Sunken Pyramid (Rogue Angel) (21 page)

Chapter 33

Annja was nine years old the first time she went to a carnival. She and two friends had slipped out of the orphanage. It was after bed check on a Saturday night, and they couldn’t resist the glaring lights or the strains of music. Not the blues or jazz so prevalent in the city in those years, but wild competing sounds overlaying each other and calling out to every imaginative kid within hearing distance.

Posey—that wasn’t her real name, but that was what everybody called her—found a roll of tickets. She, Annja and their friend Lorianne divided them up and went on the Ferris wheel first, all three squeezing into one seat and screaming happily when their car stopped at the very top.

It was one of Annja’s favorite childhood memories, that magical moment when she and Posey and Lorianne were poised above everything at the edge of the city. They were angels this high in the sky and so close to heaven, removed from the disappointment that so often dogged them. Annja didn’t long for anything in that moment, not family or answers, and in subsequent years when things were bad, she recaptured those minutes in her mind, her and Posey and Lorianne, just sitting there, rocking and taking everything in.

The rest of the tickets evaporated on the fast rides—the Tilt-A-Whirl, where Lorianne puked on her shoes; Pharaoh’s Revenge, a great sweeping swing that took them up and around, spinning them until they were so dizzy they couldn’t walk straight afterward; and finally the Salt and Pepper Shakers, where Lorianne got sick again and the ride operator cursed.

On the way out of the carnival, they stopped at one of the games of chance. One ticket left, they gave it to Annja, and she successfully hurled three baseballs at stuffed targets, knocking them over and winning a big stuffed purple dog that she presented to Lorianne.

It was the dog that did it.

They would have gotten away with it, even managed to get Lorianne cleaned up before they snuck back into the orphanage. But the stuffed dog was big, and Lorianne wouldn’t keep it under her bed—she held it close and finally caved...telling one of the directors where it came from.

Annja and Posey and Lorainne were grounded for months, but the stuffed dog stayed, as did the magical memory.

Tonight, though, the carnival that beckoned in Lakeside promised nothing good.

Why had the girl led her here, rather than stick to the lakeshore, where the darkness could work in her favor?

The array of wild sounds struck Annja as she jogged to the edge of the midway. The girl had entered the carnival grounds ahead of her, obviously concealing the knife, as the only screams were of joy. Music came from everywhere, chaotic notes competing for her attention. Annja stopped and passed the ticket booth, ignoring the cries of the ticket seller dressed as a clown. Annja didn’t need tickets for the attractions. She had only one thing on her mind: Anamaqkiu.

She was in the concession area; the rides rose up beyond and above it. Annja had lost track of the girl, and she scanned the clumps of giggling teenagers and found nothing. Signs flashed Pronto Pups, the Original Hot Dog on a Stick; Fresh Squeezed Lemonade; Fruit Shakeups; the World’s Best Carmel Corn; Cotton Candy. Annja had hated the cotton candy she’d shared with Posey, all sticky sweet and drawing flies, and she’d never tried it again.

There! Annja thought she saw the girl dart around the corner of a vendor selling T-shirts. She raced forward. The proprietor was an old man with tattoos on his arms.

“A girl, young,” Annja started. “Pink shirt, long sleeves—”

“Sold that top to her yesterday. She loves the carnival, practically lives here.”

When she’s not attacking people by the lake, Annja thought. But that was why the girl led her here—she was familiar with it, liked it, the noise and the lights.

“That way.” He pointed down a line of games. “She was in a hurry.”

A regular here, the girl knew the carnival and could confuse Annja, further tire her out, perhaps to persuade her to give up. Moreover, even though there were a few police and security wandering around, the girl could avoid them, hiding in plain sight. The police would have difficulty finding her amid the chaos and the crowd; she could slip away at her leisure to come at Annja again—here or at the lake. Annja would be going back to the pyramid.

Annja ran as fast as she could down the row of games, avoiding plowing into a toddler holding the hand of her father, and spinning past two teenagers locked in a kiss. The air was thick and cloying, filled with the scent of buttered popcorn and pizza and something sweet, maybe cotton candy. Her stomach roiled at the odors and her head still pounded, perhaps no longer from the bends but this riotous racket.

“A winnah!” bellowed a man who operated a balloon-bursting game. There was a policeman near him and Annja skidded to a stop.

“There was a girl with a knife at The Office this afternoon. Stabbed a friend of mine. You’re looking for her, and she’s here. In a pink long-sleeved T-shirt.” It was enough of a description, and so Annja continued her frantic quest. The officer barked a question at her, but his words got lost in the cacophony.

The lights from the rides blazed ahead, and Annja spied the girl rushing for the Tilt-A-Whirl. The image of Lorianne puking on leather loafers rushed at her and she forced it down and sprinted. Each ride seemed to have its own music, and it was as if each ride operator wanted to crank the volume as loud as possible to catch potential customers’ attention.

White strobe lights from the bumper-car attraction looked like a hundred cameras flashing. Red and green fluorescent tubes spun on the Kamikaze, and yellow and blue lights appeared to chase each other around The Whip. There was a house of mirrors, and Annja headed toward that. The girl would go there, a place to hide and confuse, a place to tease and taunt.

A scream pierced the air and Annja whirled, distinguishing it from the squeals of delight. The Tumble Bug ride operator clutched his stomach, then dropped to his knees and pressed his hands against his stomach. More screams sounded, parents and children seeing the blood. The crowd pressed close to get a better look, and Annja forced her way through it and to the man. He had a radio and she snapped it up, pressed the button and called for help.

“At the Tumble Bug, get an ambulance. Now!” His face was sweaty from the heat the ride generated, but his skin felt clammy. “The girl—” Annja said.

He swayed and she helped him set back, with her free hand motioning the crowd to give him space.

“She had a knife. She was running. I was worried about the kids. I tried to trip her was all, just wanted to get the knife away.”

“Where did she go?” The crowd was parting and two paramedics were pressing through. They must have been close.

“Dragon Wagon,” he said.

The paramedics pushed Annja away, the tall one thanking her. She melted into the crowd, wiping the blood on her hips. “Dragon Wagon. Dragon Wagon.”

“It’s over there.” A young man nodded toward a fresh burst of sounds and lights. “Just past the Freak-Out.”

The Dragon Wagon was easy to spot, and it was filled with children. It was a roller coaster that sat on the flatbed of a semi, a vinyl red-and-white-striped skirt hiding eighteen wheels. Arcing above it was the top of a castle, jester heads stretched across the top—one missing an eye, another missing its entire face. Flags flapped from the two plastic turrets, and the coaster rumbled along, making an annoying clacking sound that competed with the attraction’s music. The coaster was an eight-segmented dragon, and the toddler sitting in the last car was red-faced. There was no sign of the girl, and this was the last ride in the lot.

“Papa!”

Annja whipped her head around. Papa was dead, Edgar, too, and...

“Papa, look at meeeee!” It was a boy, in the lead car of Dragon Wagon, hands flailing in the air and trying to get his father’s attention.

Perhaps the girl had fled the carnival entirely. Annja felt anger and disappointment well up. Maybe if Annja went back to the lake, the girl would show up again...just to keep her away from the pyramid.

“She went under there.” It was the young man from a second ago. Annja recognized him this time. He’d been with Keesha Marie, the girl who’d made such a fuss over Annja outside Sully’s What-Nots yesterday.

“The girl with the knife, that’s who you’re looking for, right?”

“Yes.” Annja followed where his finger pointed. Under the ride. “Great.” Common sense told her to stay out, but common sense and Annja had never gotten along well.

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you call the police for me?”

She saw him take her picture with it as she ran to the back of the ride. He pressed his ear to the phone as she picked up the skirt, crawled underneath and called for her sword.

Chapter 34

Annja’s eyes had to adjust to the darkness, and in that moment, she was undone. The girl must have heard her coming and been waiting.

The jade knife sliced into Annja’s sword arm above the elbow, cutting all the way to the bone. In reflex she screamed and opened her hand, thereby losing contact with the sword. It vanished into its otherworldly space, and Annja rolled to avoid a second blow. She knew she shouldn’t have rushed in; she should have waited for help.

But too little sleep, a long, deep dive and then a race from the shore to the carnival had made any rationality disappear. Still, she shouldn’t have second-guessed her instincts.

The pain in her arm was excruciating, fire chasing through her entire body. She felt the blood running from the wound, down her arm and over her hand, turning the asphalt beneath the ride slick.

The girl was smaller and more agile, skittering like a spider under the bed and between the wheels. She darted out and slashed Annja again. At the same time, Annja called for the blade and she swept it forward, knocking the girl’s knife nearly out of her hand. The girl regained her grip and rocked back on her haunches, snarling.

If the second cut hurt Annja, she couldn’t feel it. Her arm continued to burn, and she could barely move it. Annja guessed the girl must have severed a tendon.

But the pain now seemed to help her focus. She used it. Annja hunched forward, sweeping the sword, her second circle.

If the girl had been winded from the run, she didn’t show it. She did look wild, hair tangled and sticking out from the sides of her head; the light that came through the vinyl skirting outlined her as a shadow dancing madly in front of a backlit curtain. She jabbered, and Annja tried to make it out, but there was too much other noise—including, finally, a siren. One word Annja could make out from the girl’s ranting was
Anamaqkiu.

“That’s not your name after all, is it?” Annja tried to draw the girl into conversation. She still held the sword in front of her, sweeping it slowly to keep the girl away. Though it was hard to maneuver under the bed, it was even more difficult now for the girl to find an opening, and so the confined space was working in Annja’s favor. The girl could not physically get below Annja’s swing. “What is your name?”

Annja couldn’t catch the word the young girl hissed out at her. “But I am Anamaqkiu!”

“And what is that? A title? A queen?”

The girl laughed. She was so very young, really a child. It was a child’s laugh that belonged in a schoolyard or on a merry-go-round. Annja wouldn’t kill her, would do everything she could to avoid hurting her...provided she could get out of this alive. The blood continued to gush from her arm.

“We have to finish this,” Annja said as much to herself as the girl. It was an effort to stay crouched as she was, and her breath was becoming ragged. Did the girl know how badly she was hurt? “We can’t fight under here. We shouldn’t fight at all.” That knife of hers shouldn’t have been so sharp, Annja thought...it hadn’t looked so sharp. And yet it cut through her flesh as if she were tissue paper. And the heat. The heat that it had somehow generated was still powerful.

“I will kill you,” the girl stated, in that instant sounding very grown-up.

She knocked Annja’s sword aside with her jade knife, blade to blade. The girl didn’t know the basics of fighting, that edge to edge was the worst hit, that it could break the weapons involved. Annja pulled the sword forward again, holding it like a spear.

“Why do you have to kill me?” Annja asked.

“You know.”

“To protect the pyramid?”

“Because I am Anamaqkiu.”

“A god?” Was that word Mayan? Did it represent one of the figurines carved on the temple?

“A dark spirit. Anamaqkiu.”

“And you protect the pyramid?”

The girl came at Annja again, rolling fast and kicking out, landing a solid blow against the sword and knocking the point against the undercarriage. A second kick caught Annja in the jaw. The girl stabbed with the knife, but Annja moved, slamming against a wheel and adding to the pain in her arm. Miraculously, the blade only severed a hank of hair.

She felt a rush of dizziness and recognized it: blood loss. Annja had been here before. She’d lost count of how many times she’d been wounded in fights, on more than one occasion wounded just as seriously as this. But in those cases her opponent had been an adult and she’d not been so hesitant to fight back. This was a mere girl, mad perhaps, misguided certainly...and a killer. But a child.

The clattering above them stopped and feet tromped across the metal planks of the semi, the sound booming underneath like elephants charging. There were more screams, none filled with pleasure, shouts. “Police! Clear the area!”

The blaring music kept going, threatening to drown Annja as surely as if she’d drowned in Rock Lake.

“The police are out there. You can’t get away.”

The girl looked one way then the next, scampering backward between the flatbed’s landing gear, which was down to stabilize the ride above. “I always get away.”

“How many people have you killed?” Annja wanted to keep her talking. She inched toward the girl, sword out like a lance. She was also concentrating on staying conscious. If she went down, the girl would finish her. “How many people have threatened your pyramid?”

The girl laughed. “Anamaqkiu kills, and his tooth drinks the blood.” She waved the knife for effect. “His tooth gives me strength and purpose.”

She was possessed, Annja was certain. Still, the girl was not old enough to be responsible for the deaths dating back to WWII. Someone else had done that. “Who gave you the knife?”

“Mother to daughter to daughter to daughter,” she answered. “Anamaqkiu to Anamaqkiu.”

“What a lovely family tradition.” And one Annja meant to put an end to.

Give me strength, she prayed just as she launched herself forward, her head and back scraping hard against the undercarriage. The vinyl flap was raised up, revealing flashlight beams. The girl was caught in the glare of the light and Annja swung, not caring if the police saw her sword, caring only if she got rid of the threat.

Despite her training and the warning sounding in her head, Annja aimed the edge of her sword for the edge of the knife.

Edge to edge, where weapons should not meet.

The girl tried to escape, skittering farther back, but she was stopped by the wheel coupling.

The blades connected.

Annja had all her strength and determination behind the one blow. Left-handed, wounded, on the verge of collapse, she called for her last ounce of measure and severed the Mayan dagger.

“No!” the girl howled. Her scream reverberated under the truck bed and crescendoed to a piercing wail.

Annja shielded an ear with her good hand, letting go of the sword. In the wail she heard voices, all high-pitched. Mother to daughter to daughter to daughter.

“No!” the scream continued, joined by panicked calls from the carnival-goers. “No!”

It was a painful and brittle sound, one Annja would never forget, the chorus of names swelling up, whispers folding into it: “Anamaqkiu. Anamaqkiu. Anamaqkiu. Vucub-Caquix. Cabracan. Zipacna. Anamaqkiu.”

On and on the mantra went, until the silly carnival music swept in and carried her away.