The Veritas Codex Series, #1

by Betsey Kulakowski

  Copyright © 2020 by Betsey Kulakowski

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  The Veritas Codex (The Veritas Codex Series, #1)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Afterword

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  For Mom, who always made sure I had books to read, and encouraged me to write my own

  For my Mom who always made sure I had books to read, and encouraged me to write my own

  Chapter 1

  Lauren scratched her head as she peered down at the corpse. It looked more like a chicken than any known animal, but the feet were cloven, like a goat. The stench that wafted from it made Lauren gag. The sickly-sweet aroma of death and decay lingered — evidence that putrefaction remained incomplete.

  “What is that?” The escort from the Peruvian government pushed past the camera, jockeying for a better look. Jean-René peered out over the viewfinder at him. He cast a sidelong look at Lauren.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out.” Lauren put on her gloves and edged the escort out of her way before reaching into the small indention. She lifted the tiny body from deep within the cavern. She carried it to a nearby rock to examine it. “I need light.”

  The night-vision cameras were off, so the lighting techs moved in with two high-powered spotlights. After five years of working on the show, Lauren was accustomed to being in front of the cameras, but she became impatient when the production teams got in the way of her work. She wasn’t much happier about the inspector, who maintained a stern and sour disposition, barking at her in a language she didn’t understand.

  She was a scientist first and foremost, a television personality second. It wasn’t where she’d thought she’d be at this point in her career, but the television crews paid for her research, and it was better than she’d made working for PBS, or the college where she’d had tenure.

  “It doesn’t have a head,” Rowan observed. Lauren glanced at him but said nothing. Any idiot could see it didn’t have a head.

  “The body is very light for its size. I need my scale.” Lauren pulled her tape measure out of her pocket. She stretched it out, glancing up at Bahati, who was ready to take notes. “Thirty point five centimeters.” She measured the length, then turned the tape. “Seventeen point eight centimeters.” Rowan handed her the digital scale. She laid the body on the metal plate, tapping a few buttons with her gloved pinkie, waiting for the beep. “Six-hundred-eight point three nine grams.” She handed back the scales as she lay the body back on the high, flat stone.

  Bahati nodded, documenting the evidence. She handed Lauren the digital camera and everyone waited while Lauren photographed it from every angle, laying out her tape measure for scale. After all these years as a research scientist, she was doing what she knew best.

  “Looks like an alien to me,” Jean-René recoiled at the stench as he moved over Lauren’s shoulder to get a better shot.

  She turned and cast a stern look at him. “We don’t make conclusions until we’ve analyzed the evidence.” He knew that. They all did. It was hard not to make assumptions, though. The legs had two sets of joints, one that bent opposite the other. Upon closer inspection there were two toes, maybe hooves or toenails.

  “Okay. Let’s bag it up,” she said. “Get me an evidence kit.”

  “No,” the escort said flatly.

  Lauren could feel the cameras on her as she recoiled at his refusal. His jaw was set, with his lips pursed and his hands went to his hips. “What?”

  “It is the property of the Peruvian government. You cannot take it.” His accent made the short, clipped words hard to understand. Lauren knew what he was saying. She just didn’t like it.

  “We found it,” she snapped.

  “It is not yours,” he countered. “Property of Peruvian government. This is not finders-keepers.”

  Lauren’s brow narrowed. “We came to study what we found. I can’t do that here. I need my lab.” The heat rose in her cheeks and flickered in her dark eyes.

  “What if we agree to bring it back after we’re done studying it?” Rowan stepped in, blocking Lauren. She was a logical woman, but he knew how passionately she hated anything that came between her and her work.

  “No.” The escort stabbed a finger in Rowan’s chest, tilting his head back to look him in the eye. Rowan peered down at him, arching a critical eyebrow. The official took a step back. “You Americans are all the same. Take what is not yours, even when you are shown every courtesy. This is our history, and I will not allow you to defile it!”

  Lauren took a step closer to the official, who barely came to her shoulders. She stood with her hands on her hips. “Look, Mister.” She held the words between clenched teeth. “While this might be part of your history, if you think you can bully me and tell me I can’t study something that I traveled 4,000 miles to find, then you better think again. If you keep it up, this won’t be the only headless corpse they find in a cavern in Peru.”

  The man backed up and swallowed hard.

  Rowan caught her arm and drew Lauren back. “Hey,” he used a soft tone to turn away her wrath. “Let’s just back up and take a minute here.”

  “Excuse me?” Her brow furrowed. “It’s bad enough that you drag me into the middle of nowhere and send me down into a dark hole...and then I have to put up with that guy?” Her eyes flashed as she turned her anger on her co-host, who also functioned as the team medic.

  “Look,” he snapped. “I’m not any happier about this than you are but threatening a government official isn’t going to help.”

  “It wasn’t a threat.” She lowered her voice. “Only one of us is going to come out of this cavern alive.”

  Rowan put his hands on his hips and stared at the toe of his hiking boots. He took a deep breath to still his racing thoughts. “Getting angry isn’t going to get us very far with this guy, I can tell.”

  “So, what did you want me to do? Kill him with kindness?”

  “Just don’t kill him,” Rowan pleaded.

  She took a deep breath, finding wisdom in his words. She nodded and let go of her anger. Calmly, she turned to the official. “Can I at least take sam
ples?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Small.” He held up two fingers, spread minutely apart.

  She held her hand up with her fingers much farther apart. “Just a small one?”

  “Small.” He reached up and pinched her fingers down several centimeters.

  Lauren stared down at him, her upper lip twitching as she considered her next move. “Small, huh?” She capitulated but rolled her eyes.

  “Better than none.” Rowan shrugged.

  “Okay. I’m going to need a scalpel and tweezers.”

  Unable to take a rotting, unidentified corpse out of the country, they could only take pictures and a few tissue samples for DNA analysis. It wasn’t much, Lauren thought, but it would have to do.

  * * *

  After all the trouble they’d gone through to get there, more would have been nice, but it was beyond their control. Lauren carefully collected her samples, then labeled and sealed them in a controlled bag, documenting her evidence with the precision of a forensics expert. She had collected samples of all kinds over the years. As a certified phase-contrast microscopist, she’d even done her own analysis in the lab. She preferred being in the field to hovering over a microscope.

  She inspected the corpse and planned her cut carefully. The body was like leather, dry and crumbly on the outside. It had no hair, no scales, nothing remotely resembling external reproductive organs. The ribs were visible through torn flesh. As she poked around, she realized the inside felt more like a meaty sponge. She went deep with the scalpel, hoping to collect a bit of the internal viscera. A bit of liver would be beneficial for analysis. Bone would be better, but when dealing with a cryptid, knowing where to aim was the problem. Not every creature kept its liver in the same place.

  She lifted the sample with her tweezers and held it up to the light, inspecting it, before dropping it in the bag Bahati held out for her. She glanced up at the official. “Is it too much to ask for a bit of bone?” Lauren flashed him a saccharine-sweet smile.

  “Yes,” he said, flatly. He crossed his arms over his chest. “You have enough. No mas.”

  * * *

  They spent another hour getting footage for the television show before Lauren returned the headless corpse to the depression where they’d found it.

  “I wish I could get a sample of that odor.” She sniffed into the sleeve of her jacket before peeling off her gloves. “Man, that’s vile.”

  “How long do you think it’s been here?” Bahati asked, holding a trash bag for Lauren to dispose her gloves into. Bahati’s thick accent was melodic and rich but could be hard to understand sometimes. She rolled the bag up and put it in the pack, along with the carefully labeled samples, making sure they were safely tucked in before zipping them closed.

  “It’s hard to say,” she said. “The lab will have to determine that.”

  “Let’s wrap it up and head home, then,” Rowan said.

  * * *

  It took another six hours to make their way out of the cavern. Lauren fell asleep in the back of the truck, nested atop their bags and gear, dreaming of tiny alien chicken-men dancing across the star-dappled velvet sky.

  “Lauren.” A nudge from Rowan woke her abruptly. “Lauren. Look!”

  She was immediately awake. Three objects arranged in a V formation circled directly above them. They maneuvered like a flock of geese. Lauren was momentarily blinded by a glowing blue light as the three objects came together into a unified disc. It hovered above, seeming to lower. It kicked up dirt and rock, sandblasting them with grit.

  Lauren was mesmerized by the object that glowed brightly as it moved lower across the ravine. Rowan pounded a hand on the top of the truck, and it screeched to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust that hovered around them. Rowen regained his balance and turned his attention back to the sky.

  Unmoving, the unidentified disc cast a white pallor across the sands, looking like a throbbing moon on the earth. It illuminated the dust cloud that settled around them and their breath that hung in the blue-white air.

  “What the hell is that?” Lauren’s heart pounded in her throat. She didn’t wait for an answer. “Get the camera. Get the camera!”

  The team, disoriented, roused from sleep by the bizarre glow, raced to get their equipment. In a matter of moments, they had multiple cameras aimed at the sky, and the object that seemingly defied explanation.

  “Is it moving?” Jean-René asked, his French accent more pronounced in his heightened state of awe. “I can’t tell.” He went on to mutter a string of French curses as he took out his camera and pointed it into the night sky, trying to hold the camera steady.

  Lauren turned and looked at the camera Chance operated. It wasn’t easy, but she did her best to rein in her excitement. Exhaustion tempered her racing heart. “It’s four in the morning and we were on our way back from the cavern. We’re at least two hours outside of Cusco. Our caravan is still in the middle of nowhere and we have come to find that something unreal ... is very real in Peru.”

  Lauren set out across the expanse between the truck and the disc, hoping Chance would keep the camera on her as she moved silently. He didn’t. He was as engrossed with the throbbing object as the rest of the team.

  She was a good ten meters across the flat expanse before anyone realized she wasn’t beside them. She had her digital camera in her hand. Her finger rested on the button, snapping a string of photographs in rapid succession. She continued to move closer, zooming in on the radiant glow, transfixed on the image as if in a trance. It hovered closer until she stood directly beneath it. Gazing up, she could see subtle details where smaller lights flickered like disco lights at a rave. Her hair lifted off her neck as the vibrations emitting from the object pulsed through her body.

  Lauren took a step forward, her head tilted back, transfixed on the disc. She raised her hand to shield her eyes as she moved to try and get a better look. Suddenly, the lights went from blue to red and the pulse rate increased into a rapid tempo. A deafening whine rose around her. She covered her ears and stumbled backwards.

  “Lauren!” Bahati leapt from the truck to run after her before she stepped off into the ravine. “Lauren,” she gasped, pulling her back. The red light abated, and the whining ceased. Lauren leaned over and peered down into the deep crevice before Bahati hurried her back into the darkness.

  “Mind that first step!” Jean-René shouted, grinning wickedly from the back of the truck, watching her through the viewfinder of his video camera “It’s a doozie!”

  She paused a moment. Her heart pounded in her chest and she was breathless. She cocked a hip to one side and raised a hand with a one-finger salute. She didn’t need his smart-ass remarks at the moment.

  He returned the camera to the sky, chortling as he filmed. As she moved back to the safety of the group, she returned her attention to her own camera, panning in on the object, switching to infrared. She was amazed to find very little heat signature. It flickered cool shades in a swirling kaleidoscope of energy.

  For nearly twenty minutes, they watched and filmed until the disc gradually faded, but never moved away. It finally dissipated into a disintegrating mass of twinkling dust and was suddenly...gone.

  “Just tell me you got that.” Lauren turned back to Jean-René as he lowered the camera, his jaw slack in disbelief.

  “I think so,” he said, reviewing the video in the tiny monitor. It cast the same blue-white glow on his face from the screen. “Yeah. I got it.”

  “Let me see,” Lauren said, climbing back into the truck, taking the camera from him, as the team gathered around, all trying to get a look. “Oh my God,” she breathed heavily, her hands trembling as she replayed it over and over.

  * * *

  The sky was a pale shade of gray when the convoy came to a stop on the outskirts of the town of Cusco. The dawn brought little relief from the cold. The suburban streets were quiet, but the perfume of baking bread and the rumble of garbage trucks nearby suggested the city’s inhabitants were r
ising from their beds, preparing to face the day.

  The crew roused from their nests in the back of the truck, piling out and unloading their equipment. Lauren lifted out her pack. As she dropped it to the ground, she almost plowed into the government escort who stood with his hands on his hips, his lips pursed, and his eyes narrowed. Two policia twice his size stood behind him, materializing from one of the dusty red archways.

  “Excuse me, Señor Prieta.” Lauren had been nothing but courteous since the incident back in the cavern.

  The taller of the two police officers said something curtly in Spanish.

  Jean-René spoke better Spanish than anyone on the team. “He says you’re under arrest for assault and making threats against a government official.”

  “Arrest?”

  “Assault?” Rowan turned. “No one was assaulted.”

  “You wanna see assault?” Lauren’s upper lip curled, and her fists balled.

  The police officer said something else and reached over to catch Lauren by the arm. She recoiled, trying to escape his grasp, but found herself pinned against the truck with her arms wrenched behind her. The officer cuffed her. To her right, she found Rowan in the same predicament. “Wait!” she protested. “Why are you arresting him? He didn’t do anything.”

  “You didn’t either,” Rowan said. “Just take a deep breath. We’ll figure this out.”

  * * *

  Jean-René was led into the room where Lauren sat. Her feet were chained to the chair, and her hands cuffed behind her back. Her head hung heavily. He walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, one eye swollen shut, her lip split. Her cheek was bruised.

  “Tabernaque!” he winced. “What happened?

  “I sure as hell didn’t fall down.”

  “Boss...” he sat across from her. “I called the Embassy. They’re sending an assistant to negotiate your release.”

  “The Embassy? An assistant? Really?”

  “I’m also going to see if I can get you some medical attention,” he said. “At least they could let you see the medic from our team.”

  “I’m fine. I don’t need to see the medic.” She didn’t want Rowan seeing her like this. Apparently, his arrest had been just for a show of power; he’d been released shortly afterward.