I kept my eyes on the floor.
He leaned closer and whispered, “They fed their hearts to the gods.”
Silence pressed in on the cold cage, and I stumbled back. “You…you want to sacrifice me to the Maya gods? For what? You think I’m some kind of prize? That they’ll forgive you or something?”
Bird gripped the bars. The scorpions fell dead to the ground instantly. “Such a small mind,” he said. “Why would we ever honor the Maya gods with your blood—or anyone’s? No, you’re even more valuable than that.”
Hondo used to tell me that learning what your enemy doesn’t want can be as valuable as learning what they do want. Now at least I knew they didn’t want me to fight for them and they didn’t want to feed me to the gods. Maybe they just wanted the thrill of murdering me in my sleep? Nah, they were the kind of guys who would want my eyes wide open while they stuck the dagger in my heart.
Jordan looked at his watch. “Time’s up. We can’t be late to your father’s execution.”
“What?!” I lunged, stopping inches from the bars. “No! The execution’s not until tomorrow.”
Bird’s eyes flashed with some kind of victory. “Seems you’ve lost time in our world. ‘Tomorrow’ is today.”
* * *
The twins hadn’t been gone two seconds, when the fire spread through my veins, hot and searing. Hate and panic and darkness and revenge were causing it to build up in me. My body went rigid with pain. I tried to push the fire down, to swallow it whole. But it pulsed and thrashed and raced inside.
The air felt thick and charged. Sweat trickled down my neck. Tears stung my eyes. All my senses shrank down to this: the living fire wanted out.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
I squeezed my eyes shut, digging the heels of my palms against my temple. Spikes of fear pounded into my heart.
And then Ah-Puch’s words found me: Do not try to control the fire…. Surrender to it.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to take advice from the god of death, but if I didn’t do something fast, I knew the fire would consume me.
I heard another spark of a memory, a distant voice—Hurakan’s. That day in the Empty he had said, The fire will destroy you if you don’t release its power.
But what about Brooks and Hondo? They’d get poisoned by the gas….
Regardless of my doubts, the heat and power ripped through me, fast and furious like a bullet. My eyes blazed, coloring the world bloodred. Smoke trailed from my nose and mouth. Turning away from the bars, I took a deep breath and pressed my hands into the back wall.
Then, with everything I had, I screamed and let the fire out.
Blue flames engulfed me, creating a spinning inferno with me in the center, and the harder I tried to shrink away, the tighter it squeezed. When I breathed, the fire breathed. When I moved, the fire moved.
I let it burn. Man, did I let it burn. I watched in awe as the blue fire (the hottest part of a flame) spread. The concrete around my prison cell melted, running like colorless lava. I let the fire rage and quickly realized that a magical thread connected my walls to all the others. Carefully, I drew the flame’s energy back, tamping it down until it liquefied into pools of blue at my feet and seeped into the ground with a hissing gurgle.
Out of breath and exhausted, I found myself in a weed-choked wrecking yard. There were ten-foo
t-high stacks of rusted cars, heaps of old tires, and piles of scrap metal everywhere. No wonder the prison had smelled like rubber and gas.
A swollen moon floated over the dark woods that outlined the yard. The lifeless trees were angled all wrong and had sharp, grasping claws.
I blinked in astonishment. I had obliterated the twins’ imagined world. And that’s when I knew: I had finally become one with the fire. But what did it matter? I was still locked up behind the magic bars that hadn’t melted. So was everyone else.
My eyes quickly found Brooks the hawk, shivering in her cell near a corroded van balanced on cinder blocks. Hondo was laid out flat in his enclosure, unmoving. The godborns’ cages were scattered across the yard. I didn’t understand it. They had been free before, part of the twins’ army. Why lock them up now? The cells’ shields were gone, and for the first time, I wished I couldn’t see through the dark. Each of the godborns was staring up at the sky with their mouth open. Except for that Marco dude. He was on his knees, reaching for a screwdriver on the ground outside of his cage.
I followed their gazes.
The moon cast enough light for everyone to be able to see hundreds of bats clustered together, hanging from a green wrecking crane, their heads tucked beneath their shiny black wings.
They looked just like the vile little creatures that had tried to kill us back in Cabo. And in the center of them all was a dark bulging shape, a mega bat at least ten feet tall, suspended by its claws, swinging gently in the breeze. Its rubbery wings were wrapped tightly around its swollen body. And its head? Human…ish. The face had a creepy masklike look—grayish skin pulled too tight like overcooked chicken. The eyes were closed.
Camazotz. And here I’d thought the demon runners were repulsive.