I looked for something to defend myself with. The bassinets, which I might have used as a shield were gone. I only had my bare hands.
I had to get away from him, get down the pyramid and find Sarah and Steve. But as I started toward the front steps, the women were all clustered there, blocking my way.
Then, for no reason I could understand the mother of Tz'ac Tzotz stepped out of the group and handed me her baby, saying something in Kekchi Maya and reaching to touch my cheek.
I was so startled I took the bundle that was Sarah's child. But then I thought, No! Alex Goddard will just kill him too.
"She said he must not harm you," Marcelina whispered moving beside me. "You are the special one. She wants you to give her child back to Kukulkan."
She still believes, I realized. They all do.
Holding Tz'ac Tzotz, my eyes fixed on Alex Goddard, I’d entirely failed to notice a new presence on the pyramid a ghostlike waif in a white shift who now stood silently in the doorway of the stone room. Sarah!
Marcelina had said she'd wanted to come for the ceremony. She was being helped to stand by the two Maya women who'd fed me the atole. Somehow, she'd gotten them to bring her.
"Morgy, are you there?" Sarah asked gazing up at the rainy skies, the downpour soaking her blond hair, her eyes unblinking. At that moment, I felt we'd joined become one person—me the dogged rational half who'd just gone over the line, her the spiritual part that needed to float, to fly free. "I wanted to be with—"
"Sar, get back," I yelled and started to go to her, but there wasn't time. Now Alex Goddard was moving toward me holding the knife, as though tracking a prey, oblivious to Sarah, to everything. He'd concentrated all his hatred on me and me alone, and I hated him back as much. Death hovered between us, waiting to see whom to take.