by R. D. Brady
Laney knew what he meant. The Valley of the Kings had been the burial spot for the pharaohs and distinguished nobles for five hundred years. Each unearthed tomb was extravagant in its holdings. Yet the pyramids, which were supposed to be the tombs for the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, were completely empty of any wealth or funerary goods. Not even a single broken piece of pottery had ever been found there. Experts claimed that was because of grave robbers who had removed everything of value from the sites.
But that explanation had problems too. For example, the Great Pyramid’s passageways shrunk at times to three feet in height, expanding in other areas to twenty. How would they have gotten the great tributes left behind out?
And there would have been large objects buried with a pharaoh of Khufu’s status. In King Tut’s tomb, which was a relatively small tomb by pharaoh standards, over five thousand items had been found. While some were small items, others included gilded panels, couches, chairs, beds, life-sized statues, and six chariots.
King Tut was a child king who became pharaoh at age nine and died at age eighteen or nineteen. He was a lesser pharaoh in terms of impact, and due to the stillbirth of his two children, his death signified the end of the Thutmosid line. Yet even he had a tomb filled with immense riches. It stretched the limits of the imagination that a pharaoh of Khufu’s stature would have only small items that could be slipped through the narrow passages. Yet nothing had been found in any of the pyramids of the Giza Plateau.
Plus, there were no hieroglyphs inside the pyramids. All other pharaoh tombs were lined from floor to ceiling with hieroglyphs. Of course, they were all buried in the Valley of the Kings. The three pharaohs who allegedly built the pyramids broke this tradition. The pyramids’ interiors, in contrast to the other tombs, were decidedly stark. Even the sarcophaguses found were simple unadorned rectangular granite boxes.
There were some, of course, who argued that the pyramids were not created as tombs by the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure and that they served an entirely different purpose. Could they have been machines?
Cain stepped back into the kitchen, his hair still wet from the shower, pulling Laney from her musings. He looked better. There was a little more color to his skin.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“A little. I just . . . I know this is important. And I’m annoyed I can’t figure it out.”
“You’re doing the best you can. That’s all any of us can do,” Patrick said.
Laney’s gaze flicked back to the Tome, taking in the Seal of Solomon, Victoria’s image, and the one other image on the page. She pointed to it. “Is that an ankh?”
Cain walked over and noted where she pointed. “Yes. It denotes immortal life.”
“The three make a triangle.” Patrick traced from each of the images, creating a triangle.
Triangle, triad. Laney sat back. Triangle, triad, immortal life. There was something . . . something playing at the back of her mind. She pushed the Tome toward Cain. “How many pages reference the weapon?”
“Four.”
“Can you show me?”
Cain flipped through the pages, pointing to the ones that directly referenced the weapon. On each, there were three images, which, if linked, created a triangle.
“What are you thinking?” Patrick asked.
Laney frowned, her gaze flicking across the images. “I’m not sure. I mean, triangles appear all over the ancient world in the form of pyramids. But what if this is trying to tell us the weapon is associated with a triangle?”
Patrick pointed to a sketch on the book. “Or maybe a pyramid.”
“That makes sense,” Cain said quickly. “Here.” He turned the book around, pointing at symbols she did not recognize.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“Neither did I. See these three dots? They make these symbols meaningless. Without the dots, it speaks to a time of great suffering and the alleviation of that suffering through a dangerous bargain. But in the first language, each dot means something. With these three here, I couldn’t figure out what it meant. And I’ve seen this in three other places. It was driving me mad.”
Patrick pulled over a sheet of paper and drew out the dots, separating it from the noise of the other symbols. As soon as he did, Laney recognized it. “It’s the Osiris constellation.”
Patrick nodded. “And if it’s the Osiris constellation, then there’s only one spot in the world where this would be relevant.”
“The three pyramids on the Giza Plateau. We’ll find the weapon there,” Cain said.
Laney shook her head. “No, we’ll find it at the Great Pyramid.”
Patrick and Cain looked at her. “How do you know that?”
“I just do. It feels right.” She paused, her mind whirling. “In fact, I don’t think we need to find the weapon. I think humans have been staring at it for thousands of years.”
Patrick met her gaze, nodding. “You think that that guy Dunn is right, that the pyramids are a machine.”
Laney nodded slowly, becoming more sure the more she stared at the Tome. “It’s a machine. And we just need to figure out how to turn it on. We need to find the key.” She frowned as she glanced at a large image of the Great Pyramid. “Whatever happened to the capstone, by the way? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything about it.”
“That’s because there’s nothing to tell,” Patrick said.
“What do you mean?” Laney asked.
“No one knows if there ever was a capstone.”
Laney looked at Cain, who nodded. “I stayed away from Egypt for a long time. By the time I made my way there, the capstone was absent. I never inquired as to where it had gone.”
“But there must be something out there.”
“Actually, there isn’t,” Patrick said. “We know that some individuals who have made it to the Plateau of the Great Pyramid where the capstone should reside have experienced some sort of electrical shock. And, of course, there are those who suggest that, similar to what Tesla proposed, the pyramids actually helped siphon electrical energy from the Earth. But as for a capstone, there’s nothing.”
“Is it possible there never was one?”
But even as Laney said it, she knew that was absurd. The pyramids were an absolute testimony to the precision that could be achieved with such massive constructions. The northern face of the Great Pyramid was aligned almost perfectly to true north, and the other faces almost perfectly matched their directions as well. The error was less than .0015 percent. Modern-day builders didn’t understand the need for such precision. After all, with objects the size of the pyramids, a higher degree of error would have made the job of the builders much easier and would not have been discernible to the naked eye. But if the Pyramid were a machine, then precision would have been necessary.
And in fact, precision seemed to have been the name of the game when it came to constructing the pyramids. For example, there was only a difference of eight inches between the shortest and longest sides of the Great Pyramid, a one-tenth of one percent error. Precision of that accuracy would be close to impossible in the modern day, never mind back then. So why go to all that trouble unless you needed to?
In light of the care taken with their creation, the idea that they would just skip the top thirty feet of the Great Pyramid was insane. The more she thought about it, the more she was coming around to the idea that the capstone was the key, both figuratively and literally. When the capstone was in place, would the Pyramid, in essence, turn on?
She turned to her uncle. “There has to be something out there about it.”
“I’m sorry, honey. Whether or not the capstone ever existed has been completely lost to the sands of time. There’s no record of it.”
Laney slumped in her chair. “Which probably means any chance we have of using the weapon the Tome speaks of is just as out of reach.”
Chapter 42
After speaking with her uncle and Cain, Laney had spent a f
ew hours outside Havenville searching every online source for anything on the capstone. Danny had done the same. There hadn’t been much. Like her uncle said, people couldn’t agree whether it had existed at all. And there were no hints, no witnesses indicating where it might have gone.
Even when she’d lain down to sleep, she could not get the ancient mystery out of her mind. As a result, she barely slept. And when she did, she had dreams about pyramids, the capstone, and getting swallowed by the sands. As a result, when she woke up, she felt worse than when she went to sleep.
Drake had already been gone when she’d finally stumbled from bed. With Cleo by her side, Laney went for a long run. She needed to stretch her legs. She needed to clear her mind. But each step she took merely pounded in all the doubt, insecurities, and questions she still had. Were they going down the right road? Or were they grasping at the Great Pyramid because they needed an answer? And even then, without the capstone, what good was that knowledge? Above all, though, she wondered whether it was truly possible to remove all the abilities of the Fallen.
But if Cain was right—and she really had no reason to doubt him—it wasn’t a method where she could pick and choose whose powers were removed. All the powers would disappear. Jen, Henry, Matt, Lou, Rolly—they’d all lose them as well. They’d be as defenseless as any other human. And if it worked, would that be enough? Would it stop all the chaos that had broken out around the world?
What if they removed the powers and it changed nothing? What if the world continued on its march to war? What if I just make it so good people can’t protect themselves?
She glanced down at Cleo. And what of the cats? They had been created through Amar’s blood, the blood of a Fallen. What would happen to them? They didn’t really have any Fallen abilities beyond a slightly faster healing rate. Their intelligence wasn’t due to the Fallen nature of Amar’s blood, but the human genes that had been used in their creation. Would they be all right?
Cleo nudged her. We’ll be all right.
How can you be sure?
We are not Fallen. We are not human. We are something else. Like you.
Laney slowed to a walk. I hope so.
Stop worrying. Cleo licked Laney’s leg before trotting toward Tiger, who had appeared at the edge of the field. Laney watched Cleo go. She’d been spending more and more time with Tiger lately. Laney knew it was good, but she had to admit she was a little jealous. With a sigh, she turned for her cottage. Thirty minutes later, she was walking down the stairs in her cottage, towel-drying her hair.
The kettle whistle blew from the kitchen. She should have known. She stepped in as her uncle was turning off the burner. He nodded to the two mugs on the counter next to him. “Thought we could both do with a cup of tea.”
“You are not wrong.”
He reached for them, but she shooed him away. “I’ve got it.”
He made his way to the small kitchen table. Laney placed a mug in front of him before sitting across from him.
He stirred his tea with a spoon. “Did the run help?”
Laney shrugged, stirring her own tea. “Not really.”
“It’s not an easy decision.”
“No, it’s not, especially since we don’t know how people will react.” She flashed on Agamemnon in the tub. “I don’t think anyone will be harmed when their powers are removed, at least not from the powers disappearing. But I can’t be sure. They won’t be removed by the Omni, which leaves room for doubt.”
“And what about you?”
She frowned. “What about me?”
“Your powers, your ring-bearer powers. Will they disappear as well?”
“I don’t know.” When she’d been hit by the Omni on the day of the coronation, she hadn’t paid any attention to her ring-bearer abilities. At that point, the loss of her healing abilities was the foremost in her mind. And then she’d been hit by the Omni again, and her Fallen abilities had been restored. She’d never checked if her ring-bearer abilities had also disappeared during that interlude.
“We know they’re connected. I can’t control the Fallen when I have the abilities of the Fallen, so there is some link. But until we activate the capstone, there’s no way to know exactly how it will affect me.”
Her uncle stirred his tea without responding. Laney’s gaze narrowed as she watched him. “What?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“Uncle Patrick . . .”
He sighed, his gaze flicking to the hallway.
Laney realized what was bothering him. “You’re worried about Cain.”
He nodded. “I’ve probably seen too many movies. I keep picturing him aging all at once.”
If that were the case, Cain would be reduced to ash. He was thousands of years old. “We don’t know that will happen.”
“No, we don’t. It’s just . . .” He shrugged.
“Did Cain find any more information in there?”
“No. There’s no real knowledge. Even the writers of the Tome passages hadn’t seen it work. It was just stories handed down.”
Laney sighed. “So we have no idea how it will affect people with abilities, Fallen or otherwise. And no mention is made of the impact on humans.”
“Are you sure it’s worth the risk? Is there another approach you could take?”
Laney had spent her night turning that question over and over again in her mind. Did she even have the right to make this decision? Whether she did or didn’t, she had been able to come to this decision more easily than some. It would have perhaps been different if the Omni hadn’t been uncovered. But with it out there, there was nothing good in store for the world. She met his gaze. “I wish there was. But these powers, it was bad enough when only a handful had them. But can you imagine the world if only those who want power had them? The haves verse the have nots wouldn’t even come close to describing the divisions that would be created. That much power concentrated in the hands of a few, it will be a nightmare.”
“I know.” He blew out a breath. Silence fell heavily between the two of them. Laney pictured a world with enhanced. They could and would run roughshod over the rest of the world. Apocalyptic was the only word she could think of to describe the aftereffects of the battle to come. No matter what happened, if they succeeded or they didn’t, the world would never be the same. As visions of mutilated bodies lining streets ran through her mind, she gave herself a mental shake.
Enough of that. Her uncle looked just as disturbed by his own thoughts.
“Any more ideas about the capstone?” she asked.
He started blinking rapidly. “Um, about finding it? No. There are a few sources I can check, but I won’t be able to access it from in here. I’ll have to go outside.”
“I don’t understand how it’s possible that there are no reports on it. How can no one have ever seen it? I mean, is it possible it never existed? That the Great Pyramid was never actually finished?”
“Well it is true that there has never been a mention of the capstone in any historical records I’ve seen.” He hesitated.
A dramatic pause. That can’t be good. “What is it?”
“It’s not a historical record. It’s a recounting from the Children of the Law of One.”
Laney frowned. “I don’t understand.”
She knew, of course, of the Children of the Law of One. In the time of Lemuria and Atlantis, the world had been broken into two camps. The Children of the Law of One believed in peace, in kindness toward one another. The other camp, the Sons of Belial, believed in attaining power, of asserting dominance over others. When the angels fell, they ushered in the desire for material goods within humans. They nurtured their darker impulses and created the Sons of Belial.
“There is a group I read up on while I was in Italy. It reminded me of the trances that Edgar Cayce would go into. Except this time, the questioner had a name: Ra.”
Laney’s eyebrows rose at his words. Ra was the ancient Egyptian god of the sun. He was considered the king of the g
ods, the creator of all. He was strongly associated with the pharaohs, especially during the fifth dynasty, when the pyramids on the Giza Plateau were created. In fact, at that point the pharaohs were considered to be the sons of Ra.
“What did the readings say?”
“According to Ra, there were two capstones in the Great Pyramid’s history. The second was made of gold and did nothing more than complete the Pyramid.”
“And the first?”
“It was made of black granite. It allegedly acted as a chimney, purifying the environment.”
“What happened to it?”
“It doesn’t say. But I have been thinking about that. Words often take on a different meaning when we step back. In today’s world, when we think of purifying, we think of it in terms of the environment and pollution. But that would not have been an issue thousands of years ago. So when they say purify, they must mean something else.”
Laney frowned. Purifying the spirit? But how would . . . She went still, her gaze snapping to her uncle. “Lilith.”
He nodded. “I think they were referring to purifying humanity. By her decision, she allowed humanity’s immortality to end. Perhaps the capstone was part of that process.”
Laney’s mind was spinning. Was it possible? Her mother had brought about the end of immortality to allow humans to become better people. Was it possible the capstone was the mechanism by which that happened? She had never really considered how her mother had been able to make that happen. To be honest, being angels had been involved, she had kind of thought it was a bit of bibbidi bobbidi boo and voilà, immortality was gone. But what if it required not magic, but science? What if she had to physically do something to make it come about?
“Does Cain know anything?”
“I’ve spoken with him, but he was not aware of what she had done until after, to his great detriment.”
Cain had been the world’s first murderer. He did not know at the time that striking his brother would result in his death. Before Lilith made her deal with the angels, it would not have. “Has he ever seen the capstone or heard any rumors that might point us in the right direction?”