God Stones: Books 1 - 3

by Otto Schafer

  “Not everything, Yogi. Is Garrett down there?” he asked, nodding his head toward the opening Yogi had pointed to.

  “No. He left last night. He, David, and Lenny… And some other Black guys. Two of ’em. They were heading north past the underground stables.”

  “Where were they going?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t… I don’t know. Mexico, I think. To find Breanne Moore.”

  In the street, Goch huffed. “Mexico? The chosen one has gone to Mexico. We are finished here. Kill the human.”

  “No! Please! I told you everything!”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jack said, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “I don’t know a lot, Yogi, but I know Mexico is south, not north.”

  “They’re probably going to circle around, Jack. Think about it. They will try and stay in cover. They know…” Yogi swallowed, looking back at Goch. “They know the dragons are here looking for them!”

  Jack flexed his fingers. “You would say anything to say your own skin, Yogi. But I don’t buy it. I believe he is hiding like the coward he is in that underground bunker of yours!” Jack said, pointing an accusing finger toward the back of the building.

  “Jack! He isn’t here. I told you everything! Take me with you! They’ll kill me for what I’ve told you!” he begged.

  “They won’t have to.” Jack held up a hand that was already shaking with the power coursing through his body. He concentrated just like he had a moment ago – just like he had for days while searching for Danny, alone in the woods, killing animals for food. He plagued Yogi’s organs with disease.

  “Please! Please!” Yogi’s skin turned a strange shade of yellow. Then the blood vessels in both his eyes burst, and he screamed.

  The dragons shifted uneasily behind him. He could sense their fear.

  A moment later, Yogi was dead.

  Goch spoke from behind him. “Come, human, let us depart from this place. The human we seek is not here.”

  The power coursing through Jack didn’t feel like it had before with Roger. Now he felt overfilled, like he’d eaten too much. He felt like he needed to do something. Run around the block, jump up and down, something. His head hurt, and he was getting nauseous. He tried to shake off the sick feeling. “No. First, we need to make sure this Undertown isn’t hiding Garrett and his friends.”

  Goch stepped forward. “Humans telling Goch no tend to burn easily.”

  Jack narrowed his eyes. His head was woozy, and he wasn’t sure he could disease the big red dragon. Besides, he needed them. “Yogi said the entrance is right back here. He might have been lying to protect Garrett, or Garrett could be hiding right under our feet! Please, help me find out!”

  “What do you propose?” Goch asked.

  Jack walked through the debris toward the back of the karate place where Yogi had pointed. There, in the floor, was a set of hinged metal cellar doors like the ones his grandpa had outside his farmhouse. Jack reached down and pulled on the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. He pounded a fist on the metal – a hollow thud, thud, thud echoed through the burnt-out dojo.

  From inside came a voice. “Yogi, that you? You know the knock and that’s not it. Now do it right or you can keep your ass out there.”

  Jack turned back to Goch and smiled. “You know how you get a groundhog out of his burrow?” Jack didn’t wait for an answer. “You burn him out by pouring gas down his hole and lighting it up. So why don’t you start by ripping this door open and breathing an ass-load of that fire of yours straight down this hole. Then we’ll see… then we’ll see.”

  Goch stomped forward, ripped the metal door from its hinges, and roared.

  Inside, a man screamed. “Oh, dear god! We’re breached! We’re breached! Run—”

  As the roar came, so came the flame, heavy and dense, filling the corridor below and burning everything in its path. The color of dragon fire was all wrong – a bright orange, but with a strange green hue unlike any fire Jack had ever seen. He shielded his face, backpedaling as the wave of heat singed off his eyebrows. Jack fell backward over a piece of charred timber and rolled away, the heat washing over his back.

  3

  Not a Spoke Card

  Monday, April 18 – God Stones Day 12

  Rural Chiapas State, Mexico

  Pools of evening shadow melted together as light gave way to night, and darkness swallowed the narrow trail. The retreating sun did little to reduce the humidity of the southern Mexico jungle. A single drop of rain flicked Breanne’s cheek, followed by another splattering her bare arm. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled. A precursor to the rainy season that usually arrived in May? Perhaps, but unseasonable weather was the furthest thing from Breanne’s mind.

  “How much farther?” she asked.

  “Farther, sí. Cerca… er, close,” Juan said, pressing a long stick wrapped in fuel-soaked cloth against his own already flaming torch. The cloth ignited, and he offered it to Breanne. “Here, por favor, it’s getting dark, but if the rain stays away a little longer, this should last the rest of the way.”

  “Thank you, Juan.”

  “De nada,” he said.

  Breanne let herself fall back to Gabi and Sarah. “Excuse me,” she said to an older woman and man as she eased around them. The grey-haired woman smiled weakly, a fixed crinkle of exhaustion and fear evident on her otherwise smooth face. Her husband held her close, an arm wrapped around her waist.

  Their group was two dozen strong now. Made up of neighbors and farmhands, all hoping to get to the cenote and take shelter in the caves. The decision to make for the caves came quickly after the death of two farmhands and several head of cattle. The final straw was when a wasp the size of a black crow shattered Juan’s bedroom window. For the neighbors closest to the farm, it was being overrun with football-sized fire ants. Everyone had stories of giant insects or animals attacking them or their loved ones.

  Without working vehicles, the nearest town was too far, and there was no way to be sure town was any safer. This left the caves as their only hope for defendable shelter.

  Under the torchlight of Breanne’s approach, Sarah’s hand hung slack over the side of the cart, but that didn’t stop Gabi from grasping it in her small hand as the donkey pulled the cart forward.

  Gabi’s little hand in Sarah’s brought back a flood of memories. Like Breanne’s first archaeological dig, where Sarah showed her how to brush soil from bones. She remembered it so vividly. Not long after her own mother had died in a tragic accident, Sarah had taken her own tiny hand in hers – guiding it as the horsehair brush gently unveiled ancient secrets. Over the next couple years their relationship became more than archeology. Sarah taught her about all the girl stuff her father wasn’t equipped to handle. Then later, Sarah started dating her father and Breanne let herself believe they might marry, and her father might find love once again. But her father had gotten cold feet, running off and breaking Sarah’s heart in the process. Recently, however, her father and Sarah had rekindled their relationship, spending long nights on the phone laughing and sharing ideas about the Mexico site. Her father on Oak Island in Nova Scotia and Sarah in Mexico running the dig site. But then came Apep and the God Stones, and it all went so horribly wrong.

  Breanne knew this was hard for Gabi too. She had become close to Sarah. And Breanne knew Sarah had taken a special interest in Gabi, doing the same thing with the little girl she had done with Breanne years ago, taking her under her wing, teaching her archaeology.

  “Are you okay, Gabi?”

  “Sí… yes, I am okay. Sarah is asleep again. I am so happy for that. The bouncing cart was paining her.”

  Breanne looked over the side to find Sarah’s face set in a grimace. The blankets stuffed tightly on both sides of the unconscious woman were doing little to help with the constant bouncing. What Breanne wouldn’t give for a car right now, but cars weren’t working. Phones weren’t working either. Since Apep connected the God Stones, nothing electric worked. It w
as like electricity had never existed. She wondered absently how the rest of the world was coping.

  The group had been walking for a few hours, and Breanne hadn’t slept the night before – the night the wasp busted Juan’s window, forcing them to flee. That first night, they had hidden in the windowless barn, huddled up together while doing their best to plan and prepare through the strange sounds outside. By morning, others had shown up, speaking quickly with animated hands and tear-stained faces. Breanne didn’t need to understand or hear what they were saying. Whatever ordeal these people had been through scared them to death.

  She hadn’t talked to her father since the night before last. By now, they would have reached Petersburg and hopefully found Garrett. As frantic as her own situation was, she wondered about the boy from her dreams. The boy she spent a few tragic hours with when the world changed forever. Breanne found herself thinking about him more and more and wondering if she would ever see him again. She remembered a dream in which a templar named Turek told her the only way to save her father was to help Garrett. She had tried to help Garrett, but they hadn’t stopped Apep. Yet despite this, her father miraculously woke from his coma when Apep joined the God Stones together. What did that mean? What was she supposed to do? The thought of not seeing Garrett again hurt more than it should for a boy she barely knew.

  “Stop! Everyone, get down!” Juan shouted in an urgent whisper.

  Instinctively, Breanne grabbed Gabi’s hand and pulled her down. Up ahead, the old man was easing his grey-haired wife down to the ground.

  To their left, just off the trail, the foliage shook violently across a stretch several yards long.

  “Get behind me, Gabi,” Breanne said, drawing the handgun from the holster on her hip as she waved the torch back and forth, trying to see what was causing the disturbance. God, please! Not another snake!

  Everything went graveyard silent.

  No one breathed.

  From the foliage came a loud clacking sound that reminded Breanne of a spoke card clicking against the spokes of a bicycle wheel.

  “What is that?” Gabi asked.

  Breanne frowned. “I…”

  A centipede, impossibly large, burst from the dense vegetation. Its long pairs of legs clacked together as it lurched forward.

  The old man, having finished helping his wife to the ground, spun only in time to show the centipede his left side. The centipede reared up and drove its front legs into the man’s exposed shoulder.

  The man screamed out.

  Breanne took aim as the man twisted and flailed. She couldn’t shoot – she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t hit the man. Beside her, the donkey began braying and lurched forward toward the woman still on the ground.

  “No!” Breanne shouted, shoving the pistol into her holster as she ran forward to stop the donkey. Her hands clawed through the donkey’s coarse hair until they found the leather strapping of the harness. She planted her feet and yanked back.

  Just ahead, the man screamed again, falling to the ground with the centipede on top of him.

  “Stop! Stop!” Breanne yelled. But the donkey continued forward toward the old woman, dragging Breanne with it.

  4

  In the Beginning

  Monday, April 18 – God Stones Day 12

  Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Fish and Wildlife Area,

  West of Petersburg, Illinois

  The early-morning sun heated glistening dew across an expanse of shaggy grass, burning off as if beneath a magnifying glass. In the grass beyond Garrett’s three-sided shelter, an orange-breasted robin tugged at an earthworm, freeing it from the ground as another stood not far away singing a victory chorus.

  Without getting up, Garrett maneuvered across wooden planks until his whole body was soaking up the full sun – sun as inviting as a thick blanket. The night had been so cold he was sure he could have seen his breath had it not been so dark. He closed his eyes, welcoming the warmth on his face.

  They must have arrived at the park around three or four in the morning. There was talk of skipping the park altogether and pushing through till sunup, but with Garrett still weak from having just woken the day before and Ed exhausted from his trip from Canada, it just didn’t make sense to push on. They chose the rustic side of the campground because it was more isolated and less likely to be occupied. Plus, there were several of the three-sided shelters, perfect for hunkering down in the dark. The area itself was grassy, with a narrow stretch of timber between the campsite and the lake to their west. Even more timber stretched to their north, with an overgrown gravel road leading between the timber and a large prairie to the south. You couldn’t get a car back to the campsite unless you had a key to the gate, but it wasn’t a problem for their mountain bikes. When they got back there, all the shelters were empty and there wasn’t a soul in sight.

  After a moment Garrett opened his eyes, unzipped one of the large pockets of his backpack, and drew out Coach’s plain brown notebook. He imagined the water-stained notepad as something Coach might have carried with him in Vietnam, or one of the other countless wars the ancient man had fought in. He wasn’t sure what he would find inside, but he knew it was important. Important enough that a dying man from another world wanted to be sure Garrett found it and read it. His heart thudded as he ran his hand across the unadorned cover and carefully eased it open.

  His eyes flashed over the top of the page to find a title, “The Book of Syldan,” written in pencil, followed by line after line of cramped handwriting.

  The Book of Syldan

  I never wanted to tell this story, let alone write it down. There is something about writing words down that makes them so, well, so real, I guess. But I can’t hide from my past mistakes, and I can’t let you grapple with what’s to come without some explanation. I would rather do this in person and look you in the eye, but I fear I will never meet you, never learn who my own son is. That’s a regret I must live with. I don’t know if you can even forgive me, but that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you learn what you are and where you came from. What matters is that somehow this journal finds you before it is too late. If it makes it to you in time, you will know everything you need to know.

  I suppose the only place to begin is at the beginning. I’m not talking about the beginning for me or for you, but the beginning of everything. After that you will have to decide for yourself what you do with this knowledge. Look, kid, you need to understand what I’m about to tell you may be hard to hear and it damn sure isn’t fair, but there is a hell of a lot more at stake than your feelings. For that, I’m sorry.

  Right, so from the beginning. There is a belief that in the beginning there were seven gods who governed the universe. The gods favored one planet over all others. A much bigger planet than this one. How big I can only guess, since much of it is unknown even to my own kind. It’s called Karelia, and it’s where I came from. Each of the seven gods created countless species, filling the planet with wondrous creatures.

  As the story goes, the gods wanted to meet their creations. But as they watched from the heavens, where they were incorporeal, they could not agree on what they should look like. The argument droned on and on, each god having their own idea. Hopelessly deadlocked, they decided they didn’t need to look the same. Instead, each god would forever take on the image of their favorite creation.

  After solidifying their decision, the gods didn’t just show themselves to their creations. Standing before their chosen, the gods infused seven special stones with the godly power they called Sentheye, bestowing magnificent gifts on their chosen favorites. And so it was. The seven faceless gods became the god of dökkálfar, the god of dragons, the god of nephilbock, the god of forests, the god of dwarves, the god of oceans, and the god of humans.

  The gods agreed the stones would ensure a fair balance of power across the seven creatures. But go figure, like most beings in command, they were wrong.

  In time, a human man fell in love with a dökkálfar woma
n. The birth of their child threw the gods into outrage. But not the human god. He believed the creatures of the planet should be able to love whomever they want. The other gods felt offended, warning that only the gods should have the power to create a new species. The child was not a creation of the gods, and therefore it was an abomination.

  The unrest between the gods spawned such hate and discontent among the chosen creatures that it sparked a great war unlike anything Karelia had ever seen. During the height of the great war, the god of the dökkálfar interfered by stealing the humans’ God Stone and delivering it in person to the king of the dökkálfar. Once dökkálfar had two God Stones, the balance of power changed and with it the tide of the war. With the power of two stones, human enslavement to the dökkálfar was imminent.

  The god of humans voiced his outrage to the other gods. He would not see his humans enslaved and demanded their immediate release. But the human god’s pleas fell on deaf ears. The other gods called for his banishment, casting the human god away from the heavens of Karelia, never to return.

  And so, Turek, the god of humans, took with him as many humans as he could gather to a small blue planet on the other side of the universe. This planet was not new. In fact, it was a planet all the gods knew of – a planet that had once been a testing ground for the gods’ creations.

  This won’t be easy for you to hear, but I’ve never been one to drag out the point. The god who called for Turek’s banishment, well, she is my god, the god of the dökkálfar. Her name is Ereshkigal, and she is who I once worshipped. I worship no god now, but that’s another story for another time. Ereshkigal was my god because I am a dökkálfar. Or what humans call elf. A dark elf, to be specific. That’s right, your father is an elf – and that makes you half elf.

  “Earth to Garrett?”