Chapter 13 #2
My Monster had been gone for hours when the gong sounded.
I was reading in my room, sorting through information about Mayan gods and the ancient culture they influenced, when I heard its baleful sound.
Had he known someone was coming to the house today?
Probably. Right, and he wanted me to handle it.
I rushed into his bedroom, pulling my shirt off and slipping out of my loose pants.
Clad only in my underwear, I shifted into a crow.
A moment later, I was flying over the house, in time to see Darryl walking across the courtyard with purpose.
He was dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt.
He didn’t have his briefcase, but determination was written all over his face.
Annoyed but not enough to shift back and face him completely naked, I circled back, landed outside my Monster’s bedroom, and pulled my clothes on. I didn’t bother with underwear, just pulled on the shirt and pants and hustled to the den.
We reached the room at the same time, and I pretended not to be out of breath.
He stopped when he saw me, a closed expression on his face. He looked uncertain and kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting my host to appear at any moment. He was right to fear him more than me.
“Darryl, I’m surprised to see you. I thought we agreed you’d stay away from now on.”
“Freya? I mean Morgan, sorry. I just…”
I let him flounder for a few moments.
“What do you want, Darryl? I couldn’t have been any clearer.”
His eyes snapped to mine, and his expression changed. All hesitance gone, he was pure aggression. “I know he’s not here, Morgan. I saw him in town.”
“And what? You thought you’d come and intimidate me?”
“A man went missing a few months ago. I had met him. He was a survivor type. Scary guy, someone I wouldn’t cross.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“His car was abandoned not too far from here.”
Hmm, it could’ve been the Wolf. I shrugged, unable to care about the man who tried to kill me another lifetime ago. “And?”
“Do you know what I found in the woods behind this place the other day?”
“What?”
“This.” He reached into the backpack slung over his right shoulder and pulled out a human skull. He held it out to me, eyes narrowed.
I took a few steps, at first slowly, then hurrying. I snatched the skull away from him. “You could’ve found this anywhere. It could be centuries old.”
“Only I didn’t. And you know I didn’t.”
I stared at the skull and then at Darryl, still more surprised at his bravado than anything. Brown from age and human, the skull couldn’t have belonged to the Wolf, but it had belonged to someone. “And… what now?”
“Look, Morgan, I don’t know why I keep trying to save you or get you out from under his influence, but Benjamin is not who he pretends to be.
There are old legends about this place, about the abandoned monastery, where all the monks were wiped out when they upset their false god.
About the monster that still lives on Bald Mountain.
” His eyes glanced at the door behind me, momentarily showing fear.
My brows furrowed. Had he forgotten what I had transformed into in front of his eyes and Camazotz behind me?
Written it off as a dream? A side-effect of passing out?
Or did he believe and think he could challenge him?
“And what exactly do you think he is?”
He shook his head, eyes tight with something I couldn’t quite understand. The bond between us was slight, and I was hesitant to push my way into his head for fear of it growing stronger. I placed the skull on the table to my left but then grabbed it again when Darryl reached for it.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Morgan, but I’ve known he was evil from the first moment I laid my eyes on him. There’s something not right with him. Can’t you sense it?”
I stared down at the skull. The bone was dark and smooth. Old. Hardly an expert, still, I felt certain whoever he’d been, he died a long time ago. “Do you remember what happened yesterday?”
I glanced up in time to see Darryl’s dark eyebrows furrow. “Tell me the truth, Morgan, did you drug me? Or was it him?”
He’d rationalized what he’d seen, explaining it to himself the only way his small mind could comprehend.
On the edge of my consciousness, I felt my Monster approach, flying back from the cabin, closer on Darryl’s heels than he’d ever guessed. If I wanted to prove I could be a useful partner, I needed to act quickly.
“Where did you find this?” I held up the skull, just out of reach.
“Not far from here. Would you like me to show you? Is that what it would take to convince you?”
I had an idea of how to really scare him. If it would be enough to save his life, I wasn’t sure. But it wouldn’t work if we were indoors. “Lead the way.” I held out my hand, pointing to the door. He moved quickly, eager to show me or maybe to get away from the house.
Camazotz was closing in, and at first, I feared we were out of time.
I felt his attention on me as if he were watching from nearby, most likely from the tops of the trees.
When he didn’t approach us, I figured he was watching to see how I handled the problem, so I studied Darryl as I moved in his footsteps.
He was tall, about six-foot-one, and built like someone who hiked the mountain trails regularly.
Possibly weighing two hundred pounds or just under.
For what I was planning, I’d need to be bigger than I’d been the day before.
Then again, it depended on what he had planned for me.
The bright sunshine warmed my face, reminding me I hadn’t been outside all day, but the cheer it inspired wouldn’t fuel me.
I needed to be ruthless. He led us out the main gates and over the creek, but instead of taking me down the steep driveway, he veered off to the north and up to a promontory, the only ground higher than the house.
His steps grew longer, and I had to jog to keep up.
He took us up a rudimentary path with a noticeable walkway despite the lack of maintenance.
None of the house’s inhabitants relied on paths to get where they needed to go.
We preferred to fly instead of hike up mountaintops.
His familiarity with the terrain made me think Darryl had been up here regularly.
He would’ve had to wait until he saw us in town, or he’d been spying for a while.
Maybe there was another path leading in, which I would need to find and make impassable.
Finally, we cleared the crest of the path, reaching the highest point of Camazotz’s mountain.
I slowed to catch my breath and take in the dramatic scene before me, the valley to the south spectacular in its unspoiled beauty.
Breathing in the magic of the place, I understood in my bones why he loved this place.
Over my shoulder, I could see the top of the tower.
A large bird perched in the highest tree. He was watching us.
“Morgan, look at this.” I turned with a frown, Darryl’s grating voice tainting the spiritually charged vantage point.
He stood by a mound covered in rocks the size of grapefruits.
Symmetrical indentations of where they had previously been half-buried, now only a pockmarked half-mound, showed where they had been dug up.
The rocks were pulled to the side, the site desecrated by the man in front of me.
He waited only to see that he had my attention before kneeling and moving more rocks to the side.
He kept at it until most were off the mound, then looking back at me and motioning me close.
I approached with trepidation, still holding the skull.
“There are at least three other bodies buried here,” he said. I looked down at the disturbed earth.
“See, here and here. That’s what the skull looked like before I dug it up the other day.”
I leaned closer, unable to look away. The round bone nestled in the earth looked about the same size as the head I held in my hand.
“Who knows how many are here,” he said, reading my own thoughts.
“What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to take that one to the sheriff. Then he will have to come up here. You have somewhere to go, right? I don’t want you to be here when they arrest him.”
“Arrest him? Seriously, Darryl, this skull isn’t fresh. It could’ve been here for hundreds of years.”
“Are you willing to risk it?”
My mind raced. I looked up at the sky. Where was my Monster, and did he actually expect me to handle this disaster? No, he just wanted to erase the problem. “What does the sheriff think?”
“He doesn’t know anything yet. I needed proof of something sinister happening up here, and now I have it.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“Not yet. I just saw Benjamin in town and thought I would come up and warn you. I didn’t have to give you the courtesy.”
“So, you had the skull already but didn’t tell anyone.”
“What are you saying, Morgan?”