“At least not one the Xibalbans made public,” Lucius agreed. “The knife, on the other hand, was pretty easy to find—or rather the first fire ceremony was.”
Strike grimaced. “Yeah. Jox used to pull that one out when the Xibalban boogeymen stopped working. ‘Knock it off or I’ll use you to start the new fire,’ he’d say. Usually worked too.”
Jox flushed a little when the other winikin looked at him. “What? Like he said, it worked.”
Carlos frowned. “Never heard of it.”
“Me neither,” Brandt muttered aside to Patience. “You?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t the only one; the room seemed about equally divided.
Seeing that not everyone was up to speed, Lucius said, “There were several versions of the ritual.
The basic theory was that every fire in the village—or, back in the day, the entire kingdom or the empire itself—was snuffed out simultaneously, plunging the world into darkness and essentially stripping mankind of the one big thing that separates us from the spirits and animals—the ability to use fire. Then the highest-ranking religious leader, whether a village elder or the emperor himself, would use flint and a sparker to start a new fire, and all the other fires would be relit from that one blaze. If we’re talking about a village, everyone would snag an ember and go about their business. In cases where the ritual was commanded for a kingdom or the whole empire, runners would head in all directions. Each runner would light all the village fires on his route, then pass off his flame, Olympic-
style, to another runner, and another, and so on. In this way, all the fires in the land were made fresh and new again.” He paused. “One of the reasons to perform the ceremony was to encourage the sun or moon to return after an eclipse.”
“Bingo,” Brandt murmured.
Patience nodded. “We knew Iago would try to harness the solstice-eclipse. Maybe this is how he intends to do it.”
“Which means all we’ve got to do is figure out how to stop him and keep Cabrakan where he belongs.” Brandt exhaled. “No problem.” Inwardly, he added, And we’ve got to do all that without me retaking the Akbal oath.
But that didn’t sit right either. Not after what they’d seen in the village.
Lucius went on to describe the harder-core Aztec versions of the ceremony, in which the new fires were started in the open abdominal cavities of living, eviscerated victims. He paused, clearing his throat. “There’s one more thing. I wasn’t going to mention it because we’re all pretty raw right now, and I don’t really see that there’s anything we can do about it, but . . .” He took a deep breath. “The strongest of the new-fire rituals used children. Young boys, especially.”
“Used them for wh—,” Patience began, then broke off, her face draining of color. She grabbed on to Brandt like she was drowning, digging her fingernails into his skin.
He covered her hand with his own. His stomach clutched sourly, but he said, “The twins are safe.
Iago knows they exist, but there’s no way he can find them. Hannah and Woody are pros at staying hidden.”
Lucius held up his hands. “Sorry. My bad. I was more wondering about the villagers.”
“You think the makol took prisoners,” Brandt grated.
Lucius nodded. “The Aztecs were big on it. They even used to set up mock battles with neighboring kingdoms, as a way of capturing each other’s culls for use as human sacrifices.” He paused. “We don’t know how many kids were in the village. They might’ve captured a dozen, or none. There’s no way of knowing.”
Brandt shook his head, hating the thought, and what it meant. “Iago is escalating. He started with individual murders, and more often than not, he took the time to do something with the body, either posing it like the first old lady, or—” He broke off with a look at Myrinne, because his second example would have been the Wiccan who had raised her. “Then the kidnappings started—Sasha first, then Rabbit and Myrinne, Lucius. . . . We got all of them back, but Sasha and Lucius both saw other prisoners. Then last year, he started leaving his own people to die, first the human acolytes, then other Xibalbans. And now . . .”
“What happened today was different,” Patience agreed.
“The profilers would call it overkill,” Michael put in. And he would know.
“That’s Moctezuma’s influence,” Lucius said. “We’re not just dealing with Iago anymore. He’s something different now, something far more powerful, far more violent.”
Brandt tipped his hand in a ‘maybe’ gesture. “I’m sure that’s part of it, but the pattern was in place before he summoned the demon.” He had watched his fair share of crime-solving TV back in the outside world. “I think he’s been learning as he goes.”
“Iago was the second son,” Patience said, catching on.
He nodded. “Think about it. Werigo was usurped by his younger brother—Saamal—so he probably harped on the ‘trust no one, especially your little brother’ theory when he was raising Ix.” Adrenaline kicked deep down as it came together for him. “But then Werigo died and Ix found himself in charge of a group of dark magi and nasty-ass humans, feeling his little brother breathing down his neck. I’m betting Ix wouldn’t have given Iago any details on anything he didn’t have to. So when Ix died, the information chain was broken. Iago didn’t know all of the magic or plans.” He paused. “I think that up until now he was making shit up as he went along.”
“And now he’s got Moctezuma helping him,” Patience murmured.
“Yeah. Which means it’s only going to get worse from here.” Brandt tightened his grip on her hand.
To Lucius, he said, “Unless you see a problem with that theory.”
“Only that I didn’t think of it first,” the human said drily. Then his expression shifted. “The question is whether we can use it to—” He broke off at the burble of a digital tone.
Patience shot to her feet, fumbling an unfamiliar cell phone out of her back pocket. Flushing, she flipped it open and glanced at the display.
Her face went utterly blank, draining of color.
“Patience?” Brandt rose slowly, confusion turning into something far more uncertain as he connected. It was the phone she’d kept secret from him when they’d lived in the outside world, the one she’d used to talk to Hannah.
Eyes wide and scared, she turned the display so he could see the text. It read: Put it on speaker.
A heartbeat later, the main house phone rang.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Heart hammering, Patience stared at the landline. Jox reached to punch the speaker button, then paused and looked at her. “Okay?”
She was badly afraid that things weren’t okay. Why the text? Why the speaker? Why was Hannah contacting her at all? It had to be her or Woody; they were the only ones who had the private number save for Rabbit, and he was in the room. And Reese Montana, granted, but she wouldn’t be calling after all this time. Which meant it was Hannah or Woody . . . and that knowledge held Patience all but paralyzed.
Good news or bad news? She didn’t know, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
“Do it,” she told Jox, her voice barely above a whisper. Brandt took her hand and moved up behind her, his body warm and solid. The winikin punched the button and the phone emitted the faint snake hiss of live air.
She swallowed hard, then said, “Hannah? Woody?”
“They’re here,” a man’s voice said, “but they can’t talk right now. Someone else wants to say hello.”
Patience’s knees nearly folded as Rabbit lunged to his feet with an inarticulate cry of horror. But even without that confirmation, she knew. She knew. Her stomach lurched and her heart hammered into ovedrive. “Iago.”