"I can see what you're doing. Don't think I won't shoot you."
She froze.
"Put the bag down, slowly."
She let out a shaky breath and dropped her bag next to her feet. The gloves suddenly made sense. Her mind was in disarray, and her heart was racing. Why was he doing this?
"You've been following me," she whispered more to herself than to him.
"How very observant of you." The sarcasm in his tone stung. There was an underlying hatred in his voice that frightened her. She said nothing more and sat very stiffly as he drove.
They drove for ten minutes on the freeway in complete silence until they reached a tunnel that he moved into. April had never been so afraid in her life. The feeling made her knees weak. She could feel the cold sweat on her back, and she started to think of all the things that she had not yet done in her life, wondering if she would die that night.
They got out of the tunnel and stopped in front of what looked like an abandoned lab.
"We're going to get down now, Cara. If you try to run, I'll shoot your head off. If you try to scream, I'll shoot your head off. If you try to grab that thing in your bag, I'll shoot your head off. Got it?"
She nodded, unable to bring herself to respond.
"Good. Grab your laptop from your bag," he instructed.
She leaned forward slowly and took out her laptop. Her phone was right there, but she dared not take it.
He got down from the car and walked over to her side, opening the door.
"Get out."
She stepped down, clutching the laptop to her chest. He slammed the door shut and grabbed her upper arm roughly, pulling her along as he walked to the building.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because you started poking your nose into things that do not concern you."
April did not respond to that, so she just staggered along as he dragged her into the lab. It was dusty and dark inside, but Raul seemed to know his way around because he was still carrying her forward.
"Sit!" he barked when they reached a desk and chair. It was very dusty, and April scrunched her nose then felt the need to slap herself because she was worried about her clothes getting dirty when she might get murdered. She sat and looked up at him.
"I used to enjoy reading the nonsense you posted on your blog until your recent post about Roman Catholics."
"Is that what this is about?"
"You don't know anything, Cara. You don't know anything about what you're saying. All the rubbish you wrote, you don't know."
"I don't have anything against Roman Catholics. I—"
"Stop talking! We will not allow such blasphemy to go unchecked. We cannot allow a blog like that to continue." Raul sounded insane. April wondered who "we" was about.
"You ridiculed something that we hold dear all because you want reads and what? Upvotes? You could have chosen anything else to talk about. Even homosexuality wasn't good enough for you anymore. So, you think because your last name is Wordsworth, that you are untouchable? You're quite wrong, Cara. No mortal is above punishment, and you will be punished."
April could feel her heart about to leap out of her throat, but it wasn't just fear anymore. It was also exciting. All her years as a journalist, something this dangerous had never happened before to her. She wrote something that was death threat and kidnap worthy. It made her feel invincible, although she could be killed at any time.
"Aren't unlawful killings also worth being punished for?" she asked in a low voice.
Raul's face contorted into a scowl, and he slapped her on the front with the back of his hand. She gasped and felt the hot sting on her cheek.
"Don't speak. Open your laptop," he hissed and pointed the gun at her head.
She felt tears welling in her eyes. No one had ever hit her before. It was a whole other feeling on its own. She placed her laptop on her desk and felt the tears blur her vision before falling down her face. The salt from the tears caused her right cheek to sting even more. If he noticed the tears, he did not say anything about it. Instead, he made her retract the blog post and connected a flash drive containing only two files to her laptop.
One file was a renunciation of her last post. He made her publish it. The other file was an article on the achievements of the Roman Catholic Church, which he made her read. They had created two more orphanages in the last year. They had helped over a hundred people realize that they weren't gay and many other things that were supposed to be a plus.
"We do good work, Cara. Human sacrifices are merely collateral damages. Every human will die eventually."
She did not dare to speak because she did not want him to strike her again. Instead, he leaned forward and grabbed some rope that she hadn't noticed before from the top of the desk. He warned her not to try anything funny again before tying her hands and feet tightly, chaffing her.
When he was done, he scooped her up in his arms bridal style and carried her out of the abandoned library and into the woods until they came across a cabin. She wondered why he hadn't brought her here first, then decided that she did not care.
He walked to the back of the house and opened up a trap door.
"Brace yourself," he said to her and tossed her down, not caring if she broke her head or not. She screamed as she hit the floor with a loud thud. Luckily, it was not that deep, and she landed on her arm and not her head. She heard him laugh as he climbed down. They were in some basement, it was dimly lit, and there were shelves all around.
"Does it hurt, princess?" he jeered at her. She glared at him and shimmied her body around until she was able to sit up.
"We know about the team your father sent to Africa, by the way," he told her and pulled out a dagger from his breast pocket, unsheathing it as he stepped close to her. "None of them is coming back alive."
"Let me go, please. I won't tell—"
"Shut up!" he spat and raised his dagger. "Nextlahualli."
"No!" she screamed, and suddenly an engine noise came from outside. Raul stopped and turned his head up, wondering if it was just a fluke. The sound came again, so he sheathed the dagger and climbed back up.
"Don't you dare make a sound," he warned her.
April started sobbing quietly. She heard voices and stopped herself from crying so she could listen. She heard Raul say "Liam" and gasped. The voice was incredibly familiar.
It was Liam!
She wanted to scream but stopped herself. The two men were speaking Spanish. How did they know each other?
___________
Ave Fountain
North Johannesburg, South Africa
After the earth had gulped some water, and consequently the risk of getting drowned, the men in the pit managed to keep their heads above the water level. The past few hours had been one of the most traumatizing moments in their lives. Luckily, the ground took in more water than it held up.
Jasper heard whistling and turned his head up. One of the men who watched the pit was looking down at them and whistling very loudly. He turned his gaze to Nicholas, who rolled his eyes.
"You look disgusting, do you know? Rolling around in your filth in that pit," he said and smirked but got no response.
"Nothing to say, eh?" He laughed again and kicked some sand down at them. "You Americans and romanticism. Did you think this was a movie? Do you know what happened to the last people that were here?"
Nicholas looked up and sighed heavily.
"Why don't you tell us?"
"You are not American. Are Europeans not more sensible?" he scoffed and kept talking. "We killed the last foreigners that thought they could walk onto our lands and take what they wanted. But, unfortunately, the same is going to happen to every one of you."
"Yeah, yeah," Nicholas interrupted. "Enough of the threats already. Why don't you be a lamb and get me some water to quench my thirst? I'm thirsty, you see."
The others snickered.
"Water, eh? Alright," the guard said and moved out of view. Nicholas had only spoken to annoy
him and get him to go away, but he would have been glad to see his request met.
The next minute they heard his voice; he said, "Here's your water!"
A stream of urine fell on their heads. The guard laughed as he moved his hips around to get the piss on every one of them, even as they tried to move out of the way. They heard him grunt and groan as he started to lose his footing and tried to regain his balance. He failed and plummeted down into the pit, landing right in the middle of everyone. He sat up and gasped.
"Please, no, stop!" he pleaded as they rushed him. All of them, except Nicholas, grabbed him at once and started to kick, punch, and slap him. He tried to scream, and one of them held a handful of sand mixed with his piss and shoved it into his mouth.
"My friends, my friends! Please, stop!" Nicholas cried, begging them. Finally, they stopped and stared at him in surprise.
"Yes, y-yes, stop. Listen to the dwarf, please," the man pleaded, spitting out the sand in his mouth.
"Yes, listen to me," Nicholas said and smiled.
"I've been quite pressed all day, and I need to piss. I don't want to do it on the floor, and there are no toilets here..." He paused and smiled again. "Would you, gentlemen, please open up the nearest toilet for me to ease myself?"
"No, no, no, please!" the guard begged as the men held him down and pried open his mouth.
17
Chapter Seventeen
Ave Fountain
North Johannesburg, South Africa
Miles set out on this specific task alone, hoping against all odds that whatever awaited him at the core wasn’t what he’d suspected. The symbols and images he had seen on the live feeds pointed towards ancient religion- the kind that would scare away any daring explorer. He wondered if the past explorers had gotten as far as they had and whether it was what they had discovered that killed them, not an explosion. He hated thinking about it, but he felt like he might die there.
The tunnel he was walking through was quite broad, and he was sure that it was made a long time ago.
When Wordsworth bought this property to mine, did they have no idea about the traditions? Did they know and strike a deal with the locals?
If they knew, they probably did not pass the knowledge because he was sure that Harry had no idea.
He was following the dotted line on the portion of the map he had torn earlier. It was not hard to follow a map, but he was on high alert in case he was being followed. Activities that had befallen them of late, showed that the templars or Aztecs were connected to the events that had cost the lives of innocent miners.
As he moved closer to the core, he started hearing the trickling sound of water, which turned out to be some river separating the path. If he followed the river, there would be an exit somewhere close. He made a mental note to tell the others in case they could not escape through the main entrance.
He folded the paper back into his pocket and stepped back a little to give himself momentum before he jumped over the river.
"Careful," a voice said behind him just as he pushed himself off the ground. He landed on the other side with a grunt and turned around quickly to see who had spoken. Miles scoffed and clenched his jaw as he stared at his older brother, Eric.
"Oh great, they are illusionists too," he said sarcastically and reached back to pull out the map from his pocket.
"Looking for this?" Eric said and held up the piece of parchment. "Illusionists? You sound like that bald face talking about parallel universes and all that."
"Give that back to me," Miles demanded and watched as the "illusion" walked through the water to reach him on the other side.
"Here you go." Eric held up the map to him with a smile. Miles snatched it and put his other hand in his pocket to feel the pocketknife he kept for protection.
"You want to kill me again?" He laughed and pointed up. "See, if you reach for that rope over there, you can climb up the wall and get to your destination faster."
Miles looked and saw a rope resting on the side of the wall. It swung down from somewhere, and that was not part of the map, and he certainly did not trust the fake Eric that showed up out of nowhere.
"And Pierce, please don't land with your head again this time."
Miles stared at him in shock. That statement was from nearly twenty-five years ago when he had bumped his head against a truck in the park while he tried to swing from a tree. He had just watched the Tarzan movies and was feeling very inspired. He still had the scar at the corner of his forehead, which he reached to touch instinctively.
He tried not to be too surprised that the fake Eric knew this because it was news around that time. There was no way it was Eric standing in front of him because he had seen his brother's body. The memory made his heart ache.
"Nothing to say?"
"If you try anything funny, I'll slit your throat."
"My, my. I wouldn't dream of trying anything funny, and you're the funny one."
Miles rolled his eyes and refolded the map, placing it in his breast pocket this time. He reached down for some sand to rub on his hand before grabbing the rope.
"Careful," Eric told him as he pulled himself up, pushing his boots against the wall and using the rope to climb. Finally, he reached the top and used his hand to hoist himself over the edge. When he stood and turned around, Eric was right in front of him. Miles gasped and started to wonder if he was a figment of his imagination, and maybe he was beginning to lose his mind.
"Shall we? I know the fastest way to where you're going, "Eric offered with a smile.
"I have a map," Miles grumbled and pulled his map back out.
"Okay then, I'll just follow you and keep you company."
"That's kind of you but unnecessary."
"Remember when we took that trip to Disneyland, and you cried the whole time we were there because you were scared of all the life-sized cartoon characters?" Eric laughed. "Those were some good times."
Miles did not comment and kept moving. He hated that story, and Eric always told it to anyone he knew. Although his brother was never a chatty person, he mostly spoke to himself and, whenever necessary, to people.
"Or that time Mom caught you and I baking cookies at three in the morning."
Miles couldn't help but smile at that memory. The entire kitchen was a mess. Flour was everywhere, they had spilled milk and eggs, but the cookies came out pretty well. Eric was grounded for a week because he was older and should have known better, but the whole family ate the cookies. It was a good memory. However, he was starting to feel uneasy. Was it his brother? Was it his imagination? Some kind of voodoo? Or did the psychos that were murdering children know everything about him?
"Did you enjoy your flight to Johannesburg?"
Miles nearly stopped in his step as Eric started speaking about how beautiful the city was and how he wished they had visited together. His actual brother would know that he hated planes; he had refused to take a plane when he was coming down to South Africa, but he had no choice. He hated planes because their parents had died in a plane crash. The real Eric would have known that. His heart dropped a little at the tiny hope he kept that it was his actual brother that was following him.
"You're chatty for someone that's supposed to be dead," Miles sneered, but he just laughed.
"You know how these damn Catholics are, with their vows of silence and other ridiculous doctrines. There's barely anyone to talk to. The whole church is a joke, confessions and Hail Marys…ridiculous."
Miles smirked to himself. That was another dead giveaway that it was not his brother that he was talking to. Although Eric had renounced his priesthood and left the church in Spain to become a vet, he was still a devout Christian and worshipped in his own home. He never gave the reason for leaving the church, but he never spoke ill of the Roman Catholics and never allowed Miles to.
"Yeah, sick bastards," Miles said, deciding to play along. "The whole thing is based on lies. I don't even know what we're still doing here; I'd much rather just ca
ll the boss and ask him to pull the plug on the whole thing."
Eric was suddenly quiet. Miles wondered if he had spoken a little too freely and tipped him off.
"I wish I never even became a priest. It sickens me the kind of things these people get up to."
"Is it like this everywhere or just here? Was it like this in Spain?"
"Why do you think I left?"
At this point, Miles was certain that he was not speaking to his dead brother. It pissed him off that they would use something like that.
"Mr. Wordsworth should sue whoever sold him this property. With all the information we've gathered against the church and this community, he will be properly compensated."
Eric laughed at that.
"Is he going to sue an entire clan?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it was not Harry Wordsworth who bought this property but his grandfather. That Wordsworth bought this property from the Xhosa clan at a low price instead of buying it from Xipil Tezcacoatl."
"Who is Xipil...something?"
"He was a Mexican diplomat. He had bought percentages of this land from the colonizers and tried to sell it off after independence, but he didn't realize the property had been restored to the Xhosa clan. Wordsworth knew this and took full advantage of it."
"But the clan sold it knowing the history?"
"They certainly did. That was not their problem to deal with, though."
Miles went silent. He was surprised that he had managed to trick the illusionist into giving him all that information. He was also surprised about the history of how the property came to be.
Eric started talking about another childhood memory, like what happened when he had a crush on the neighbor's daughter. He saved all of his allowances so that he could buy her a box of chocolates and a teddy bear on Valentine's day. Miles wondered how he found all these things out, and they were Catholics growing up and mainly had Catholics around them. It was very likely that the church had gone around asking for information on him from all those people. Just how much did all these organizations watch them? It made him feel very uncomfortable.
The Lost Treasure of the Aztec Kings Page 16