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The gossamer-sheer material spread out behind her in the evening breeze, held closed by a thin rope around her waist. Her copper hair shimmered like liquid metal pouring over her shoulders. Her eyes were wide and frantic as she looked down at the people below.
    â€œTake them away!” the High Priestess said.
    â€œNo! Not my daughter!” Heathcliff pushed past the others and lunged forward.
    Hector brought up his gun.
    â€œProfessor, no!” Ethan threw his body into the professor without thinking. The roar of the gun and the sledgehammer blow to his chest seemed to happen simultaneously.
    Ethan collapsed on the ground. Fire filled his chest. Ix Chel spoke, but he couldn’t understand her words. Dark brown arms entered his field of vision. Arms appeared to one side, dragging something into the night. The professor? Was he dead as well? Ethan looked up, saw the feline eyes of Ix Chel hovering over him.
    In the erratic light of the torches, her face seemed to grow longer, her eyes more golden. As if she was becoming something else.
    Something not quite human.
    Then his strength failed him and his head fell to the side.
    More words reached him, as if from a great distance. Heathcliff, his old friend, shouting. “You can stop this, Ethan. It’s not too late.”
    His head filled with a buzzing, as if a thousand bees filled his skull. Thoughts misfired, struggled for coherence.
    Heathcliff? No, you’re dead.
    Stop it? Stop what?
    They have Jenny.
    There was nothing he could do. No more miracles. He’d looked inside himself for the courage to face his fear of revealing his true self, but it wasn’t there. Where once had beaten the heart of a warrior now only indecision remained, pushing weak, timid blood through his veins.
    â€œShe loves you, Ethan. She told me. She always has.”
    Heathcliff’s voice again. Or was he dreaming?
    Dimly, he was aware of his body moving across sharp stones.
    It didn’t matter. It was over. He was dying, and it was too late to change that. Soon he’d join the professor, together in death as in life.
    Images came to life inside his brain. Jenny sitting by the fire, her voluptuous body outlined against the tents. Jenny atop the pyramid, flashes of pale flesh and forbidden treasure showing when the wind tossed back her white garment.
    Jenny, lying underneath him, clothes and flesh torn to pieces, her beautiful face covered in her own blood.
    No! That could never happen. He wouldn’t allow it. That’s why he’d never let himself…let the beast…
    More rocks scraped against his back. He forced his eyes open. Popi and Luz stood in front of him, hands gripping is arms, preparing to lift his body. He turned his head, and through a haze of pain recognized the black hole behind him.
    A cenote , an ancient Mayan well.
    â€œDo it.” Hector Veracruz’s voice.
    The hands pulled and pushed. His body teetered at the edge of the cenote . Ethan closed his eyes again. A final push, then peaceful oblivion. All his pain and sorrow would be gone.
    There’s still time to make the right decision. This time he knew the thought was his own, even if it sounded like the professor’s voice. As always, the professor served as his conscience, his moral compass.
    Damn you, Heathcliff!
    With his last ounces of strength, he clutched at Popi’s shirt just as the two guards let him go, and together they toppled into the blackness.
    Free…
    Rory Amos watched in horror as the two men disappeared into the cenote ’s opening. Popi’s wordless scream echoed up from of the ancient tunnel and then stopped, cut off by death or distance. Not that it mattered. Cenotes could be hundreds of feet deep, and usually led to underground lakes or rivers that eventually fed into the ocean. There was no surviving a drop like that.
    â€œWatch the others!” Veracruz shouted to Luz. He ran to the edge of the cenote and peered into the Stygian