‘Thank you,’ said Jack. As he closed his fingers over the book, he heard a deep sonorous boom.
‘The cóndor,’ said Hollis, ‘That’s a nickname with some cachet.’
‘Do you actually know what a condor is?’ asked Cash, moving to the gates where Dana stood guard, the drone of the helicopters shaking the hacienda’s walls while they loaded the wounded.
‘Four under par?’
‘It’s a bloody vulture, a bird that feeds on the dead,’ said Cash.
‘It’s a sacred bird to the Cuari, to my mother,’ said Isela. ‘We believe that the cóndor comes from the heavens and it can take messages back and forth between the three worlds. It is the key to keeping the universe in balance.’
Jack carefully unfolded the cloth, and was shocked to see that tucked in the back were a series of letters that Renso had written over the years to Jack.
‘Were you the friend that my grandfather wrote those letters to all those years ago?’
‘I loved your grandfather, Isela.’
‘He loved you too,’ said Isela. She stood and held out her hand. ‘Come. I’ll take you to my mother.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jack. Before crossing the lush courtyard with Isela, Jack skimmed across the pages, tore out the relevant ones, and handed them to Vlad. ‘Do what you need to do.’
Cash sent Hollis and Sam to watch the other gates. ‘If the CIA want this girl bad enough, they’ll charge in and take her. Jack, we have less than four hours to get you up the mountain.’
69
LEAVING GWEN STRETCHED on a lounger singing in Welsh to herself under the watchful eyes of Eva and Vlad, Jack trailed behind Isela inside the main house. His field of vision was contracting. Running ahead of him, Isela looked as if she was moving along a narrow tube. The ache in Jack’s joints and the drumming in his head had worsened. He hobbled across the foyer.
‘Jack,’ said Cash into his earpiece, ‘it looks like the helicopters are going to have to make one more run. We’re safe from Captain Anderson’s unit until then. She’s got a guard on the edge of the canyon. She knows we’re still in the compound.’
Isela led Jack along a narrow side passageway decorated in blue and white-flecked wallpaper and a plush carpeted floor.
‘The walls and the ceiling in this part of the house are all soundproofed and shaded to make it easier on my mother.’
They stopped outside a pair of arched double-doors with the three-circle symbol that Gwen had carved on her forearm displayed in the centre.
‘What’s wrong with your mother?’ asked Jack, even though he already knew.
‘The doctors have a long list, but they say the main disease is vitiligo. She can’t go out in the sun. She has no… no…’ She was struggling for the word in English. ‘Color en piel?’
‘Pigment?’
Isela nodded. ‘She has no pigment, so she burns up in the sun. Oh, and she’s sensitive to sounds and touch and so many other things. It’s why I want to get away from this place.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it is the mountain that’s making her sick and one day it will make me sick too. My grandmother said so, and my mother says so. My father refused to name me after my mother and grandmother because he believes the name is cursed.’
‘What should you have been named, Isela?’
‘My Cuari name is Gaia.’
Jack flipped to the pages with the most writing in his notebook. There it was. Her grandmother’s name scribbled across the page, the guide Jack now recalled had taken him into the mountain to sacrifice him to the Helix Intelligence, to the astral force locked inside the Earth’s core.
In the line under the name Gaia, Jack had scribbled, means goddess of the Earth.
‘I will go inside first to prepare her for you.’
*
When Jack entered the room, the first thing he noticed was the silence. Every noise in his head shut down. Then he realised his knees were no longer aching, his heartbeat had steadied itself, and the rock in his gut had gone.
The walls were dressed in a similar flecked fabric to the hallway but inside, instead of blue and white, the colours were maroon and gold. The carpet was thick, soft and black, and the tall arched windows were made of smoked glass. The view of the mountain and a tiled fountain were visible from the draped four poster bed where Isela’s mother was propped in front of layers of soft pillows.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ said Gaia. ‘The mountain won’t wait much longer.’
‘Then you know what’s happening? To the world?’ asked Jack. He tasted ginger.
‘Of course, it has been marked in the mountain since the beginning of time, noted in the beads by my ancestors and written in the scrolls by yours. It’s part of the prophecy.’
‘But then you also must understand what has to happen.’
She smiled sadly at Jack and then at her daughter. ‘I’ve known my entire existence. It is what a star guide is born to do. There are so few Cuari left. The prophecy must be fulfilled this time.’
Jack walked closer to the bed. Gaia let out a painful ear-piercing wail. Jack quickly backed away.
‘Everything about you hurts me,’ she sobbed, her breath catching in her throat.
‘Sit there,’ Isela said, pointing to a long red velvet couch in front of a wall of cloth-bound books. Isela stroked her mother’s palm, calming her immediately.
Jack sat on the couch and studied the woman in the bed. She was painfully thin, but her beauty and sensuality were undeniable. Patches of her skin were as white as Jack’s and others were as brown as Isela’s, the mottled texture and the uneven tones of her skin only enhancing her radiance. Gaia’s hair was jet black, easily reaching her waist, but it was her eyes that Jack found so mesmerising, so enchanting. They were deep midnight black. The longer he stared at this woman – this being on the bed whose spirit was ancient and ageless, prehistoric and primal – the more clearly his memories of the mountain and its power fitted into place, and the more he doubted the success of his plan.
Jack had got some of it terribly wrong.
70
Swansea, same day
RHYS LEANED OVER Anwen’s cot, tucked her in, settling her stuffed bear close to her side. He kissed his finger and touched it to Anwen’s heart, and for a while he stayed in that position staring at the wonder of his daughter until she snuffled, rolled onto her side, and high-kicked her blanket to the bottom of the crib.
Rhys smiled, lifting out the blanket. ‘You’ve definitely got your mum’s legs.’
Downstairs, he switched on the TV news, and stared at the footage of the tower of water shooting into the heavens. The scaffolding enveloping it looked as if an oil rig had been constructed around it, lights blazing from the navy ships, making it easy to watch the tower of rock slowly but surely engulfing the entire jet stream. The press, the crazies, and the curious had all stayed bobbing out there in the sea, as they had at the other geysers, despite most governments asking those closest to the chimneys to evacuate further inland.
And somewhere out there, Jack and Gwen were fighting to right the world.
Rhys sat down on the sofa, and prayed that the morning would come.
71
Southern Peru, same day
STANDING ON THE wide porch of the hacienda with his gun over his shoulder, smoking a Cuban cigar, Cash wondered how they were ever going to make it up the mountain given Jack’s deteriorating condition, never mind what he planned to do when he got there.
Savouring every puff of his cigar, Cash stared out at the Pacific. The late-afternoon sun was lingering over the horizon as if considering whether or not to be swallowed by the coming darkness.
According to Shelley’s calculations, they had three hours until the vent chimneys would be sealed.
The climbing procession was organising with little fuss in the foyer when Dana alerted Cash in his earpiece that Captain Anderson’s team were preparing to breach the south wall.
‘If you’r
e going, love,’ she said, ‘I’d say now would be good. Sam and I can hold them off until you get out of the compound.’
‘Then what?’ said Cash.
‘Then we’ll improvise.’
Cash waved at Dana, then pinched the end of his cigar, setting the rest of it on the edge of the veranda. ‘I expect everyone to be there when I return.’
Inside, he told Jack they had to move. Now.
Gaia insisted that the prophesied ritual be followed to the exact glyph. Dressed in a black suede jumpsuit with padded earmuffs secured under her hood, she and Isela would lead them. After some trial and error, she was able to tolerate Eva more comfortably than any of the others, so Eva was positioned in front along with Isela.
Jack refused to wear the traditional Cuari tunic. ‘If the world is going to end tonight, I’m going out with my trousers on.’ He sent Vlad to retrieve his coat from the rear gates.
Jack was unsteady on his feet and close to incoherent for significant chunks of time, so Cash and Hollis decided they were the best equipped to handle him.
Vlad was travelling with Gwen, who was more than a little wobbly on her feet. All of them, including Isela, carried weapons.
Twenty minutes into their climb, they reached the steep canyon hiking pass, the trail that centuries ago had been used by the great Inca warriors leading their sacrifices up the mountain.
Jack’s field of vision looked like a Jackson Pollock painting, dripping with dots and dollops of blinding colours. Snarling voices were screaming in his head and he could hardly walk, his knees crippling him. With Cash and Hollis supporting him on either side, they tramped into the rocky jungle path.
Gunfire erupted from the compound below.
Eva stopped at the sound, but Cash urged her on.
‘Dana and Sam know what they’re doing. We need to keep moving, Eva.’
Eva was glad she had been put in the lead a good few metres in front of Vlad because she was afraid that her own heightening sexual desire, which was getting more intense the higher they climbed, would put Vlad in more danger than the soldiers snapping at their heels. Eva was breathing heavily when they entered a clearing at the top of the canyon pass.
The volleys of gunfire echoing from the compound below were almost continuous.
‘They must have breached the wall,’ yelled Cash. ‘Let’s go, people. Let’s get this done.’
When they finally arrived at the deserted ruin of the Cuari village beneath the mountain’s plateau, the darkness had descended like a lid on the basin of the mountain only a few hundred metres above them.
With the descending darkness came a change in Gaia that was startling. Her steps quickened, her breathing became less laboured. She shrugged off Eva and Isela and bounded towards the final leg of the canyon pass. Jack, on the other hand, was being dragged between Cash and Hollis. No one was speaking. Only the bursts of gunfire from the compound below punctuated their progress.
The air in the clearing was rank with sulphur and ash. Jack tasted rotten meat and sour milk and ginger, the taste of the mountain. Then the gunfire ceased.
‘Cash!’ yelled Dana. ‘Anderson’s coming.’ Then her comms went silent.
‘Jack,’ said Cash, leaning him against the ruined wall of a brick cairn. ‘You’re going to have to do your best to go on without us. Hollis and I will hold this clearing for as long as we can.’
Jack nodded, guessing what Cash was saying to him, but the words felt like water on his face, splashes of yellow wrapped in despair. Jack kept brushing his hands over his cheeks, nodding that he understood. When he looked at his hands, he saw that his tears were pink.
Accepting Gaia’s offer of support, Jack linked his arm through hers. Then he turned and saluted Cash, who’d taken a position at the mouth of the canyon, tucking himself under the jungle’s canopy.
‘Remember,’ said Jack, choking the words out, ‘make their progress difficult, but don’t shoot to kill. They’re only following orders.’ Cash nodded and returned Jack’s salute.
Jack winked and blew a kiss to Hollis, who caught it in his fist. With Vlad and Gwen tottering behind, they climbed the final metres to the basin of the sacred mountain.
72
THE DARKNESS ENGULFED the rag-tag gang as soon as they emerged from the canyon pass and onto the plateau. Eva lost her footing and fell, tumbling off the path and into a tangle of trumpet trees bordering the steep ridge. Vlad abandoned Gwen and slithered down the hillside after her.
‘Are you OK?’
She smiled, nodded and reluctantly broke free, scrambling to catch up with Jack, who was slumped a body’s length from the lip of the massive mountain basin. Eva could barely make out Isela up ahead already marking out their positions with a ceremonial feathered brush, the peak of her markings leading down into the mountain. Like her mother, the higher the motley crew had climbed, the more compliant Isela had become, the mountain’s sway over her as strong as it was over her mother. At this altitude, a thin sheen of ice coated the edges of the rocks surrounding the basin itself, the mountain etched in silver.
‘Jack, where’s Gaia?’ asked Eva
Jack struggled to his knees, pulling the night-vision goggles he’d taken from one of the guards from his pocket. ‘Give these to Cash,’ he said to her. ‘He may need them.’
Jack’s eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot and he wanted nothing more than to have the cacophony of noise in his head be silent if only for one minute, one second, one beat of his pounding heart.
‘Jack!’ This time Eva screamed. ‘Where’s Gaia? We can’t lose her. Not now.’
‘She’s right there.’
Eva heard a low growl and in terror dragged Jack from the edge of the basin against an outcropping of rocks as a mountain lion, a sleek black puma, pounced from the jungle landing next to Isela. The puma was bathed in a faint yellow light, transforming the plateau into a movie newsreel, the crew, Gwen and Jack, players on a sacrificial stage.
‘Oh my God,’ said Eva, backing away from Jack and closer to Vlad and Gwen.
Isela put her hand out and gently stroked the puma’s neck. It nuzzled against Isela for a beat and then it turned, darted to the rim of the basin and roared, the sound bouncing off the steep rock walls and waking the mountain.
Seconds later, the ground began to shake violently, throwing Vlad, Eva and Gwen to the rocky ground where they frantically crawled to the massive boulders for something to anchor themselves against. A flaming fissure broke from inside the basin and shot up along the edge of the mountain, circling it once, twice. And then the fissure shot out across the plateau following the area Isela had marked with the ceremonial feathers, creating three interlacing fiery circles, the peak of the third one descending into the flaming rim of the mountain itself.
The puma leapt from the edge and landed in the centre of the top circle. The entire mountain trembled, a thunderous roar bursting from the bowels of the Earth, spewing ash and rock out across the plateau.
Gwen scrambled forward, grabbing Jack by the arms. ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’
‘Each circle represents the three worlds that must be kept in balance for the Earth to survive. The world above, the world below and the world here and now. I was wrong. I thought that the Helix Intelligence – the astral force – was our enemy, that it was trying to break free, but she’s not. She needs this sacrifice, needs our genetic and cellular codes to heal herself. If Renso had let her have me all those years ago then we wouldn’t be here now.’
Gwen had been here before. She’d seen Jack walk into the shadow of a demon and stare into a void in the heart of the Earth. And always – when anyone else would show fear, panic, or indecision – suddenly, this most heavy-hearted of men would become cold and rational. He’d clench his jaw and square up to the universe.
Jack squeezed her shoulder. ‘Gwen Cooper, you know the drill.’
‘You bloody idiot,’ said Gwen.
‘Yup.’ Jack nodded, kissing her.
Gwen brushe
d his hand and stepped away, walking on wobbly legs with as much determination and dignity as she could muster to the boulders where Vlad and Eva were clinging, shaken by the worsening tremors. She dropped behind the safety of the jagged outcropping next to Vlad and Eva. With images of Rhys and Anwen in her mind, Gwen prayed for a tomorrow. She glanced back at Jack, calmly waiting, and then she cleared her throat. ‘Come on, kids,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here before the world ends.’
Jack was about to step into the circle that was burning next to his feet when Captain Anderson charged out of the canyon pass and fired a volley of shots into the air.
‘Hold it!’
The puma leapt from the lip of the mountain, flew across the air and knocked Anderson back against her men. With her massive paws on Anderson’s shoulders she roared, opening her mouth as wide as the smouldering circles themselves.
Cash broke through the dense jungle brush and fired at the massive cat that was about to swallow Anderson whole. The shot hit the puma’s hind leg. It howled. The ground thundered and shook in response, throwing anyone still standing off their feet. Fissures were shooting out across the plateau from every circle, crumbling and crushing anything and anyone in their path.
‘No!’ yelled Jack. ‘Don’t shoot her.’
The puma leapt off Anderson and pounced into the lead circle. Jack turned and watched as Gaia now stood in the centre of the blazing rings, blood dripping from a bullet wound in her thigh.
‘I don’t know what weirdness is going on here,’ said Anderson, scrambling to her feet, ‘but give me the girl and you can all go about your private orgy when she and my unit are clear.’
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