The Belial Search

by R. D. Brady

  Laney pulled out her legal pad and started writing notes. Henry had texted her about Jen’s idea. And it made sense, in a completely horrible way.

  She frowned. She knew that ritual human sacrifice had a long history, especially in Central America. Captured warriors and children were common sacrifices. In fact, in some cultures, children were groomed from birth to be sacrifices.

  The Aztecs presented the most well-known example of human sacrificial culture, as they had engaged in it on a truly horrifying scale; thousands had been put to death, their still-beating hearts ripped from their chests in some cases. But Laney knew they weren’t the only ones, not by a long shot, nor was the practice limited to Central America. The Incans, Celts, Mongols, Scythians, Mayans, Toltecs, Egyptians—they had all engaged in the practice.

  One group, the Olmecs, was said to have engaged in the practice as early as 1500 BC. The Olmecs were a mysterious group that appeared out of nowhere in Mexico. With them they brought science, literature, and law. But they left little behind except for the massive stone heads with African features. A group that history said had been nowhere near South America at that time.

  Laney had once taken some of the older kids from the school to an Olmecs exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. In the exhibit, the Olmecs were described as Mexico’s earliest civilization.

  But regardless of which culture you referred to, the sacrifices only came about when things had gone wrong—terribly wrong. And in the so-called “Ring of Fire,” disaster was never far away.

  The Ring of Fire was a 25,000-mile stretch that rimmed the Pacific Ocean. It horseshoed from the southern tip of South America, up the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, and down through Japan and New Zealand. And within that area were over 452 volcanoes. So no matter how prepared they were, anyone living in the Ring of Fire would be exposed to extreme natural disasters—savage flooding, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis.

  And in times of stress, those groups historically turned to religion as a way to cope. For the older cultures along the eastern portion of the ring, humans were sacrificed to the gods. They believed that once the gods were appeased, the world would calm down again.

  “Hey.”

  Laney’s head snapped up in surprise. Jake stood only a few feet away.

  “Oh, hey,” Laney said, not sure how to react. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Glad to see my skills are still intact.”

  Laney’s heart gave a painful lurch.

  “You look a little lost in thought,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, um, just trying to make some sense of all this.”

  Next to her, Cleo rolled to her feet and walked up to Jake. She bumped him none too gently with her head before disappearing into the trees. When everything had started getting uncomfortable with Jake, Cleo had made it clear whose side she was on.

  Jake rubbed his chest with a wince. “She always gets me in the same spot.”

  Laney tried not to smile. She had to admit, she kind of liked Cleo’s snub of Jake. At least someone was telling Jake he was acting like an idiot. “I don’t think she’s very happy with you right now.”

  “Yeah, I get that.” He paused. “I don’t think you are either.”

  “Jake, I—”

  He put up his hand and walked over, then took a seat on the ground next to her. “Let me just say this, okay?”

  Laney nodded.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been acting like a complete idiot. I’ve been injured before, but never like this. It’s never taken me so long to come back. And I’m not handling it well.”

  “Well, that’s a bit of understatement,” Laney muttered.

  Jake let out a laugh. “True. It’s just—I’ve been a soldier for the majority of my life. And now I’m not, so I guess I don’t really know who exactly I am these days.”

  “Jake, you’ve never been just a guy who throws punches and shoots guns. You’re still a soldier, you’re just fighting a different way right now.”

  “I know. It’s just in my head. I’m stronger than my body actually is and—”

  Laney took his hands. “Jake, you and Henry took on Cain knowing how devastating your injuries were going to be. You risked your lives to save us. And that’s not physical strength—that’s so much more. You’re so much more. I don’t love you because you can fire a gun and beat up guys. Sometimes I love you in spite of it.”

  Jake went still. “Do you? Still love me?”

  Laney felt a catch at the back of her throat. “Against my better judgment, yes.”

  He smiled, regret in his voice. “I’m sorry, Laney. I know you’ve been going through so much with Victoria, and now the Fallen popping up everywhere, and trying to keep the world safe. And I haven’t been making that any easier on you. But I promise I will from this point forward.”

  Laney looked into his eyes, wanting more than anything to believe him. She wanted her Jake back, not this angry man she’d been seeing for the last few months.

  “Promise?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Promise.”

  Laney wanted to believe him, but she knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as a few words and everything was solved. “You can’t keep making me feel guilty when I go out in the field. It’s my job.”

  “I know. It’s just—when Henry and I got hurt, it clarified how fragile we are. And it made me realize just how easily you could get hurt, too.” Jake shook his head. “I don’t know that I could stand that.”

  “Jake, if I get hurt, then I get hurt. It’s not your responsibility. This is the life we lead, and it’s not a safe one. But I can’t keep fighting you and then going out there to fight the Fallen. I need peace somewhere. And I’m pretty sure the Fallen aren’t going to offer it.”

  “I can’t promise I won’t be worried. I can’t promise I won’t want to be by your side when you go out. But I can promise that I will support you. I know what you can do. I know how strong you are. It’s just difficult being the one left behind.”

  “You’re not left behind, Jake. You’re always right there with me.”

  He wrapped his arms around her.

  Laney closed her eyes and leaned into him. She felt the heat and familiarity of his embrace, and she realized just how much she had missed him even though he had been near her this whole time. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she clutched him to her.

  “I’m so sorry, Laney,” he whispered in her ear.

  And Laney let go of her doubts and her fears and decided to trust. Because whatever the future held, it held it for both of them. Jake had her heart and would always have it.

  “I love you, Laney.”

  “I love you too,” Laney whispered, and she hoped that the song was wrong, and that sometimes love was enough.

  CHAPTER 18

  Laney and Jake had stayed out in the field for a while, lying next to each other, their hands entwined. And Laney could not remember a time in the last few months that had been better, not even DC. She and Jake being off-kilter had sent everything off-kilter. But now her life was back in its proper orbit. Still difficult, still stressful, but being on the same page with Jake made all the rest of it seem surmountable.

  She just really hoped it lasted.

  Hand in hand, they walked into Henry’s office as darkness fell. Jen looked up from the couch and noted their hands. “Well, about damn time.”

  Laney smiled. “Our thoughts exactly.”

  She let go of Jake’s hand and took a seat across from Jen. “Anything new?”

  Jen shook her head. “From what I can tell, this ritual is not one that’s been recorded in history. Someone seems to be blending previous rituals together.”

  Jen’s words triggered the niggle of a memory in the back of Laney’s brain. Something about the blending of rituals and Cayce.

  “Any parts of the world where they seem to borrow from?” Jake asked.

  “The Yucatan, although honestly we can’t be sure,” Jen said.

  “That�
��s it,” Laney said.

  “What’s it?” Jake asked as he took a seat next to Laney.

  “The blending of rituals. When the people of Atlantis left after the final destruction, they took their rituals with them. Eventually, their rituals were blended into the structure of other rituals.”

  “But we don’t know this has anything to do with Atlantis,” Jake said. “I mean, just because it’s Fallen-related doesn’t mean it’s Atlantis-related.”

  “I suppose,” Laney said.

  Henry walked in and nodded toward the conference table. “I may have something.”

  The screen lowered, and an image appeared—one drawn in blood. It looked like a small series of mountains with a lake.

  “What’s this?” Jen asked.

  “At each of the abduction sites, this image is placed somewhere,” Henry said. “This one was found in Sheila’s kitchen. Mikio didn’t notice it in his rush to find Sheila, but one of our guys did when they went over the scene.”

  “It looks like a mountain range,” Laney said.

  Henry nodded. “I thought the same. I had an analyst try to run it and see if they could get a cartographic match. We came up empty. It doesn’t mean that it’s not a mountain, it just means that until we know the scale, we probably won’t be able to match it.”

  “But there must be a reason why they left it,” Jen said.

  Jake stepped forward, tilting his head to the side as he looked at the picture. “Henry, can you rotate the picture?”

  The image shifted ninety degrees.

  “One more.” Jake said.

  Henry rotated it again.

  “There,” Jake said. “Doesn’t that look familiar?”

  On screen, the mountain range had morphed into the profile of a man with a long straight nose, closely set eyes, and a straight forehead. And there was something familiar about it.

  “It’s one of the heads from Easter Island,” Jake said.

  Laney started. Although technically a province of Chile, Easter Island was almost four thousand miles west of the South American mainland. And the island itself was tiny—a triangular-shaped piece of land only a little over sixty square miles. You could easily walk across it in a day. It was beyond barren with few trees and lots of wind.

  It was also a footnote to the dangers of exploited natural resources. Apparently at one point, it had been a fertile piece of land with a strong forest. But natives had hacked away at the trees and overused the soil. As a result, the land now yielded very little. When early explorers first came across the island, they described its people as among the poorest on the planet, barely subsisting.

  Yet the tiny, poor little island was still a place of mystery—the biggest being the moai, the giant heads that were found across the island.

  Laney turned to Jen, who had specialized in Pacific civilizations in grad school. “What do you know about Easter Island?”

  “It was first reported in 1687 as being a large landmass, but by 1722, on a second visit, only the small island was left, and the rest of the land was believed to have submerged. And it has a sad history.”

  “How so?” Henry asked.

  “In 1862, twelve Peruvian slave ships arrived on the island’s shores looking for slaves to mine guano deposits in the Chincho Islands. They kidnapped over a thousand islanders. The few remaining survivors fought off the slavers and managed to steal a ship. They sailed to Tahiti to tell the French court of the barbarity of the Peruvian slavers, and the Peruvian government ordered the slavers to return the islanders. But while more than a thousand had been taken, maltreatment, disease, and devastation had greatly shrunk those numbers. Only fifteen of the original group survived the trip back to the island; and worse, they brought smallpox with them. By the time the disease had worked its way through the island, there were only one hundred and eleven islanders left.”

  Laney shuddered. The island was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Its closest neighbor was Pitcairn Island, over a thousand miles away. She couldn’t imagine watching the numbers of your people dropping and knowing there was no chance of help coming. How helpless they must have felt.

  “And of course, Easter Island is famous for its moai statues,” Jen said. “There are more than nine hundred of them scattered across the island, and no one knows where they came from. The natives say their ancestors did not create them.”

  Laney pictured the moai. Each one depicted the head and shoulders of a man. They ranged in size from fifteen feet to seventy feet. Each weighed hundreds of tons.

  “Have they ever figured out who or how those statues were created or how they were erected?” Henry asked.

  Jen shook her head. “No. But of course there are rumors.”

  “Of course there are,” Jake muttered.

  “According to the legends, the moai walked into their positions.”

  “Walked?” Henry asked.

  “Yup,” Jen said. “Of course, other reports say they were moved into position through mental powers.”

  “Isn’t there a more traditional explanation?” Jake asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Well, there is the age-old theory that says they rolled the statues into place on logs,” Jen said, her voice indicating her thoughts on that particular theory.

  “Let me guess—the terrain makes that likelihood very slim?” Laney asked.

  “Yup—very rocky terrain. And some of the moai are in rather difficult to reach locations. Rolling a hundred-ton statute into one of those locations would be highly unlikely.”

  “Were they once an advanced civilization?” Jake asked.

  “Not recently. In fact, most explorers were struck by how poor the citizens were, how isolated. Today, there’s only five thousand or so people. But it does get fifty thousand visitors every year,” Jen said.

  “But there must have been some evidence of an advanced civilization somewhere in their history,” Laney said. “I mean, someone had to have built the moai.”

  Jen nodded. “There’s the rongo rongo script that was found in 1864 by Eugène Eyraud. He found twenty-six wooden tablets in various huts around the island. Each tablet was covered in symbols that looked like hieroglyphs. The script has never been translated, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to the script used by the Cuna Indians in Panama and the script used in Mohenjo-daro that dates to 4000 BCE.”

  Laney started at the mention of Mohenjo-daro, an ancient city in Pakistan built somewhere between four and five thousand BC. The city had been laid out on a grid. It had a sophisticated sewage system, including manhole covers and public latrines on every block. It also had the Great Bath, which was believed to be used as a purification pool.

  But what Mohenjo-daro was most known for was the skeletons found strewn throughout the streets, some holding hands. Some believe the city had been the site of a nuclear blast in the ancient world.

  “Is there any link between the island and the Fallen?” Henry asked.

  “No,” Jen said, “not directly. But Easter Island does have some legends surrounding it that have some familiar themes. Its origin myth speaks of a King Hout-Matua, who arrived with his people after the submersion of their homeland. But according to the legends there were already people on the island—very tall, redheaded individuals.”

  Laney groaned. More tall redheaded giants. “Why are they always redheaded?”

  Henry smiled. “I’m sure it’s nothing personal.”

  “Okay, so Easter Island may or may not have some links to Atlantis, but we do see pictures of moais at each of the crime scenes,” Jake said.

  Jen nodded.

  “So if I’m understanding this correctly,” Jake said, “we have a group kidnapping individuals who have some sort of link with the Fallen, sacrificing them, and leaving behind a pictures of the statues from Easter Island which were allegedly created by the descendants of an advanced civilization?”

  Laney nodded. “Yup.”

  Jake flopped down onto the couch. “Oh well, it must be Tuesday.”
>
  CHAPTER 19

  Laney had spent the rest of the afternoon looking through all the files that Matt had sent on the companion murders. At five she had called a halt, and she, Henry, Jake, and Jen went to the school to meet with students and attend the candlelit vigil. She knew they needed to track down Sheila’s killer but the search could do without them for while. And the kids at the schools needed to be reassured.

  Then this morning, they had attended the memorial service. Lou and Rolly did a really beautiful job setting it up. Still, it had been rough. The kids had looked so lost. And Mikio clinging to his two children looking completely shattered was not an image that Laney would be able to shake any time soon.

  But it was back to business now. Danny had stayed at the school to be with his friends while Henry, Jake, Laney, and Jen headed back to the estate.

  When they arrived, Henry and Jake headed right for the office. But neither Jen nor Laney could stomach looking at any crime scene photos—not after the rawness of this morning. So they went for a run to clear their heads. Eight miles later, Laney knew they had put off work as long as they could.

  Laney shifted from a run to a jog as they approached the gates of the Chandler estate. Jen matched her pace. “Feel better?”

  “A little. You?”

  Jen sighed. “A little.”

  They shifted to a walk as they reached the gates and waved at the guards in the booth. They continued on to Sharecropper Lane. And just like that, all the murders and questions popped back into Laney’s mind. How on earth could there be a link between an island over five thousand miles away and Sheila’s murder? And was any of this linked to Cayce and Atlantis, or were they just assuming there was a link because there always seemed to be a link?

  Laney sighed. Yet another moment when I wish Victoria was here. Before her death, this would be just the type of question Laney would bring to her. And Victoria would answer, albeit in her own cryptic way.