Suddenly several deep flashes emitted from below Garrett’s house, momentarily pulling him from his revelation. The flashes were followed in rapid succession by just as many concussive blasts. Chunks of foundation exploded outward as the house collapsed in upon itself.
Through the dust Garrett could see his house was now nothing but burning rubble. The roof was sitting at nearly ground level, consumed in flame. Everything Garrett owned was gone. His home, his clothes, everything – all lost. But what dropped him to his knees was the loss he could never replace. He knew now that what James said was true. If his stepfather hadn’t already been killed… he was dead now.
11
Sentheye
Wednesday, April 6, moments earlier – God Stones Day 1
Petersburg, Illinois
Apep stared down into Phillip’s hollow eyes.
He placed his boot on top of Phillip’s head and rolled it back and forth with his foot before giving it a booted kick into the hungry flames.
He looked down at his own leg. The blade had not only left three puncture wounds in his outer thigh, but it had come out the other side just below his ass. For the first time, Apep felt a hint of real panic pulse through him, radiating like a cold shiver on a chilly night. He reached down and grabbed hold of the sai’s hilt, clenched his jaw, and pulled. He felt every inch of the metal prongs as they slid through his flesh and across his bone. He retched in agony as the blade tugged free. Blood pulsed out in spurts with the rhythm of his heart. For the first time since waking up under the sand, he found it difficult to hold the human form. Normally he didn’t even need to think about it. It was as simple as breathing. But now he felt the façade slipping away. His skin began to change color. His hair turned silky black and began to lengthen as his body lengthened too, easily stretching another foot in height.
Apep closed his eyes and chanted the word Sentheye. A word of immense power. A word spoken by the seven gods. Focusing on the Sentheye of the God Stones, Apep let his mind relax. He wasn’t ready to return to his true form – not yet. He needed to stop this bleeding. He had to focus.
Since reclaiming the stones, he’d found drawing on the Sentheye was easy, even after so much time separated from it. It was like having amputated legs given back to him strong and fully functional years after they had been lost. He didn’t need to learn how to use them – they were just part of him once again. The ancient Sentheye was again his to command. He could feel it rushing forth in him like water from a powerful stream.
As the Sentheye drew into him, the center of his mind pulsed, then throbbed, filling like a balloon on the verge of bursting. Mumbling the ancient word, he placed each hand over the wounds on either side of his leg and focused on the power of the seven God Stones. The Sentheye took the form of dense, blue-grey shadows. The shadows obeyed, snaking from his palm and fingers – like smoke, but alive, moving with purpose and direction. The shadows slithered into the punctures, and seconds later his bleeding stopped. Apep continued to concentrate, and the shadow smoke wormed its way inside mending the tissue in the deepest parts of his wound. With a little more focus he was easily able to pull himself back into human form. For the second time that night, he had healed himself with the power of the Sentheye.
As the Sentheye repaired Apep’s injuries, it also elevated his senses. Abruptly he stopped and the shadows dissipated. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong, he thought. The panic he had felt before returned, but this time it came back tenfold. He looked around. The basement was filling with smoke very quickly and the flames were out of control. No, something else. A trap!
He turned to the tunnel, but it was sealed with concrete. Then back to the door consumed in flame. He moved toward the flaming doorway.
Then he heard it – a strange sizzling sound.
Every precariously stacked brick column in the small basement exploded, virtually simultaneously. Hundreds of bricks became projectiles, launching in every direction. The instant disintegration of the columns and foundation left nothing to support the house and it dropped like a rock.
Apep screamed.
12
The Grooves Are the Key
Wednesday, April 6 – God Stones Day 1
Rural Chiapas State, Mexico
Fredy ran forward, shouting after Sarah, “Be careful, compañera!”
“I’m good, Fredy!” Sarah shouted back. “There’s just not much room in here to rappel. I’ll have to go really slow.”
Gabi peered over the edge, shining her headlamp down at a dangling Sarah.
“Careful, Gabi,” Fredy said.
“Why in the hell wouldn’t she go slow?” Andrés asked, as he assessed the rigging of Sarah’s anchor point to ensure it was holding secure. They had decided the giant statue’s ankle would make as solid an anchor point as anything they could create. As expected, it was holding fine.
“I have worked with Sarah for a long time, compadre – you don’t know her like I do. The woman is fearless and maybe even a little loco,” Fredy said, twirling his finger next to his head.
Gabi stared down, unblinking. Her own heart pounded against her chest as Sarah jumped back a few inches off the wall and dropped away. Again and again, she jumped back and dropped down, the light from her headlamp retreating a little each time she repeated the technique, slowly making her way down the shaft. A moment later the swaying light stopped.
Fredy depressed the button on the radio. “Everything okay, Sarah? Over.”
As Fredy released the button, the radio crackled to life. “Yep, I’m good. Just taking a pause to investigate and check for gases. Gauges are good. I don’t know, Fredy, part of me thought maybe it would just be the top, but it’s still perfectly circular and I can’t find one tool mark. They couldn’t have just bored a hole through solid stone.” The radio went silent for a long second. “I think this must have been a natural hole. The shaft started out smaller, then its creators must have widened it into this perfect circle. I suppose it’s possible they rubbed away any tooling marks with harder stone using an abrasion technique. Everything else must have been formed around it. The chamber, the stairwell, all of it. The question is why? Why would they go to the trouble? Maybe they widened it out to allow sacrifices to pass through to the underworld. I can buy that. But to create this perfect shaft and hide the marks… I don’t get it. I have never seen anything like this.”
Fredy shared a confused look with Andrés then with Gabi. “We agree, Sarah. This makes no sense.”
Gabi watched on, eyes fixed as Sarah’s light began to sway hypnotically. Her mind reeled as she tried to puzzle out the mystery, but it simply made no sense. When the light finally stopped its metronome cadence, it was a faraway glow, a fading light at the end of a long vertical tunnel.
“I’m down,” Sarah announced.
Fredy pressed the button. “What do you see, Sarah?”
María and Itzel stopped their work and joined the others, everyone gathering around Fredy and the radio. Gabi continued to peer over the edge, watching the light below.
“I must be around one hundred feet below you. The floor feels soft and uneven but stable. Wait! There are smooth curved structures protruding from the material making up the floor of the shaft. Jesus! Stand by.”
“Sarah!” Fredy shouted.
“It’s okay. They’re bones, Fredy. Bones upon bones – god, there’s no telling how deep these go.”
“Or how long this shaft was used for sacrifices?” Andrés muttered. “Tell her to check her gauges.”
“Check your gauges, Sarah. Are they still clear?” Fredy asked through the radio.
“Shit, I forgot! Stand by.”
“Come on, Sarah.” Fredy sighed but he didn’t depress the button on the two-way. “She knows better. All those bones. They could be releasing poisonous gases as they decay!”
“She is just excited, Fredy. She will be fine,” Itzel reassured him.
“Just excited! She could be breathing lethal doses of methan
e—”
The radio chirped and Sarah’s voice rang out, “I’m good! The gauges are flat, but my god, Fredy, there’re bones everywhere!”
“What’s your next move, Sarah?”
Sarah’s voice came back. “It would be easy for me to spend the next several days, maybe even weeks, sorting through the material under my feet. But I am telling you there is something more to this than a hole created to toss sacrifices down.”
Her intuition, Gabi thought. And she felt it too. There was so much more.
“First off, this chamber and shaft required way too much work to simply be used for sacrifice,” Sarah continued. “Second, most places specific for sacrifices would lead to the underworld – well, at least to underground caverns or cenotes. Almost always something full of water. But there is no cavern here – no water either. Maybe it dried up, but I don’t think so. So, what then, Fredy? We’re supposed to believe this is just a shaft deep in the ground leading to nothing? I’m not buying it.”
Gabi reached out over the rim and ran her hand along until she found one of the grooves. The grooves are the key, she thought.
From across the chamber Itzel called out, “Gabi, come join me, we can work on the wall together.”
Gabi traced her finger up the groove. I know it’s the grooves, Sarah – I feel it. “Coming, Mamá!”
One hundred feet below, Sarah ran her hand along the wall until she found one of the grooves. It’s the grooves, isn’t it? The grooves are the key. She pressed the button on the radio. “It’s the grooves. They must be the key. Stand by, team.”
Sarah knelt down, following one of the grooves until it disappeared into the floor of bones. The stale air was cold, and she felt a shiver as she carefully began removing material, following the groove down the wall. A few inches down, the groove disappeared behind a skull that was held fast by a dark amber substance, like a giant bug stuck in tree sap. Very carefully she pulled it from its centuries’-old hold. She placed it on the growing mound of material behind her and continued removing bones.
She had followed the groove nearly a foot beneath the layer of decayed remains and still she couldn’t find the bottom, when Fredy’s voice crackled from her two-way, causing her to jump.
“Sarah! Status report.”
“Christ!” she said before depressing the button on the two-way. “I’m fine, Fredy, but I’m going to be a few more minutes. I have a hunch and I need to see it through.”
“Fine, just keep us posted – we’re all getting anxious up here,” Fredy said, his voice laced with worry.
“Okay. Sorry.” Sarah checked her watch and then said, “I’ll check back in ten minutes.”
“Okay,” Fredy said.
Sarah continued to work further into the strata, peeling it back like an onion until she created a deep pocket next to the wall. After another check-in with Fredy, ten minutes turned into twenty as she wondered, How deep could this be? Maybe at one time this shaft did lead to an underground cenote, but the bodies filled it up. If that were the case, forget weeks – they could spend years excavating this shaft. She began to feel like her hopes of finding bottom were unrealistic. She would have to give up for today. The team would need to set up a system for removing the material bit by bit.
She shook her head. What the hell am I doing? She had been a fool to try and follow the groove down the wall like this. How much damage to the remains had she already done? Dammit, she knew better than this. Better than to let the excitement of her theory put the material she was digging through at risk. Still, even as she thought it, she shifted her body from a squat to all fours, reached down well past her elbow, and pulled loose yet another bone from the bottom of the hole. She reached in again, and this time she felt a smooth surface.
Sarah’s heart began to pound so hard she could feel it in her ears. Frantically, she scooped and brushed clear dirt and bits of bone from the smooth surface along the bottom of the hole. Finding where the groove met the smooth bottom, she worked to clear the area. Pulling her arm back out she shifted to shine her headlamp down the hole. It was about a foot and a half deep. Did the groove stop at the floor? She couldn’t tell. She reached in again and poked her finger into the groove, trying to see if she could shove her finger below the flat surface she had cleared. Suddenly, the dirt filling the groove gave, and her finger dropped down the hollow, below the floor, all the way to her knuckle. She knew it!
She pressed the button on her two-way. “I know what the grooves are for, Fredy! I know what they’re for! It’s a lid of some kind! A lid!” Sarah shouted through the radio. “The notches are how they lowered it down. Once in place they must have dropped the ropes through the holes so that it could never be pulled back up!”
“Dios mío! Are you sure, Sarah?” Fredy asked, his voice crackling back through the radio.
“It has to be. There’s something under here Fredy – I can feel it!” Sarah said excitedly. Something important, she thought.
“Sarah, are you ready to come up?”
Sarah hesitated. The shaft was only a few feet across. If they were to just clear the bones it wouldn’t take that long. “Fredy, I don’t want to wait. Send down a basket – I’m going to clear the bones so we can figure out how we’re going to remove this lid.”
“Sí, compañera,” Fredy said. “Come up and I’ll send Andrés back down to clear the bones.”
Sarah smiled. “Fredy, you worry too much. I’m good. I want to stay and work this. If I get tired, I’ll tag out.”
“Sí, compañera.” Fredy sighed.
13
In the Distance
Wednesday, April 6 – God Stones Day 1
Petersburg, Illinois
The library basement was swallowed in darkness so absolute it almost felt crushing to Breanne. Crushing like the tunnel in Mexico. Crushing like the vine room on Oak Island. Crushing like her mother’s car right before Christmas. She felt her heart rate rise and a real fear she might lose it.
Then she heard her brother whisper, “It’s okay, Bre, just breathe.”
She took a deep breath. She wasn’t being crushed. She wasn’t in a cave or an upside-down car in the middle of winter. She was just in the dark.
Everyone froze in place.
“Guys, what the hell just happened?” Pete asked.
“I can’t see my hand in front of my face,” David said.
“Everybody, stay calm. The power just went out,” Paul said.
Next to her, Janis gasped.
“Janis? Are you okay?” Breanne asked, rifling through her backpack for a light.
“Um, yeah, I guess. But um… I can see just fine.”
“What do you mean, you can see just fine?” Pete asked.
“I mean, I can see just fine. Like the lights aren’t even off.”
“Whoa! Night vision. You got freaking night vision? That’s awesome. I’m happy for you, Janis,” David said.
In the pitch black of the basement, Breanne didn’t need to see the disappointment on David’s face to sense it. Something in his voice, beyond the excitement and happiness, betrayed his own desire for a special power. “It will happen, David. I think it’s just different for everyone,” she said encouragingly.
David sighed. “I don’t know. Mr. B said most people may not even be affected.”
“I think there is a reason you are here, David, just like there’s a reason we’re all here. Just give it time…”
“Thanks, Breanne. I’ve dreamed of having a superpower my whole life. I know this might sound stupid, but you have no idea how much time I’ve spent contemplating which superpower I would want. I have seen every superhero movie and played every game that has to do with magic or superpowers. You know what I always end up deciding on?” David asked.
Breanne shook her head, answering absently as something invaded her vision. “No, David, what?”
“Invisibility. I mean you could do so much with it,” David said excitedly.
“You realize you’re a d
ouche canoe, right?” Pete asked.
“Yeah, and you’re a real dick,” David shot back.
“You know what, David…”
The voices were growing distant, fading into the background as Breanne was suddenly somewhere else. Or at least her mind was somewhere else, while her body seemed to stay in place in the library. What was she seeing? A basement?
And what was happening? Something unspeakable.
She watched a man die. Then she saw a wounded Apep standing over him, a bloody sword in his hand. She stared into the dead man’s hollow eyes. She didn’t recognize him but somehow knew who he was. “Oh no!” she gasped.
“What is it?” Paul asked, clicking on a headlamp he retrieved from his pack.
“Dude? Why are your sister’s eyes clouded over?!” Pete asked.
“Oh, shit! They’re completely white!” David said, pointing.
“Be quiet – she’s seeing something!” Paul said, reaching for her and finding her hand.
A few seconds later her eyes cleared. “I just saw something… I think it was Garrett’s dad. Apep… oh dear god! He… he killed him!” she cried.
“What!?” Pete asked frantically. “How can you know that?”
“It’s her power, bro!” David said. “Are you sure it was Garrett’s dad? Is Garrett okay? What about his mother? Lenny?”
“I… I don’t know. I only saw Apep and this other man.”
“What do you mean ‘saw’?” Pete asked.
“They were fighting with swords. There was fire and then… Apep… he… he cut off the man’s head!” she cried, burying her face into her hands. But before anyone could say anything else another flash lit up her mind. She threw her head back involuntarily, her eyes opening wider than should have been possible.
The Keepers Of The Light (God Stone Book 2) Page 9