Antonio’s expression was grim, and all the color drained from his face. “My man.” He pressed his hand against his chest. “The fire expanded some.”
“Some?”
“It’s still weak.”
“I…I stole the life from my…” It sounded so much worse out loud. Antonio wouldn’t understand. No one would. I felt like a murderer. “I sacrificed Fuego for nothing!” I’d come here for nothing!
“Not for nothing. You came with a single purpose, one goal. But goals change, whether we like it or not. The hand of destiny is strong, and you came here to give enough life to the flame to buy us some time. To save centuries of magic from being destroyed. That ain’t nothin’.”
“The Red Queen lied. She told me that if I came here I…I would change the future for the better.”
“How do you know you haven’t? That’s why it’s called the future. We can’t see what’s around the bend.” Antonio picked up another guitar and strummed some chords. “Let’s say I could’ve granted you one wish and one only. Even if I had the power to change Hurakan’s execution, would you have used your one request to save his life? Or the godborns? Your own life? Would you have chosen to end wars and stop bloodshed? Which future would you choose to change? Just remember…one wrong choice, no matter how pure your intentions, can lead to disaster. It’s called cause and effect, my man, and it can be brutal.”
My voice rose a couple of notches. “You did this for you!” I cried. Smoke trailed from my mouth and nose. “Because if the flame dies, you probably do, too.”
“Death is only another form of being. My job isn’t to get all hung up on what happens to me or how this all ends. Get it?” Antonio’s fingers plucked the air. “Now, you must play the notes to hear the song. But I can tell you this. Beware. There is a traitor among you.”
“Who?” It had to be Ah-Puch! Then another horrible thought occurred to me. My heart sank to the lowest level of Xib’alb’a. Ren wasn’t the traitor, was she? Was this what she’d been trying to tell me back in San Miguel? Did it have something to do with her special magic?
“I will try to keep the flame going for as long as I can. I cannot tell you more without affecting decisions and consequences,” Antonio said. “But I can give you this.”
He opened his palm and blew into it. A tiny vortex of smoke swirled to life like a mini hurricane. Slowly, it spun toward me in dizzying circles. I ducked to avoid a collision, but it was too late. The smoke swirled up my nose. My brain fired off a burst of white light behind my eyes, and, in an instant, I knew not only the exact location of where the godborns were being kept, but also the details of how to get in and out. They were a couple hundred miles from my old backyard in New Mexico. Then the picture changed, and I saw Hurakan kneeling on the top of a rounded pyramid under a starless sky. Two shadowy figures stood over him.
One held a gleaming ax.
I floated away from Land’s End on Chiquita’s back with two distinct sounds ringing in my ears: Antonio’s stupid words, and some very loud guitar banging. It might sound like fun to cruise on a massive stone dinosaur across the Sea of Cortés…. It wasn’t. Not when your brain feels like it’s got a slow leak and, with every mile, the memories of Antonio, his place, Fuego…all seemed to drift farther and farther away. It was like walking backward through a hazy dream. All I could remember when I finally collapsed on the beach was that something had been broken and something had been repaired. Two words drifted into my subconscious: creator and destroyer.
* * *
This next part isn’t from my own memory. I pretty much had to take Ren’s and Ah-Puch’s word for it. They said they found me at dawn, passed out on the beach. I (supposedly) woke up mumbling stuff about wars, blood, paper, dragons, and the Beast.
The first thing I remember was waking up on the sofa back in our hotel room. I sat up, rubbing my head, trying to recall what had happened and how I’d gotten there. I was relieved when I heard Ren’s voice.
“He’s awake.”
She leaned over me. Rosie was sniffing and grunting trails of thick smoke while licking my face.
“What…what happened?” My mouth was as dry as a cotton ball and tasted like I’d eaten out of a dirty ashtray.
Ah-Puch sighed. “It’s about time you decided to wake up. We’ve been under siege, and you sleep?”
“Siege?”
“More bats,” Ren said. “Rosie incinerated most of them down on the beach. And A.P. wouldn’t even let me give them a funeral.”
A.P.? She had a nickname for the god of death?
“Burned the beasts so bad, there was no blood left for me,” Ah-Puch complained. He looked around anxiously. “We need to go now, and quickly. Where to?”
The words came without me even thinking about them. “New Mexico.”
Ah-Puch muttered, “Such cruelty.”
“Are you sure?” Ren asked me. “How do you know?”
I stretched my memory in four different directions, searching for the answer. The last thing I remembered was a boat and a dramatic, over-the-top god…. What was his name?
Ah-Puch frowned and looked around nervously. He’d aged again. I mean, not as bad as the little bald viejo coughing up blood. More like a leather-skinned middle-aged dude with a really bad receding hairline who’d smoked and drunk all his days away.