“Shh,” Noelle whispered as she shook Lucero awake.
“Que? What…” Lucero mumbled sleepily.
“There’s something happening outside,” Noelle whispered.
Lucero slowly got her bearings together and rose from the bed, following Noelle to the window to see a procession of people, all carrying torches, heading to one of the pyramids.
“Have you seen this before?” Noelle asked.
Lucero was quiet for a moment before she nodded.
“It happens once every month,” she replied. “I don’t know exactly what they are doing, but we’re not allowed to go out when it happens.”
“It has to do with the temples, does it not?” Noelle narrowed her eyes. “I’m going,” she suddenly declared.
Though she was still recovering from her injuries, she could move more freely.
Sergio hadn’t hurt her again after their last confrontation and for almost a week now he’d left her alone. She’d seen him a few times around the hacienda, but he’d ignored her every time. Still, she could see the contempt on his face whenever he saw her and she was sure the resentment was bubbling.
If she didn’t find a way to truly gain the upper hand, she feared he would soon snap and hurt her again. He hated her too much to simply allow her to exist after what she’d done to him, and the threats she’d issued wouldn’t protect her forever—not unless she found something more tangible.
Not unless she found a way to undermine his power.
“You can’t,” Lucero’s eyes widened. “You barely got him to leave you alone. If he sees you trespass into the temple…”
“I need to see what he’s doing,” Noelle shook her head. “We know he operates on a cult-like system,” she started, though she realized Lucero didn’t quite grasp the ramifications of the word. After all, she’d lived here all her life and it was everything she knew. “But we don’t know how he does it. How does he control everyone? How does he make them believe he is a god?”
“I’ve told you how. He ensures the community is safe and that people live well. What else would he be doing?”
Noelle took a deep breath as she looked into her friend’s innocent eyes. Despite her intelligence, Lucero was incredibly naive about how the world worked.
“That is only what we can see—what’s at the very bottom. But I doubt that he can maintain his position by simply caring for the community. Other people can do that too and they aren’t seen as gods.”
“I don’t understand…” Lucero trailed off, her brows knit together in confusion.
“Just like with any power structure, Sergio is at the top while the regular people are at the bottom. But there are still those in between. The people he works closely with. You know who I’m talking about. There are those barons that get their own little piece of the pie.”
Lucero had told her that though Sergio was the supreme authority in the region, he had designated barons that oversaw the villages surrounding the hacienda and who were loyal to him. And just like Fernando, they too believed that Sergio was the incarnation of a god.
At first, Noelle hadn’t been sure whether it was all an act—if those people acted that way because it was a beneficial ruse. But as she’d closely observed the workings of the hacienda and the people who visited Sergio and bowed to him, she realized there was more to it than personal interests.
Anyone could feign allegiance for their own gain, but not anyone could feign such a deep worship towards Sergio.
Noelle had always thought herself a good judge of people, mainly due to her observational skills gained from a life of living by the sidelines—always watching, rarely interacting. And what she’d seen had confirmed to her that the barons truly believed in Sergio’s divine origins.
It would have been so much easier if they hadn’t, because everyone can be swayed by the material. But as it stood, the only way she could see herself winning was by finding out what Sergio’s secret was.
Despite her physical condition, over the weeks she’d been at the hacienda, Noelle had dedicated her time to learning. She’d absorbed everything she could, eavesdropping on conversations when people thought she could not understand the language and observing people’s conducts in relation to Sergio.
She’d not only gathered information about the organization of his community, but she’d also learned about his businesses.
There were a few plants scattered across the region, with the closest one only a few minutes away from the hacienda, that produced drugs. And not just any drugs. Though Sergio had ties with the cartels in Mexico, he had his own brand of drugs that had absolutely no competition.
Lucero hadn’t been able to tell her exactly what it was, only that Sergio was experimenting with different drugs in order to create his own, unique one.
Of course someone who saw himself as a god would want nothing less—his ego was truly too overblown.
Noelle turned from the window, going to her suitcase and fishing out a cardigan to shield herself against the night chill. Putting on her shoes, she was ready to get out the door when Lucero suddenly stopped her.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t go. It’s not safe.”
“If I don’t, I’ll never be safe anyway. I don’t want to die here,” Noelle said in a determined tone. “Regardless of my threats, he won’t stay still forever. One way or another, he will kill me. And then he’ll blame it on an accident so that my brother won’t ask questions. You know it as well as I do. He detests me.”
“But you can bide your time. I’m sure you could at some point get in contact with your brother and explain everything…”
“And then what? If my brother could have done anything, he wouldn’t have allowed me to get married to Sergio in the first place. He told me himself that he had his hands tied. It’s a small wonder Sergio is worried at all of what Cisco would do if he killed me, but the moment he thinks he can do it and get away with it, he will do it.”
“I’m coming with you,” Lucero sighed.
“You know you don’t have to.”
“I want to. We’re in this together,” she squeezed her hand.
Noelle gave her a warm nod, waiting for her to get dressed before they both went out into the night.
No one else was around the house. All doors were locked, the silence weighing heavy on Noelle.
Slowly, they walked out of the house, taking the same path the people with the torches had taken. The destination was one of the completed temples.
“Why does he need more than one anyway?” Noelle asked in a hushed tone as they reached the temple.
“I don’t know,” Lucero answered, looking left and right to make sure there was no one around. “But I think it has something to do with the location. They are all placed in very specific locations and I remember when I was working on the other temple that the guards were very strict with the placement.”
“Odd,” Noelle noted, storing that one bit of information.
“Come, there is a hidden entrance in the back,” Lucero said, leaving her to the back.
The structure was absolutely immense. If it had been under any other circumstances, Noelle would have found it breathtaking—so much so she would have loved to visit and admire it with her Blue. They’d talked about visiting Aztec ruins together, and the memory of those conversations stabbed at her heart.
Triangular in shape, it looked like one of those pyramids she’d only seen in pictures. The temple was made entirely of stone and measured more than a hundred feet.
So close to the construction, Noelle realized the effort it must have taken to build such a thing. It must have been incredibly costly to build one but more?
“The people you saw with the torches usually enter through the main steps. But there is another way in—we used this during the construction stage and Sergio didn’t want it covered.”
Noelle nodded as she followed closely.
They didn’t have any light source since they didn’t want to attract any attention, but Lucero seemed to be doing just fine without one.
“What’s inside?”
“There are a few chambers and a main room in the middle. I only know how they looked before, when we were working on them. I can’t say they are the same now,” Lucero added pensively.
Finding the hidden door, Lucero pushed it open and they were immediately met with darkness.
“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Noelle asked as they entered the temple, their hands on the wall as they felt their way forward.
“I remember the layout. The chambers I told you? All of them feed into the main room in the center. And it’s the only safe way to sneak in without bumping into anyone.”
“You really took notes,” Noelle joked lightly.
“I had to,” Lucero said, but didn’t elaborate.
Given her tone, Noelle imagined it had something to do with the man she’d helped escape, so she didn’t pry further.
Without the guidance of light, it felt as though they were walking for miles, but they were only taking a few tentative steps forward. Yet after a while, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. Slowly, it became more and more pronounced until they came to the other end of the chamber. At the same time, a choir-like sound permeated the air, echoing into the entire temple.
Lucero suddenly put a hand up to stop Noelle.
Carefully coming to Lucero’s side, Noelle sank to her knees right at the mouth of the chamber.
Peeking her head forward, her eyes widened when she took in the shocking image before her.
There were panes of black glass all around the main chamber, the effect immediate as it drowned the room into darkness even as the room teemed with sources of light.
In the center of the room was a golden throne, right in front of a large jaguar painting.
The more Noelle looked, the more she noticed the same motifs carved into stone or painted all over the walls.
Yet that was not the oddest thing about the room.
There was a hole in the middle of the room that diverged into smaller viaducts that covered the entire surface of the room.
Around the hole, eight men were gathered in a circle, their mouths moving in slow, precise movements as a foreign chant vibrated in the entire pyramid.
The sounds went on for moments on end before a booming voice ordered them to stop. All at once, the eight figures dispersed, bowing in a small gesture of reverence as Sergio appeared at the top, right in front of the golden chair.
Everyone was wearing strange, colorful garments that reminded Noelle of the traditional clothing she’d seen people around the village wear. But even stranger was the fact that all were wearing masks in the form of wild animals.
Sergio, of course, was the one wearing a jaguar mask.
Noelle could vaguely remember that Tezcatlipoca was associated with a jaguar.
At Sergio’s command, everyone took their spot in a formation as a few other maskless men stepped forward, dragging two struggling girls with them draped in black cloaks.
“What the hell is this?” Noelle whispered in shock.
“Shh,” Lucero whispered. “Just watch. We can’t let them know we’re here.”
Noelle nodded, turning her attention towards the pit again and watching as the men dumped the girls right by the giant hole before retreating into the shadows. Once more, it was only Sergio at the top on his golden chair and the eight mysterious figures aligned along the viaducts.
“Is that mercury?” She murmured as her eyes widened.
Lucero frowned, not understanding her.
“Look, there’s a liquid flowing through those ducts. Mercury is also called quicksilver and has been known to be used in rituals across religions.”
Lucero blinked, taking in the information.
“What does it do?”
“Some say it has magical properties. But I don’t know why Sergio is using it.”
A piercing cry echoed through the pyramid as Noelle and Lucero turned their attention to the main room again.
One of the masked men from each row stepped forward and wrenched the cape away from one of the girls, leaving them naked and powerless.
“Let us see who is the first to go on this new moon,” Sergio addressed everyone.
Noelle’s eyes widened as she saw the same men bring forth small cups and force some type of liquid down the girls’ throats. Not a moment after, they were both given a dagger as everyone stepped aside to give them more space.
She couldn’t believe her eyes when she realized the goal was for them to fight to the death, and everyone was cheering on from the sidelines.
“What the hell is this insanity?” She muttered under her breath.
Looking at Lucero from the corner of her eye, she noted the girl was still as stone, her eyes the size of two saucers as she watched the girls proceed to attack one another.
Grunts of pain filled the air as the girls fought for their lives—a macabre spectacle for those sick men’s enjoyment.
Yet the more time the girls spent fighting, the more sluggish their movements became, until they barely seemed in control of their own bodies.
“He drugged them,” Noelle stated, aghast.
The fight continued, and one girl got the best of the other as she sliced the front of her stomach wide open, blood flowing to the ground. Yet the other girl wasn’t resigned to losing. She did everything she could to withstand the pain and attack her opponent.
For a while, no one knew who was going to win. Both girls seemed determined, yet only one wasn’t mortally injured. Against all odds, though, it was exactly the wounded one who won by sticking her knife into the other girl’s throat, buckets of blood flowing freely down her body.
She was breathing hard at the end, barely able to move—from the drugs and from the shock.
Suddenly, a loud round of applause erupted in the room. Sergio was the first to clap followed by the other men.
“It seems we have our lucky one,” Sergio intoned, beckoning the girl to him in front of the hole.
Her eyes sparkled with renewed hope as she dragged herself towards him, her hand on her bleeding wound.
Sergio gave her a deceiving smile, and the moment she reached him he grabbed onto her hair, removing a hidden blade from his back and slicing her throat in a smooth line.
Both Lucero and Noelle barely stifled their gasps as they watched the ensuing scene.
One moment, the girl was in his grasp, the next her body fell to the ground, oriented towards the hole in the center as the blood drained from her neck.
As the red liquid flowed into the central pit, it slowly trickled down the viaducts, the blood mixing with the mercury in a peculiar combination.
But Sergio wasn’t done. Grabbing the head of the dead girl, he brought his blade down on her neck, hitting incessantly until he decapitated. Only the head remained in his grasp, and holding it by the hair, he raised it in the air for everyone to see.
The men cheered him on, and one of the unmasked attendants brought over a pike for Sergio to impale the head on before placing it like a trophy in front of his throne.
“The girls can’t have been more than fifteen,” she finally whispered. “Why…What…”
Noelle reached out and squeezed her hand.
“There isn’t an explanation for evil,” she said. “And that’s exactly what we’re witnessing. Evil.”
Noelle’s statement was further reinforced when the men lined up in front of the dead girl, pulling their cloaks off and remaining fully naked.
“What…” Noelle muttered in disbelief as she noted what the first man in line was doing.
He was already sporting an erection and grabbing the headless body by the legs, he lined his penis to her sex, pushing inside. His groans permeated the air as he started thrusting into her.
It wasn’t long before he was done, and withdrawing from her, he took a blade and cut his hand.
Blood slowly trickled to the ground and once the entire surface of his palm was covered in red, he gripped his still hard penis and took a step to the right, stroking himself to completion and shooting his seed into the combination of blood and mercury from the viaducts.
The same action was repeated by the subsequent man. He fucked the corpse before cutting himself and spilling his semen into the viaduct.
Every single man did it. All but Sergio, and Noelle could guess why he wasn’t participating.
When they were done with it, they resumed their positions alongside the center of the room while Sergio sat down on his throne.
Loud chants erupted in the air as the men raised their arms in the air.
“We need to go,” Lucero whispered. “We can’t get caught or we’ll end up like that…”
Noelle nodded, though her gaze was still drawn towards the main room. Slowly, she managed to get herself to step back, following Lucero back through the tunnel and back to the exit at the base of the pyramid.
“Those men,” Noelle’s lips flattened into a thin line as she regarded Lucero once they were both safely ensconced into her room. “They are the barons, aren’t they?”
Lucero nodded.
“I can’t think of anyone else and the numbers match. Here,” she beckoned as she removed a piece of paper and a pen. “This is the hacienda and these are the temples,” she said as she drew some figures. “Then here are the villages and the main prominent areas in the region. They are all led by El Señor.”
“Eight. Just like the eight men.”
“Yes,” Lucero grimaced.
“Then what the hell was that ritual? I can understand dedicating a cult to an ancient divinity, but that is too extreme,” Noelle shook her head. “I’ve read about the old beliefs, and nowhere did I see anything about fucking corpses. Sacrifices, yes. But that… Good God, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more fucked up.”
“What if it’s not part of the old beliefs. What if it’s just El Señor’s way to doing things?”
“What do you mean?” Noelle frowned.
“What if….” Lucero bit her lip. “I know you saw it too. Those men… They enjoyed fucking the headless body. It wasn’t a hardship for them.”
“Are you saying he’s doing this to fulfill some sick fantasies for those men?”
Lucero slowly nodded.
“You might be right,” Noelle frowned. “Didn’t we wonder before why these people agree to worship Sergio? It might be because he fulfills those fucked up desires. Maybe there’s more. We need to go back there.”
“What? Of course not. It’s too dangerous,” Lucero protested.
“You don’t have to come, Lucero. But I’m going. I need as much information I can get if I’m to beat him at his own game,” Noelle added in a determined voice.
“What do you mean? What do you have in mind?”
“What do the people around the hacienda think of me?” Noelle suddenly asked.
Lucero tilted her head to the side as she studied her.
“The foreign bitch,” she answered with a straight face.
“They hate me, don’t they? Even when they saw me with bruises all over my face, they still hated me.”
Reluctantly, Lucero nodded.
“I don’t blame them. To them, I am a foreigner, especially someone who doesn’t seem to obey their master. But what if I wasn’t?”
“I don’t follow,” Lucero frowned.
“What I mean,” the corners of her mouth curled up, “if I want to get out of here alive, I need to have the same power Sergio has. More, even.”
“But Noelle… You must know that is impossible.”
“No, it’s not,” Noelle smiled, a plan slowly unfolding in her mind. “I just need to become a symbol, too.”
