"As close to it as I want to get." Ren stopped, then gently tugged her into a shadowed alley.
When she started to speak, he placed his finger over her lips. Only then did she hear the sound of something slithering by the area they'd been in only a heartbeat before. Bug-eyed, she held her breath until it vanished and all was relatively quiet again.
"I have to get you out of here," he whispered in her ear.
She couldn't agree more. "And you, too."
He glanced to his wounded shoulder. "I've been tagged. I won't be able to leave now. Wherever I go, they'll follow and drag me back."
Her heart ached at the sad resignation in his voice. It was as if he accepted the fact he was going to die here, and that she had no intention of allowing to happen. If she was nothing else in her life, she was loyal to a fault. "It's not right to leave you here alone to face them."
"I'll live."
"You keep saying that. But-"
"I'm immortal, Kateri," he said, cutting her off. "You're not. Your duty is to save the world and my only duty now is to save you. I have to get you back to the human realm so that you can fulfill your sacred role. It's that simple."
She shook her head at the ludicrousness of those statements. And nothing was ever simple. Rubik's Cube had taught her that when she was four years old and had arrogantly boasted that it couldn't be that hard.
Yeah, that had learned her.
"You know, Ren, twelve hours ago, I'd have called you nuts for talking about sacred roles and all of this." She gestured at the bleak, twisted buildings surrounding them. "Luckily, I'm a little more open-minded now. Not sure if that's a good thing or not, but ... At least I'm not wasting time with denial anymore. I accept the fact that the weirdness in my life has just shot up the epic scale of redonkulous."
After all, what more could happen?
Death and dismemberment notwithstanding.
Yeah, okay, maybe she shouldn't test the bad-luck fairy since the bitch was already gunning for her. But dang ...
Didn't they deserve a break tonight? And not one on their bones.
All of a sudden, one corner of his mouth quirked up as if he was amused by her comments. "We have to get off the street and find a safe place to hide until I recharge my powers enough to get you out of here."
"Okay. But I still don't understand why it has to be me to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do. How did this chore fall to my bloodline anyway? What did we do to be so cursed?"
"It's not a curse. Your ancestor stood strong before the gods when no one else would."
There was an answer she hadn't expected. "What do you mean?"
Ren grimaced as if his wound pained him, then rolled his injured shoulder. He led her back to the dark street. Keeping to the shadows, they headed in the direction that, given the moon's position, she assumed would be east. "Before recorded time, there was a god who came to this realm and-"
"What god?" she asked, cutting him off. While her people believed in an overall divine being, and other paranormal entities, they didn't think of the Great Spirit as a god in the traditional sense of the term. It was extremely hard to explain their beliefs to others who came at it with preconceived notions.
And the way he used the word "gods" ...
It didn't make sense to her.
"Ahau Kin was, for lack of a better term, the Mayan god of their underworld and of time," Ren explained. "It's why he's usually shown at the center of their calendars."
She scowled as she remembered seeing the image all over the Yucatan last summer. "The guy who looks like a jaguar or has a jaguar face?"
He nodded.
Fernando would be so pleased that she recalled that. But her happiness died instantly as she remembered her friend's death, and grief went through her all over again.
Clearing her throat, she waited for Ren to continue.
He didn't. Rather he seemed to be lost in either thought or memories.