Page 205 of Empire of Shadows

“I’m fine,” she assured him unevenly. “Keep going.”

He didn’t believe her. The fact of it was written clearly on his face—but they were running out of time.

Adam hauled himself up the side of a god with a dog skull instead of a face. Ellie approached the next statue.

This one was some sort of bat. Black wings extended out from either side of it, pointed and leathery. Red eyes caught the torchlight and flickered it back at her.

They looked like glass… or maybe rubies. Were there rubies in British Honduras?

Ellie’s thoughts drifted into possible trade routes.

She shook off the haze and forced herself to climb. Her hands gripped soft fur and leathery skin.

Ellie suppressed a yelp—and realized that it was only wood, lightly textured by some expert, long-dead hand. It had not felt like wood… which meant that she was starting to hallucinate.

Hallucination was one of the more advanced symptoms of heat stroke.

The bat god had fangs. They were long and wickedly pointed.

Yes, Ellie thought distantly. That made sense.

The fangs were not wood. When she touched them, she felt bone.

Perhaps she was hallucinating again.

She reached the back of the bat’s neck and found the flute. The note it sounded was a screech nearly too high in pitch for her ears to hear it.

Ellie collapsed back to the ground, too weary and disoriented to climb. The air was so hot—too hot.

She threw herself against the lever. It gave under her weight and clanked down. More noises ground from within the walls.

There was still no way out.

Ellie slumped down on the ground beside the lever.

No—she had to keep going.

She dragged herself to her feet and stumbled to the final statue. The skull-faced woman was framed by a halo of golden feathers and draped in rich, colorful robes.

Ellie had seen her before—painted onto a cheap paper card set in a wooden frame on an altar in Santa Dolores, honored with flowers and candles.

“Santa Muerte,” Ellie gasped as her head spun dangerously.

It seemed that the skull-faced woman nodded, as regal as a queen accepting her tribute.

Ellie set her hands on the goddess’s knees and pushed herself up. She climbed the figure slowly—a hand to her silk-covered shoulder, a foot on her skeletal hand. She wrapped her arms around the statue’s back, clinging to her like an exhausted child as she pulled herself the last bit of distance to her goal.

Her eyes rested on the back of Death’s throat.

The bone was broken.

Shadows crept into the sides of her vision. They swarmed there, dancing and shifting. The scope of what she could see narrowed, and Ellie wavered unsteadily.

Her arms gave way. She slid into Santa Muerte’s lap, and then fell to the ground as the monsters around her blurred into a kaleidoscope of flower petals and rot.

Adam’s face hovered above her. The familiar lines of it were drawn with concern.

“Damn it,” he cursed.

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