Fredy wasn’t trying to figure out what was happening, he was shouting orders. “Andrés! María! Everyone! Get to the stairs!”
They all ran to the spiral staircase. From above lights bounced down the stairs.
Juan and Manuel appeared on the bottom step. “What is happening!?”
Andrés was the first to reach Gabi and the stairs, but the bottom step was nearly two meters high now. Her father snatched her up by the waist, lifting her in the air.
“Take her, Manuel! Take her!” Andrés begged as he held her by the waist above his head.
The two men fell to their hands and knees, reaching for Gabi.
“Reach, Gabriela! Reach!” her father screamed.
She did reach. She stretched her small hands out to the men with all she had, but the floor kept sinking and their hands pulled away. Sarah, her mother, and María all tried to jump too but none could make the grab.
Without warning, a crack opened at the bottom of the stairs. Gabi turned to see that the gap stretched all the way around the room. The floor continued to descend as the crack grew from a few centimeters into a dozen and then into a meter then more. An expanse of impenetrable darkness opened around them as cool air washed over the sinking platform. The few skull racks that remained standing tipped off the edge, the precious artifacts plummeting into the unknown.
Instinctively they all backed away from the edge.
The rumble softened as sound escaped into the vastness around them, but still they continued to descend.
“Manuel, go get rope!” Andrés shouted.
“Okay! I’ll return for you, compadres!” he said, disappearing up the stairs.
Gabi’s father grabbed her wrist with one hand, motioning to Itzel and María with the other. “Come on!” They ran back to where Sarah and Fredy stood near the center column, away from the edge of the platform. Her father held them tight to his chest, as if he were waiting for death itself to announce its arrival. “Sarah, what’s happening?”
“It must be another trap!” Fredy asked.
Sarah answered in a voice that wasn’t completely hysterical. She didn’t need to yell anymore either as the rumble dissipated into the darkness beyond. “No, I don’t think so, Fredy. This is too elaborate. We’re descending to—”
“To the lower chamber!” Gabi burst out. “The one where the god sleeps!”
29
Judas
Wednesday, April 6 – God Stones Day 1
Petersburg, Illinois
Garrett stood on the temple floor next to Breanne, staring up at Janis. Lenny stood next to her, his own face flooded with horror. In that moment Garrett’s emotions stalled. He felt like he was outside himself watching from somewhere else. This wasn’t real. None of this was actually happening. He didn’t just watch Janis stab Pete. He blinked, shaking his head. God, this couldn’t happen. This couldn’t really happen. But it was happening – it was.
Janis glared back down from the slab, her face as hard and cold as the steel blade still in her hand.
“Pete!” Lenny screamed down from the slab, his eyes going wide. “What the…?” He reached down into the small back pocket of his dobok where he had safely tucked the knife Paul had loaned him in trade for the staff – but it was gone. “Garrett! That’s Paul’s knife! She took it when she grabbed my ass earlier!”
Janis turned to Lenny.
The strange surrealistic feeling faded as fear clenched hold of Garrett, but it wasn’t fear for himself. “Lenny! Jesus, Lenny, get out of there!” he shouted, as he and Breanne ran to Pete, who lay facedown on the slab in a pool of his own blood.
Janis turned to face Lenny, who was still standing on the slab. “Well, Lenny, what’s it going to be? You can join your friends down there or bleed up here.”
“For the record, I never really trusted you, Janis.” Lenny threw a roundhouse kick at the girl’s face.
Janis easily slipped the kick and countered with a fast, stabbing thrust, the serrated blade slicing open Lenny’s dobok and the flesh of his shoulder along with it.
“Ah!” Lenny shouted, spinning away.
Janis didn’t hesitate, snapping a quick kick into Lenny’s back. The momentum sent him flailing off the slab.
Lenny tucked when he hit the floor, rolled, and sprang back to his feet. He spun back toward the slab, ready to give it another go, but stopped abruptly when he heard Janis start chanting. It was a low mumble at first, but as she continued, her voice became louder, more commanding.
“What the hell is she doing?” Lenny asked, craning his head to look down at his shoulder.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good! Are you okay?” Garrett asked.
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s very deep,” Lenny said.
“Help me with Pete,” Garrett said, grabbing one of Pete’s wrists as he nodded for Lenny to grab the other.
“I’ll get his feet,” Breanne said.
Pete didn’t move and his arm was limp. Garrett’s stomach turned.
With Lenny and Breanne’s help, he dragged Pete away from the stone slab and the chanting Janis. David and Paul joined them. “This way,” Garrett said. He knew they couldn’t go back toward the entrance – Eugene and Dagrun were both in the way. They couldn’t flee to the other side of the slab unless they wanted to risk getting closer to the sleeping dragon. They went in the only direction they could and backed themselves into the one corner void of giants, dragons, or evil wizards.
Eugene moved cautiously toward Janis as she continued to chant.
Dagrun carefully followed, matching Eugene’s movements.
“Garrett, do you remember the story I told you about Sun Tzu?” Eugene yelled toward the group, without taking his eyes off Dagrun. “He wrote that book The Art of War. You remember?”
Garrett spotted his sword lying behind him against the chamber wall. He dropped Pete’s wrist and lunged forward, grabbing his sword.
“Do you remember, my boy?”
Eugene loved to teach kids lessons, whether it be about the lord or life in general – always in a humble way, never by putting himself above others. But there was something different in his tone now, something strange in the look. Something that hinted at… contempt.
On the slab, Janis chanted faster now.
Garrett tightened his grip on the hilt and set his jaw. He had come to trust Eugene more than any other adult. In fact, he’d admired him. Garrett watched the man’s face now, but it wasn’t admiration he felt. Now he felt… sick. Sick because in that moment he knew he had been fooled.
“Sun Tzu taught us to subdue the enemy!” he shouted, nodding sharply to Janis.
The ground began to shake as giant spears of stalagmite broke through the floor.
“What’s happening?!” Breanne shouted over the rumble.
Each spear was part of a uniform row, stretching up, gaining in height and width, until finally crashing into the ceiling one after the other. Chunk! Chunk! Chunk!
By the time the stalagmite spears stopped growing, they were only inches apart. Suddenly they were in a cell built of thick stone columns, each at least a couple feet in circumference. Garrett and the other five were effectively trapped, separated from Janis, Dagrun, and Eugene by large stone pillars.
Coach Dagrun ran forward.
“Stop right there or I’ll burn them alive!” Eugene ordered, raising his hands up, fingers splayed. Then for effect he curled both hands into tight fists of burning grey flame. “Think I won’t do it?”
Dagrun stopped.
So, there it is, I’ve failed, Garrett thought. Eugene is Apep.
Eugene paced in front of the stone cell. “Oh dear, Garrett. Oh my, you’re in a real mess now. You were the last hope for your Keepers of the Light. How sad for you, how sad for your pathetic world. You can’t be blamed, no, no,” he said, waving a finger. “What a pathetic prophecy. Doomed from the beginning. I should know, I was here long before it was written.”
Everything was spinning out of con
trol. How was he supposed to fix this? Wasn’t that what the prophecy said? He was the chosen one? Now they were trapped. Pete lay on the floor bleeding. So much blood. Paul had passed out too – the blood loss from his leg must have finally been too much.
“That’s enough, Apep,” Dagrun said. “I’ve been watching you for some time now, doing what you do, plotting your big comeback. Very clever, posing as an unassuming Christian do-gooder, but you’ve never fooled me.”
Eugene pulled a face then shot Dagrun a look. “Enough? Yes, pathetic human. I suppose you’re right!” He raised his skinny arm and motioned with his fingers as he mumbled some strange words Garrett had never heard. “Shirayshi, akdoe!” Shadows darted from Eugene’s spread fingers toward Dagrun, taking form into something seemingly solid and pointed.
Dagrun motioned idly with his own hand, as if he were backhanding a pesky mosquito, not magic from a powerful wizard. The dark shards deflected before reaching him, falling harmlessly to the floor and dissipating back into shadow.
“Holy shit, did you see that?” Lenny said, peeking through a gap between the stalagmites.
“Yeah,” Garrett said, allowing the tiniest bit of hope to seep into his voice. He knelt next to Pete, speaking in a low whisper. “Guys, we need a plan.”
Eugene frowned uneasily. “I don’t recognize you. What’s your name, Keeper?”
“My students call me Coach Dagrun.”
Eugene looked befuddled. “Dagrun?”
“That’s right. It’s the name I gave myself long ago.”
Eugene’s expression changed, taking on a suddenly uncomfortable pucker. “No,” he mumbled slowly, his head beginning to shake. “That name has special meaning where I come from… it means—”
“Dragon,” Coach interrupted.
“Father! Who is he?” Janis asked, uneasiness clear in her voice.
Lenny and Garrett shared a look. “Father?”
“No. It isn’t possible! Syldan? You can’t be here!” Eugene said, his eyes springing wide with the terror of some realization.
“But I am here,” Dagrun said.
“You couldn’t have opened the gate! Not without the Sound Eye!”
“No. I couldn’t have. You opened it for me, Apep,” Dagrun said.
“But that would mean you have been here since…?”
Dagrun pointed at the prone giant. “I’ve been here since you and your nephilbock opened the gate the second time.”
“But… but how?” Eugene stammered.
“The portal stayed open just long enough for me to slip through before it collapsed.” Dagrun stepped forward toward Eugene. “Come now, Apep, did you really think he wouldn’t find out? Did you think our father would allow you to lead our enemies to another world where you could build an army unchallenged?”
“It is you!” Eugene staggered backward like he had been struck. “Brother!”
Dagrun’s body began to change, to transform. His limbs, both arms and legs, stretched several inches, as did his neck. His skin changed to a bluish hue, and his ears grew to points. His eyes slanted up, then curved in a graceful arc back down. His facial features changed too, his jaw becoming more prominent and his hair transforming from a short, sandy-brown buzzcut to a long flowing sheet of black. Within a few seconds, he had completely changed into a tall, lean… what?
Garrett and Lenny tried to find an angle to see between the stone columns.
“Jesus, Garrett, what is that?” Lenny said, pointing to the thing standing where Coach had been.
“I… I can’t tell for sure. But he isn’t human.”
The corner of Syldan’s mouth turned up in what Garrett could only figure was a cross between a hateful sneer and a smile.
“That’s right, Apep, twelve thousand years I’ve waited.”
Eugene’s thick brows drew together. “But—”
Syldan held up a silencing hand. “During most of my time here I allowed myself to just forget you. But over the centuries there were the nights I couldn’t forget. The nights I lay awake thinking of what I might say to you in this moment. I have played it out so many times. But now that the moment is upon us, I have only questions. What is it you hope to accomplish, Apep? You are a failure. You failed our father. You failed your people. You failed your own brother, and even when you tried to kill me as I slept… still you failed. Did you think if you killed me our father would change his mind and give you the throne?
Eugene’s eyes flared and looked wild. Wilder than Garrett thought possible.
“You nearly destroyed this planet with your ignorance, Apep. And what if I hadn’t come? What if I hadn’t intervened with the dragons you brought here? I will tell you what – they would have wiped out this whole planet. You joined with our sworn enemies and brought dragons here! To what end? You thought you could control them – you? I am a Dagrun Heru, Apep! You could never have controlled them!”
“Enough!” Eugene screamed, his face screwing up in disgust. “It is laughable that you have the temerity to lecture me. Do you think I cared about controlling dragons? Or about this planet? I came here to build my own army of giants. And the dragons?” he huffed. “I knew I was on the cusp of losing control of them, but it mattered not! All I needed to do was finish my work in Egypt. The pyramid was nearly complete, and then I could have opened the gate home. I wouldn’t have needed to control them, they were starving – they’d have laid waste to everything in their path.”
“You would destroy your own kingdom, your own people? You would have unleashed thousands more dragons into our world?”
“Yes, Syldan! Where were our people when father banished me? Where were you when father had me stripped naked and marched into the misting sand?” Eugene’s face was trembling with rage as he pointed a shaking finger at the newly transformed Dagrun. “To return to Karelia and take what is rightfully mine – I would unleash hell! I would burn it all and be king of ashes. But at least I would be king!”
“After all this time father will be long dead! Who knows if Osonian even exists?!”
Eugene smiled. “You are a bigger fool than even I could have guessed. Time is not linear, Syldan. I won’t have lost a single minute from the time I last opened the portal!”
“What?”
“The heir to the throne is the eldest son. I am the eldest, Syldan! Not you! What father took from me goes against everything we are. I will enjoy looking into his eyes as the life drains from his worthless soul!”
As Eugene beat a fist into his scrawny chest for emphasis, Garrett gaped, mouth open in wide-eyed shock at the once-kind man with the shoestring arms – the bean counter, as he often referred to himself. The man who gave Garrett and his friends each a penny to make a wish. He looked at Lenny, whose feelings must have mirrored his own, because as the lighthearted Sunday school teacher continued ranting like a psychopath on the topic of destroying worlds, what Lenny said next captured Garrett’s feelings perfectly.
“Garrett, if there is really a Twilight Zone, we’re balls-deep in it now.”
Garrett could only offer a slow nod of acknowledgment as he turned back to the gap between columns.
“Gods, I should have just killed you in Egypt, but Turek convinced me we should only imprison you and cast you into a suspended sleep. I had my people in Egypt dig you a nice deep hole and stick you behind walls so thick it should have been impossible for you to escape. But just as Turek predicted, here you are.”
Eugene’s clean-shaven cheek twitched as his head cocked to the side. “It was you who doomed me to that rotten hole for nearly nine thousand years! My own brother!”
Now Eugene’s form began to change. No longer was he the scrawny accountant. In only seconds, Eugene was gone. In his place Apep appeared, taking on the same bluish hue in his skin as his brother Syldan, stretching to nearly seven feet tall, his frame filling out into a muscular build. His once-bald head suddenly boasted its own full head of black hair, long, silky, and dark as night. His chin became more chiseled and his
nose lengthened to match his brother’s. He stood up tall, pushing out his chest.
Syldan met his brother’s violet eyes with his own and nodded. “It was I.”
“And you would kill me for what? These humans?” Apep spat, his face contorting in bitter disgust. “We are dökkálfar! Superior in every way! Our race lives thousands of years in comparison to their paltry dozens. We are lucky to bear one child of our own, but them – they breed like Karelian morph flies, consuming everything until there’s nothing left. They’re a plague on their own world – roaches, vermin, meaningless insects! I will be happy to know this world is pulled apart at its fabric as I step through the portal home!”
Janis watched on, her face deadpan as if an emotionless robot dwelled behind her alien eyes.
Inside their cell, Garrett and Lenny tried to follow along. Garrett pulled his eyes away from the gap to glance back at Breanne and David. David knelt at Pete’s side across from Breanne, who had her hands pressed down over Pete’s stomach.
Pete was dying or maybe dead. Garrett couldn’t tell, but he looked bad.
“Bre, I need to do something,” David said.
Breanne’s eyes darted up as she tried desperately to stop Pete’s bleeding, applying pressure to the deep wound. “What?” she gasped.
David nodded, motioning her to let him take over.
She peeled her hands from Pete’s gut.
Garrett tried to swallow back a wave of queasiness.
David tore open Pete’s shirt and placed his hand over the slippery wound, a dark crimson seeping up between his fingers.
Garrett’s heart sank at the site of the jagged puncture. So much blood. More than he had ever seen in real life. Time was not on their side. They needed to get out and get help for Pete. He tore his eyes from his friend to share a look of worry with Breanne. She pressed her lips into a tight line. Her brows were knitted, and Garrett realized she didn’t look so good. Like she was fighting to hold it together. Please don’t lose it on me, Bre. Somehow, he knew if she fell apart, he would follow right behind her, and then what?
The Keepers Of The Light (God Stone Book 2) Page 20
