Page 171 of Empire of Shadows

Blast it anyway, she determined fiercely. Ellie rose and plunged her hand into the smooth, dark beans—then bit back a curse at a quick sting on her finger.

Lessard’s warning came back to her.It might bite.

She pushed her hand deeper more slowly—and brushed against something that was most certainlynotcoffee beans.

Ellie grasped it carefully, and then drew it out of the bag as the beans rustled softly around it.

She found herself eyeing the familiar, gleaming shape of Adam’s machete.

There was a new clamor of voices from outside the storehouse. Ellie dropped back and pressed herself against the crates as Jacobs’ voice cut to her from just outside the building.

“What is this?” he snapped.

“We found this old goat lurking outside the camp,” another voice replied. It belonged to one of Jacobs’ armed men. Ellie worked to place it and pictured a shorter man with an unpleasant smile—Price, perhaps? He usually patrolled with Buller, who was larger and had a noticeably big nose.

“But is he…fromthis place?” she heard Buller ask, sounding uncomfortable.

“Nobody is from this place,” Price scoffed.

“Why are you here?” Jacobs demanded coldly.

Ellie shivered at howclosehe sounded as she clutched Adam’s machete to her chest.

“I came to deliver a warning,” a familiar voice replied.

Ellie risked a peek around the corner of the crates… where she saw Padre Kuyoc looking up at the taller figure of Jacobs with an expression of cool defiance.

But what on earth was the priest from Santa Dolores doinghere?

Kuyoc was dressed like a diminutive Mayan Don Quixote. Over his plain shirt and trousers, he wore a bizarre homemade breastplate made of clattering rows of hollow reeds woven together with wiry cords.

“A warning from whom?” Jacobs dryly pressed.

“From the dead,” Kuyoc replied and flashed him a knife-sharp grin.

A few of the men by the fire exchanged looks at his reply, shifting uncomfortably.

“They know why you are here,” the priest continued relentlessly with his gaze locked onto Jacobs. “They know what you seek. And they have charged me with telling you that if you try to take it from this place, all the beasts of Hell will be unleashed upon you.”

Kuyoc raised his voice, pitching it out over the scattered men.

“I have seen Death sweeping down from the sky to claim the blood of the damned,” he called out boldly. “And none shall escape its wrath if the secrets of this place are profaned!”

Ellie blinked with surprise. Adam had warned her that Kuyoc had expressed some fantastical beliefs about the region of the wilderness in which Tulan was concealed, but the priest had also struck her as decidedly rational and clear-thinking.

Had she been mistaken in her impression… or was something else going on here?

“Tie him up and leave him with the mules,” Jacobs ordered flatly, and then walked away.

Price bound the priest’s hands behind him with a length of rope. The man’s bizarre breastplate clunked as the guard jerked him into position. The tenor of the sound was odd. Dry, hollow reeds should have given off a noise more like a clatter than a dull thunk.

Ellie set the thought aside. There were more immediate things to worry about.

With another peek to ensure that the attention of the men was still focused on Kuyoc, she darted back into the ruined hallway and crept through it until she hopped out into the overgrown alley. Ellie picked her way behind the looming structures, rounding the courtyard until she reached the place where they had deposited the priest.

The mules shifted uneasily in their nearby corral as she slipped back up to the plaza, which was bordered on this side by a low stone wall. One of the animals brayed, and Ellie ducked back behind the barrier, keeping her head below the stones until the beasts had settled.

Slowly, she peered over the wall. The men by the fire had gone back to quietly talking among themselves. A few of them glanced up nervously at the occasional gusts of damp wind that unsettled the leaves of the nearby trees. Behind them, Jacobs gave low, authoritative orders to Buller and Price as more of the men filtered back from the now-concluded fight by the pit of bones.

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