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January 10
Suki’s heart thumped with the sound of the bullets deflecting off the web of kem äm. Her powers were strong when certain planets or the moon was in sight. The times she’d practiced in the ball court, she’d been able to do more, lift heavy things, control multiple items all at once. In the tomb-like corridors beneath the temple, her connection with the magic was more limited. And it didn’t help that they were near the source of a totally evil magic.
The jaguar priest was also protected from their bullets, which were still ricocheting like burning coals through the corridor. Suki watched the jaguar, trying to see him through the hail of ammunition. The stone door that had blocked the mirror room continued to grind open.
Suki glanced at Jordan, his rifle raised but not firing. He looked deadly serious as he glanced back and forth between the jaguar and the mirror room.
“We’re in between,” he said in a low voice to her. “Not a good spot to be in.”
She noticed two hand grenades poking out from the front pockets on his vest. She knew the basics. Pull the pin. Boom. The jaguar priests inside the room wouldn’t be expecting it.
“Roll a grenade in there when I tell you,” she said, hooking her thumb and pointing underneath the stone door. “I’d rather collapse their room than ours.”
Jordan grinned and let go of his rifle, which was hanging from his shoulder by a strap. He yanked the grenade out of his pocket and pulled the pin, holding on to the safety lever.
“Four seconds,” he told her.
Suki nodded and held up her hand to count. One, two, three. “Now!”
Jordan released the safety lever, and Suki used the bracelet to draw any kem äm from the other side of the stone door into it. Motes of golden dust swarmed her hand.
There was no protection on the other side, but it could be reinstated if they didn’t act quickly enough.
“Roll it!” she urged to Jordan.
He counted silently in his head and then did a softball underhand throw and rolled the grenade beneath the stone door. Suki put up a shield in the gap to protect them from the explosion.
The blast rocked the corridor, just a dull tremor. The tunnel was made of solid stone. Suki’s shield defending them from the jaguar priest came down. Their attacker, a man once more, rushed forward. He jammed a dagger into the neck of one of the soldiers before she could raise another one.
Suki saw the motes swirling around him, drawn to her hand, and ripped the magic away from him.
“Now!” she shouted.
“Fire!” Jordan ordered. Before he could lift his own rifle, one of the other soldiers with a handgun shot the jaguar priest point blank in the chest with three rounds. The popping noises from the gun weren’t what Suki had been expecting, but the results were instant. The priest’s face gaped with shock and pain, and then he fell on his back, writhing, struggling to breathe, blood blooming from his chest wounds.
The army guy who’d been stabbed fell to his knees, blood dripping through his fingers. Suki rushed to him and put her hands on him, invoking the healing magic. This was her strength, not fighting. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see the blood. Tapping into the magic thrumming inside her, she filled the soldier with healing energy.
When she opened her eyes again, he was healed. He stared at her, dumbfounded, patting his neck above his body armor where the blade had gotten through.
Then he grinned. “You . . . you healed me!”
Suki smiled back and turned to look at the stone maw leading to the room where the mirrors had been. All she could see was stone dust swirling against the kem äm. The feeling of dark magic was gone. The grenade had broken all the obsidian mirrors in the room. It had killed whichever jaguar priests were in there too.
“We did it,” she gasped.
“Did what?” Jordan wanted to know.
“The mirrors are broken. They can’t get out.”
One of the other soldiers, Killian, was standing over the jaguar priest. The man wasn’t breathing anymore, his face gone slack. He was dead.
“If Suki hadn’t put up a shield, we’d all have died,” Jordan said, panning his glance across the group of soldiers. “Got that?”
“We need to leave,” Angélica insisted. “More will come.”
“Lead the way,” Suki said.
They went back down the corridor they had come from, and Suki released the kem äm at the stone door. The tunnel was narrow and confined, and then it hit a fork. Angélica led them through the twisting tunnels, going up as soon as they encountered stairs. They were climbing higher now. Did that mean they were near the surface of the pyramid?
