CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nobody
II
Wilburn stared down the tunnel of the serpent’s gaping throat—and out the ragged hole in the back. He could see stripe-clad chanters all the way across the temple through it. The snarling reptilian head rushed at him, seeming to reach for him like a hand with fangs as tall as him for fingers. It was a soil-your-britches sight if ever there was one, yet Wilburn felt perfectly relaxed. He perceived, with a mysterious clarity induced by the honey-rain, that the serpent posed no threat to him now, nor to the chanters, nor to the Girl in Gold. It was all part of the ritual. The ritual was in charge. So Wilburn’s dreamy smile didn’t waver as the head bore down on him—then flew right on past, missing him by inches.
Just before it should’ve crashed down amidst the rubble of the altar, the head was captured by some unseen force and borne aloft. It floated up the column of light, its massive jaws stretching wide to make a funnel. The fizz of tiny droplets hitting Wilburn’s skin abruptly ceased. Hey! The darn snake was drinking all the honey-rain! In seconds, pink-tinged fluid came gushing out the severed hole in the bottom. Yuck!
Wilburn and the Girl in Gold retreated from the splash-radius, each toward their own side of the temple. The temple was quaking worse than ever now, rumbling constantly, as if it had been built in the crater of a volcano that was getting ready to erupt. Very much as if that, in fact. But there was more. The endless chant resonated in the stone, in the air itself. It wasn’t natural. Wilburn could see the vibrations jiggling the blood-and-honey lake, rippling the surface in a hexagonal bullseye pattern.
Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…
Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…
Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…
The kneeling chalice-bearers rose, their striped garments dripping blood and honey, their cups brimming over with the fifty-fifty potion. The swirling liquid cast a pink glow up into their hoods, illuminating the faces of—just people—unremarkable grown-ups… but their expressions… Even through the intoxication of the honey-rain, Wilburn was disturbed. The people’s expressions were no expression. Blankness. Like the blankness he’d noticed earlier on Yellow Guy; except, at a distance, he’d mistaken it for indifference, a zoned-out kind of blankness, whereas, up close, Wilburn saw it was the very opposite: a deadly, deliberate hyperfocus. Not absent-mindedness. Single-mindedness. Unnatural, inhuman single-mindedness.
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Then darkness once more veiled the bearers’ faces the potion in their chalices turned black—as black as the knife that had slain the serpent, so black it looked like someone had taken scissors and snipped out those parts of the picture. Were they seriously gonna drink that stuff?
Yep.
As one, the six chalice-bearers lifted the golden cups to the shadows of their hoods, and tipped them. Eww! Wilburn was grossed out and impressed. No way would he drink snake blood, even mixed with magic honey. Granted, those sickos had only taken a little sip. But still… snake blood.
The chalice-bearers glided away toward the pillars of the temple to deliver the black potion to the crowd. The libations were conducted with the same eerie choreography: six chanters on opposite sides of the temple drinking in unison, then passing the cups along. It took awhile, and in the while it took, the scattered macaroni-noodles of great serpent came back to life as the honey spread to each in turn. There was none of the previous chaotic flopping: once reanimated, the noodles slithered purposefully to the altar, where the same unseen force hoisted them aloft and guided them into position beneath the glutting head. The fragmented serpent hung vertically, a good hundred feet long, honey spilling between its disconnected segments.
Wilburn watched the girl watching the reptile’s reassembly. Her bold eyebrows were quirked in a puzzled frown. Wilburn wanted to go ask her what her name was… but… The more he sobered, the more his fear was creeping back. What if the girl’s icy rage returned as well? What if she became the Girl in Black again, whose eyes had promised death? Drops of honey still sparkled throughout the wild thicket of her curls, but the rapture had departed from her face, and her hand had drifted to the hilt of the knife sheathed at her belt. What if she decided to chop Wilburn into pieces the way Red Guy had chopped—
Wilburn did a double take—her hand. The girl had a tattoo! Wilburn hadn’t noticed it earlier in the moonlight, but now, under the intensifying brightness of the Category-Q, the contrast between the black ink and the girl’s brown skin was stark. Some kind of complicated symbol—but it didn’t matter what it was—the fact that the girl had any tattoo at all was… epic. Wilburn was seriously jealous. He couldn’t believe the girl’s mom had let her get it. He guessed her mom must be really cool.
“Hey Mom, you don’t think maybe I could get a tattoo… do you?” Wilburn asked, hopefully.
“Sure you can,” Ez told him, “when you turn thirty.”