Page 232 of Empire of Shadows

His eyes narrowed as he took a more careful, dangerous look around the room.

Ellie forced herself to breathe. The lanterns only offered so much light in the vast, shadowy space, leaving plenty of places for them to conceal themselves.

Jacobs didn’t bother to search. Instead, he stalked over to Staines and plucked Adam’s Winchester from the guard’s limp hands.

Staines startled, almost falling backwards, even as Ellie flinched at Jacobs’ abrupt proximity.

Calmly, Jacobs put the rifle to his shoulder and pointed it through a gap in the men to where Kuyoc stood, still keeping up his Yucatec monologue.

“Aww hell,” Adam muttered—and vaulted over the stones into Jacobs’ back.

Adam’s impact sent the pair of them sprawling. The rifle flew from Jacobs’ hands, skidding across the floor.

Jacobs twisted like a fish in Adam’s grasp and whipped a knife from his sleeve.

Buller and Price whirled. They raised their rifles as Staines scrambled across the floor toward the Winchester. Adam gripped Jacobs’ knife-hand as the pair of them rolled across the floor.

Nobody fired, though Ellie watched the rifle barrels track Adam’s progress across the ground. He and Jacobs were twisting around too quickly for a safe shot—but that wouldn’t last. Either someone would find a clear way to put a bullet into Adam, or one of them would wise up and jump into the brawl to change the odds.

Between the fight and Kuyoc’s fish-themed chant by the water—nobody in the chamber was looking at the mirror.

I have given you a weapon.Find out how to use it, the priest had said… and suddenly the meaning of his words snapped into place.

Ellie balked. The priest’s plan was insane. Maybe impossible.

But it wasn’t as though she had any better ideas.

Ellie sprinted across the floor of the cavern with Adam’s machete in her hand. She threw herself against the squat pillar that held the mirror.

Her body slammed up against the truncated stalagmite and she found herself staring down at a flawless, liquidly smooth piece of perfectly black stone.

It was perhaps four feet across. Her guano-streaked, abraded face shone back at her from the surface of it, framed by the reflection of the jagged stalactites overhead. They looked like teeth opening to eat her.

If you want to see through the eye of the gods, you must pay for it in blood.

Ellie felt a quick panic as she recalled Kuyoc’s instructions. Whose blood?

A gun went off behind her. The bullet chipped against the stones of the ceiling. Little shards of them rained down.

Her thoughts lurched to her knowledge of Mesoamerican cultures. There was strong evidence for the practice of human sacrifice—never minding the pile of the dead that she had climbed over to get here—but far more frequently in the iconography of the Mayan world, one saw images of priests piercing their own tongues or extremities to make sacred offerings to the gods.

And after all, there was only one source of blood Ellie had on hand.

Wincing in anticipation, Ellie raised the machete and sliced the blade lightly down her arm.

Adam kept his knife sharp. Blood welled up in a rich, red ribbon that unfurled across the pale surface of her skin.

It streamed to her elbow. The first drop of it quivered there, suspended—and then plopped down onto the mirror.

It landed with an impossible hiss. A tiny wisp of smoke curled up from the surface.

Smoke?

It had to be some sort of chemical reaction—but obsidian wasn’t a volatile mineral. Nothing in it could react with blood.

Dawson’s voice cut through the air.

“Get that woman away from the artifact!”

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