chapter 7
Sprawled out on the floor, Chaam’s head lolled from side to side. Maggie was gone. Maggie was gone. Maggie. Was. Gone. And
mind-crippling rage was first on the scene. Self-loathing, the second to arrive. And third…
“Found him!” Cimil stood at the bottom of the steps, happy as an evil clam, pointing at Maggie’s father’s lifeless body.
“F*cking hell, Cimil,” he groaned.
“Wow.” She rolled her head and surveyed the room. “Looks like you had quite the shin-diggedy-dig party. Didn’t know bloodbaths
were back in fashion. Personally, I’m tired of mud, so yippy! It’s my lucky day!”
She was always so damned evil. And late. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I stopped to have this frock-o-licious ensemble made. And by made, I mean I stole it.” She now wore an elaborately beaded white
dress. “My mariachi suit was a loaner, and el Señor Trumpet had a wedding gig. But lucky me, I found this. Boy, did that bride look
pissed. Maybe Señor Trumpet will loan her his outfit.” She grinned. “So, you need some help, yes?”
He scraped himself up off the grimy, blood-soaked floor and charged. She moved to the side, away from his open claw, but wasn’t
fast enough. He slammed her against the wall. “F*ck you. This is your fault. You were supposed to find Maggie’s father.”
“Yeah. Funny you should mention that,” she grunted. “I actually took a peekee-poo into the future and saw all paths led to this one. No
escape.”
He released her. “What are you saying?”
Cimil rubbed her neck. “This was Fate’s plan all along. You were meant to lose Maggie.”
Her words crushed his very soul. “No. This can’t be right. Fate wants me to suffer?”
“Yep! But there are many paths forward potentially ending in your happiness.”
He braced his two arms against the wall next. The air no longer wanted to enter his lungs, but the darkness did. This entire place
was saturated with it, and his agony only seemed to amplify the potency. No wonder Maggie’s father had turned evil. But there might
still be hope for himself. Maybe. He wanted to fight. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is I can reunite you with your precious mortal.”
Could she? Cimil was known for her deception. That said, she was the Goddess of the Underworld. Her powers were an enigma,
even to the gods.
“How?” he asked.
“Simple.” Cimil gyrated her hips.
Un-f*cking-believable. “Are you dancing?”
Still circling her hips and staring off into space, she replied, “Uh-uh. I’ve got a Hula Hoop contest tonight. I’m gonna win this time. I
can feeeel it!”
Chaam raised his open hand. “I don’t know what a Hula Hoop is, but you’re not winning shit without your head.”
She stopped her strange little dance and then rolled her eyes. “Fine! I will prevent Margaret from crossing over into the eternal light
of the universe where she would be recycled—perhaps into a tree or a bullfrog or a chicken potpie. Or a very naughty clown. One
never knows. Then we will find a way to reunite the two of you.”
“Are you telling me she’s… she’s…” A black cloud besieged him, and in that moment, the invisible shackles which had compelled
him to protect the mortal world for thousands of years, snapped. Every. Single. F*cking. One of them.
“Maggie is dead?” Chaam sank down. He’d never imagined such emptiness and despair could exist inside him. It was like a
cancer fed by his rage. A rage that would never cease until he had her back.
He now understood the true meaning of torment. He now understood Maggie’s father.
“Tell me what to do,” he mumbled.
“How far are you willing to go?” Cimil crouched in front of him. A sinister twinkle gleamed in her eyes.
“I would do anything.”
“Peachy! There are two options. One, you reopen the portal with the tablet—good luck with that, by the way—it’s nearly impossible.”
“Impossible?”
“Yes. Impossible. As in almost never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever… ever!”
“I just opened it.”
“Ah! But you see, it only opens once every ten or so cycles on the Day of the Dead, when the sun is just-so in the sky and a tiny frog
hops from one lily pad to the next just as he’s gulping down a fly born precisely twenty-six hours earlier when the temperature of the
air is exactly seventy-two point three degrees and the wind blows at five miles per hour due east, just—and I mean just!—as a man
with a black soul is nearly decapitated by a deity who is in love with his daughter, and the blood pours on a virgin, lying directly over
the tablet, on an altar at the mouth of a giant black jade cave.” Cimil sucked in a deep breath and then scratched the corner of her
mouth. “Or something like that. But I can’t be sure.”
Did she think this was one of her f*cking little games?
Chaam threw Cimil against the slimy stone wall and clamped his hand around her neck. Her legs dangled several feet above the
ground. “Stop. F*cking. With me,” he growled.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she croaked.
“Tell me! How do I reopen the portal?” He knocked her against the wall several times.
“I told you! It’s some mystical algorithm—planets aligning, virgins, blood, tiny creatures eating…. You heard me!”
He thumped her against the wall once more.
She pointed at the altar. “I’m telling the truth. Look at the tablet! The instructions are right there in Maaskabese. If you can decipher
it, you can go anywhere! Backward, forward, side to side, the other side, the outlet stores. Even The Rack. Fabulous, right?”
He released her, and she slid down the wall like butter on a heap of hot pancakes.
Chaam moved to the altar where the young woman—Maggie had called her Itzel, he thought—lay unconscious, bathed in blood—
not hers, thankfully. He slid the tablet out from beneath her head and examined the shimmering black artifact. “Black granite?”
“Jade. From the mine.” Cimil pointed to an opening about four feet in diameter under the stairs. “It’s powerful stuff. I think you’ll find it
… useful for what comes next.”
Chaam’s eyes made a quick sweep. “This is an entrance to a mine?”
Cimil nodded. “The Maaskab’s best kept secret.”
His attention moved back to the tablet. The writing appeared to be Mayan, but he did not recognize the symbols. “What does it say?
”
“I told you what I know.”
Perhaps she told the truth, perhaps not. But he’d known Cimil for seventy thousand years, and whatever information she might have,
she wasn’t going to share. Yet.
“What’s the second option?” he asked.
“Oh boy. After the wall-thumping you just gave me, not sure I want to go there.”
“Tell me!”
“Okaaay, but it’s big. It’s bad. It’s glamorous and icky. Are you suuure you’re willing to do anything to get her back?”
“I’d tear apart the whole f*cking world stone by f*cking stone.”
“Oh goody!” Cimil jumped up and down, clapping. “This really is my lucky day! Because that is exactly what I had in mind!”
Why would she want that? She hadn’t been singled out by the universe for this cruel, horrible fate, for this unbearable, unjust
punishment.
“What’s in this for you, Cimil?”
Her face turned into a tundra of icy starkness. She grabbed him by the arms and sent paralyzing shock waves of searing pain
through his system. “See, brother. See into my eyes. See what the dead have shown me.”
Chaam leaned down and met her gaze, but he would find no visions of the dead. Not today, she thought.
“Let the darkness in, brother,” Cimil commanded with hypnotic waves that burrowed into the depths of his soul. “That’s a good boy.
Just let it in. Think of your precious Maggie, of how much you love her and how she was so cruelly ripped away. Yes, that’s right. Let
all that pain in. Feel the darkness consume you.”
“Yes,” he said with a vacant stare to match his vacant heart. “I will let the darkness in. I understand now.”
Cimil sighed, pushed her head to his chest, and embraced him with teary eyes. “There will be much suffering ahead, brother. And
for this, I am sorry,” she whispered. “But I promise, when this is all over, your soul will be washed clean and Maggie will be waiting
for you.”
Gods, she hoped. This journey would not be an easy one and could backfire a million different ways. One wrong turn, one mistake,
and her plan would go up in a not-so-dramatastic cloud of smoke. Boom. Dead. Everyone. But the dead had shown her what was to
come, and there was no choice but to march forward. In the meantime…
She’d always loved doing bad things! Now was her chance to truly enjoy it; vicariously through Chaam, of course! Because unlike
her, his deity-do-gooder bond with the universe had broken.
Cimil released him. “Fabulous! You’re going to have so much fun! Evil is the new good! We’ll pretend it’s a game—’kay? Evil Cimi
Says.”
“When do we start?” he murmured.
“No time like the present,” she said. “Let’s go find some evil Maaskab and have an evil chat.”