Life Blood---XXVIII---Page No 104



spewing spikes of flame, orange and yellow, dancing over the top
of the clinic. There was a finality about it that momentarily took my
breath away.
Then it hit me. Steve's in there. It was a horror that, in my
initial shock, I couldn't actually process, the thought just hovering
in the recesses of my brain defying me to accept it.
        Then Alex Goddard turned back, shouting at the Army men in
rapid Spanish—I recognized the word for fire—that galvanized them
to action. They snapped out of their mental paralysis and headed
down the pyramid, toward two Land Rovers parked at the back.
        Next he turned around and fixed his gaze on me. At last he
knew / knew he was capable of unspeakable evil, and I knew he
knew I would do everything in my power to stop him.
        "All my records." His voice sounded as though it was coming
from another world, and it held a sadness that touched even me.
"You have no idea what's been lost."
He was distraught, but also obsessed. With his wild mane of hair, he did, finally, look like Shiva the Destroyer. He stalked over and seized the obsidian knife, then turned toward me.
I looked for something to defend myself with. The bassinets,
which I might have used as a shield were gone. I only had my
bare hands.
I had to get away from him, get down the pyramid and find Sarah and Steve. But as I started toward the front steps, the women were all clustered there, blocking my way.
Then, for no reason I could understand the mother of Tz'ac
Tzotz stepped out of the group and handed me her baby, saying
something in Kekchi Maya and reaching to touch my cheek.
I was so startled I took the bundle that was Sarah's child. But then I thought, No! Alex Goddard will just kill him too.
        "She said he must not harm you," Marcelina whispered
moving beside me. "You are the special one. She wants you to give her child back to Kukulkan."
She still believes, I realized. They all do.
Holding Tz'ac Tzotz, my eyes fixed on Alex Goddard, I’d
entirely failed to notice a new presence on the pyramid a ghostlike waif in a white shift who now stood silently in the doorway of the stone room. Sarah!
Marcelina had said she'd wanted to come for the ceremony. She was being helped to stand by the two Maya women who'd fed me the atole. Somehow, she'd gotten them to bring her.





"Morgy, are you there?" Sarah asked gazing up at the rainy
skies, the downpour soaking her blond hair, her eyes unblinking.
At that moment, I felt we'd joined become one person—me the
dogged rational half who'd just gone over the line, her the spiritual
part that needed to float, to fly free. "I wanted to be with—"
        "Sar, get back," I yelled and started to go to her, but there
wasn't time. Now Alex Goddard was moving toward me holding
the knife, as though tracking a prey, oblivious to Sarah, to
everything. He'd concentrated all his hatred on me and me alone,
and I hated him back as much. Death hovered between us,
waiting to see whom to take.
But then the woman who had borne Tz'ac Tzotz said
something in Kekchi Maya, pointing back at me and her child, and
lunged at him. They collided together in the rain and next she slid
down, first seizing his leg, then losing her grip and slipping onto
the stones, her long black hair askew in the hovering smoke.
She's trying to save me, I realized. Why—?
Then I saw Sarah pull away from the women supporting her and slowly move across the platform.
"Morgy . . ."
She was walking in the direction of Alex Goddard, but then she stumbled over the fallen woman's leg and her hand went down as she sprawled across her. She must have touched
something, because she recoiled backward, and only then did I notice the flare of a torch glinting off the obsidian knife now
protruding from the woman's chest.
Sarah rose up, her eyes full of anger, and awkwardly flung her
arms, searching. I could feel the passion that had been pent up all
those months she lay in the coma, feeding her madness. She
managed to catch hold of Alex Goddard's arm, and they began an
awkward minuet, neither realizing how close they were to the
stone platform's edge. I stood mesmerized a moment, then
dashed toward them, but only in time to watch them vanish into
the rain and haze. It was as though there had been some sleight
of hand. One second they were there and the next they weren't.
At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but then I
realized it was real. They were gone.
"Sarah!"
I reached the side in time to see them land on the first tier of
stones below. She'd fallen near the edge, but she was solid and
safe. Alex Goddard, however, hit with one foot on and one foot

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