The Graves of Saints (30 page)

‘I’m staying,’ Allison said.

Octavian looked at her, startled. She’d always gone her own way, but this . . .

‘I spent a few years as a bloodhound for Task Force Victor, Peter,’ she said. ‘I want to head out to California and sniff around, see if I can pick up Cortez’s trail. If
you need me, you can always call.’

Octavian hesitated. ‘You know I’m not abandoning her.’

They both understood to whom he referred.

‘I know. And you have other responsibilities. Go do what needs doing. That’s always been what you’ve been best at. Let me keep trying to run this bastard down, and when
I’ve got him up a tree, I’ll keep him there for you.’

Octavian barely heard the words. His attention had strayed to a dark shape in the sky, a crow that descended toward them. He frowned as he watched its unwavering path. Beyond it, an airplane
lifted off a runway, but his gaze remained locked on the crow.

Allison said his name, wary and curious, and in his peripheral vision he saw her turn and also begin tracking the crow’s descent. Metzger and Song did likewise, and Song unholstered his
gun, taking an instant bead on the crow, whose path was now certain.

‘Don’t,’ Octavian said, gesturing at Song, and a sphere of bright blue light appeared around the hand holding his gun. He would not be able to pull the trigger now.

‘Is this an attack?’ Metzger asked, backing up a step or two and glancing worriedly at Octavian and the magic he’d used to stop Song from firing.

‘Well, it’s not a bird,’ Allison muttered.

Octavian frowned. No, it wasn’t a bird, but neither was it an attack. Though dusk had arrived, if Cortez was the stickler for tradition – for the vampire as monster – he would
never have allowed one of his people to slip in as a crow. It would be a bat, the image that had been rendered absurd by a thousand parodies.

‘Be wary,’ he said, taking a step forward. He felt the static of magic between his fingers, felt it running through his bones, ready for anything.

In the gathering darkness, the black bird seemed almost to vanish . . . and then it ignited in a ball of flames. Fire seared the night, roaring brighter, and Octavian lifted a hand to protect
his eyes. The growing blaze touched the tarmac, climbing higher, smoke rising. Song swore loudly, angry at Octavian, wanting access to his weapon. Metzger barked a warning, hoping that the mage
knew what he was doing. But Allison only stepped up beside him and watched as the fire began to sculpt itself into a human silhouette.

A woman on fire.

The flames diminished and then drew inward, as if pulled back into the very flesh of the figure who now stood where the fire had been.

Octavian smiled. ‘Hello, Charlotte.’

‘Holy shit,’ Metzger said under his breath.

Charlotte stood before them, head bowed as if she feared to meet their eyes. Her copper red hair hung down in front of her face, hiding those ocean blue eyes, and she seemed to hesitate.
Octavian had been inside the worst asylums of eras past, and for just a moment she reminded him of the wary patients he had seen there, wandering the halls and talking in empty corners.

‘You just left me,’ she whispered, lifting her gaze at last. Those blue eyes were like ice.

Allison stepped forward. ‘The explosion . . . we figured you were killed.’

Charlotte shook her head regretfully. ‘No faith.’

Octavian thought she would smile, then, teasing them for not believing in her. But there wasn’t a trace of jest in her expression or her tone. He felt tempted to embrace her, but she
radiated anger. The girl did not want anyone trying to make her feel better.

‘I thought you might have survived,’ he admitted. ‘But I wasn’t sure how long it would take you to pull yourself together and we’ve got a whole world falling apart.
I’m sorry, Charlotte, but we needed to stay focused.’

Again she seemed to lose herself, gazing off into some haunted middle distance. Then she blinked and nodded.

‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘Your lady’s dead and the planet’s going to shit and you’ve been next to useless, sitting around like your hate might kill Cortez
by remote control while I go out with a couple dozen guys who get vaporized around me.’

‘Charlotte –’ Allison began.

‘While
I
get vaporized,’ the redhead went on, blue eyes wandering as she looked at anything except for Octavian. And then she froze, staring at him. ‘I get it, Peter.
Priorities. You’re a warrior. Every battle is fucking triage, right? You fight to win and fight to live and everything else is a luxury.’

‘If I had known what would happen—’ Octavian said.

Charlotte gave a throaty, humorless laugh that made it clear she had been broken and put back together slightly wrong.

‘I’ll get over it,’ she said. ‘I have no illusions as to who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy in all this shit. You’re not the one who killed me.
Not the one who raped me. Not the one who blew me to fucking smithereens. So let’s get down to business, shall we?’

Octavian glanced at Allison, then at Metzger and Song. They all looked as profoundly worried about the girl as he felt, but he suspected they were more concerned with what she might do next than
they were about what would become of her. Somehow, after all that she had been through at Cortez’s hands and the transition from human to vampire to Shadow, she had managed to keep her head
together. But this latest horror had been too much for her, as it would have been for almost anyone.

Her grin made him shiver.

‘We’ve lost Cortez’s trail for the moment,’ Octavian said. ‘Allison is going out to California to try to track him. I’m headed to India to deal with the
latest incursion.’

‘I don’t think you are,’ Charlotte said. ‘See, I was down in the basement of that damn armory. Cortez had left us a welcome present, a whole big pile of dead folks and a
ton of explosives. But right before the blast, I saw something . . . something written on the wall in blood. It was like an artist’s signature on a painting.
Xibalba
.’

She spelled it for them.

‘Does that mean something to you?’ Allison asked.

Charlotte narrowed her eyes. ‘Never did before, but you can be sure I won’t forget it.’

Octavian glanced at Song, who had regained control of his hand and his gun, which dangled at his side. He and Metzger both seemed baffled, though the commander did seem to be thinking hard on
the question.

‘What about you, Peter?’ Charlotte asked. ‘You know all this stuff. It’s all stored away in your brain, isn’t it? A whole world’s occult bullshit, going back
thousands of years.’

‘The place of fear,’ Octavian said, earning surprised looks from Allison and the two TFV men. ‘That’s more or less how it translates.’

‘If you say so,’ Metzger said. ‘But what does it mean?’

Octavian searched Charlotte’s eyes and realized that she understood, that she had sought out the significance of that word before she had tracked him down here tonight. He nodded to her,
then bent and picked up his bag and started toward the airplane.

‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘You too, Charlotte.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t miss it,’ she said, striding after him.

Allison fell into step beside Octavian, gripping her rucksack in one hand. Metzger barked an order at Song and then hurried to catch up.

‘What does it mean, Octavian?’ Metzger asked, trying to put his authority behind the question.

As they hustled toward the plane, Octavian didn’t look back at him.

‘It means we’re going to Guatemala.’

Airborne

Allison liked that they were all in the same compartment. She had been on too many planes where the troops were treated like cattle, herded into an ugly, narrow space and
strapped in for the duration, while the officers flew in relative comfort in a forward compartment. This jet had an aisle down the middle and a row of seats on either side – not your typical
military transport by any standard. She liked Metzger’s style.

Still, the TFV soldiers had filled the plane from the back, leaving the seats closest to the cockpit for their officers. Sergeant Galleti had taken a spot in the third row, forcing Song to
retreat amongst the other subordinates. That left Allison, Octavian, Metzger and Charlotte filling the front four seats. Allison had taken the second row on purpose so that she would be adjacent to
Charlotte, and though she tried not to stare at her, she kept aware of the girl in her peripheral vision. Her tattoos were still there and she still had the face of a nineteen-year-old –
hell, she always would – but all the fun had been burned out of her.

As far as Allison was concerned, that made her dangerous.

Charlotte had experienced things that would have broken most people and come out the other side. But this . . . Allison could see just from the ice in her eyes that this had turned the
girl’s heart to stone.

‘All right,’ Metzger said, emerging from the cockpit and clicking the door shut behind him. ‘The pilot has her instructions. We’re headed for Guatemala.’ He slid
into his seat and began to buckle his belt. ‘Now, you want to tell us why?’

‘Thank the Mayans,’ Octavian said.

‘What do the Mayans have to do with any of this?’ Allison asked.

‘Probably nothing. But Xibalba . . . that’s not an accident. Maybe it’s just what Cortez calls his coven, and if so we’re going to waste a lot of gas on this trip. But
I’m betting there’s more to it than that.’

‘It’s just a word,’ Metzger said, turning to look at Allison, behind him.

‘No,’ Charlotte said, her eyes haunted and grim. ‘Cortez wasn’t counting on anyone surviving that explosion. He wasn’t counting on me being there.’

‘How can we be sure?’ Allison asked. ‘He knows I used to track for Task Force Victor. He had to have realized I might be there, and he couldn’t be sure that blast would
kill me.’

Octavian nodded. ‘Point taken. But I’m banking that he figured anyone who got close enough – deep enough into that basement – to see that word up close was going to be
killed. If this is some kind of ruse, it feels like there are too many variables. More likely that after murdering all of the people in that basement, he painted that word on the wall in
celebration or as some kind of declaration.’

‘Punctuation,’ Metzger said.

‘That was the feeling I had,’ Charlotte said.

‘So we take it as a given for now,’ Allison said. ‘To which I still say, “what the hell do the Mayans have to do with anything?”’

‘Xibalba is the Mayan underworld. All their dark gods . . . their death gods . . . lived there. According to legend, there was a physical entrance to the underworld, an actual door or
gateway of some kind, in what is now Guatemala, near a city called Cobán. It’s locked, of course, barred to keep the demons on the other side.’

Charlotte gave a small grunt that might have been a laugh. ‘Or it’s supposed to be.’

Octavian glanced back at her. ‘You found the story, I assume? The legend about the last time the door to Xibalba was opened?’

Charlotte nodded.

Allison shuddered, a tremor of dread passing through her. ‘This sounds like the same kinds of breaches that are happening now.’

Octavian gave her the lopsided smile that she had always found charming. Tonight, she found it unsettling as hell.

‘Doesn’t it, though?’ he said. ‘Go on, Charlotte. Tell them.’

Metzger and Allison both turned to study Charlotte more closely. The vampire girl still wore a grim expression, but now she focused those deep ocean blue eyes on Allison.

‘One of the Maya death gods was called Mam,’ she said, her voice husky, and drifting as though she spoke from distant memory. ‘Or maybe they were all called that. From what I
read, the word meant “grandfather”, and the people used it out of respect. When the door came open, only one man managed to stand against them, a holy man called Brother Simon, though
I’m sure it was originally something else.’

‘Early Catholics called him a saint,’ Octavian said.

‘They stopped?’ Allison asked, cocking her head.

‘Short version?’ Charlotte said. ‘Brother Simon got the door to Xibalba closed. Guy had some serious mojo, like Octavian. But the story says that one of the death gods, Mam . .
. he was holding the door open. Brother Simon defeated him by doing something crazy. Somehow he merged with Mam, almost like inviting possession. Death god and holy man became one. The door closed
and he/she/it sealed it up tightly. End of story.’

‘Only it’s not the end of the story,’ Octavian continued. ‘When the Catholics rose to prominence and they were trying to bring pagans into the fold, they co-opted pagan
symbols and saints all over the world, like Saint Brigid in Ireland. Here, they made Brother Simon into Saint Simon . . . at least for a while. The problem was that the people did not want to
forget his real origins. They not only worshipped the man he had been, but the thing he became afterward.’

Charlotte glanced out the darkened window. ‘They called him Maximón, this weird fucking god-man hybrid. For a long time, the Mayans worshipped it as a god on earth. And then it went
mad and started eating them and tried to re-open the door to the underworld, and they killed it . . . this thing the Christians called Saint Simon . . . and they cut off its head.’

Allison blinked, feeling as if she were awakening from a dream. She looked at Metzger but he seemed unphased, still in the grip of the story, so she turned to Octavian and saw the glimmer of
dark knowledge in his eyes.

‘Oh, shit,’ she said. ‘No, no, this guy is not that clever. Please tell me that Cortez does not seriously have that kind of power.’

‘What?’ Commander Metzger demanded. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ a voice piped up behind them, ‘spit it out!’

Allison turned to see Sergeant Galleti in the third row, leaning out of her seat and listening with rapt attention. Beyond her, many other faces peered over the tops of their seats or around
into the aisle. They had all gotten too loud. The entire team was listening now. But perhaps that was for the best.

‘This thing, Maximón, was considered a saint among its people,’ Allison explained. ‘Don’t you get it? Even the Catholics called it Saint Simon—’