Tomb of the First Priest: A Lost Origins Novel

by A D Davies

  “Go,” came Dan’s strained reply.

  “Okay, but I’ve got one thing to do first.”

  He bent at the knees and heaved the slab that once formed the vertical side of the bookshelf. His fingers and shoulders protested with sharp pain. The stone scraped against the floor, but Harpal pushed it toward the deep, black canyon, keeping his weight on back third. A few inches from the other side, it began to tip. Harpal moved to the back, preventing an accident, and shoved it more slowly.

  It hit the other side. But didn’t rest on the lip. It just bumped into it.

  A matter of millimeters too low.

  “Ahh.”

  Harpal sat on the end with his ass, jiggled it a bit. He shuffled as far forward as he dared and bounced.

  The slab shifted slightly.

  He bounced again and jammed his hands under the sides to stop it from falling flat. The slab’s mass pressed down on his skin, his bones, as agonizing as trapping his fingers in a car door. But he continued to shove with his feet on the floor, his arm muscles straining, sinew stretching against tendon, and—eventually—the slab settled on the other side.

  A better bridge than the desk had been.

  He took ten seconds to suck his sore fingers, replaced the tiny half-moon flaps of torn skin, then sprinted over the fallen bookcase, out into the crypt, and returned to the corridor that took him to the waterfall.

  The rest of his dash was of Olympic quality, rushing back up the well after telling Toby to winch him up.

  When he surfaced into daylight, Harpal pulled himself clear to see Toby’s evac was well underway—and with good reason.

  The ground had collapsed in places, sinkholes caving in from the hillside and spreading all the way down here. Like an unsafe mine sucking the town away. The villagers were gathering possessions from their homes, a steady stream heading for the drop-off that overlooked the rest of the valley. A town of refugees fleeing for their lives. The elders prayed on the hearth of their church.

  “Jesus,” Harpal said.

  “I’m afraid not,” Toby answered, abandoning the winch and rushing to see the state of Harpal. “But we may well need his help soon.”

  “Guys,” Harpal said. “You need to hurry.”

  “I’m gonna kill you, boy!” Down on the plain cube, Horse bled from several places, most prominently his mouth.

  Jules’s philosophy was one of Zen, of peace. He was ashamed that he’d enjoyed fighting Horse—just a little—but now, seeing the mess below him, that enjoyment turned bitter, a curdled drink in his gut. Horse’s mouth contained broken teeth to be sure; he had a busted eye socket, which now swelled approximating an apple; and he limped even as he drove on toward Jules.

  He fired again.

  Jules found a foothold on the blue flint devil statue, easing the pressure on his arms. He could not leap down onto Horse without the bodyguard shooting him. Equally, he couldn’t fall into the fire.

  Let’s try something...

  He rocked.

  The statue gave, shifting a couple of inches before settling back in place. It was lighter than it looked.

  While geology was not a field Jules troubled himself with, he inevitably had to study certain rock types, and this felt similar to flint only lighter, less hard. You certainly wouldn’t carve a tool out of it.

  Jules held on, dug in his heels, and shifted his weight again. The statue almost tipped over.

  “I see what you’re up to.” Horse loosed off two more shots. “Won’t work. I’m gonna kill you before it even hits the ground.”

  Those calculations that used to dance in the air before him came racing through his mind. Taking it all in—the angles, the weights, the trajectory.

  The cube Horse is standing on is thirty to thirty-two feet high.

  It’s surface is twenty-five feet square.

  I am between fifty-one and fifty-three feet up.

  Where is Valerio?

  “Your pals,” Horse called. “They’re dead too.”

  From his vantage, Jules could now see Valerio standing before a blank wall perpendicular to the wide, flaming pool, manic as he paced back and forth, eyes straight ahead, oblivious to the surrounding conflict.

  Switching angles, Jules made out the gunfight, the urban warfare at which Dan was highly experienced, and Charlie was plainly no slouch.

  “Ain’t a problem,” Jules said. “Two on two, I’d bet on Dan any day of the week.”

  “Except it isn’t only two.”

  Jules adjusted his grip, moved enough to stay hidden from Horse but also to view the central pavilion.

  Empty. The Ravi brothers were mobile again.

  “Dan!” One hand slipped as the realization hit him. He immediately regained his grip. “There’s two more! Watch yourselves—”

  Three gunshots came his way, each as close as any to date. The stone chipped, sharp fragments spraying Jules’s left cheek.

  “Okay, let’s stop messing around.” He let his feet fall free, swung them back, and hurled all his weight at the statue’s torso sending it teetering but not falling. “Here we go, Horse, get ready to catch me.”

  “Give it your best,” Horse said.

  One more thrust with Jules’s legs, and the demonic carving surrendered to gravity, a tree expertly felled.

  Jules whipped himself up and slid down the flintlike surface to the halfway point like a fireman’s pole, below the cube’s lip. Then he jumped to his feet and ran back up, spinning the timings through his head, ignoring the steep odds of pulling this off and just acting as if it were a given.

  Running faster than the statue’s fall, Jules reached the cube’s level.

  As hoped, Horse must have assumed Jules was turning tail, trying to hide, and with his angry head working harder than his tactical mind, he ran into Jules’s hands.

  Jules dived off at an angle, swung his feet forward, and slammed into the oncoming juggernaut’s shins. One of the bones snapped under the attack, Horse’s scream far girlier than Jules expected.

  He also lost all sense of himself. No balance, no control. He dropped his gun, bounced, and somersaulted before flying over the edge toward the mass of flames.

  Jules closed his eyes, unable to bear witness to the first life he ever took. One he didn’t intend, but even there, amid the chaos and destruction, his overwhelming thought was that this death would haunt him forever.

  As the devil statue crashed to the ground, it breached the edge of the fire pit, and shattered into a million chunks as if it were glass. The barrier around the fire suffered damage, a V ripped out of its front section, and the clear fluid within flowed over. It oozed onto the floor with the consistency of spilled custard, diverting around the small buildings and monoliths first, headed for the statues and offerings from around the world. The pitch of the floor guided it directly downhill.

  Toward Dan and Charlie.

  A deep-throated growl rose from the cube’s edge. Jules dashed forward.

  Horse hung from another wedged sculpture by his fingertips. He bared bloodied teeth at Jules, eyes narrow with hatred and rage.

  Jules’s whole body flooded with relief. Although logic dictated that losing Horse would have been both accidental and self-defense, he could not bring himself to write off a human life that way. He knew logically that Horse would strike to kill him at the earliest opportunity, yet this was his one commitment that logic alone could not override. It could in others. But not him.

  You go ahead, but it’s not for me.

  Jules stuck out a hand. “Grab it.”

  “Go to hell.” Horse glanced back down at the fiery pool leaking away. More surface area burned now.

  “You sure?” Jules said.

  Horse looked back at Jules. “On second thoughts... fine, pull me up.”

  Jules crossed his arms and crouched on his haunches, reaching right over the edge. Horse released one hand to grip Jules’s forearm just above the Aradia bangle, then the other above the Ruby Rock. Jules pushed with his
legs, heaving the 250-pound gorilla up. The gorilla howled again as his broken leg scraped the cube’s corner.

  Once safe, Jules let go and rolled away, springing up into a low stance, close enough to tackle Horse if he produced a backup firearm.

  But Horse lay there on his side, both hands in plain sight. Jules chanced a quick pat down, and Horse didn’t try to fight. No weapons.

  “I don’t need to do anything else.” Horse panted for breath, gritting through the pain. “The boss is clear. Your pals are dead.” He pulled himself across the cube to the point where he climbed up the remaining section of blue-green devil, slithering and pushing himself with his one working foot. “And you got no way out.”

  Jules had the perfect comeback, a retort that would make Horse feel silly in the extreme, but he never managed to deliver it.

  Charlie’s scream cut him off.

  Still using the monuments and sculptures around the wide staircase for cover, Dan spotted the two additional guys, his vantage better than Charlie’s. He figured he was better picking off the militiamen from up high while Charlie guarded the imagined perimeter he had relayed to her.

  The one he took out by the library entrance was as troublesome as a mild cold while the pair rushing them from the other aeries acted conservatively and knew how to hold cover. Potshots exchanged, nothing more. Now, with a survivor from the explosions in the entrance below, two others who’d had real training stalked them too.

  When the gunfire went quiet, Dan figured they were communicating somehow.

  A four-way barrage ensued. Machine gun–fire blasted from the ground level while the two experts fired handguns from atop a yurt-shaped building with spires and domes.

  Dan made a beeline for a naked bronze man holding a spear, one higher than his current spot and almost in line. The gunfire followed him. Slugs impacted behind, but he made it, the ricochets pinging off the metal.

  From there, he observed Bridget’s hiding place—behind the plinth of a silver-looking pregnant woman, naked of course, holding her round belly and gazing heavenward. Dan patted the air, indicating she should stay down.

  A huge crash rang across the cavern, and he was certain the flames licked higher over the far end. Sparks danced, and the flaming channels shifted and shimmered.

  His movement, though, had exposed the pair at ground level. Emboldened them. Dan aimed through the warrior’s legs. Not trusting the single-shot function, he set the gun to a three burst. “Charlie, give them something to think about.”

  “Copy that.”

  She hunkered between two plinths, home to identical male nudes in white stone, holding hands above her, more a victory celebration than love. At the first minor letup, Charlie’s Makarov boomed four times. The two men, just outside her range, instinctively ducked and shifted.

  Dan blasted twice, taking the pair out. Neither moved on the ground.

  “Got ’em,” Dan said. “Just need the rooftop guys.”

  “I can see both.” Charlie pointed, then flattened her hand to chop the air.

  “I got no clue what that means. Some Brit signal?”

  She sighed. “Run like hell to the right, head for that big bear statue. Fire a couple of rounds if you can.”

  “Hey, tactics are my domain.”

  “You going or what?”

  Dan checked his breathing, clutched the stolen machine gun—a nice AK-400—then set it to single rounds, and ran. Doing his best to aim properly, the gun bucked with each shot, coming closer and closer each time.

  “Now pretend to fall,” Charlie said. “Trust me.”

  All or nothing.

  He stumbled on purpose. His momentum sent him sprawling in a more gangly fashion than he intended, which induced genuine panic.

  But it worked.

  Both militiamen steadied their positions, static in their shooting stances.

  Charlie sprinted from her spot and improved her angle. Knelt. Aimed. Fired twice.

  The two heads atop the yurt-come-temple burst into red mist, and all that remained of the gunfire was the familiar echo in Dan’s ears.

  He stood. Held up a fist Charlie’s way. “Nice.”

  Another report split the air.

  And Charlie cried out, clutching her stomach.

  Blood streamed from between her fingers. She dropped her gun and added the second hand for pressure. She sat, lay back on the steps, reducing the need for circulation.

  Where... ?

  The guy with the RPG was across and to the right. He wasn’t dead. He lay in his blood with a rifle aimed their way, struggling to find a bead on his second target.

  Dan had no such problem. He fired five single shots at the man, each thumping home. If he wasn’t dead this time, he was powered by whatever magic was driving this place.

  Charlie wasn’t magic, though.

  Bridget crept out to see, and when she did, she hurried down toward her friend.

  Dan joined them, ripping his top shirt off as he went. He pressed it on Charlie’s wound, the gun to one side, more frightened now than he had been throughout the entire firefight. “Bridget, keep an eye out. Anything moves, you yell, okay?”

  Bridget pulled off her pack and rummaged inside. Came out with a roll of electrical tape. Dan wiped his hand on his own white shirt and accepted the tape. He removed the makeshift staunch while Bridget ripped open Charlie’s shirt at the bottom, then Bridget reapplied it. Dan ripped open the tape and stuck it to the cleanest part of Charlie’s skin, unspooling it across the wadded shirt, passing it through the gap formed by the stair under her back, and taking it over and around again. He kept on going, tighter each time.

  “I... I think you got it,” Charlie said, her face pale.

  “You’re not surviving some bottomless pit only to die from a boring old bullet.” Dan lifted her like a baby. “Gonna get you in that pool.”

  “You can’t,” Bridget said. “It needs Jules and that tablet thing, and we don’t know where they are. Take her back to the helicopter. There’s a first aid kit there. It’s less than half an hour to the border.”

  Charlie’s arms hung around Dan’s neck, but they were weak.

  Bridget jabbed a finger at the exit. “We can’t know that it’ll fix a bullet wound!”

  Charlie said, “Bridget’s right. We don’t know... where the hell Jules is. Plus... look.”

  They all saw it now: the slow creep of more fire, oozing throughout the channels and makeshift streets. The repository was being consumed.

  “Take her.” Bridget pointed at Charlie, then the door to the library. “Harpal said there’s a new way across.”

  “That kinda sounds like you aren’t coming,” Dan said.

  “I’m bringing Jules out.”

  “How you plan on doing that?”

  Bridget picked up the AK-400. “No idea. But I’m guessing there’s a way through those fires.”

  No time to argue, Dan handed her the final magazine and pointed to show her how to eject the old one. She struggled to get the new one in place, but once it was, she armed it like a pro.

  He said, “You’ve fired other weapons back home?”

  “Everyone’s fired guns in Alabama.”

  “Select your rate of fire, point, and shoot. And you know not to bluff, right?”

  “I’ll do my very best. Now go.”

  As much as Dan feared this was a mistake, it was a simple triage choice: stay and Charlie dies for sure, go and maybe she lives. He could only hope Bridget knew what she was doing.

  Bridget had no clue what she was doing. Yes, she’d fired rifles and shotguns and six-shooters with “Smith & Wesson” embossed on the side, but a machine gun was something else entirely. Nor did she know exactly where she was going or where Jules was currently located.

  Her decision: scout the structures, don’t get cut off by the spreading flames, preserve her own life as best she could. If Jules came with the bangles they’d come for, great. If not, they would write off the bangles as a loss, and she’
d insist they never attempt anything on this scale again.

  With Dan taking Charlie to safety, she was now the only wild card. If they didn’t count Jules. Which she figured they didn’t.

  Yet she wanted to give him one final chance.

  Was that all, though? How much of what she was doing was linked to the bangles? To the history? To the desire to linger just a little longer in the most extraordinary find since... since when? Since what?

  The wonder of opening Tutankhamun’s tomb?

  The rewriting of human evolution through unearthing the bones of the hominid known as Lucy?

  The scientific breakthrough of mapping the human genome?

  This was a moment like no other. And it was falling down around her.

  Yes, spending those additional moments here meant the world to her. If she could save Jules and survive the day, that would be a real bonus.

  By the time Jules had traversed halfway to the pavilion, he could see the staircase where the gun battle played out and that Dan carried Charlie in his arms, leaving Bridget behind wielding a machine gun that was way too big for her.

  Jules bounded forward, down to ground level. Having mapped out the fire’s flow, he gave it a wide berth, hoping none of the materials here were flammable, or worse, combustible. The people who built it seemed at least as intelligent as modern humans, but explosive rock wasn’t beyond his imagination.

  He reached the far side, where Bridget picked her way at a jog.

  He said, “Hey, Bridget.”

  She responded by hefting the gun, a slow process due to its weight, but he held up his hands anyway.

  “Is that all you got to say? ‘Hey’?” She lowered the gun, stashed it on her back with the strap, and ran toward him, sweating now in the rising heat.

  “You wanna ‘how do you do’?”

  Behind her, back at the staircase, the stream of fire pooled and branched off toward the entrance Jules had come through. She reached him and placed both hands on the bangles. “You got them both! That’s great. Wait till you see the library we found!”

  “A... library?”

  “Huge! Like... like finding all the books from Alexandria, only... so much better. Come on!”