Page 23 of Corvus and the Broken God

“Yes, please.” She took a bite of her slice of thick bread and accompanied me back out into the hall. The door he had pointed out to me earlier looked heavy, a single giant slab of rock easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there, but it swung open smoothly on its hinges. I poked my head into the dark tunnel beyond it.

“We may need to find a candle or two,” I said to Mindy.

“Okay. I’ll go grab some.” She shoved the bread into her mouth and disappeared back down the hall. The one thing that would be easy to find in this old building should be candles.

I stepped back into the dim hallway to wait. Mindy sounded happy, excited. She had willingly leapt with me into a real-life fairy tale, the kind which usually ends with someone losing a critical body part. Instead, she was acting like a little girl who had discovered, after hard years of being the daughter of a peasant family, that she was a princess. I rolled my eyes at my fancy. He was resistant to changing me back. Or was he? What did he want from me in exchange?

A bright glow engulfed Mindy as she joined me in the hallway, handing me one of two lit candles. I turned back through the doorway into the dark tunnel, which led back another ten feet before curving to the right. A stone staircase spiraled down into pitch-black darkness, and I cast a reluctant look back at Mindy.

“It’s really dark down here.”

“Is there something I need to know about you, Freya?”

“Like what?”

“Any phobias? Are you going to freak out if we get dumped into a cave?”

“No, I don’t think so, but I’ve never been inside a cave before, so it’s not out of the question.”

“Then get moving.”

I took a few hesitant steps down. An unfamiliar scent tickled my nose.

“How come you’re so brave?” I whispered over my shoulder. And how come I was such a chicken?

“Keep walking, sister.”

I kept moving, bolstered by Mindy’s strength at my back. My arm was extended, giving off about a ten-foot diameter of light.

“Tell me you brought matches,” I said, as a gust of wind threatened to extinguish my candle. I cupped the flame as heat licked my palm.

“Nope. I lit them from the fire.”

We kept walking downward. The stairs ended in a small chamber. Another stone door, this one from an even larger piece of granite, sat at the far end.

“Your man sure is strong if he built this place himself.”

I was thinking the same thing.

“And he comes down here a lot,” I said, pushing the door open easily. A sharp bite of warm wind extinguished both candles at once, and I drew in a breath. But when my eyes adjusted, we weren’t standing in complete darkness. Pale blue light glowed down the side of a large cavern, its source hidden from view. We were in a cave, one complete with stalactites and stalagmites, big and small. About half of the room’s floor was taken up by a large pool. Steam billowed upward, playing with the blue light. Here and there, a bubble burst on the surface of the water.

Mindy walked straight to the water’s edge, bending down to brush her fingertips in its dark depth. “It’s warm, hot even.” She turned back to me with a huge smile on her face. “We should get in.”

I joined her and stared into the black liquid. “I don’t know. Aren’t there creatures that usually live in places like this? Like worms or snakes? Or millipedes?” I shuddered. Those especially grossed me out, with all those feet.

She laughed at me. “Do you think he’d send you down here if there was a chance you could get hurt?”

“How would I know? All I know is he was once worshiped as a Mayan death god. I know he introduced himself as Benjamin, but I overheard his real name when he was talking to the other god-man, whatever they are. Camazotz means ‘death bat.’ I’m pretty sure there were human sacrifices made on his behalf, but that was a long time ago.” I scanned the cave ceiling, thick with stalactites, looking for bats. Bats didn’t bother me as much as the creepy crawlies, but it would be good to know if they coated the ceiling.

“And you’re only just telling me this now?”

“Well, I kind of wrote it off as internet nonsense.”

“Jesus, Freya. Then why would he introduce himself as Benjamin? That’s such a normal name.”

“Honestly, I have no idea. Probably to get you to overlook the horns.”

She shook her head and then proceeded to take off her clothes.