David Gilman - Blood Sun

On top of the pyramid, Max was the first to react. The shock of seeing the shaman’s blood splatter across their fine clothes stunned the group into silence. In the past, Mayan kings saw death as an honor and offered their own blood to appease their gods, but for these people to hear a shouted curse and see one of their own die threw them momentarily into disarray. Had the wayob struck the shaman down?

Max realized what had happened, but there was no time to work out who had shot the priest. Maybe Flint had broken free, found a rifle. From where? It didn’t matter. Max was alive.

The guards were the first to recover. Whatever they believed about the supernatural, they did not lack courage. They were there to defend the boy and his family. Max was already on his feet. There were no weapons to hand except the shaman’s censer. He swung it. The incense plumed and the men ducked back, shielding their eyes. He felt it connect with one of the guards’ heads. Like an ancestral killing when bodies were thrown down from the top of the pyramid, the man tumbled into space, his cry cut off abruptly as his bones shattered on the steps and his rag-doll body fell limply toward the bottom.

The rod holding the incense burner snapped. The men lunged at him, but Max sidestepped and grabbed the boy, whose look of confusion turned to fear.

Max yelled at the men. “Stay back!” He felt a pang of sympathy for picking on the boy who had tried to help him, but he was all Max had as a bargaining tool. The guards ran at him, but Max’s snarl as he half pushed the boy over the edge made his intention clear -Come for me and the boy dies . Max held him over what was almost a sheer drop. His heels slipped; he nearly fell. One of the elders raised a hand and the guards stopped. Max wasn’t sure what to do next. He would not be able to manhandle the boy down those steps, and the moment he released him, the guards would be on him.

The boy whispered fearfully, “Behind you.”

Max looked. There was a narrow arched doorway with steps inside leading down. He pulled the boy with him and entered the cool shelter of the pyramid. The stone stairway twisted downward, and he pushed the boy in front of him until light from another doorway spilled into the building. They had quickly reached the first level of the pyramid, where the kings of old would have entered and moved up to the top, showing themselves to the people, convincing them that they were descended from the gods. No more than a magician’s trick.

But there were no tricks that could make Max disappear; he would have to make a run for it on his own. He held the boy away at arm’s length, letting him feel the security of the wall against his back, then released him. The boy may have told him about his mother, but he had also been prepared to stand back and let them cut out Max’s heart.

One last question. Max pointed toward the satellite dish. “Does that belong to the men who came here, who imprisoned everybody? The man who arrived in the helicopter?”

The boy nodded. “We cannot go there; it is where they take our blood. It is protected. No one can go there.”

Max had to know if that place held any other answers to his mother’s death. He couldn’t see an obvious way in through the jungle; it seemed to be blocked by a jagged scar of a ravine.

“What sort of protection?”

“They took one of our people and sent him through that place to show us,” the boy said, pointing to the building next to the pyramid. “It is the Razor House. We heard him scream before he was cut to pieces. Go. You must run. I will tell the guards you have gone toward the jungle.”

No more questions. Max turned away and began the long run down, hoping the boy would do as he said, or he would still have to avoid the warriors on the ground.

Riga followed the turbulent water that channeled down toward the compound. Max Gordon had his wits about him. He had got this far. Did the kid know anything about this place? Cazamind wanted Riga dead because he had disobeyed him and entered this forbidden killing ground. His secret was here somewhere. Did Max Gordon know what it was?

He saw children and an old man being herded away by warriors. They had been spooked by what they’d seen on the sacrificial site. Riga could have shot a dozen of the men before they knew what hit them, but they were unimportant, and he did not have time-a shadow lengthened down the side of the pyramid. It was Max heading for the building where the water hurtled in a torrent of power through a narrow sluice. What was there? He wasn’t going to get down in time before the English boy reached the building’s entrance.

Riga flung himself into the water chute.

Max could see Flint’s feathered hat jostling amid the crowd of children. He knew Xavier would still be with him, but there was nothing he could do to help them now. The tendons and muscles in his legs screamed for rest. This was worse than any sports training he had ever done, but there was something else driving him now-something that felt like revenge. He had doubted his father. How could he have thought his dad was a coward and had abandoned his mother? So why did he feel this surge of vengeance? Who was it against? As he pounded downward, he realized it was against himself.

He hit the ground running. Sprinting through the shadowed alleyway between the pyramid and the Razor House, he felt a low rumbling in the ground beneath his feet. Another earth tremor? He braced himself against a wall, but there was no surge of power rolling through the ground. This was coming from below the building. Running to the end of the passageway, he could see that the ball court was being cleared of the prisoners, and the guards moved in the opposite direction. The Mayan boy had given him a chance. He turned the corner quickly and stepped into the gaping cold shadow of the doorway. Dust sprinkled from the ceiling; the walls trembled with a slow, grinding vibration. He moved farther into the chilled interior. The light from the entrance was too far back to penetrate this deeply. He closed his eyes, wanting the sunlight from seconds ago to seep away so he could see into the gloom. Something moved. It whispered. The air brushed his face. He stopped.

Whoosh .

Stale air wafted past his face.

He waited, caution reining in his urgency. The Razor House? Blades?

Whoosh .

Like a fan.

He took a step back, opened his eyes and concentrated on the darkness.

Wooden poles, like fallen sticks, crisscrossed the narrow passage that led through the building. It was an ancient but intricate design to obscure and obstruct any further movement. The sour taste of nausea caught his throat. It was no fan that cut the air-it was hundreds of flint blades attached to wooden arms bound to those turning poles. Razor-sharp. They were like a meat grinder. With more angles than the face of a diamond, any one of those flints would snag clothing or flesh and churn their victim into its shredding jaws-like a boa constrictor’s teeth.

Max backed away, lest the mesmerizing machinery draw him in. One more step forward and it would snare him, then slice and hack him in a terrifying and painfully slow death.

If he wanted to get through, he had to find what drove the stone-wheeled machinery and destroy it. He turned. A shadow stretched in front of him. A man, water dripping from his clothes, stood silhouetted in the entrance. His leg was tied with a sweat rag, a rifle gripped casually in one hand, his backlit face in shadow.

Max knew without a doubt that if he saw this man’s eyes, they would have the same cold, penetrating gaze of the man who had nearly killed him in the British Museum.

“Hello, Max,” he said. “My name is Riga.”

Charlie Morgan and her convoy of ex-British Army jungle fighters had pursued the men from the City of Lost Souls. The old man who drove a battered supply truck in and out of the jungle stronghold had scraped the route map into the dirt, showing there was only one entrance, which lay between rugged boulders.