Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [102]
Huitzilin shrieked. He tried to take a step forward, but something stopped him, as though a sheet of glass hung in the air between them. ‘Stop it! Stop reading!’
The Doctor wasn’t reading. He was swaying slightly, eyes closed, the words pouring out of him. Smoke was rising from his hair and hands.
Que ia noca oia tonaqui yiaia yia yio
‘Stop it or I’ll kill you!’
The door of the cabin opened and slammed shut. Objects picked themselves up and danced about the room; a comb, a shoe, an empty glass, tracing poltergeist waltzes in the sizzling air. The window exploded outwards, spraying the deck below with glass.
Tetzavitztli ia mixtecatlce i mocxi pichauaztecatl
Huitzilin clawed the air, screaming. The luminescent lines of his body bent and convulsed, as though he were being crushed.
Tlapo ma ia ova yieo ayia yie
It was working.
Smoke curled around the Doctor’s fingers. He pushed them into the fragile book, fingernails tearing the paper. ‘Ai,’ he gasped, ‘tlaxotla t-t-t-tenamitl ihuitli m-m-macoc –’
Huitzilin’s face was drawn into a hideous mask of hate. ‘You can’t do it!’ he howled.
‘Mopopoxotiuh,’ the Time Lord tried to catch his breath, ‘I – lautlato –’
‘Go on!’ laughed the Aztec, through his pain. ‘Go on! Say it!’
‘Noteouh – noteouh –’ The Doctor’s eyes opened; he was shaking violently, the energy exploding around him in brilliant patterns, striking the walls, the floor. ‘Noteouh aia tepquizqui mitoa ia –’
And then he dropped the book.
* * *
Chapter 15
Epiphany
* * *
Monday, April 15, 1912
* * *
12.19 am
And then he dropped the book.
The light and the sound vanished in an instant. In the sudden ringing silence there was a pitter‐patter of tiny sounds as the airborne objects dropped onto the carpet. The Doctor crumpled to the floor as though someone had cut his strings and curled around his seared hands, making a single, tiny sound of pain. Wisps of smoke rose from him in graceful patterns.
The Codex Atlaca flared orange and exploded into flames. The carpet smouldered around it as it self‐destructed. The raw fragrance of burning paper filled the cabin.
Huitzilin straightened, stretched luxuriously and came across the cabin like a jaguar.
The Time Lord gasped as the Aztec reached down and hauled him into the air by his collar. Huitzilin wrapped an arm around his throat, a ghostly and intangible arm, suddenly horribly real and strong. They were converging. It was happening.
The Doctor reached for the constricting arm, but Huitzilin grabbed his wrist and gripped it so tightly he thought it would break. He tried to kick backwards at the psychevore’s shin, shin, but he didn’t have the strength.
‘Now,’ the flute said in the Doctor’s ear, ‘what do you have left to fight me with?’
‘Cristián –’ gasped the Time Lord, before Huitzilin pulled the arm tight across his throat.
‘None of this is real to him,’ whispered the god from behind. His voice was almost tender, gentle now he knew that he had won. He looked over the Doctor’s shoulder at Cristián, sitting like a broken doll with his back against the wall. ‘It’s a dream. It isn’t happening.’
Huitzilin smiled, and sank his teeth into the Doctor’s neck.
* * *
12.21 am
The TARDIS juddered and thumped and was suddenly still.
‘What was that?’ cried Bernice. ‘Have we gone?’
‘No,’ said Ace. ‘No, we haven’t.’
‘She listened to you.’ Benny ran tense fingers through her hair. ‘She actually listened to you.’
‘I don’t think she did,’ said Ace. She patted the console the way a rider might pat a familiar horse. ‘She just didn’t want to leave him.’
‘Right,’ said Bernice. ‘Now all we have to do is save the day.’
* * *
12.22 am
For the first time in twenty‐two years, Cristián was not afraid.
He remembered a childhood accident, three neat stitches above his eye. Pushing his thumbnail into the skin in fascination. The nurses had swabbed the bit of skin with cotton wool before they’d started sewing. And now the skin had no feeling at all. Cotton wool.