Page 51 of Queen Takes Blood
“I don’t know how. When I regained consciousness, I was in a dark place underground. I crawled for days, it seemed, until I found my way out.”
“Where?” I bit off, though I lowered the blade from his neck. A little threatening I didn’t mind, especially when he’d been a party to the atrocities committed on my mother. But I didn’t dare get too used to Zuma’s knife in my hand. “Show me.”
I glanced over at the human, silently checking to see that she was still alive. Her pulse was steadier. I hoped that she would live to see the dawn. Once I saw to Tlacel, I’d come back for her and at least make sure she escaped the ruins. I turned back to Seti, and found him staring at me, his cheeks wet with tears.
“Your mother…”
My eyes narrowed to slits and I lifted the knife back toward his face, wrapping my other hand around his nape. “Be very careful what you say, tlapalantli.”Filth.
“We never learned how she escaped.”
I moved the tip of the blade closer to his eye. “I’m listening.”
Seti gulped. “We kept her here at first. This is the best palace in the entire city, even now as it decays. But we were only allowed to…” He breathed shallowly, rapidly, his eyes flickering from the knife to my face and back. “Keep her. Until the full moon. Then she was supposed to transform.”
Urgency hammered in my skull. I didn’t have time for a horrible history lesson of how they kidnapped, raped, and tortured queens, but if there was something that could help me save Tlacel… “Zuma said your queen is also papalotl.”
“Queen Oxomo’s line failed to have an heir of her blood long ago, but the Great Goddess’s power lives on in Teotihuacan. She can transform any queen into a queen of her line, but in exchange, she lives as Queen Tocatl, unable to shift back to her prior form. It’s been done many times. Zuma knew exactly what we needed to do, though I had never actually seen it done. We were supposed to impregnate her, either with an heir or future Blood of our line, and then the current Queen Tocatl was supposed to take the sacrifice into her lair. None of us knew what happened after that, but Zuma said he found me as a baby crying on top of the Pyramid of the Sun. He sent me to a local village to foster with humans. I’m not sure where Tecuani or Iztcoatl fostered.”
“So there’s access to the Tocatl realm via the Pyramid of the Sun.” I lowered the blade and gave him a shove toward the exit back down to the plaza. “Let’s go.”
“Of course, alpha, but you can’t access it.”
I gritted my teeth, fighting down the urge to send his head rolling down the stairs. “I’m not your fucking alpha. Sacrifice should open any portal or gateway. Let’s see if your heart on the stones will open the way.”
“Your mother disappeared.” Seti stumbled along ahead of me, though he paused at the edge of the courtyard, pointing back over his shoulder. “From over there. The Palace of Quetzalpapalotl. She didn’t come through the courtyard to escape or we would have seen her.”
Papalotl. Again. “Show me.”
Seti hurried back across the courtyard toward one of the many doorways, only to reveal steps down into a subterranean level. He paused at the bottom of the steps to light a torch. His hands were shaking so much it took him several tries of striking flint while I ground my teeth to dust. I could see well enough in the darkness to find my way but if he didn’t have fangs, maybe his vision was subpar as well.
Finally, he managed to light the torch and used it to illuminate the walls as we walked deeper into the series of rooms. As with many other cities in Mexica, one palace had been built on top of another older one, which backed up against the massive pyramid that had been expanded over the centuries to cover it all. Protected from the elements, the air was stale and dry, which had preserved the vibrant murals. Large owls and quetzals were carved into the stone with chips of obsidian for eyes. Every inch of the walls were carved and painted with green feathers, conch shells, and butterflies.
In the next chamber, Seti lowered the torch to better illuminate red-painted panels along the floor. “I wanted to show you this.”
In the flickering torchlight, the painted jaguars almost seemed to prowl around the room with plumes of blood curling from their mouths.
“She slept in this room,” Seti said. “There’s no way out except back the way we came in.”
I squatted down in front of the painted panel to get a closer look at the other elements. Along the top edge, a border of two repeated images drew my attention. One looked like a green feathered royal headdress. Given the other elements in the room, probably a symbol of their Great Feathered Serpent god similar to Quetzalcoatl.
The other was a black-painted face with bulging eyes and distended fangs on top of a star set inside a yellow circle. It might have been a reference to their earlier version of Tlaloc, but with the black paint, it made me think of Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror. He was often pictured with obsidian mirrors, and in many stories, he and Quetzalcoatl were twins. Two sides of the same coin. One bright and treasured. One darker and feared.
Like my brother and I.
Black sun and red spiral. Just as Mama had said.
Straightening, I scanned the floor, looking for any markings or stonework that might indicate a hidden altar Mama might have used or even created, but the floor was smooth plaster. I drew the obsidian blade over my left palm.
“What are you doing?” Seti asked.
Ignoring him, I walked around the room in a spiral, sprinkling blood on the floor until I felt a rush of energy. Magic flared on my skin, lifting the fine hairs on my nape like a warm summer breeze. The air changed, fresh and floral with all the scents of the jungle. I could almost hear the low warning cough of a jaguar pacing closer.
The other man dropped to his knees beside me. “Such magic. I had no idea it could be like this.”
“This is what true goddess-blessed magic feels like. The kind of magic that honors the gifts our ancestors have passed down through centuries in our blood. Not built on torture and rape.”
“Your people slaughtered thousands in Tenochtitlan too,” he retorted. “The pyramids ran red with the blood of innocents.”
