Jaguar Sun (23 page)

“It once belonged to a Mayan Elder,” he said. “It’s been passed down by Adriana’s ancestors for hundreds of years. I wanted to give you something, you know, before….” His voice trailed off.

“I love it,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You look like the Mayan Queen that you are,” he said. He took my hand and we turned toward the forest, walking into the unknown, but walking into it together.

~ ~ ~

By the time we got back, we could see the headlights of the vans as the shifters were all ready to head to Chichen Itza. Soon we would be doing the same. We walked into the kitchen, where Adriana and Richard were sitting at the table.

“Look who’s here!” Richard said, giving us a half smile.

I flushed about ten shades of red.

“Would you two like some tea?” Adriana asked. “We’ve still got a little time before we have to leave.”

“I’ll have some,” I said, sitting down at the table.

“I’m good,” Matt said.

I looked into the living room, where I could barely make out the dark outline of Cesar sitting alone on the sofa.

“Cesar, do you want some tea?” I asked.

“No, thank you,” he replied politely.

To my surprise, Matt got up and walked over to him, sitting down on the arm of the sofa. Within minutes they were deep in conversation about something.

“Huh,” I said.

“A few things have changed while you were away,” Adriana said.

“You mean those two are getting along?”

“Well, I can’t say that they’ll ever be the best of friends, but they’ve found one thing they can agree on,” Richard said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You.”

“Oh,” I said.
Yeesh
. I went back to sipping my tea.

“Good morning,” Adriana said, as the twins came into the kitchen.

“Uh, we have a slight problem,” Damian said, turning around. There on the back of his neck was the mark of a beautiful, bright sun. It wasn’t all one color like a shifter’s mark. It was in full color with bright yellows and oranges.

“What the—” Richard began.

“—Wait,” Damian said. “There’s more.”

Lyssa lifted her hair. On her neck was a gorgeous blue crescent moon.

“Oh, my God,” Adriana said. “Richard, the Hero Twins!”

“It has to be,” he answered.

“Wait,” I said, “the hero what?”

“The Hero Twins. From Mayan mythology. But they were boys. And, oh, Lord, I can’t believe I didn’t see this before! They were ball players!” Adriana was shaking her head in disbelief.

“Like soccer?” Lyssa asked.

“No,” Richard said. “The ancient Mayan people played a different ballgame. But the Hero Twins were incredible players. Just like you two.”

“Isn’t there a myth about the Hero Twins defeating some kind of sky god?” Damian asked.

“There is. Actually, they defeated several gods in the Mayan creation story. But most of them were in Xibalba,” Adriana said.

“She-bal-ba,” I repeated, “What’s that?”

“The Mayan Underworld,” Richard said.

“Maya, remember when we talked about the
Chilam Balam
?” Adriana asked.

I nodded.

“Well, the Hero Twins come from the other Mayan book I mentioned, the
Popol Vuh
. It actually contains numerous stories about the Hero Twins,” she explained. “At the end, one of the twins becomes the sun and the other becomes the moon. That has to be what their markings stand for. The question is, which story fits?”

“Maybe none of them do. It’s possible that they’re meant to help Maya,” Richard said.

“Okay, hold on.” Damian took a step closer to his twin. “Watch this.”

The twins took hands and closed their eyes. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, out of nowhere, I heard a yelp come from the living room.

“What the hell!” Matt yelled.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“We pushed a thought into Matt’s mind that his sneaker was on fire,” Lyssa giggled.

“Don’t ever do that again!” Matt sounded pissed.

“Your powers have expanded since you got your marks?” Adriana said. “That’s fantastic. I wish you had more time to practice.”

“Well, we already know we can push thoughts and visions. And we can still read each other’s minds, too, but we still can’t read anyone else’s,” Damian said.

“Looks like you were right all along, Adri. They must have a purpose to fulfill,” Richard said.

“You two should stay with us at the museum until we figure out what it is,” Adriana said.

“And we’d better get going,” Richard said. “The sun’s almost up.”

The next thing I knew, we were packed into the van and heading to Chichen Itza. I sat next to Matt and laid my head on his shoulder. We took the highway, so the trip was smoother and a lot shorter than I expected. Or maybe it just seemed that way as I sat looking out the window, wondering and worrying about all that was to come. Matt held my hand and gave it a squeeze as we pulled into the parking lot at the museum. There were already tons of cars and busses filled with tourists in the parking lot.

Immediately, Adriana, Richard and the twins walked into line at the front gate, while Cesar, Matt, and I stayed in the van and waited. Matt and Cesar were both wearing watches, and they checked the time repeatedly, which made me even more nervous. Finally, Matt looked at Cesar and nodded and we all clambered out. I noticed that as soon as we started walking toward the line, Matt and Cesar never left my side.

It took us a good half hour to get through the line and inside the museum. Once we were inside, we headed northeast to the Jaguar Temple. The crowd was so thick we had to push our way through, so I was grateful to have the guys as bumpers on either side of me. They were heading straight for our meeting point, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of El Castillo, which was directly to my right. It looked so much taller than it did in photos and I couldn’t believe how steep the stairs were. There were ninety-one of them, practically all going straight up. I cringed. Adriana had told me to wear jeans to protect my legs in case I slipped while I was running. Looking at it now, I felt like I should have worn knee and elbow pads and possibly even a helmet.

We finally got to the entrance to the Lower Temple of the Jaguar by the Ball Court. The entrance itself was made up of several very ornate carved columns. There was a worn Jaguar Throne at the entrance. I touched it briefly with my hand and felt a sudden jolt of power. I looked around me, but no one seemed to notice.

“Cesar,” Richard’s voice startled me out of my thoughts, “Good, you made it. Have you seen anyone from Toltec?”

“No, but they are here, I am sure,” Cesar replied. “This crowd is thick.”

“Well, let’s just hope that this wall of people is hiding us as well as it’s hiding them. We’re going to have to be very careful. And remember, no one phases unless it’s absolutely necessary. The last thing we need is a riot on our hands,” Adriana said.

“I have a feeling we’re going to end up with one no matter what we do,” Matt said.

“Okay, Maya.” Richard turned to me. “Tell me what you’re going to do.”

“We make our way to the bottom of El Castillo. I wait until I’m signaled and then I run the steps. I enter the temple at the top where I can’t be seen, open a portal, and move to the roof. Or I could just open a portal at the base of the pyramid,” I suggested hopefully.

“No. That’s too dangerous,” Adriana said. “You could miss.”

I gave an internal groan as I thought about the hellish run that awaited me.

Richard took over. “Once you get to the top of the roof, you’ll feel the pyramid amplifying the power from the earth. Just follow your instincts,” he said.

“Okay.” I nodded, but I actually had no idea what that meant. Especially since my instincts at that particular moment were telling me to turn around and get the hell out of there. But I knew I couldn’t run. I knew what had to be done, and I knew that I could die doing it.
Please be with me, Grandma
, I thought. Just then I felt Matt take my right hand to comfort me and a vision of my grandma chanting before her altar flashed before me. I knew instinctively that Matt’s impulse to reassure me had come from someone else. I smiled to myself as we rounded the corner and began the walk to El Castillo.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It turned out that picking our way through the crowd on the way to El Castillo was pretty slow going. That was fine with me. The longer it took us to get there, the more time I had to get my head together. Cesar walked on my left, Matt held my right hand, and Richard and Adriana formed the front and back of the square. The twins were out in front of Adriana somewhere. Suddenly the earth began to shake and I was thrown against Cesar.

“Don’t worry, I have you,” he said, somehow managing to stand up straight while the rest of us flailed about.

“What the hell was that?” Matt asked Richard.

“It’s most likely the beginning of the transition. We’d better speed this up.”

Just as we began to press forward with more speed, another quake hit. This time, people began to scream. Some dropped to the ground in an effort to steady themselves, but they only ended up getting trampled by others who decided that running was the best way to deal with the situation.

“Stay together, stay together!” Richard yelled. “Everyone grab a hand on each side and keep moving forward!”

Suddenly, with a great groan, the earth began to split apart beneath my feet. I saw the people around me diving out of harm’s way, but I was too late. I cried out as I felt the earth beneath me crumble away. I held on to the edge of the chasm, my feet struggling for some kind of foothold. I could hear the terrified cries of people all around me, as they could no longer hold on and were forced to let go. I kept my eyes forward, not wanting to look down. But my hands were slipping. Then I felt hands gripping my forearms.

“You got her?” Matt asked Cesar.

“No problem,” Cesar answered.

Together, they lifted me like I weighed nothing and set me on my feet. As we hurried away, I turned my head, expecting to see a crack in the ground. Instead I found myself staring at a miniature version of the Grand Canyon. It was nowhere near as wide, but it was so deep that its bottom was swallowed by darkness.

“You guys, we have to hurry.” Then I panicked. “Wait—where’re the twins?”

“They’re fine,” Matt said. “They’re with Richard and Adriana over there. They weren’t as close to the split as we were. My, I’m so sorry. You just slipped out of my hand.”

“It’s okay, I’m fine.”

As we started to walk toward the twins, I spotted Avery Wells in the crowd.

“Come on,” I said, picking up the pace. “Did you guys just see him?”

“See who?” Richard asked.

“Avery Wells,” I said. “He’s right over…where’d he go?”

“I’m sure you saw him,” Adriana answered, looking around at the thinning sea of tourists. “We’ve spotted some of Toltec’s shifters and Lucas Moss since the museum started to clear out some. They lost a few shifters. That could work to our advantage.”

“Our biggest worry right now is getting you around this chasm and up to El Castillo,” Richard said.

And as I turned around to get a better look at the situation, I could easily see what Richard meant. The split had sliced the park right down the middle. The Temple of the Jaguars was completely gone, as was half of the Venus Platform that had been diagonal to it.

“We’ll have to take her back down the other side by the rift’s tail end,” Richard said after a minute.

The ground started to shake once more, but this time there didn’t seem to be any new rifts opening up. Though people began to scream again, the noise soon died down when the tourists began to see that they were safe. Then we heard it. It sounded like high-pitched
eek eek
sounds coming from deep within the pit. All eyes were fixed on the pit as a black, winged creature soared up. Its face and body were like a bat’s and it had a long skinny tail. And it was
huge
. I felt every cell of my being shrinking in revulsion as I watched it fly higher, making that terrible screeching sound. Everyone seemed frozen in fear and disbelief.

“Demon!” Richard yelled. “We’ve got to go
now.
But slowly. We don’t want to attract its attention with too much movement.”

No sooner had Richard spoken than the bat thing honed in on a woman trying to run for safety. It swooped down, picked her up in its talons, and dropped her into the pit. I turned away. As we all slowly made our way to the right, the crush of the crowd became too much. People were shouting out names, looking for their friends and loved ones. I could see that the throng was headed toward the exit gate and was pushing way too hard. More people had fallen and were now being walked on. When a young woman fell right in front of us, Matt grabbed her under the arms and quickly set her on her feet again. All of a sudden, I noticed that the twins weren’t following us. I stopped dead.