CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR JAGUAR TEMPLE CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE

JAGUAR TEMPLE

CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE

January 10

Pressing his back against the stone wall of the cell, Roth came to his feet slowly. He gripped the dart tightly in his hand. He couldn’t see a whorl of kem ?m swirling around Jacob. Was Jacob so confident he’d win? Was it just hubris, or was it earned? He kept his eyes focused on his enemy’s. In his peripheral vision, he saw Brower slowly rise as well. It was two against one. The other warriors had already taken their captives away.

Roth was a bigger man than Calakmul. Force was a function of weight and speed. If he moved fast, he might be able to knock Jacob down. And he had Brower, who obviously had much better training than he did. It might work.

“Well?” Jacob challenged. “Will you die without resisting? I thought you better men than this.”

Brower attacked first. He lunged across the small gap of the cell, hand reaching for Jacob’s wrist.

Jacob sidestepped the attack, which put Brower in between Roth and himself. He drew a symbol in the air with his hand—the one with the glowing ring—and Brower slammed into the wall.

“I can’t see!” Brower gasped.

“But you’re an FBI agent,” Calakmul quipped. “You’ve trained for this moment!” He struck a blow to the side of Brower’s head.

Roth took a quick breath and charged. He just needed to nick Calakmul’s skin with the dart. One little nick, and the man would be paralyzed in seconds. With his forearm raised in front of him like a battering ram, Roth tried to collide with Jacob, but the jaguar priest was impossibly fast. He didn’t evade the attack—he came right at Roth with his own body, and it felt like slamming into one of the stone stela statues throughout the temple grounds. Roth’s teeth rattled. He tried to jab the needle into Jacob’s exposed arm but found his own momentum blunted when Jacob seized his wrist with his other hand. Roth tried to lever him backward, but he couldn’t move the other man, not even an inch.

Brower kicked backward, trying to catch Jacob unaware.

But again, the jaguar priest anticipated the attack and swiveled just slightly, drawing Roth into the path of the kick. The shoe struck Roth in his hip painfully, and he grunted.

Jacob squeezed Roth’s wrist and torqued it. Involuntarily, Roth’s fingers opened, and the dart dropped to the ground. His heart sank.

“You thought you could best me?” Jacob hissed in Roth’s face. “You?” He slammed his knee into Roth’s groin, knocking the wind out of him and causing a stomachache that was debilitating. Roth groaned again, unable to breathe, unable to even stand.

Brower attacked again. He was fighting blind, but he lunged at Jacob, who dodged his various blows and kicks, returning punches to ribs, kidneys, kneecaps, and other sensitive spots. Roth hugged his own body, struggling to breathe, watching the one-sided fight continue until it ended abruptly. Then he saw the dart on the ground by his hand. His whole body ached with agony, but he grabbed it.

“Fight me!” Jacob roared. “Have you nothing left in you? I will kill millions in your country. I will burn your precious Constitution like the Spanish burned the codices. Fight! This is your only chance to win!”

Roth was going to throw up. The kick to the groin had ruined him, and now that he had an injured hand, he felt utterly helpless. He was on his knees. And that’s exactly what Calakmul wanted him to feel. This was part of his revenge.

Brower slumped against the far wall, breathing heavily. He was in pain too.

They were not fighting a normal, mortal man. The quickness, the strength—these were all augmented by Maya magic. There was no way they could beat him. Roth doubted even someone from the elite Special Forces could, despite their years of training. Hadn’t they seen the proof at the White House?

Roth swallowed, trying not to throw up. It took every bit of willpower not to. The dizziness, the pain was the worst he’d ever felt. But he kept himself from vomiting. A small victory.

Lifting his head, he looked up at Jacob’s angered face.

“We can’t beat you,” Roth said, stifling a groan. “I knew we couldn’t. You wanted it this way.”

“It didn’t have to end this way, Mr. Roth. I gave you a chance to protect your family. You would have had power and riches beyond belief. But you chose to rise against me. To spite me. You will be very alive when I wrench your heart out. Your family will suffer too. Because of you.”

Roth had made his choice, and he couldn’t undo it. He wouldn’t, even if he could. He glared at Calakmul. “I knew I couldn’t win. But I also know that neither can you.”

“I’ve already won,” Jacob snarled.

“Huracán won the last round. But he’s losing this one. The Jaguar Prophecies weren’t about you, Calakmul. Kukulkán is coming. And you can’t stop him.”

“You pretend to know our history. You know nothing,” Jacob seethed.

“What is history?” Roth shot back, cradling his injured arm. His body throbbed with pain. “It’s more than a set of lies agreed upon. Napoléon had it wrong. He may have won battle after battle, but in the end he lost. And so will you. When the story of this world is told, your name won’t even make a footnote.”

Roth couldn’t hurt Calakmul with his fists. Or a dart. But he could hurt him with words. He saw the rage in the man’s face, and then he felt the blows rain down on him. He slumped to the ground, twitching as the blows came, but there was no pain. He realized, startlingly, that Jacob could no longer hurt him. A thought memory flickered in his mind before he fell unconscious, of how the human brain released certain chemicals before death to ease someone’s suffering. He’d heard it in a talk a long time ago, a talk about a zebra dragged into a lion’s den. There was something innate in a living body that tried to protect it before that last moment. Had evolution and nature instilled that particular pharmaceutical? Or was something else at work? He’d always wondered if it was true.

And he wondered, as the blackness enfolded him, if he would ever wake up again.

He did.

The sound of arguing voices roused him from the stupor. Spoken in English. That was confusing. Roth’s entire body ached. His hand was sore, possibly broken. He sensed that immediately. He felt like he’d been walloped with a baseball bat. If there weren’t bruises now, there would be, all over his back, his arms, his hip.

Of course, he likely wouldn’t survive long enough to see them form.

Roth couldn’t open his eyes, so he just listened, trying to understand the voices rattling through his skull. It didn’t smell like the dungeon. The air hung with the scents of incense, cooked meat—even xocolatl, which made him crave a sip of the drink for its restorative powers.

“What else have you lied to me about? I’ve heard fighter planes flying over the jungle. Why haven’t you summoned a storm to drive them off?” It was a man’s voice that Roth didn’t recognize.

“I will in due time!” Jacob answered angrily. “They cannot get through our shield. And I want them to watch what happens. I want the satellites to see it!”

“But it isn’t President Parker!” yelled the other man. “That’s one of Wright’s deputies. You have the wrong man!”

Roth suspected the fellow was American. He might even be Senator Coudron’s friend, the one who had come to Cancún to escape the end times.

“What matters is the ceremony,” Jacob countered. “The message that despite their technology, their bombs, their missiles, they cannot reach us. They cannot stop us. He’s just a man in a suit. That’s all I need.”

“You promised me—”

Roth heard the smack of a fist against flesh. He struggled to open his eyes, managing it to some extent, but the images were foggy. He saw someone go down on his knees, holding his mouth and a cut lip.

“Your pitiful rank means nothing here!” Jacob shouted at the man cowering before him. “You are nothing more than one of the pitiful Aztec nobility who suffered baptism by a Catholic priest after switching sides. I honor my promises, but you disgust me, Senator. And you try my patience too far. Leave before I decide to sacrifice you as well.”

Roth’s vision cleared, and he saw a man wearing the ceremonial cedar armor and feathers, like the kind Roth had been dressed in for the death game. He barely recognized the senator from Texas, oiled and tanned and looking very out of place in a Maya outfit, with golden wrist bands and necklaces. The fake tan looked awful. Had it been sprayed on?

Roth blinked up at Jacob. He wore his ceremonial attire as well, looking as he had during the death game. Brower was gone. Roth twisted his neck, trying to get a view and felt his lower back stab in agony.

“Get out!” Jacob shouted, gesturing to what was presumably a door.

The senator skulked away. They were in the throne room of the palace. Servants were standing aside, exchanging worried glances. They didn’t know English. But they’d seen enough to realize their guest was now in disgrace.

Jacob turned and looked at Roth with repugnance. He said something in Mayan and gestured at Roth.

He heard the soft padding of feet approach him.

“They will carry you to the top of the pyramid, Mr. Roth. You are in no condition to climb it yourself. I want you to watch the first execution before it is your turn. I want there to be no clouds to block the scene from the satellites. I want them to see you die, Mr. Roth. And feel the helplessness of what is coming for them.”

Roth wheezed in pain as they hoisted him from beneath his arms. Was his back broken too? He didn’t know, but his legs hurt terribly. They didn’t care about his discomfort.

Roth folded into the fetal position as they carried him, arms tight against his sides, muscles clenched, his knees bent toward his chest. His leg spasmed, and he reached down to knuckle the muscle as he groaned.

It hurt to move, but he wanted to see if his plan had worked. If he’d angered Jacob sufficiently to cause him to forget to search for the other darts in Roth’s clothes.

He felt a single dart still in his pocket.

If he could disable Jacob, just for a moment, the tables might turn. He had enemies who would leap at a sign of weakness.

Roth hoped he still had a chance to turn the tide.