Life Blood---XXVIII---Page No 105

off, and the result was he slid away, then vanished into the dark
rain.

It's her final act of self-destruction. She's joined me in my

rage, but we've both been spared. That's the miracle of Baalum.
        "Sar, don't move." I finally found my voice. I was still holding
Tz'ac Tzotz, who'd begun to shriek, his blue eyes flooded with
fear.

Now several village men from the square were running,

shouting, up the slippery steps. Their faces looked like they'd

been painted at one time, but now the rain had washed most of it
away.

While I yelled down to Sarah, again begging her not to move,
Marcelina was asking them something, and their answers were
tumbling out.

Finally I turned to look at her, the screaming Tz'ac Tzotz still in my arms.

"No one knows where he is," she was saying as she looked down over the side. "He's gone into the forest."
        "Good." I pulled Tz'ac Tzotz to me and kissed him, trying to
tell him to calm down. It wasn't working.

"Marcelina, here, please hold him. I've got to get down to
Sarah."

She took him. Then I walked over to where his mother lay

bleeding on the stones. The woman wasn't moving, the obsidian
knife still protruding from her chest. She'd saved me, but now
death had taken her. There was nothing anyone could do.

I was trembling, but I turned and began easing myself over

the side of the stone platform and onto the first tier of the pyramid.
        "Sar, don't move." I inched my way across to her. "Just
stay still." The rain was pouring again, but the electric bloom of
sparks and flames from the direction of the clinic was unabated. It would be completely gutted. Was Steve awake enough to get out? He'd seemed alert when I left him.

"Morgy, is that you?" She was holding out her fingers. "I can't see you. Where are—?"

"I'm here, Sar. Right here." I reached down and took her
hand, which was deathly cold. "Come on. Let me help you get
up."

Carefully, leaning against the wet stones of the side of the pyramid, I gradually pulled her to her feet and away from the treacherous edge. Then it hit me what she'd said.

"Sar, what do you mean, you can't see me?"

"I'm okay. It's just . . ." She was gripping my hand now, and then she brushed against the stone side of the pyramid and put out her other hand to cling to it. "Morgy, I took it again. To go to their sacred place. But sometimes you can only see visions and then after a while everything goes blank."

That bastard. Alex Goddard had given her the drug again. Now she was lost in a world of colored lights, a place I'd just traveled through myself. She probably had no idea she'd just pushed him off the pyramid and into the dark.

"Your hand feels so soft," she was saying. "You're like warm
honey."

"Sar, try to walk. We're going to turn a corner and then we'll

be at the back of the pyramid. Next we'll come to some steps, and then we're going down."

As I inched our way along, scarcely able to keep our footing because of the rain, I wondered again about Steve. Please, God, let him be all right.

When we finally got to the steps, Marcelina was there,

standing expectantly, holding Tz'ac Tzotz. He was still crying, intermittent sobs.

"He belongs to you now," she said, holding him out for me. "It's what she wished.

"What—?" I took him before I realized what I was doing.

As I cradled him, gazing down at his tender little face, I

realized he truly was Sarah all over again. And I was so glad she
couldn't see him. Never, I thought, she must never, ever know.
        I finally forced myself to place him back into Marcelina's arms.
        "You've got no idea how much I want him, but I can't. Let one
 of these women give him her milk, have a twin for her own child."
        For that wrenching moment I'd held the very baby my heart
longed for. But he was the last one on earth I could have. Just go,
take Sarah and find Steve and go as far from Baalum as you can,
before you lose your compass and do something terribly selfish.
        "Marcelina," I said, reaching to hug her, "tell them these
'sacred' children are all from his medico. Look up 'in vitro' in your
dictionary. That's all it is."

She hugged me back, though I wasn't sure whether she

understood. Then I asked her to take Sarah's hand for a moment
while I went back up the steps to the platform. I felt a primal anger
as I took one last look at the women Alex Goddard had wronged,
now clustered around the body of Tz'ac Tzotz's mother. Then I