Order of the Black Sun Box Set 7

by Preston William Child

  “Maria, where are we conducting this ritual? I mean, Machu Picchu is a tourist destination. How will we be able to kill someone during the daytime in front of everyone without being arrested?”

  “You’d be the only one arrested,” Isabella laughed.

  Maria ignored Isabella. “Do you think we’re going to do this in Machu Picchu? Are you stupid?”

  “Apparently,” Hannah mumbled.

  “Grow up, you subservient bitch!” Madalina shouted at her, an outburst she hadn’t been intending. She waited for a painful reprimand, but instead Isabella cracked up in her shrill, childish way, slapping Hannah mockingly. Maria was unfazed by Madalina’s reaction and told her what she wanted to know. She was going to die after she had killed the child anyway, so there was no reason to withhold it from her.

  “We are going to the Forgotten Lake, a secluded rock pool inside the adjacent mountain face. Only the Children of the Sun knew about it, until we obtained the location from their scrolls during an excavation at Lake Guatavita in Colombia,” Maria told Madalina. Her plain tone of voice and demeanor made her almost seem seemed human. “There is a sacrificial slab, divided in three layers. You’ll see. When the eclipse comes, the sun will have fallen directly on the duct at the bottom of the slab.”

  “A duct,” Madalina sighed. “For Raul’s blood, I suppose.”

  The two women behind them applauded Madalina’s deduction, again provoking her rage with their juvenile attitude. “Yes,” Maria confirmed.

  “But the rays will be gone when the sun darkens. Does that not thwart the whole ceremony?” Madalina persisted, adamant to find out as much as she could.

  “Oh, Jesus, isn’t she just full of beans?” Hannah groaned.

  “Be quiet, Hannah. You’re beginning to irritate me,” Maria warned. She sighed at Madalina’s relentless questioning, but she mustered one more piece of information. “It’s not about the heat of the rays, my darling girl, or the light being dimmed.” She shrugged. “It’s about the moment in time, the celestial alignment that is marked by the eclipse.”

  “So it’s about timing?”

  “The eclipse is only a marker, just so that we know when to do the ritual,” Maria disclosed. By the way she acted after this, Madalina knew that the husky-voiced Maria was done explaining; she was done being amicable.

  Suddenly she pushed Madalina sideways, corralling her towards the right of the rising cliff face before them. The path went left, but Maria shoved the Spanish teacher into a clump of lush trees that grew from the cliff side. “What the fuck are you doing?” slipped out of Madalina’s mouth, but Maria gave her no explanation. The pathway was suddenly barely a few inches wide and to the sides, the rock they walked on fell away into two flanking drops so steep that they disappeared into chasms on each side.

  Madalina felt her stomach contract and her heart hammered in her bosom. “Oh God, I’m going to fall.”

  “Don’t,” Isabella said behind her, as the women progressed in a single file.

  From somewhere in the mountain Madalina heard Raul’s voice. Her heart jumped. As she followed Maria, she listened keenly to ascertain his mood, but he did not sound distressed. Above them, the sunrays fell through the broken mountain rocks that split it into two cliffs. The sunlight highlighted a small area inside the shadow, like a spotlight on an operation table. A column of pure sun poured through the hole above and revealed Madalina’s greatest horror.

  Raul was naked, tied to the slab face down, with leather restraints fastened to the rock by long, thin spikes. His face rested on a pillow of stone that elevated his head, curving his neck backwards. “Oh Christ, no!” she shrieked. “Raul! I won’t hurt you, sweetheart!”

  “I know,” his shrill little voice answered, the sound muffled by the rock under his face. “But you do not make your own body move . . . and you will kill me.”

  She started to sob uncontrollably, resisting what felt like a natural urge to tear his limbs from his tiny body. It was Sabian’s influence. The sensation had the same gentle drive she’d felt that night when she’d killed Mara. “No! No! I won’t!” she kept wailing, but she was dragged to the slab and made to stand between two men—Sabian and a grotesque stranger she did not know.

  The light began to fade rapidly now, as the moon gradually slid over the sun to obscure it from sight. Sabian and the ugly man with the big teeth were chanting in a monotonous cadence, using words unknown to any modern tongue. Still, Madalina recognized the syllables as those used during her sessions with Sabian, and some she’d heard him use on Javier.

  They were controlling her actions, and as long as she could hear, her mind would obey. The murderous charm was growing stronger inside her unwilling mind, but she thought of her darling Raul, she thought of her brother, her parents, and all the things she loved about her life.

  Dr. Sabian reached out and gave her a stone athame, a sacrificial knife to draw the boy’s blood with. “Go on,” he commanded tenderly, “be the Last Mother of the Red Messiah!”

  “Where is Hannah?” Isabella whined loudly when she realized that Hannah was absent. Maria looked around but saw no sign of the skinny acolyte. She shrugged apathetically, assuming that Hannah had lost her footing and fallen from the ledge they’d hiked in on.

  Madalina saw them all look up as the sun lost its face, leaving only a thin circle of light in the mighty sky. Inside the cavern it was shadowy, looking dreary and haunted. The men kept chanting. In her childish screech, Isabella shouted and pointed to the disc in the sky. “Look! The Black Sun in all her glory!” Proudly, Maria and Isabella venerated the image, seeing the insignia of their clandestine organization displayed so regally by the very powers of the universe.

  “Now! Madalina, now!” Sabian bellowed, his voice trailing through the chasm like the howl of a demon. Raul’s little body was shivering, but Madalina did not care if it was fear or cold that shook the boy. In fact, she did not care about him at all. Her hand tightened around the hilt of the stone weapon and inside her, she felt happy and strong. Words became commands from a language she did not know, yet understood.

  To her newfound mindset, the child looked deliciously vulnerable and Madalina felt her mouth curve in laughter as she reached around him. Her one-armed embrace around his neck turned into a smooth motion to slit his throat. She heard herself apologize, but she felt nothing.

  Finally, the child cried. Thus far, he had controlled his emotions splendidly, hoping that he could still be saved, but as he felt his beloved keeper drag the knife across his throat, he knew she was lost to him.

  32

  Litanies

  Solar Eclipse: 100% - Black Sun Attained

  Blood trickled from the meeting of tender flesh and hardened stone, prompting the priests of the Black Sun to chant louder and faster. In the chasm, the gate to the lost city of gold was about to open, revealing temples of solid gold long hidden by the mountains of Peru. Raul screeched like a piglet at slaughter, a sound so piercing that Madalina cringed.

  The sound momentarily severed Sabian’s words from the tether they had on her mind, and she knew she had to act quickly. Growling with effort, she dislodged one of the spikes that secured the boy’s restraints.

  “She is untying him!” Barnard shouted at Maria. “Get her! Secure the ties!”

  Maria and Isabella charged toward the unwilling Last Mother, but she was not untying Raul at all. Before they reached her, she stabbed herself in the ear, deafening herself instantly. Howling in pain, she repeated the self-mutilation in both ears and succeeded in losing her hearing entirely. Gripping her bleeding head in her hands, as the excruciating agony spread through her skull, she let out an unearthly snarl of defiance.

  Their words had no hold on her anymore, and their spell was left impotent. Sabian and Barnard were furious. In desperation, Barnard lunged forward and seized the athame from where Madalina was writhing on the ground. “I’ll finish him off before the moon moves!” he shouted to Sabian.

  “It won’t wor
k! It has to be the Last Mother, remember?” a man advised the two frantic priests.

  “Who are you?” Sabian spat, livid at the failure of the sacrifice. Barnard ground his large incisors in a snarl when he saw David Purdue towering over him from the ledge, dangling Hannah off the ledge by her wrist. Disbelief gripped him and he shook his head profusely, refusing to acknowledge what his eyes beheld. “I said . . . who are you?” Sabian repeated.

  Barnard turned to his associate and panted in rage, his face reddened and sweating. “That is David fucking Purdue!”

  “I thought you killed him,” Sabian scowled.

  The obviousness of his remark only infuriated Barnard even more. “Well,” he pointed at the white-haired billionaire, “apparently not, you imbecile!”

  Nina raced to untie Raul as the eclipse started to pass, but she had two obstacles in her way. One was a brunette and the other a redhead. Nina did not feel like explaining or mouthing off. There was a wounded teacher and a little boy who both needed medical assistance and she was at the end of her tether.

  “Why bother?” she asked them. “Your eclipse has passed. There is no point in being a dick, ladies.”

  Hannah was kicking at Purdue, while Barnard and Sabian assessed their opposition. Raul was bleeding and sobbing, and so was Madalina. Purdue lightened his grip a little to allow Hannah to control her own fate. Her violent kicks dislodged her from Purdue’s grasp and she fell, screaming, until a thump on the jagged rock silenced her. In shock Maria looked at Purdue, but he showed no emotion.

  The distraction was all Nina needed. She bolted towards Maria, but instead of throwing a punch, the petite historian fell into a slide, knocking Maria’s legs out from under her. A loud crack came from Maria’s knees and she folded like a mousetrap, roaring in anguish.

  Isabella went for Nina while she was on the ground, but a bullet stopped her for good. Ripping through her neck, Sam’s bullet spoiled any chance of a tourniquet for the immature Italian girl.

  “Penetration, just as you asked,” Sam told her, turning to aim his barrel straight at Barnard. His broken arm was in a cast, but Sam was ambidextrous when it came to guns. “Now, you can march out with us to meet Capt. Pedro Sanchez and his Interpol friends for attempted murder and robbery, or you can join your little whores,” Sam offered.

  Nina got the boy loose. She took off her vest and put it on him.

  “Gracias,” he choked on his tears. He moved past Nina and sank to his knees next to Madalina. Raul stroked her hair and her cheeks as she begged him to forgive her. He said nothing in reply, but wrapped his arms around her neck. As the two of them sat weeping and bloodied, the sun grew brighter with every second’s passing and illuminated them like a beam of redemption.

  Barnard, Sabian, and the stout Maria were not going to be taken, but they had to pass Purdue, Cleave, and Nina only to be confronted by Interpol outside.

  “What do we do?” Barnard asked. “Offer to tell them where the golden statue and the prayer stick is?”

  “No,” Sabian objected sternly. “The Black Sun is the most powerful society in the world and we do not give in to charlatans like these!”

  Barnard looked at Purdue. “I’ll tell you where I put her, the golden woman. In return you let me go free.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Sabian yelled at his associate.

  “Bribery,” Purdue shrugged. “I like it. It is the last escape route of a coward. But unfortunately for you, your mole Hannah spilled her guts . . . .” He laughed at the irony as he peered down into the depths to which shed plummeted moments earlier, “. . . so to speak . . . and she told us everything we needed to know.”

  Barnard fumed. “You’re bluffing.”

  While he played blow for blow with Purdue, Sabian had begun to recite another chant, attempting to influence their actions. Soon everyone began to feel their thoughts intruded upon. It was an odd feeling to be completely cogent and yet have an unbridled urge to walk off the ledge.

  “You feel that?” Sam asked.

  “Aye, and I don’t like it,” Nina reported, her eyes wild.

  Purdue stood frozen, fighting the suggestion. From Madalina’s embrace the little boy stood up, his chest splattered with the blood from his throat. Those big, dark eyes Madalina so adored turned into blazing pools of anger. He walked toward Sabian, murmuring a litany so rapidly that they could not discern separate words. Continuously, he muttered the invocations of his ancestors, rendering Sabian mute in his abilities.

  Under the Incan sun the child drove the Santero mad with his petitions.

  “What language is that?” Purdue asked.

  “Quechua,” Raul answered him innocently before resuming his invocation upon Sabian and his associate. Barnard turned and looked at Sabian.

  From the ledge, Capt. Sanchez peered around the rocks to witness the phenomenon. Barnard’s eyes became bloodshot, and then he smiled. Sabian ignored him and walked briskly toward the boy. Barnard bared his oversized teeth and cackled with delight before he ran Sabian down with such force that they both tumbled over the edge behind the sacrificial slab.

  Sabian’s screams could be heard in the dark ditch where the ground dipped into shadow. Nobody wanted to say it, but they could hear Barnard’s huge teeth clap as he devoured Sabian in cannibalistic insanity.

  Nina thought nothing of it.

  “My research has proven repeatedly that South American tribes across the Amazon used to become infused with urges that turned them into man-eating hunters and warriors,” she said, shrugging. “After all, there is no better punishment for child killers.”

  “Amen,” Purdue replied. Sabian’s wails had ceased, but Sam was concerned about the monster that took him out. Raul returned to his last mother and took her hand. He led her toward Capt. Sanchez, who helped them walk the ledge out of the cavern. At the same time, Nina, Sam and Purdue kept an eye on the darkness at the back of the mountain.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Raul told them. “I told him to eat the sun man, and wait.”

  “Wait?” Nina frowned, reluctantly turning to follow them onto the ledge.

  “Sí,” the boy said cheerfully.

  “Wait for what, Raul?” Sanchez asked.

  “Just wait. He will wait now, until I tell him different. But I am not coming back in here.” He smiled, caressing Madalina’s hand. She was stone deaf now, but ecstatic that Raul had chosen to stay with her.

  “Oh my God, that is deliciously gruesome, don’t you think?” Maria gasped, admiring the boy’s command. “He will starve to death in there and he will never know why.” Sanchez and Purdue were helping her across the ledge and delivered her to Interpol agents as soon as they got to the winding trail to Machu Picchu.

  Raul led Madalina aside to a wild part of the jungle between the mountains. They remained a few hours in the meadow and admired the streams of clear water that led into an ancient aqueduct in the grass.

  “Let’s go home, sweetheart,” Madalina shouted, unable to control the volume of her voice. Raul laughed with her. He pulled her face down to his so that she could see what he was saying.

  “We are home, Madi. Remember my ice cream castle?” he asked.

  She nodded in affirmation, recalling the pudding creativity back in Sax. He winked and motioned for his new mother to look to his left. She gasped, tears filling her eyes as she saw the cascading stone peek through the thick vines and overgrown trees.

  “Shh,” he said and brought her over the aqueduct. Madalina could not believe her eyes as the elaborate city of masonry and gold appeared from behind the dense forest growth. He smiled and said, “See? My home.”

  As they walked deeper into the lost city, they left behind the mountain where they’d almost died. In their wake, the sacrificial cavern grew smaller and Barnard stayed inside, waiting.

  Epilogue

  “It’s so good to be back home,” Nina cried happily, relishing the delightful Edinburgh storm outside Purdue’s dining room window.

  “This wa
s one trip I could have done without,” Sam remarked from where he sat at the hearth. His cast had all kinds of doodles on it, evidence of his boredom, a boredom he confessed to enjoying thoroughly. “Nina, would you believe that that black circle with the edges of light that I saw under the water looked just like that goddamn eclipse we saw in the cavern.”

  Purdue turned in astonishment, neglecting the papers of the logbooks he’d obtained courtesy of Hannah, the mole. “Um, excuse me? Did you also see that?” he asked Sam. “My God, Sam, I saw the exact same vision while we were being dragged along the hull of the Cóndor!”

  “The circle that grew wider?” Sam asked.

  “Correct! It grew wider and had shining edges and the inside fell in,” Purdue reported.

  “You two saw the same thing at the same time?” Nina said, staring at them with a raised eyebrow. “And it was a portend of what was to come in Peru?”

  They nodded together.

  “Holy shit! Maybe there is really some esoteric basis to that area of the Alboran Sea,” she hypothesized. “That could explain the sinking of the twin Nazi ships at the same time.”

  “Oh, I have one for you,” Purdue interrupted her, waving the logbook pages in the air. “The mummified bodies on the wreck? Hear this . . . Raul is not the first Red Messiah, Nina. Here is your answer.”

  “Shoot,” she urged.

  “His great grandfather was the previous Red Messiah of the Inca prophecy. According to these journals, he was abducted from his parents’ home by Nazi soldiers looking for gold to ransack for Hitler’s hoard. The Black Sun, of course, knew about his significance, so they had the same plans for him in Spain. But . . . .”

  “Here it comes,” Sam jested, twirling his glass of scotch.

  Purdue smiled. “While the unmarked vessel sailed back towards Argentina, he had already mind-fucked the soldiers through suggestion while they were stationed at the convent. It says here, ‘We are so very cold. So cold. We feel the uncontrollable urge to crawl into the warmest areas of the ship and wait there. For what, we do not know yet.’