The Doomsday Key and The Last Oracle with Bonus Excerpts

by James Rollins

  Across the inner surface of the preserved hide, a riotous battle had been drawn. Stylized figures of men on horseback raced across the hide, many bearing shields. Spears stabbed with splashes of crimson dyes. Arrows flew. Billy swore he could hear the whoops and war cries of the savages.

  Fortescue spoke as he knelt down. A hand hovered over the display. “I’ve witnessed such handiwork before. The natives would tan the buffalo skin with a mash of the beast’s own brains, then apply their pigment with a hollowed-out piece of its own bone. But, mon Dieu, I’ve never seen such a masterpiece as this. Look how each horse is different from another, how each warrior’s garb is painted in such detail.”

  The Frenchman’s hand shifted next to hover over what the hide had protected all these years. “And I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  The skull of the monster was laid bare. Earlier, they had excavated the broken tusks of the beast, poking out of the hide-wrapped package. The cranium, exposed now to the light of day, was as large as a church bell. And like the buffalo hide, the bone of the skull had also been adorned, become a canvas for some prehistoric artist.

  Across its surface, figures and shapes had been carved into the bone and painted so brightly they looked wet to the touch.

  Billy’s uncle spoke, full of awe. “The skull. It’s a mammoth, isn’t it? Like those found over at Big Salt Lick.”

  “No. It’s not a mammoth,” Fortescue said, and pointed with the tip of his cane. “See the curve and length of the tusks, the giant size of its masticating teeth. The anatomy and conformation of the skull are different from the mammoth specimens of the Old World. Remains such as these—unique to the Americas—have been reclassified as a new species, a beast called a mastodon.”

  “I don’t care what it’s called,” his father commented forcefully. “Is this the right skull or not? That’s what I want to know.”

  “There is only one way to find out.”

  Fortescue reached and ran his index finger along the bony crest of the skull. The tip of his finger sank into a hole near the back. Over the years, Billy had dressed enough deer and rabbit carcasses to know the hole looked too clean to be natural. The Frenchman used that purchase and pulled up.

  Another round of gasps spread outward. Several of the slaves fell back in horror. Billy’s eyes widened as the top of the monster’s skull split into two halves, opening like the doors of a cabinet. With his father’s help, Fortescue gently pushed back the two pieces of the cranium—each two inches thick and as large as dinner platters.

  Even in the meager sunlight, what lay inside the skull glinted brightly.

  “Gold,” his uncle choked out, shocked.

  The entire inside of the skull had been plated in the precious metal. Fortescue ran a finger along the inner surface of one of the bony halves. Only now did Billy notice the bumps and grooves across the gold surface. It looked to be a crude map, with stylized trees, sculpted mountains, and snaking rivers. The surface was also inscribed with hen scratches that might be writing.

  Leaning closer, he heard Fortescue mumble one word, full of awe and a flicker of fear. “Hebrew.”

  After the initial shock wore off, his father spoke at Billy’s elbow: “But the skull is empty.”

  Fortescue turned his attention to the open cavity of the gold-lined cranium. The space was large enough to cradle a newborn baby inside, but as his father had noted, it was empty.

  Fortescue studied the cavity, his face unreadable, but behind his eyes, Billy saw his mind churning on unfathomable calculations and speculations.

  What had they expected to find?

  Fortescue stood up. “Close it back up. Keep it wrapped in the hide. We need it ready for transport to Virginia within the hour.”

  No one argued. If word spread of gold here, the place would surely be ransacked. Over the next hour, as the sun sank below the horizon and torches were lit, men worked quickly to free the massive skull. A wagon was prepared, horses readied. Billy’s father, his uncle, and the Frenchman spent much of that time with their heads bent together.

  Billy crept close enough with his broom to eavesdrop on their conversation, pretending to be busy. Still, their voices were too low to pick out more than a few words.

  “It may be enough,” Fortescue said. “ . . . a place to start. If the enemy finds it before us, your young union will be doomed before it has even begun.”

  His father shook his head. “Then maybe it best be destroyed now. Set a bonfire here. Burn the bone to ash, melt the gold to slag.”

  “It may come to that, but we’ll leave such a decision to the governor.”

  His father looked ready to argue with the Frenchman, but then caught Billy hovering nearby. He turned and lifted an arm to shoo Billy off and opened his mouth to speak.

  Those words never came.

  Before his father could speak, his throat exploded in a spray of blood. He fell to his knees, clutching at his neck. An arrowhead poked from under his jaw. Blood poured between his fingers, bubbled from his lips.

  Billy ran toward his father, regressing from young man to child in a dark instant. “Papa!”

  In shock, his ears went deaf. The world shrank to include only his father, who stared back at him, full of pain and regret. Then his father’s body jerked, again and again, and toppled forward. Feathers peppered his back. Behind the body, Billy saw his uncle kneeling, head hanging. A spear had cleaved clean through his chest from behind, its point buried in the dirt, its shaft propping the dead body up.

  Before Billy could comprehend what he was seeing, what was happening, he was struck from the side—not by an arrow or spear, but by an arm. He was knocked to the ground and rolled. The impact also snapped the world back into full focus.

  Shouts filled his ears. Horses screamed. Shadows danced amid torches as scores of men fought and grappled. All around, arrows sang through the air, accompanied by savage whoops.

  An Indian attack.

  Billy struggled, but he was pinned under the Frenchman. Fortescue hissed in his ear. “Stay down, boy.”

  The Frenchman rolled off him and flew to his feet as a half-naked savage, his face painted in a red mask of terror, came flying toward him, a hatchet raised high. Fortescue defended with his only weapon, as meager as it might be—his cane.

  As the length of carved oak swung to point at the attacker, it parted near the handle. A sheath of wood flew from the cane’s tip, revealing a sword hidden at its core. The empty sheath struck the savage in the forehead and caused him to stumble in his attack. Fortescue took advantage and lunged out, skewering the attacker through the chest.

  A guttural scream followed. Fortescue turned the man’s momentum, and dropped the savage beside Billy on the ground.

  The Frenchman yanked his sword free. “To me, boy!”

  Billy obeyed. It was all his mind would allow. He had no time to think. He struggled up, but a hand grabbed his arm. The bloody savage sought to hold him. Billy tugged his arm loose.

  The Indian fell back. Where the hand had clutched his sleeve, a smeared handprint remained. Not blood, Billy realized in a flash.

  Paint.

  He stared down at the dying savage. The palm that had clutched him was as white as a lily, though some of the paint was sticking to creases in the palm.

  Fingers clamped onto his collar and pulled him to his feet.

  Billy turned to Fortescue, who still kept hold of him. “They . . . they’re not Indians,” he sobbed out, struggling to understand.

  “I know,” Fortescue answered with nary a bit of fright.

  All around, chaos continued to reign. The last two torches went dark. Screams, prayers, and pleas for mercy echoed all around.

  Fortescue hauled Billy across the encampment, staying low, stopping only long enough to gather up the loose buffalo hide, which he shoved at Billy. They reached a lone horse hidde
n deeper in the woods, tethered to a tree, already saddled as if someone had anticipated the attack. The horse stamped and threw its head, panicked by the cries, by the smell of blood.

  The Frenchman pointed. “Up you go. Be ready to fly.”

  As Billy hooked a boot into the stirrup, the Frenchman vanished back into the shadows. With no choice, Billy climbed into the saddle. His weight seemed to calm the horse. He hugged his arms around the mount’s sweaty neck, but his heart continued to pound in his throat. Blood rushed through his ears. He wanted to clamp his hands over those ears, to shut out the bloody screams, but he strained to see any sign of approach by the savages.

  No, not savages, he reminded himself.

  A branch cracked behind him. He twisted around as a shape limped into view. From the cape of his jacket and the glint of his sword, he could see it was the Frenchman. Billy wanted to leap off the horse and clasp tightly to the man, to force him to make some sense of the bloodshed and deceit.

  Fortescue stumbled up to him. The broken shaft of an arrow stuck out of the man’s thigh, just above the knee. As he reached Billy’s side, he shoved two large objects up at him.

  “Take these. Keep them bundled in the hide.”

  Billy accepted the burdens. With a shock, he saw it was the crown of the monster’s cranium, split into two halves, bone on one side, gold on the other. Fortescue must have stolen them off the larger skull.

  But why?

  With no time for answers, he folded the two platters of gold-plated bone into the buffalo hide in his lap.

  “Go,” Fortescue said.

  Billy took the reins but hesitated. “What about you, sir?”

  Fortescue placed a hand on his knee, as if sensing his raw terror, trying to reassure him. His words were firm and fast. “You and your horse have enough of a burden to bear without my weight. You must fly as swiftly as you can. Take it where it will be safe.”

  “Where?” Billy asked, clenching the reins.

  “To the new governor of Virginia.” The Frenchman stepped away. “Take it to Thomas Jefferson.”

  PART I

  Trespass

  Chapter 1

  Present Day

  May 18, 1:32 P.M.

  Rocky Mountains, Utah

  It looked like the entrance to hell.

  The two young men stood on a ridge overlooking a deep, shadowy chasm. It had taken them eight hours to climb from the tiny burg of Roosevelt to this remote spot high in the Rocky Mountains.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Trent Wilder asked.

  Charlie Reed took out his cell phone, checked the GPS, then examined the Indian map drawn on a piece of deer hide and sealed in a clear plastic Ziploc bag. “I think so. According to the map, there should be a small stream at the bottom of this ravine. The cave entrance should be where the creek bends around to the north.”

  Trent shivered and brushed snow from his hair. Though a tapestry of wildflowers heralded the arrival of spring in the lowlands, up here winter still held a firm grip. The air remained frigid, and snow frosted the surrounding mountaintops. To make matters worse, the sky had been lowering all day, and a light flurry had begun to blow.

  Trent studied the narrow valley. It seemed to have no bottom. Down below, a black pine forest rose out of a sea of fog. Sheer cliffs surrounded all sides. While he had packed ropes and rappelling harnesses, he hoped he wouldn’t need them.

  But that wasn’t what was truly bothering him.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be going down there,” he said.

  Charlie cocked an eyebrow at him. “After climbing all day?”

  “What about that curse? What your grandfather—”

  A hand waved dismissively. “The old man’s got one foot in the grave and a head full of peyote.” Charlie slapped him in the shoulder. “So don’t go crapping your pants. The cave probably has a few arrowheads, some broken pots. Maybe even a few bones, if we’re lucky. C’mon.”

  Trent had no choice but to follow Charlie down a thin deer trail they’d discovered earlier. As they picked their way along, he frowned at the back of Charlie’s crimson jacket, emblazoned with the two feathers representing the University of Utah. Trent still wore his high school letterman jacket, bearing the Roosevelt Union cougar. The two of them had been best friends since elementary school, but lately they’d been growing apart. Charlie had just finished his first year at college, while Trent had gone into full-time employment at his dad’s auto-body shop. Even this summer, Charlie would be participating in an internship with the Uintah Reservation’s law group.

  His friend was a rising star, one that Trent would soon need a telescope to watch from the tiny burg of Roosevelt. But what else was new? Charlie had always outshone Trent. Of course, it didn’t help matters that his friend was half Ute, with his people’s perpetual tan and long black hair. Trent’s red crew cut and the war of freckles across his nose and cheeks had forever relegated him to the role of Charlie’s wingman at school parties.

  Though the thought went unvoiced, it was as if they both knew their friendship was about to end as adulthood fell upon their shoulders. So as a rite of passage, the two had agreed to this last adventure, to search for a cave sacred to the Ute tribes.

  According to Charlie, only a handful of his tribal elders even knew about this burial site high in the Uintas Wilderness. Those who did were forbidden to speak of it. The only reason Charlie knew about it was that his grandfather liked his bourbon too much. Charlie doubted his grandfather even remembered showing him that old deer-hide map hidden in a hollowed-out buffalo horn.

  Trent had first heard the tale when he was in junior high, huddled in a pup tent with Charlie. With a flashlight held to his chin for effect, his friend had shared the story. “My grandfather says the Great Spirit still haunts this cave. Guarding a huge treasure of our people.”

  “What sort of treasure?” Trent had asked doubtfully. At the time he had been more interested in the Playboy he’d sneaked out of his father’s closet. That was treasure enough for him.

  Charlie had shrugged. “Don’t know. But it must be cursed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His friend had shifted the flashlight closer to his chin, devilishly arching an eyebrow. “Grandfather says whoever trespasses into the Great Spirit’s cave is never allowed to leave.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because if they do, the world will end.”

  Right then, Trent’s old hound dog had let out an earsplitting wail, making them both jump. Afterward, they had laughed and talked deep into the night. Charlie ended up dismissing his grandfather’s story as superstitious nonsense. As a modern Indian, Charlie went out of his way to reject such foolishness.

  Even so, Charlie had sworn Trent to secrecy and refused to take him to the place marked on the map—until now.

  “It’s getting warmer down here,” Charlie said.

  Trent held out a palm. His friend was right. The snowfall had been growing heavier, the flakes thickening, but as they descended, the air had grown warmer, smelling vaguely of spoiled eggs. At some point, the snowfall had turned to a drizzling rain. He wiped his hand on his pants and realized that the fog he’d spotted earlier along the bottom of the ravine was actually steam.

  The source appeared through the trees below: a small creek bubbling along a rocky channel at the bottom of the ravine.

  “Smell that sulfur,” Charlie said with a sniff. Reaching the creek, he tested the water with a finger. “Hot. Must be fed by a geothermal spring somewhere around here.”

  Trent was unimpressed. The mountains around here were riddled with such baths.

  Charlie stood up. “This must be the right place.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Hot spots like this are sacred to my people. So it only makes sense that they would pick this place for an important burial sit
e.” Charlie headed out, hopping from rock to rock. “C’mon. We’re close.”

  Together, they followed the creek upstream. With each step, the air grew hotter. The sulfurous smell burned Trent’s eyes and nostrils. No wonder no one had ever found this place.

  With his eyes watering, Trent wanted to turn back, but Charlie suddenly stopped at a sharp bend in the creek. His friend swung in a full circle, holding out his cell phone like a divining rod, then checked the map he’d stolen from his grandfather’s bedroom this morning.

  “We’re here.”

  Trent searched around. He didn’t see any cave. Just trees and more trees. Overhead, snow had begun to frost on the higher elevations, but it continued to fall as a sickly rain down here.

  “The entrance has got to be somewhere nearby,” Charlie mumbled.

  “Or it could just be an old story.”

  Charlie hopped to the other side of the creek and began kicking at some leafy ferns on that side. “We should at least look around.”

  Trent made a half-assed attempt on his side, heading away from the water. “I don’t see anything!” he called back as he reached a wall of granite. “Why don’t we just—”

  Then he saw it, out of the corner of his eye as he turned. It looked like another shadow on the cliff face, except a breeze was combing through the valley, setting branches to moving, shadows to shifting.

  Only this shadow didn’t move.

  He stepped closer. The cave entrance was low and wide, like a mouth frozen in a perpetual scowl. It opened four feet up the cliff face, sheltered under a protruding lip of stone.

  A splash and a curse announced the arrival of his friend.

  Trent pointed.

  “It’s really here,” Charlie said, sounding hesitant for the first time.

  They stood for a long moment, staring at the cave entrance, remembering the stories about it. They were both too nervous to move forward, but too full of manly pride to back away.

  “We doing this?” Trent finally asked.