Bringing the steel whistle to his lips, Jake blew with all the strength he could muster. It felt like his head was going to explode.
At last, the giant carnivore swung around with a heavy sweep of its tail. It pounded away with a final roar over its shoulder—then dove back into the jungle.
They waited to be sure.
Marika finally spoke. “I think she’ll head back to her nest now!”
Just in case she was wrong, Jake kept the whistle in his hand.
“Is it safe to leave?” Kady asked Marika.
The girl shrugged and stared at Jake’s hand. “A silent flute that scares away thunder lizards. You bear powerful alchemies.”
With the immediate danger over, questions flooded Jake’s mind. They jumbled together. What was this place? How were humans and dinosaurs living together? How did Jake and Kady get here?
Before he could settle on a single question to ask, Marika said, “We should go now. All the noise might attract other creatures.”
Pindor shoved forward with his spear. “Let me go first,” he said glumly. “In case there are more beasts about.”
But the boy’s look betrayed him. He would not meet Jake’s eye. After the demonstration here, Pindor plainly wanted some distance from these strangers. Suspicion pinched his face.
Pindor’s companion was not as wary. After they climbed out of the cave, Marika’s gaze locked on Jake for a moment. Sunlight flashed from her eyes with an emerald fire, revealing a mix of curiosity and amusement.
She pointed an arm up toward the neighboring cliff. “There’s a path up that way. We must get past the Broken Gate. Then we’ll be safe.”
Safe?
Jake glanced back toward the dark jungle as it resumed its squawking and buzzing chorus. Just as he suspected, no place was truly safe in this new world. A saurian bellow echoed out of the deep jungle.
Jake shivered, suddenly remembering the darkness that had brought them here. And the words that had scratched out of the blackness between their world and this one.
Come to me…
6
BROKEN GATE
Jake climbed the narrow trail that headed up the cliff in a series of steep switchbacks. Marika led the way. Pindor guarded their rear and urged them to move silently so they wouldn’t attract other monsters. They hiked quickly. The pace had left little time for questions.
Still, Jake managed to get a closer look at Marika’s jade necklace. It was carved with a symbol.
There was no mistaking it. It was definitely Mayan. The glyph’s name, balam, meant “jaguar.” The symbol even looked like the jungle cat. Marika also wore an embroidered Mayan blouse, like one Jake’s mother once brought home from Central America. Even the girl’s skin was the same shade as his mother’s morning tea, mixed with a generous dollop of cream.
Could she truly be Maya?
And what about Pindor? Jake managed a closer look at the cut of his sandals and the bronze work of his spearhead. It was all of Roman design, possibly second century B.C. Even his hair, tied long in back, had bangs cut straight across the front like some caesar out of time.
Maya, Romans, and T-rexes.
What was going on?
After another two turns in the trail, the top of the cliff appeared high overhead. A narrow pass cut through two massive guard towers built out of dark stones, each ten stories high. An archway once bridged the two towers, but it had fallen away, leaving only stumped ends. The spires appeared long deserted.
“The Broken Gate,” Marika said.
As they climbed toward the pass, Jake noted the pocked and blood-dark color of the gate’s bricks. Volcanic stone.
Marika stopped ahead of him, so suddenly that Jake bumped into her. An eerie screech split the continual droning whir of insects. It came from the sky, sounding like a rabbit being strangled. Marika twisted around, her eyes wide with raw terror, more terror than she’d showed with T-rex.
Jake turned, too, and Pindor and Kady halted. High in the sky, a large creature drifted on leathery wings. At first glance, Jake thought it might be a pterodactyl, another saurian hunter like the tyrannosaurus. But as he squinted, he recognized his mistake. The wings were attached to a gaunt creature that appeared to be just leather over bone. As it swept past, Jake spotted arms and legs and a bald domed head ridged by a hard crest.
Jake’s whole body shuddered, sensing the unnaturalness of this creature. Yet, at the same time, it reminded him of something—something he’d seen before.
“A grakyl!” Marika’s voice rang with disbelief and horror. Her gaze ripped from the skies and fixed on Jake. For the first time, he read suspicion in her open face. Then it was gone, hardening into concern. “Make for the gate! It’s our only chance!”
Marika set off as another screech split the sky.
Jake followed, but he kept watch. Overhead, the creature turned on a wing tip. Jake sensed its cold gaze upon them. With another cry, its wings tucked and it tilted into a dive. They’d been spotted.
Marika sprinted up the rocky trail toward the pass. The stone towers waited. Jake chased after her, followed at his heels by Pindor and Kady.
As they neared the towers, Jake’s skin began to prickle, as if a thousand spiders were dancing over his flesh. With each new step, the feeling grew more intense. The prickling began to burn. Confused, Jake stumbled on a loose rock.
“Mari!” Pindor called ahead.
The Mayan girl glanced back and saw Jake stumble. She reached and grabbed his wrist. The burning sensation snuffed out with her touch, though Jake still felt a strange electricity and pressure in the air.
He allowed himself to be dragged up to the Broken Gate and into the shadow of the towers. Marika hauled him another few steps, and the pressure popped away. He turned and saw Pindor had a grip on his sister’s elbow as they dove together through the gate.
The winged creature swooped down with a shriek, diving under the broken archway. Jake ducked, but the creature slammed to a halt. It writhed in midair, fixed in the archway like a living insect pinned to a board. Spatters of lightning coursed over its body. Some kind of field seemed to restrain it.
Jake fell back, getting a good look at the creature. Thrashing limbs ended in claws. Razored spurs decorated knee and elbow. But its face was the worst of all—not because it was monstrous with its porcine nose and fanged maw, but because it was too human. Jake read the intelligence in its agonized eyes. That gaze focused on him, intently, as if recognizing him.
Then with a final screeching cry, the grakyl battered back against the force that held it trapped. It twisted away from the Broken Gate, wings beating desperately. Once well enough away, it finally seemed to catch a bit of wind and flew a crooked path back into the forest.