The design was in the same style as the others, and yet unlike all of them. In the center was a figure with the face and antlers of a deer. Its arms were folded across its chest and what looked like wings were pinned underneath it. To either side of its supine form were serpentine shapes that reminded Bly of dragons, their legs raised to display their fanned claws and their faces turned to showcase their sharp teeth.
They’d encountered countless burials at the bottom of what had once been a lake, but this was the first tomb. And if he was right, they’d finally found where this lost civilization buried its royalty.
He removed his communications device from his stuff sack and turned it on. A crackle of static burst from the speaker.
“Hello?” He smacked the side of the transceiver and tried again. “Hel-hello? Can anybody hear me?”
A garbled voice replied, but he couldn’t decipher what it said. He was at the very farthest extent of its range and he knew it, but he had to try, if only to minimize his guilt over what he intended to do next.
He set the transceiver on the lid, braced his feet, and shoved the lid.
A deafening screech echoed through the cavern, but the lid only moved a quarter of an inch. If that. The blasted thing had to weigh five hundred pounds. He pushed back the sleeves of his cave suit, put his shoulder into the stone slab, and drove—
Click-click-click-click-click.
He turned at the sound, but there was no sign of anything behind him. He swept his light across the orifice and the surrounding walls. There wasn’t so much as a hint of movement. He returned his attention to the lid, braced himself once more, and pushed with everything he had.
The granite made a grinding noise and slid maybe six inches, just far enough for him to be able to see over the edge. The stench that gusted from within left no doubt as to what the box contained.
Bly tilted his head in such a way that he could shine his light inside. The remains were brown and mummified, the parchment skin shrunken to the contours of the bones. He saw a pair of knobby, bare legs. Cloth, black with the fluids of decomposition. A cavernous abdomen and chest rippled with ribs. And the bony snout and antlered skull of a deer.
Click-click-click-click-click.
This time he could tell exactly where the sound originated.
He slowly raised his light toward the ceiling—
Eyeshine.
He caught a glimpse of scaled lips peeling back from teeth glistening with saliva. He raised his arms to shield his head. A blur of feathers and it was upon him.
His hand vanished with a crunch of bone. Claws pierced his upper back. Searing pain in his shoulder and neck. A sensation of weightlessness as it lifted him, kicking and screaming, toward the hole in the ceiling from which it hung.
The sound of his blood spattering the granite lid followed him into the darkness.
28
KELLY
The Cage, FOB Atlantis
Kelly drew her knees to her chest and practically disappeared into the chair. She’d never been so cold in her life and couldn’t seem to make herself stop shivering. It was this place, she knew. This awful, awful place where so many horrible things had happened. She wanted to go home. More than anything, she just wanted to go home.
“This serpent god you mentioned,” Barnett said. “Is it like you? Do you see yourself as a god?”
His voice echoed from the speakers inside the cavern. On the monitor, the creature made no appreciable indication that it had even heard him. Its thermal representation just sat there, surrounded by bones, staring at them through two feet of solid steel and concrete.
Roche pulled up a chair beside hers and took her by the hand. She leaned into him and allowed him to wrap his arm around her.
“We know about the maze in Teotihuacan. We know the pattern you drew on the window is the path through it.”
The being cocked its elongated head. Its multicolored silhouette looked like something from a science fiction movie.
“What’s at the center of the maze? What do you want us to find?”
It rose and stalked across the cavern in its halting, disjointed way. It was just on the other side of the glass, and yet Kelly couldn’t see it without the aid of the thermal imaging.
“Tell me about the sleeping god.”
An orange smile slashed its face.
“Free . . . us.”
Kelly flinched at the sound of the voice straight out of her nightmares. She clutched Roche’s hand so tightly that her fingernails bit into his flesh.
“Tell me what I want to know and I’ll consider it.”
The smile mutated into a snarl.
“You . . . lie.”
“As long as you inhabit that form, you will never leave this cage,” Barnett said. “Is that what you wanted to hear? No matter how smart you think you are, you will die in there.”
“As you will . . . die . . . out there.”
Kelly shivered. This time it had nothing to do with the cold.
“This isn’t accomplishing anything,” Tess said, and gently rested her hand on Barnett’s.
The director looked at her as though seeing her for the first time, and leaned away from the microphone. He abruptly stood and walked away from the console. Kelly could feel him pacing behind her as she stared at the hideous face on the computer screen. The smile returned, only somehow even worse.
Tess pressed the button and spoke into the microphone.
“You’re referring to the feathered serpent god, correct?”
Uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uh.
“What is the sleeping god?”
“Let him . . . ask.”
“Let who ask?”
“Martin . . . Roche.”
Kelly felt him stiffen next to her. Tess glanced back, but said nothing. It took her a moment to compose herself. There was no way it could have seen him through the blood-smeared glass.
“Tell it he’s in England,” Barnett said.
“The director says he’s in England.”
“He is . . . here. I can . . . smell . . . him.”
The way it emphasized the word “smell” made Kelly’s skin crawl.
Tess looked at Barnett, who stopped his incessant pacing only long enough to spear Roche with his stare.
“You up for this?”
Roche stared at the dark window for several seconds before releasing Kelly’s hand. He stood and approached the console.
The creature’s smile grew impossibly wide.
Roche licked his lips and pressed the button on the microphone.
“What is the sleeping god?”
“Have you . . . broken . . . the code?”
The tone of its voice was cruel, taunting.
“What code?”
“You are . . . running out . . . of time.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Events already . . . in motion.”
“Ask it what it means,” Barnett said.
“Screw this. I say we end this monster right here and now.”
“Just ask it. Please.”
Roche stared at Barnett for several seconds before looking away and pressing the button.
“What events?”
The creature’s smile faded. It rocked back like a wolf preparing to howl and drew a long inhalation through its nose. When it lowered its head, Kelly was certain it looked straight at her through the monitor. It held up its left hand and tapped its abnormally long fingers against its thumb, just like Kelly was doing at the exact same time. She closed her eyes as tightly as she could and felt the warmth of tears on her cheeks.
“Kelly Nolan . . . knows.”
She sobbed at the sound of her name coming from its mouth.
“Leave her out of this.”
It smiled and retreated into the cavernous depths of its cage.
“Don’t let it get under your skin,” Barnett said. “Focus on the task at hand. Ask it again about the sleeping god. We need to know what we’re
up against.”
“You ask it. We’re done here.”
Roche extended his hand to Kelly, who took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet.
Barnett’s transceiver crackled. He stepped out into the tunnel and lowered his voice so they couldn’t overhear what he said.
“How does it know our names?” Kelly whispered.
“I assume the same way it learned our language,” Tess said. “I believe it assimilates the memories of its host.”
“We barely met Rubley,” Roche said.
“But you knew Hollis Richards, who, from what I understand, learned everything he could about each of you.”
The thought made Kelly sick to her stomach. If that was true, it knew where she lived, where she worked. None of them would ever be safe as long as it was alive.
The creature turned to face the camera. The expression on its face was not that of a higher order of life, but rather that of a predatory species.
“Kill it,” Kelly said. “Kill it now.”
An alarm klaxon blared.
Kelly screamed and nearly came out of her skin.
“What’s going on?” Tess asked.
Barnett holstered his transceiver as he entered the room.
“Everyone to the surface,” he said. “We’re on temporary lockdown.”
The creature settled once more into its nest of bones and stared at them through the monitor, seemingly unperturbed by the siren.
“What’s happening?” Kelly screamed.
The creature’s voice was barely audible over the shrill sound, but there was no mistaking its words.
“The . . . sleeping god . . . awakens.”
29
CARSON
“Everyone needs to get to the base,” Special Agent Drew Carson said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the alarm. “That means you, too, Dr. Clarke.”
He was getting more than a little tired of babysitting civilians, especially those who couldn’t seem to follow the simplest of orders. It almost made him nostalgic for his days guarding the oilfields of Iraq for men who didn’t give a rat’s ass about the war and were only in it for the money. Men like that were easy to deal with because their motivations were transparent. And predictable. They were going to make a fortune regardless of how many lives were lost or whose side they were on.
Dr. Clarke, on the other hand, was exasperating. The creature on the other side of the wall was an abomination that had viciously murdered people just like them and here she was trying to make sure that everything was in order when they should have just triggered the fail-safe and incinerated the freaking thing, or at least left it to rot in there while they followed their orders.
“Come with me,” he said in the most level tone he could muster and took her gently by the arm. “Please.”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “I just need to make sure that all of my data is saved and backed up—”
“You’ve already done that multiple times.”
“I can’t leave anything to chance,” Tess said. “Not with something this important.”
“There’s no way it can get out of there, can it?” Kelly asked.
“No, ma’am,” Carson said. “As long as we’re on lockdown, there’s no way that door can be opened without a manual override.”
“Who all knows the code?” Roche asked.
“No one who has any desire to let that monster ever set foot outside that cage again, if that’s what you’re asking.” Carson positioned himself behind them so he could herd them toward the corridors leading to the base. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind . . .”
“We’re going,” Dr. Clarke said, and led them at a jog down the hallway toward the underground entrance to the pyramid.
They were nearly there when the pigs started screaming. It was like the sound they made when Dutton rolled that cart of his down the hall, only every single one of them seemed to be making it at once.
“Keep going,” he said. “You know the drill. Gather in the central hub and wait for further instructions.”
“I’m sure we can handle it on our own from here,” Dr. Clarke said.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
Carson watched them until they reached the ladder before heading back and opening the door to the infernal pigsty. The smell smacked him upside the head the moment he crossed the threshold. The single emergency light was in the far back corner and hidden behind the racks of pig feed Dutton had arranged so he could hide while he took his little naps. Everyone knew about it, but no one cared. As long as he continued to serve the bacon crispy and the eggs fluffy, the cook had a blank check to do whatever he wanted as far as any of them were concerned.
The squealing was so loud he feared it might rupture his eardrums. If it were up to him, he’d let these infernal swine hurl themselves against the walls of their cages until they battered themselves to death, but Barnett would have a coronary if he let that happen. It would take more than a week to arrange for replacements and if anything happened to that beast in the other room in the meantime, Barnett would make sure someone’s head rolled, and there was no way on this planet it was going to be his.
“Dutton?”
Carson approached the wall of cages. There were fourteen of them in all: seven columns stacked two high. All of the wire doors stood open, and yet he could still see the dark shapes of the animals cowering in the back of most of them, just squealing and pissing themselves like it was the end of the world.
He closed the doors one at a time. It wasn’t like Dutton to leave them open. He must have been in the middle of feeding them when the alarm sounded and just ran for the barracks. Not like the squealing wouldn’t have been enough to drive him out of his mind anyway. Maybe if someone silenced the blasted klaxon they’d shut their bleating snouts for two seconds.
Crack.
The sound came from somewhere behind him. He closed the last cage door and turned toward Dutton’s little hidey-hole.
There was something back there.
Carson drew his sidearm and sighted down the shadow, which blended in with the darkness so well that all he could see was the outline of a head and hunched shoulders.
“Come out of there,” he said. “Slowly.”
Crack.
Without taking his eyes from the sightline, he removed the mini LED Maglite from his utility belt and shined it backhanded into the corner—
The beam reflected from a pair of eyes that were simultaneously human and bestial. The mask of blood on Dutton’s face nearly concealed his features. Most of it dribbled from the torn skin along his hairline, which had retracted to reveal the bare bone of his elongated forehead. The rest belonged to the dead pig clutched in his grasp.
“The hell is wrong with you?”
Dutton dropped the carcass, revealing the gaping hole in the pig’s neck and the broken vertebrae inside. The edges of the wound appeared to have been inflicted by teeth.
The cook looked up at Carson and tensed, like a spring compressing. He’d stripped off all his clothing and crouched naked on a sack of feed. His skin had a grayish cast, mottled black and purple with bruising.
“Don’t move a muscle, Les, or so help me I’ll—”
Dutton lunged at him.
Carson dropped his flashlight and pulled the trigger in rapid succession. The flash of discharge created a strobe effect, making Dutton appear to fly toward him in lurching movements.
The cook struck him squarely in the chest. Got inside his arms, forcing his shots high and wide. Drove him to the ground.
Carson grabbed Dutton by the hair and attempted to yank his head back, but only succeeded in ripping the scalp from the cook’s deformed skull. Before he could press the muzzle against the other man’s temple, Dutton buried his face in the side of Carson’s neck.
He bellowed in agony and prayed that Dr. Clarke hadn’t followed orders for the first time in her life.
His cries reverberated through the empty corridors until they dissolved into t
he shrill alarm and the squealing of pigs.
30
EVANS
Teotihuacan
Anya blew past Evans and sprinted into the darkness. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Jade’s face before she did the same. He didn’t know what the hell had them so scared, but he had no desire to find out.
Villarreal nearly barreled into him. Evans stepped to the side and caught him by the arm.
“What in the name of God is—?”
Bullets sang past his ear and pounded the mound of dirt and debris behind him. He hit the ground a heartbeat before Villarreal and scrambled deeper into the warrens. He wasn’t about to stick around long enough to figure out who was shooting at them.
Evans’s light illuminated Jade and Anya, casting their long shadows onto the ground ahead of them as they ran. They ducked in and out through the four chambers and ran into the straightway. If they continued on their course, they’d careen headlong into a dead end.
He pushed himself harder. Grabbed Jade by the wrist. Slowed her momentum.
“Anya!” he shouted.
She dashed ahead as though she hadn’t heard and was nearly past the lone remaining branch when he finally got her attention.
“Anya!” She slid on the damp ground and spun to face him, her eyes wide and wild. “There’s only one way—”
A light materialized behind them, silhouetting Villarreal ever so briefly. Muzzle flare preceded the thack-thack-thack of bullets hammering the limestone.
Evans ducked from the path and descended the ladder as fast as he could. He hopped off the moment he sensed the ground below him and shined his light upward for the others.
The ladder was slowing them down while their pursuit was only gaining on them.
Jade landed first. Stumbled. He pushed her unceremoniously through the mouth of the tunnel.
“Go!”
He pulled Anya from the ladder by her hips and ushered her into the hole behind Jade.
Swinging lights appeared above them, crossing the mouth of the pit before settling on the uppermost rungs of the ladder. They were coming too fast.
Forsaken Page 17
