Chapter 16
Acheron Parthenopaeus paused as he entered Kateri's bedroom. While her home was modest, the interior was filled with warmth.
Like his own house in New Orleans.
A smile curled his lips as he thought about his wife and son. He couldn't wait to get them back home and have all of this nastiness put aside.
If it didn't kill them all.
His mother would be thrilled to hear his doubt. But he didn't want to think about her right now. He had to find Kateri's time stone and get it to her. Time was running out and the gates were so thin, they were translucent.
"Damn, there's a lot of rocks in here," he muttered as he saw them all around the room. There were even more in boxes in her garage and a huge pile on her covered back porch. He'd never seen anything like it.
The woman was obsessed.
"It's been a long time, Acheron."
He froze at the sound of a voice he hadn't heard in centuries. Turning, he saw the shade of the extremely wise medicine woman he'd met on a previous doomsday avoidance mission. "Ixkib. How have you been?"
"Not as well as I would have liked, but I'm glad to have your help, old friend."
"Glad I'm still here to do it."
She laughed. And by that, he knew it wasn't the real Ixkib. Though she looked like her, she didn't have the same laugh. Dread filled him. "Who are you?"
"You know me."
Acheron searched his mind, but he couldn't tell who it was. "No, I don't."
But as soon as those words left his lips, he realized how wrong he was. He did know her.... "Tiva." The goddess of unraveled time. While her twin brother oversaw time itself and kept it in order, Tiva lived to destroy lives.
Zev was the one they called Time.
Tiva was Untime.
She clicked her tongue at him. "Always brilliant. Thank you for leading me here, by the way. I appreciate it. I would never have found this place without you." She moved to go through one of the boxes.
Ash pulled her away. "I can't let you do that."
She sneered. "You can't stop me."
"Oh yes, I can." Ash felt his body start to glow as his god powers surged. "You want to try me?"
* * *
Kateri was still worried sick about Ren. Though he said he was fine and they were both back in normal clothes, she had her doubts. Something didn't feel right.
Now that he was resting in his bed, she'd snuck away for a cup of coffee. She sat at the kitchen table with Cabeza, who'd returned a little while ago to let them know that Sasha was being tended to and would make a full recovery.
Kateri hung up the phone to smile at Cabeza. "Sunshine said that they're all fine and that Rain is driving her up the wall. She wants us to hurry so she can go home before she kills him."
Cabeza laughed.
Sobering, Kateri raked her hand through her hair. "I still don't understand why all of this has fallen to me. I get that Sunny isn't completely American Indian because of her mother, but-"
"Your grandmother was a very special woman," Cabeza said, interrupting her train of thought. "Back before records were kept, a fierce battle was fought between our peoples. Ahau Kin was our god of the underworld and time, and we're exceptionally lucky we didn't meet him while we were down in Xibalba. Of course, Ren might have enjoyed his blood more. Why risk it? Anyway, you do know who he is, don't you? He's almost always shown at the center of our calendars."
"The god with the jaguar face. Ren already covered this with me, and said that Ahau Kin was the father of the Anikutani."
He inclined his head to her. "When the other tribes went after Ren's people, their hatred and attack so angered Ahau Kin that he cursed them and divided them for all time. His intent was to send mankind out of this existence and to banish them to the realm of the underworld so that he'd never have to see them again...."
His words made her mind flash to one event in particular. It was in a dark, small village where fires burned all around. Ahau Kin was walking through the center of the village, making sure there were no survivors.
All of a sudden, he saw a young woman holding her neighbor's baby, trying to protect it.
He went to kill them, but rather than cower, she stood her ground.
"What you're doing is wrong!" she shouted fearlessly. "You are supposed to be better than us, but you're not, are you? My father always said that being an asshole to others doesn't make you feel better, and it if does, then I really do feel sorry for you. How awful to hold all the power in the universe and to not have any better means of coping."
Her words stunned him. Here she was, a puny human, and she dared confront him. Not with weapons.
With words.
That courage and wisdom in one so young and pure touched a foreign part of him. It made him admire her, and for that reason, he couldn't bring himself to kill her. Instead, he took her as his human bride and she gave him a hundred sons and thirty daughters. For the first time in the history of the universe, Ahau Kin was truly happy. But due to his actions against the mainlanders, he'd caused a rift in the cosmos.
An imbalance of darkness brought on by his hatred.
That evil swept into this world, devouring everything it touched. Worse, it went for his human family.
To save the children he loved so dearly from being killed, Ahau Kin drove that darkness back, he banished it past the crossroads in the sky where the tree of life forms a bridge between this world and the dark one. Ahau Kin put it there so that it couldn't harm his family.
But the darkness was strong and it wouldn't stay there. He knew it the moment he sealed the gate.
"Every year from that day forward, whenever the winter solstice sun crosses the sky archer, it causes the heart of the sky to open." It was her grandmother's voice Kateri heard now, telling her this story.
"And from that doorway, all that darkness and all the evil it entails is able to climb down the sacred tree and return to earth to wreak havoc and come for the children of Ahau Kin."