Chapter 19 #4
Blood had soaked into the ground. The pain penetrated deep into the recollections of the forest. It would always be there, the memory of the slaughter of a village.
This hadn’t been the only massacre committed on these grounds.
The memories rose from under the more modern-time murders, choking Sarika.
The screams and wails of the dying, the tortured innocent people, came from beneath the layers of Solange’s massacred village.
Sarika couldn’t block them out. She tried everything, but the closer they got to the actual ruins of the temple, the louder the screams were, reminding her she hadn’t saved those gentle people.
Her stomach lurched, knotted into tight fists of pain.
There was no way to stop the rush of memories invading her mind and flooding her body with a sickening physical reaction.
The temple ruins were nearly overgrown with moss, vines and liana, making it nearly impossible to see until one was right up on it.
The statue of the jaguar with its piercing eyes seemingly watched them from any angle of approach.
Moss and liana climbed her body, but not her face.
There wasn’t a speck of green on her head.
Her gaze was fierce, the eyes of a predator judging their intent.
Sarika felt the power emanating from the statue. Through her, the others felt it as well.
“What is it made of?” Tomas asked. He got very close to inspect the statue, but he didn’t touch it. Sarika had been prepared to push him away. The statue was sacred. It was protected.
“Look at this,” Tomas invited his brothers. “This material is not from our planet. Like Sarika’s amulet, it is made from either an asteroid or a meteor. To make a statue this size, it would have been one huge chunk falling from the sky. Most are very small.”
Tomas looked at Sarika. “Could these people have come from a different planet?”
“I don’t know. They were highly intelligent and very advanced. Very peaceful people. They wanted to stay to themselves and live out their lives in harmony with the earth, sky and below. The temple was the connection between all three dimensions.”
“Was it a female-dominated society?” Lojos asked Sarika. “The jaguar statue feels feminine, and you have the ability to bind power to you.”
“They worshiped the jaguar,” she said. “I was a shifter in those times and regarded as a sort of priestess. My life was one of service to the people.”
“Were they shifters?” Mataias asked.
Sarika shook her head. They were entering the temple.
On the outside, the building looked as if it were broken and sunken into the ground, but the moment they entered, walls shimmered around them, great blocks of stone.
There were two chambers one could conceal themselves in, but Sarika pushed on what appeared to be a solid wall, knowing the actual temple was belowground.
She did it instinctively, as if she’d done so many, many times.
She led the way with confidence, down the narrow stairs and through the various rooms used for rituals.
They were looking for the weapon she had stolen from Mitro.
She hadn’t had time to take it down into the extensive underground tunnels.
She had hidden it there in the chamber where Mitro so gleefully tortured and murdered the innocent, peaceful people she had come to love.
No one spoke. The chamber was far too soaked in blood and death.
Heaviness invaded their minds and hearts.
The Carpathian males automatically shut down their feelings, but Jubal and Sarika had no choice but to endure.
She couldn’t help admiring the strength in Jubal.
He had come to pay tribute to these people as well as to Solange’s.
When he knew Solange was making her pilgrimage, he joined her to give her support and to let her know that her people would not be forgotten.
He was making that same statement about Sarika’s people.
With each step leading to the platform where her life had ended, Sarika found herself going further back in time.
The coppery scent of blood that had permeated the ritual chamber.
The stench of the fires Mitro had scattered around to throw live children into to watch them burn for his own amusement.
The flicker of the orange-and-red flames built on the walls of the chamber. She felt the stone under her feet.
Her fingers circled the amulet until it grew so hot it burned the image of the jaguar into her palm just as it had done once before.
She barely felt it as she deliberately took a deep breath and stepped from reality to her past. Her goal was to find the hidden piece of the weapon that could destroy the Carpathian people.
She felt the impact of connecting with her two best friends, women she called sister.
Both wore the same amulet, and both carried the immense power of the jaguar.
Even together, they could not defeat Mitro.
They weren’t prepared for such evil, or for the trauma their too-sensitive hearts would have to endure seeing the brutal torture and murder of a peaceful people.
She had to get past what was happening all around her and to her sisters, to focus completely on Mitro and the pie-shaped metal he had shoved inside his shirt.
While her sisters distracted him, she had to steal the weapon and hide it before they suicided.
They could never chance telling him where they had hidden what he considered the ultimate prize.
Her mind worked at rapid speed. She was all too aware of Mitro defiling Litza while Sarika combined their power to remove the weapon.
With only seconds to hide it, she used every ounce of power she had to embed it deep in the hieroglyphics on the wall behind Mitro.
As she did, she replicated the design throughout all the walls, inside and out of the temple.
The hieroglyphics told the stories of the past, the star people who had come to live in peace and died in a horrendous and senseless slaughter.
As she relayed the information to the others, all eyes went to the spot behind where Mitro had stood to see that the wall had been broken open, as if someone had taken a hatchet to it.
Small and large pieces of stone were scattered all over the floor, along with dirt and particles of dust. Great cracks ran up and down the wall, fanning outward from the gaping hole where the piece had been ripped from the wall.
Sarika collapsed on the platform, dissolving into tears, overwhelmed with grief, with too many memories, but uppermost, guilt.
They’d given their lives for that small piece of a weapon.
All three of them. How had it been found?
Why hadn’t she allowed herself to see into her nightmares and know they were real? This catastrophe was on her.