Rip Your Heart Out by Christine Morgan

Author:Christine Morgan [Morgan, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Evil Cookie Publishing
Published: 2022-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

SHARP OBSIDIAN

They came in the dark sleep of Uh’Chuul, when the goddess-moon turned her face away and the god-sun journeyed in the underworld.

They came in the blackest black of midnight, and blood did not placate them.

Screams did not placate them.

Only death. The death that they brought with their tails, their long thin tails.

Stinging like scorpions.

Tickling like quetzal-feathers.

Hot as a white-burning ember.

Colder than the deepest cenote-water.

Xialque ran.

She ran until her legs ached and her lungs throbbed. Until her heart felt as if it must burst within her chest like an over-ripened fruit.

Stones cut her bare feet. Roots struck at her shins and knees. Branches lashed the arm she held bent over her face. Leaf-thorns and barbed vines snagged at her cotton huipil, at her skin and hair.

She ran until she thought she could run no further, and then she ran some more.

T’lat, panting, begged her to stop. If only for a moment’s rest, just to let him catch his breath–

A moment’s rest might be too long. The breath he caught might be his last.

Their mother would not forgive her if she let anything happen to T’lat. Whatever else, she had to look after her brother.

So, ignoring his pleas and protests, she tightened her grip, all but dragging him along.

The air hung heavy, damp and fuming, aromatic. All around them chirred and whirred the sounds of countless insects. Somewhere, night-birds warbled. Monkeys and macaws whooped.

By daylight, Xialque knew this path as well as any near their village. Now, in this blind darkness, it was an unfamiliar terror. Each step risked a fall, a striking snake, a jaguar’s lethal pounce.

Yet, she ran and pulled her brother with her, fleeing from terrors far, far worse.

What had been opened?

What had been let loose?

She remembered the stories told by her elders, stories of Xibalba and its many evils… rivers of pus, houses of slicing blades, ball-courts where human heads were used to play the sacred ball-game of pok-a-tok… the twelve demon lords and their servants… the spirits that lurked in unswept corners or along lonely roads…

Ahead, through tree trunks and dense foliage, she glimpsed the flicker of a torch.

Behind, she heard only silence, though she imagined the whispery rush-flap of strange wings.

Or did she imagine it?

Had they followed?

The zotz’ah?

If that was what they were?

She dared not look back.

T’lat stumbled and cried out. Xialque yanked him up again. A dog began to bark, and then another. Voices rose, questioning.

More torches joined the first. She saw the hunt-camp clearing, wild pigs gutted and hung by their hind feet, flies buzzing over offal piles. A few men and youths had been on guard against hungry scavengers drawn by the butchering-smell; the rest now sprang from their blankets, seizing weapons. The women who’d accompanied the hunters, to cook maize and squash, huddled near the fire with sticks and flint knives.

The sudden appearance of Xialque and her brother, not some prowling jaguar menace or raiding band from an enemy village, came as a shock.

Itz’hil reacted most swiftly, pushing past older hunters, catching Xialque as her legs finally gave way.

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