The Keepers Of The Light (God Stone Book 2)

by Andrew Schafer

  Apep didn’t answer; instead he focused his mind on imposing his will, compelling the animals and insects to obey him. Excitement consumed him. All these new creatures to command. I can add to my army with the sorry creatures of this planet! Make them into the fierce monsters they should have been if a real god had created them… a dökkálfar god. Yes, of course, it will be perfect, he thought, as the huge snake worked its way across the rocks and between vehicles. Yes! Come to me, my children. Come to me and obey!

  The giant snake paused briefly, turning its head toward them.

  “That’s right. Yes, come to me.” Apep beckoned with his hand. The Sound Eye crown atop his head began to glow once again. “Come to me!”

  The viper stretched upward several feet off the ground, its long tongue flicking at the air. What followed was a defiant hiss that could be heard all the way up the mountain.

  Apep frowned. Despite all his focus the creatures did not obey. Not even one of the biting gnats and certainly not the snake. They were not his creatures. He had seen his own daughter grow and command rats but he couldn’t bend a bug to his will? He, with more power than anyone in the universe. He, with more power than the gods themselves – couldn’t make them obey? He could use the Sound Eye to physically change them, but he couldn’t do what a pathetic half-breed could do with a few rats!

  “What’s wrong?” Ogliosh asked.

  “C’est la vie.” Apep sighed.

  Ogliosh laughed and then he laughed even harder, holding his massive belly as it shook. “Of course, you can’t command them, can you?”

  “What do you mean ‘of course’?” Apep asked, feeling blood flush to his face as anger built inside him.

  “It isn’t in your nature to control creatures. The Sound Eye hasn’t changed that. It will only enhance your attributes, mage, not give you new ones.”

  In the distance, one of the raccoon things tried to scurry up a tree, but the tree wouldn’t hold, cracking with a loud pop under the beast’s newfound weight. The beast startled and took off like a shot, running wildly into the jungle, wrecking foliage and toppling trees as it went.

  Apep raised a long finger toward the giant. “Just prepare, Ogliosh. If humans come snooping, they will be in for a surprise.”

  “As will my nephilbock, when they arrive,” he said disapprovingly.

  “Oh, come now, I don’t think a few giant monkeys and some overgrown mosquitos are anything your nephilbock can’t handle,” Apep said. “Now, if you excuse me, I’ve a dragon queen to see.”

  “Perhaps you should stay and rest. The Sound Eye is taking its toll on you,” Ogliosh said as he backed away, never taking his ostrich egg–sized eye off Apep.

  “Nonsense. I have never felt better in my life!” He closed his eyes and pictured the place he wanted to go. The place he knew Azazel would be. It had been many years, but the memory was solid. The Sound Eye glowed bright, so bright it swallowed him in its light. Then he was gone.

  52

  Old Guilt

  Saturday, April 9 – God Stones Day 4

  Rural Chiapas State, Mexico

  Somehow the Jeep managed to stay upright as it careened down the mountain and through base camp. Breanne screamed, one hand gripping the dashboard handle, and the other clinging for dear life to the handle above the door. As her body locked up, horrible memories flashed through her mind of the last car accident she was in, the one that stole her mother, the one that she caused. Now this girl, this strange girl, trying to save her was going to die! She needed to stay present. She had to stay here… now.

  The girl in the driver’s seat was squeezing the steering wheel, her eyes wider than she thought possible. When the Jeep hit the edge of the gorge, Breanne felt a weightlessness as everything smoothed out. They were flying. The ground beneath them was gone, and the only sound remaining were their screams. A moment later they hit the ground hard. Even belted in, it was all she could do to keep her head from slamming into the roof of the Jeep. The other girl, Gabi, wasn’t so lucky. Breanne saw her hit her head and her body go slack, but before she could grab the wheel the Jeep turned abruptly and flipped onto the driver’s side. Breanne watched in horror as Gabi fell limp toward the ground the Jeep was sliding along. She lunged for the girl, trying to pull her back. The Jeep slid for what seemed like forever, ripping through foliage and small trees before finally stopping abruptly against a large tree.

  The girl opened her eyes. “Mamá, my head,” she moaned.

  “Gabi? Are you okay?” Breanne asked.

  The girl lay there for a long moment as if listening for something. “Yes, I think so. I don’t hear them anymore.”

  “Hear who?” Breanne asked, bracing her feet against the dash. She unclipped her seat belt and lowered herself to straddle the girl.

  “Ogliosh and Apep. I’m not in their heads anymore.” Gabi shook her head side to side.

  “Listen, Gabi, I am going to assume Ogi—”

  “King Ogliosh, the giant.”

  “Right, Ogliosh. I’m going to assume he is going to try and kill us, and I for sure know Apep will. Can you get up?” Breanne extended her hand to the girl. Gabi’s hand was small but strong. Breanne took it and pulled the girl to her feet. They climbed up and out of the passenger side window.

  Breanne jumped down, the dry foliage crunching under her feet as she landed. “Is your head okay? I think you were knocked out there for a second.”

  Gabi swung her leg over the side of the Jeep door. “Hurts a little. But I am getting used to it.”

  The girl jumped down next to her, and for the first time Breanne had a chance to really look at her. She was about a foot shorter than Breanne, with long jet-black hair parted down the middle and braided into two matching pigtails. Her clothes were torn and filthy. She looked really young, but something was off. It was in her eyes. Something horrible had happened to her. And after the way she had screamed at Breanne on the mountain and talked about being in their heads, she wondered if the poor thing wasn’t broken. “Where is Sarah, Gabi?” she asked softly.

  “I… I don’t know. I think she’s dead,” Gabi whispered.

  Breanne’s heart sank into her stomach. Memories came in a rush, flashing through her mind of a time when she was even younger than Gabi, squatting down over a shallow hole on a dig site, brushing strata away from objects buried centuries earlier, talking girl stuff with Sarah and laughing. “Are you sure?” she tried to ask, her voice cracking.

  “What?” Gabi said distantly.

  “Gabi, are you sure? You said you think. Are you sure!”

  “No. But I think the giant killed her, maybe even ate her.”

  “But you’re not—”

  Above them something crashed through the trees.

  Breanne looked up just as a large black mass scrambled down the gorge not thirty yards away. She grabbed Gabi by the arm and pulled her back against the bottom of the overturned Jeep, pressing her own back into it. She squatted down and peered beneath the protruding tire of the Jeep.

  The monkey howled so loud Breanne had to cover her ears. She grabbed Gabi and pulled her down into a squat. The monkey stood facing away from them, swaying on its feet.

  “That’s a howler monkey,” Gabi said.

  Breanne knew what it was, but this monkey was way, way too big to be a monkey at all. Yet there it was, with its long tail reaching high up over its head as if searching for something. Then, as Breanne watched, the man-sized monkey grew another three feet.

  Breanne looked back up the wall of the steep gorge where the monkey had come from and gasped. “Gabi, can you run?”

  “Sure, I can run,” Gabi said flatly.

  Blue-grey fog spilled over the top of the gorge from above.

  The monkey staggered forward, taking several steps away from them.

  Breanne pulled Gabi up by the hand, fearful the girl was in some kind of shock. “Okay, we have to make a run for it, Gabi.”

  Breanne pointed further down into the gorge away
from the monkey. As they prepared to run, something clacked off the Jeep above them. Then again, again, and again. Maybe some kind of landslide from above? Then a fire ant landed in front of them. It was the size of a football. “Run, Gabi!”

  Gabi bolted forward as if a starting gun had gone off.

  Ants were landing all around them. Breanne leapt over one as she gave chase. Gabi wasn’t kidding – she could run. Breanne pushed hard to keep up, her body dehydrated and threatening to cramp. Two minutes later and a good distance away, she yelled for Gabi to stop. Sweat soaked her shirt, pasting it to her back. She gasped for breath. “Gabi, do you know how to get out of here? How to get to a road or, better yet, a town? And where is everyone else from the dig?” She hesitated before asking but then said, “Your parents? Where are they?”

  Tears filled Gabi’s eyes and spilled down her dirt-streaked cheeks. She shook her head. She reached forward, taking hold of Breanne’s hand.

  Breanne dropped to one knee as a memory forced itself into her mind. She was in a large cavern with a dragon and a giant. Sarah was there with others, and all around her people were screaming and running. She could hear herself screaming too. “Mamá! Papá!” A woman pushed something into her hand. She looked down and saw it was a familiar chain, her own father’s chain, and on it was a wedding ring with a small diamond. The woman, she knew somehow she was Gabi’s mother, turned and ran away… and died.

  Breanne grabbed the girl by the shoulders. “Oh, Gabi! I’m sorry!”

  Gabi shook her head and said in a voice that was barely a whisper, “Gone. They are all gone.”

  Breanne hugged the girl to her chest and squeezed her with all she had. She knew this vision wasn’t hers. It felt different and, besides, she had never seen a vision of the past before – only the future. She had no idea how the girl had shared this memory with her, but she knew what she had seen, and she knew what gone meant. Her brother was gone. Her mother was gone and her father… she didn’t know. God, she didn’t know. She didn’t know about Garrett or the others, were they… gone? This girl, this little girl, taking her hand in hers did something to Breanne. This young girl Sarah had talked about. The girl who was to be like a little sister to her when she was able to join the dig during breaks from college. Now they were together fighting for their lives. She couldn’t speak, didn’t know what to say if she could, but then it was Gabi who spoke.

  The girl pushed herself back far enough to look at Breanne. She was holding the chain with her mother’s ring. “This chain was your father’s?”

  “Yes. Did Sarah tell you?”

  “No, you told me.”

  Breanne frowned – she hadn’t said anything.

  Gabi started to slide the ring off the chain when Breanne put her hand on top of the girl’s. “Hang onto it for me? Please?”

  Gabi forced a weak smile. “Thank you,” she said, stuffing the chain and ring back into her front pocket before wiping her eyes with dirty sleeves. She looked away and pointed behind Breanne. “There is a town, but it is over an hour’s drive. The road isn’t that far though, and there is a farming village a few miles down once we get to the road. That’s where Fredy hired the laborers from. We will have to cross back through the gorge though. If we don’t, we will get lost for sure.”

  With their hands clasped tight together they began to walk. “Okay, listen to me Gabi. We are going to go wide on the far side of the gorge. Did you see that bluish fog?”

  Gabi shook her head side to side. “No.”

  “Well, I think that is what’s making the ants and the monkey and god only know what else grow. If we see that fog, we have to avoid it and anything else we might see.” She stopped and pulled Gabi toward her, hugging her again. “Just stay close to me. We are going to get out of here, Gabi. I promise.” And she meant it. She meant it from the bottom of her heart. “Come on, we need to get to that road before the sun sets.”

  Together they raced down deeper into the gorge, crossed the worn dirt path that led back to base camp, and over to the far side until it became too steep and thick to traverse. From there they began working their way along the gorge, horizontal to the trail. As they moved, they heard buzzing insects too loud to be normal. They foraged some long branches to use to bat any that came too close but so far none did. They did see more ants, some large beetles, and one butterfly the size of a dinner plate. They stepped carefully and as quietly as they could, always giving the insects a wide berth.

  “Breanne! Look!” Gabi said, pointing.

  They had come upon a utility truck, or what was left of it. Some of the cab attached to a twisted frame and one wheel was all that remained of the upside-down vehicle. It had torn a pretty good path through the jungle heading back toward base camp.

  “I remember, Sarah jumped into this car right before I blacked out. Ogliosh told me she ran away.”

  Breanne ran to the cab and squatted down to peer inside through the busted window. There was no sign of Sarah, but there was plenty of blood. “She’s not here but stay back and keep an eye out,” Breanne said instinctively, not wanting the girl to see the blood. She crawled into the cab, searching for anything useful but finding only a khaki work shirt, a wide brimmed hat, and half a bottle of water mixed among a scatter of other debris. She lifted the door to the glovebox and reached in to find a pistol stuffed into a leather holster with a spare magazine and a plastic box of 9mm ammunition. She grabbed it all and scooted herself backward out the window of the truck. She emptied the box of rounds into the cargo pocket on her thigh and clipped the holster onto her waistline. She didn’t want to shoot the gun, but not because she was afraid to or didn’t know how. Her brothers were military and they’d insisted she knew how, but she didn’t want to draw attention. Better to have it and not need it.

  “Gabi, when the sun goes down it’s going to get cold,” she said, draping the shirt over her shoulders and placing the hat atop her head.

  Gabi pushed her arms into the long sleeves of the oversized shirt and adjusted the hat. “Maybe Sarah is okay?” she said with a slight glimmer of hope.

  “Maybe,” Breanne said, less hopeful. There had been so much blood. Too much. “Come on, let’s get to the road.”

  They were cautious as they crept along, barely daring to speak as they made their way through the dense jungle gorge. Once they were off the mountain, they followed the same narrow trail that had been blazed to get the vehicles to base camp. The trail ultimately broke free of the jungle to a single-lane dirt road where they were able to jog. When they were too tired to run, they walked as fast as their tired legs would carry them. As they slowed Gabi began to tell Breanne everything about her time with Ogliosh. Once she got started, she didn’t stop until it was all out. She told her about the promise he had made her, and all the lies. She told her how after she saw the Sound Eye, she could get in Ogliosh and Apep’s heads, feel their emotions, listen to their thoughts. Then she told her about Apep’s plan, and Ogliosh’s army.

  The inner earth? Middle earth? The same inner earth the space alien nuts talk about? Breanne thought.

  “Yes, the same one. I know how it sounds. But he said there’s an army that’s been waiting and multiplying over thousands of years, a race of half-breed giants like the skulls we found on the tzompantli skull racks in the circular chamber—”

  “Wait a minute, Gabi, are you listening to my thoughts?” Breanne asked, stopping to face the girl.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, Bre.”

  She hadn’t told Gabi she preferred to be called Bre over Breanne. “Can you control it?” Bre asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m really sorry.” Gabi looked at the ground.

  “Don’t be sorry for something you can’t help.”

  She looked up and smiled shyly. “I’m really glad you’re here, Bre.”

  Gabi threw her arms around her and hugged her so tight Breanne could feel the girl’s soul. For the first time she didn’t feel doom and sorrow. For the first time she felt hope
. And for the first time, as strange as it was, and as bad as she missed her father, her brothers and, oddly, the boy Garrett who she had only known for a few hours, she felt like she was where she was supposed to be. Gabi needed her. She had to protect her. Now she just had to figure out the rest of it. “Now go on, Gabi, tell me about the army.”

  They began to walk again. “Sarah said some of them could be as big as twelve feet tall, maybe even bigger! Don’t you see, those skulls on the racks were part of his army before they were killed, and Ogliosh was put to sleep by the mages. He lied and told me it was the dragons, but it wasn’t, it was us. Humans imprisoned him and now Ogliosh’s army, Apep, and the dragons are gathering to open the gate back to their planet. Apep said he is going to overthrow his father, but I was in his head – he wants more, he wants to rule everything. He wants to be a god. And this place, Bre! This place, this mountain – it’s a pyramid. The whole thing is a pyramid bigger than any on earth and, even worse, it’s the portal!”

  Ahead they saw a dark tree trunk lying across the road. Except this tree trunk was moving. “What the hell is that?” Breanne asked. Then beside them, just off the road, they heard the hiss.

  Before Breanne could reach for the gun or even react, the giant snake darted forward from its hiding place and struck Gabi in the face. Gabi flailed and tried to scream but she couldn’t. The snake retracted, dragging her body back into the jungle as it coiled around her. Breanne’s body began to shake uncontrollably, and her vision narrowed. In the broken part of her mind, Christmas music played, a car crashed, and her mother died.

  53

  Farewell, Prince

  Saturday, April 16 – God Stones Day 10

  Petersburg, Illinois

  “What do you mean trees are moving?” Lenny asked. “What kind of moving? We talking swaying back and forth or walking around?”