color, something huge burst from the trench, escaping the reach of the army's lights almost immediately. Octavian swore under his breath. While Charlotte was asking what he'd seen, Allison watched it spear upward through the darkness. Moonlight and the glow from below glinted off of its undulating body as the huge thing slithered through the air in a serpentine ribbon, trailing feathers of gold and green and red. It arced toward them, and Allison cried out for the pilot to bank left, but it didn't matter. The thing veered off, driving straight into the windscreen of the nearest of the choppers behind them. It coiled around the craft, rotors snapping off as they struck unyielding flesh, and then together the helicopter and the feathered serpent plummeted to the ground.
'What the fuck was that?' Charlotte demanded.
'My signal to get the hell out of here,' the pilot said in heavily accented English. Nobody called him on his facility with the language; they were too preoccupied with not dying.
'Not yet,' Octavian said. 'Get us lower.'
The pilot scoffed. 'Or what, you kill me? I die if I stay.'
The chopper continued veering left for another moment and then straightened its course, heading due south, away from the trench and the evils issuing from it. Octavian started arguing with the pilot but Allison's focus was elsewhere. She craned her neck to see behind them and to the right, where three of the devil-bats - horned, leathery things with fifteen-foot wingspans - were attacking the sides and front of another chopper, staying well away from its rotors.
'What about Metzger and Galleti and the others?' she asked. 'They've got to be on one of those. Maybe the one that just went down.'
Charlotte stared at her. 'Why do you care? I mean, after all Task Force Victor did to you?'
Allison would have explained to her, would have said that Leon Metzger was a good man and that his unit was doing important work, that he didn't deserve to die because he had followed orders and kept Allison on the TFV's most wanted list. But then the chopper already on the ground exploded and the blast shook them, even this far away.
'The second one's going down,' Octavian said, his voice cold and grim.
'Shit,' Allison whispered.
They watched quietly as the helicopter under siege by devil-bats lost altitude. One of the creatures had laid itself across the windshield, and the other must have gotten in the way of the rotors after all, because they were tangled with strands of its slippery viscera. They still spun, but slowly, and as Allison watched it descend she prayed that some of those aboard would survive the landing.
What then? she wondered. What would become of them on the ground?
'Tell the last chopper to land or turn back!' Octavian snapped. Then he reached up and grasped Allison's arm, tugging her toward the rear of the chopper. 'Come on. Enough of this.'
He grabbed the latch and hauled it back, then dragged the port gunnery door open. The chopper swayed with the change in air pressure and the pilot shouted at him, but Octavian was past listening. Allison understood. They'd passed the point of no return a long, long time ago.
'Go!' Octavian shouted.
Charlotte needed no further urging. She leaped out of the helicopter, shapeshifting as she hit the open air and began to plummet. Allison expected an eagle or hawk but instead the girl became a sparrow, perhaps thinking herself small enough to reach the ground unnoticed.
Octavian took two running steps and dived, his hands seeming to ignite with emerald flame as he did. A shimmering disc of magic took shape beneath him and a moment later he was standing atop it, lowering himself to the ground as if riding an elevator to the ground floor. Allison turned to mist and drifted after them, spun away in the wake of the helicopter for a short time before she could descend swiftly to the ground, where they could all greet the horrors close up.
As she restored her flesh, she heard chanting, the voices of dozens of vampires raised in either worship or incantation. Or both, she thought with a shiver. Shrieks of devil-bats joined the chanting and the sound of retreating helicopters, but above the cacophony she heard her name and turned to see Charlotte running toward her, red hair flying in the breeze.
'The second chopper didn't explode,' Charlotte said, coming to a halt and immediately gesturing back the way she'd come. 'If there are survivors, they're not going to last long without help.'
Allison started rushing back in that direction with her. They hurried across sharp grass and past copses of trees.
'I don't get it,' Allison said. 'You were the one who didn't think I should care what '-'
'Medusa!' Charlotte said, shooting her a sidelong glance as they ran. 'In vampires alone we're outnumbered about fifty to one. If any of Metzger's people were on that chopper, their guns are loaded with Medusa bullets. We need those guns, need the toxin.'
Shouts came from up ahead, punctuated by gunshots that echoed through the night. The wreckage of the helicopter loomed and Allison heard rending metal and breaking glass as the pair of devil-bats that had survived their encounter with the machine continued to beat and tear at it to try to get to the human meat at its core.
'You think they have enough bullets to even the odds? Did you see the size of Cortez's coven?' Allison asked.
Charlotte replied but over the chaotic noises around them, Allison didn't hear the words.
'What's that?' she shouted, racing toward the helicopter and its attackers. She glanced at Charlotte, saw the outline of the girl's tattoos gleaming in the moonlight and the grim set of her jaw.
'I said, as long as Cortez dies before me, I don't care about the odds.'
'That's a cheerful thought.'
Charlotte scowled. 'It is to me.'