Oh. I—I…“That’s the saddest and sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.” I stroked Kinich’s ice-cold cheek. “You’re so full of surprises, Sun God,” I whispered.
“So,” Emma asked, “are you going to keep wallowing, or are you going to disembark from the S.S. Pity?”
“Sorry?”
“What’s your move?” she asked.
“Are you saying I get a choice?”
She nodded.
“But I didn’t choose this,” I pointed out sadly.
She shook her head. “No. You didn’t. But now you get to choose what you make of it.”
“But what can I do?”
“Step one,” she replied. “Stop being afraid, and accept what you are. We need every able body we can get to face what’s coming. And after we’ve trained you, you’ll make us that much stronger.”
“This is too much. I’m not ready for all this.”
Emma’s green eyes glowed with warmth. “You are my sister now, and I’ll be here to make sure you never stumble.”
“Sister?” My eyes filled with tears—yes, yes. More crying.
It was one thing to grow up without a father, but not having any siblings was hard. It seemed all my friends had sisters and brothers to play with or watch over them, everyone except me. That’s why when I was little I worried to death about who would be there for me after my mother was gone. Would I die alone without any family there to love me?
When I got older, however, I became tired of feeling helpless so I turned to martial arts. Somehow knowing I could defend myself didn’t make being alone so scary. Truth be told, it made me feel confident, strong, independent—like I could handle anything that came my way.
But nonetheless, the absence of a sister or brother—a best friend who shared my blood—stayed with me.
“You and I are Payals, Penelope. And I don’t know why life turned out this way for us, why the people we love have been taken, but there’s a reason for all this. I can feel it in my bones. I have to believe that.”
“Who? Who was taken from you?” I asked.
Emma’s eyes reflected her dreary thoughts. “My grandmother was taken by the Maaskab a few years ago. I thought it was the worst day of my life. But it wasn’t. That day was when she showed up on our doorstep in Italy, leading her own army of Scabs. I almost killed her—she was crazed from the black jade they’d injected her with.” Emma whisked away a tear. “I don’t know how, but I managed to hit her with just enough energy to knock her out instead of killing her. After everything was over, I’d planned to have Guy take my sedated grandma back to Mexico, to the cenote so he could take her to his world.”
“Why?”
“So the gods would make her immortal and cure her with their light.” Emma took a deep breath and blew it out. “But I never got the chance. A man named Tommaso, a man I thought was my friend, released her and fled.”
“Emma, I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say; her story was so sad. “Why did he do it?”
She shrugged, her expression bleak. “Because he was born evil, and there’s no cure for that.” She paused. “Doesn’t matter now. Because I’m going to get her back, and then I’m going to kill him.”
Wow. That was one hairy ax to grind.
“We leave the day after next.”
“But what if it doesn’t work?” I asked. “What if you find her and can’t cure her? What then?” Did I have any business asking her this?
Emma explained that the gods’ light made a person immortal, but not indestructible; the cenote would not build them a new body if theirs was destroyed.
“If we can’t cure her,” Emma said with a frigid tone, “then I’ll do the right thing.”
What a horrible thought. I couldn’t imagine what Emma was going through.
“As for you, we’ll face whatever comes, together,” she said, changing the subject quickly. “All you need to do is decide. Are you going to stand up and fight for the people we love? Or are you going to crawl in a hole and hide?” She stared directly at Kinich, and then so did I, which made me think: If someone so powerful could be brought down by the Maaskab, then what chance did I have? “I need time. A lot’s happened.”
Emma reached over Kinich and rubbed my arm. “Don’t worry. We’re not going anywhere. We’ll be here when you’re ready.”
“So will we.” Guy, Gabrán, and that man I’d walloped in the training center stood with fierce, determined expressions just outside the doorway.
“We’re the good guys, Penelope. We’ve got to stick together.” Guy flashed a cool smile in my direction.
I felt it then. Their power. Their determination. Their loyalty toward one another. I didn’t know them, but I got it now. Like Kinich, they’d all been dealt their cards. They could’ve run away or tried to deny it. But they’d chosen to fight. To do good. To…not hit the denial button.
I stood and smoothed down the front of my wrinkled, charred jeans. No. No lemonade for this girl. Stick those lemons where the sun don’t shine! “Okay. I’ll fight. I want to go on the rescue mission.”
Guy stepped next to Emma, hovering over the dormant Kinich. “You told her about the mission?”
“Of course. She needs to know we’re doing everything to get her mother back from the Maaskab. That said”—she looked at me with a sour face—“are you crazy, girl?”
“What?” I asked defensively.
“Penelope,” Guy’s tone was flat and firm. “You’re not combat trained.”
I huffed. “I’ve got a black belt in karate, the ability to throw fireballs with my hands, and I can light the interior of extremely expensive sports cars on fire with my ass. I can handle myself.”
Emma and Guy exchanged glances with Gabrán, who was smiling.
“Not a word out of you!” Guy pointed to Gabrán, and then turned his irate gaze at me. “No. You will be a liability to my men. We cannot risk—”
“Honey,” Emma chimed in. “I think you should consider her wish. It’s her mother, she should have the right to put her life on the line if she wants to.”
“No! I’ve already gone head-to-head with Niccolo on this matter because he insists on saving Viktor himself—which I refused on the grounds of Niccolo’s strategic, military value. So he would consider it an insult if I let her go on the mission, but not him.”
“Honey,” she argued. “This is different. Cimil has prophesied that we can’t win the Great War if Niccolo isn’t leading the army. If he dies, it would mean an apocalypse.” She turned toward me. “No offense Penelope, but the world wouldn’t end if you met yours—not that I want that to happen.”
Morbid. But true. “No worries.” I flashed a quick smile. “I understand.”
Guy growled. Like any man, he likely didn’t appreciate being cornered. “She’s never been in a battle, and we do not have time to train her.”
“I will train her,” Brutus said in a deep, scratchy voice.
Guy’s mouth fell open. So did Gabrán’s. Now, as for Emma…
“Oh fine!” she griped. “You’ll speak to help out Penelope, but you won’t even give me the courtesy of one lousy ‘hi.’ It’s one syllable, Brutus! One!”
One corner of his mouth curved upward.
These “people” were truly bizarre. Sweet and powerful, but bizarre.
“Thank you, Brutus. When do we start?” I said.
He stared at me without so much as an acknowledgment of my question.
“Okeydokey, then. I don’t know how this silent training thing works, but I’m an open-minded gal. Let’s start now.”
Guy, obviously not aligned to my involvement, but knowing he’d lost the argument, turned to leave, grumbling, “You have one day, Karate Kid.”
Hey. That name sounded kind of cool, but wouldn’t something snazzier make me feel tougher? Something like Fire Balls or Smoky Pants?
Hmmm…maybe not. I’d need to work on a handle. Maybe get myself some red tights and a blue, waist-high half leotard.
r />
Pen! You’re not a superhero. You’re just crazy. And apparently contaminated with the DNA of a supernatural serial killer.
Lucky me.
“Hey, Guy! Wait up.” I ran down the hallway after him, and when I caught up I couldn’t help but shiver in my smoky pants. He was so damned huge. “About this mission…”
He crossed his mammoth arms. “Let me guess, you want to right the wrongs for all who have suffered. You wish to make the Maaskab pay for every evil they’ve committed. You want to wring their necks one by one and watch them choke on their own sick, but not before you’ve extracted their fingernails with a pair of rusty tweezers and removed their eyes from their sockets with a hot poker.”
Oh my God!! Yes! That’s exactly it!...If I were a sick, depraved, revenge monger hung up on violence and acts of meaningless retaliation.
What the hell was wrong with these people?
“Um. Not exactly. Though, that is an excellent suggestion. By the way, you’re the god of what, exactly?”
“Death and war.”
That explained it.
I smiled stiffly. “I am getting the impression that your policy is to exterminate any priests you come in contact with, but they’re the only ones who know what’s wrong with Kinich.”
“Ah. I see. You want us to take prisoners for interrogation.”
“Yes,” I replied.
“This is very challenging; we must kill them quickly or knock them unconscious before they sift away. We typically choose killing.”
“Sift?” I asked. Wasn’t that something you did to flour?
“Teleport. Although they travel only short distances, they are difficult to contain.”
Oh. Well, that explained how that Maaskab who’d attacked me at my apartment kept popping up on the street.
Then I remembered how Viktor appeared out of thin air. “It’s pretty weird that the priests have the same abilities as vampires.”
“At first we thought so, too. But then we discovered they had aligned with the Obscuros; we imagine they’ve been learning from each other.”
An idea hit me. “Can we use that black jade stuff somehow? I hear it has some magic juju something or other to absorb power.”
He scratched his chin. “Perhaps. I will consult my chiefs and give it consideration.” Guy peered over my head in the direction of Kinich’s room. “Emma! What are you waiting for, woman? It is time for our evening lovemaking!”
Classy.
Emma came skipping out of Kinich’s room and made a little wave as she passed by and disappeared into one of the guest rooms.
Well, at least I wasn’t the only one who had a bizarre relationship with a deity, punctuated by the word “woman.”
CHAPTER 25
I wrapped my favorite blue scarf around Kinich’s neck and kissed his icy forehead, wishing he knew that I would do everything possible to help him. It killed me to see this magnificent male reduced to a lifeless-looking shell, so pale, so vulnerable. This is why I’d made the insane decision to go on the mission; I couldn’t bear to sit one more day at his side, hoping a miracle might wake him up. I couldn’t stand one more day wondering what those vile cretins were doing to my mother. And bottom line, Emma was right: I had to step up and fight for what I loved. I only prayed it wasn’t too late.
I pushed away the dark thoughts, trying to remain positive; because if they had harmed a hair on her beautiful, already fragile body, I would jump on Guy’s strangulation, rusty tweezers, hot poker bandwagon so fast that they’d piss their…Well, they didn’t wear pants. No. They wore the icky, leathery-looking bikinis made from human skin.
Psychos.
“They’ll piss their icky, psycho man-kinis and wish they were never born.” I closed my eyes and sighed. What a turn my life had taken. Only a few short weeks ago I’d been worrying about money for my mom’s treatment, thinking about how I’d make ends meet for Christmas.
Holiday crackers! Less than a week until Christmas.
No one had mentioned a thing, but then again, it would be a little strange for the gods—except Cimil, obviously, because she was just weird—to observe a human holiday. I’d have to find out what they did celebrate. Probably some weird crap like Hot Poker in the Eye Day.
Well, it didn’t matter that I was missing Christmas; I was in no mood to celebrate. I was in the mood to fight, win, and then pick up the pieces of my life.
“And when you’re all better,” I said to Kinich, “we’re going to finish what we started.” I rubbed my nose against his. It was cold. I winced and resisted letting the sadness back in.
No. No more.
“It is time,” a deep, raspy voice said from behind.
I practically jumped from my skin. “Brutus! You scared the hell out of me!”
Brutus was dressed in his combat gear: black from head to toe, a gun holstered to each side, electronic equipment wired to his head.
He held out a large pack.
“Parachute?” I asked.
He nodded once.
“I love parachuting.” I’d dropped five times, but it had been for fun. This was different. This was war. Life or death. And I was ready. Brutus had spent the last twenty-four hours making sure of that.
“Okeydokey. Let’s go get my mom.”
This was it.
***
Five hours later I’d successfully herded the scaredy-cats scrambling around inside my head and locked them in a cage. Brutus had explained—in exactly ten words—that the key to winning any battle was having a clear head and calm nerves. He and his men meditated for a minimum of two hours before every mission.
I bet he wished Emma had followed the regimen, not to mention learned to skydive. He did not seem happy suiting up for their tandem jump.
“Dammit! Stop wiggling!” Emma barked over her shoulder. “And that had better be your flashlight!”
I tried not to laugh but couldn’t resist.
“Ma’am?” One of Brutus’s men, sitting to my side on the long bench at the tail of the plane, helped me with my parachute.
My scaredy-cats began getting restless in their cage, chucking hair balls. This was it.
Dressed in a black jumpsuit, I strapped on the pack and got into formation behind Guy and Emma (and Brutus) who were deep in conversation. Over the roar of the engines, I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but I saw their faces and couldn’t help but be envious. The way Guy regarded Emma was nothing short of worship.
Then Emma elbowed Brutus and spouted, “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s kill some Scabs and get my granny!”
Let’s go get my mother, and capture at least one Scab? Those bastards would pay, but not before telling me how to cure Kinich.
She glanced over her other shoulder toward me. “Ready?”
“You better believe it,” I replied. “These clowns picked the wrong girl to mess with.”
***
I thought I knew what terror was—finding a giant fuzzy spider staring you down in the shower or discovering a mysterious curly hair in your salad after you’ve eaten the entire thing, for example—but nothing in my life compared to the moment I found myself hurtling through a black void on a moonless night toward Earth, scared out of my frigging mind, hoping my altimeter didn’t fail.
“Penelope? Are you there?”
Voices. I’m hearing voices. Oh perfect. Dammit. This was no time to lose my marbles. Go figure.
“Penelope, please respond.”
The voice sounded like Emma.
Headset! Headset. I sighed with relief. I pressed the transmission button on my neck. “I’m here.”
“Don’t forget Guy’s instructions: Wait for Brutus to signal you.”
I remembered every word. Once everyone was on the ground and in position, the Uchben would go in first. I’d stay behind until given the word—or a poke, since he didn’t really talk—from Brutus.
“Got it,” I replied.
The alarm on my altimeter beeped. Time to pull the cor
d and pray: Dear Lord, or universe, or anyone out there powerful enough to save my unworthy, stupid ass, please don’t let me land on a power line, something sharp, or a really tall tree…
***
The dear Lord, universe, or other being powerful enough, had listened. I landed with a soft thump in a soggy, grass-covered clearing along with three other Uchben I didn’t know. One came over and helped me out of my harness, then pointed to a tall patch of grass several yards away. I scurried over and crouched.
It was the dead of winter, but the tropical air of southern Mexico was moist and heavy. The dank, earthy smell of the jungle instantly penetrated my nose.
Now, I know any normal person would wet themselves at the thought of jumping headfirst into this situation but, perhaps as a testament to my “exotic DNA,” my body buzzed with anticipation. Now that I’d decided not to take my situation lying down, I felt like I’d been born for this moment, to serve justice to these horrible beings who’d harmed the people I loved.
“People” you…love?
I loved my mother. That was a given. But did I love Kinich, too? We barely knew each other, frankly. Yet there I was, ready to put my life on the line for him. Yes, if my mom weren’t a part of this, I’d still be here.
It was a startling revelation, really. How had I gone from infatuation to soul-clenching lust to…love?
True love defies logic. That’s its signature trait.
Funny, people always said love was something that grew in both intensity and depth as you got to know a person, but I was never sure about that. Maybe the love is already there, dormant inside your heart, waiting for “the one” to unlock it. That would certainly explain how I felt; I loved him. I felt like I always had and I always would.
“Great. I’m in love with a comatose deity who has mixed feelings for me,” I whispered to myself. Could my life possibly get any more complicated?