22. My brothers will likely leave you to your fate. #2
After some instruction from my father, Thiago positioned the helicopter ten feet above the top of the ziggurat, hovering while we made our exit.
My father jumped down with enviable grace, and I made use of the skid to lower myself down before dropping all the way, my father offering support so I wouldn’t fall.
With the exception of the priestess and the reformed necromancer, everyone else made it down without assistance. Making use of cables, the soldiers in the helicopter carrying the blood lowered down several crates.
If the vampires were low on blood, we would be able to provide for them until it was time to contact them for a ride out of the Amazon.
My father waved, and the helicopters departed.
“They will land ten minutes from here. They will restock on blood and medical supplies and summon extra helicopters in case they are needed. How many vampires are here?”
“I believe thirty-eight. They are sharing a close and confined space. Possibly a shared holding cell. There is little movement, but they are alive. There are no other life forces of significance within the ziggurat.”
I marveled at the man’s abilities. “Is this sort of working difficult for you?”
“There is so much latent necromantic magic imbuing the air I need not do anything other than harvest what is here. It will somewhat speed the defusing of the energies as well—in a steady stream rather than a drip.”
My father turned to the sun priestess and waited in expectant silence.
“This sun god valued sacrifice, which is a necromantic power. The sense of it is not malevolent. It is ancient and old, however. There are some undertones of perhaps unwilling sacrifice of life and blood, but the power was never claimed. It simply pools here as shadow,” she said, and she crouched, resting her hand against the damp stone.
“The memory of sunlight and renewal is just as strong as the death, decay, and sacrifice. This was once a living temple to a living god, but that god sleeps now.”
My eyes widened. “Do you think Breckenan was striving to bring this god back?”
“It is possible, but he went about it the wrong way. This god sleeps deeply—no, these gods sleep deeply. There are two. All that remains of them are whispers of memory. Many hundreds of years have gone by since their age.” The priestess smiled, and she gestured to the eastern idol.
“Mothers would bring their newborns here and present them to the light of the dawn so they might receive the blessing of the sun.” Still smiling, she gestured to the western idol.
“Upon the death of their loved ones, they would sacrifice their hearts to both gods, at the wish of the deceased. There were no unwilling sacrifices, not here. Does this match with what you feel, necromancer?”
“Yes, that would match the energies converging here. A simple enough matter to defuse everything. I will channel it into the temple and continue the restoration. Then the people who once revered these gods can return.”
“They sacrificed the hearts after death?” I asked.
“That does seem to be the case. After the sun would set on the corpse, they would place it on the stone to the north side of the central idol, carve out the still heart, and lay it in repose on the south side of the altar until the first rays of the morning sun struck the ziggurat, which would be when the heart would be brought into the sunlight.” The priestess frowned.
“I do not know what happened to the bodies after the presentation at sunrise. I sense nothing.”
“The organic matter likely dissolved and became part of the ziggurat itself,” the reformed necromancer commented. “It would explain much about the power here. This is quite the unusual application of necromancy, I must admit.”
“And none of it is Breckenan’s doing?”
“I do not believe so. It has a great deal of age associated with the magic. However, it may explain how he turned the little girl child. If he brought her here, that may have amplified his vampiric abilities and made her easier to turn. The presences below feel female.”
“I’ve heard enough,” I announced. “It’s time to bust this joint, Dad. Let’s get these crates down to the entrance and have a closer look. If there are turned women here, they’re going to need blood.”
“They seem to be supplied,” the reformed necromancer stated, and he pointed below us. “There is a significant collection of viable blood there.”
“Bastard,” I muttered, wrinkling my nose over Breckenan’s ruthlessness. I appreciated he had taken care with some of the women he’d kidnapped and attacked.
“She means Breckenan, not you,” my father said with a laugh.
“I guessed as much. Come along. I trust these old vampires can handle something as simple as a few crates.”
My father’s uncles, the seven of them who’d come along for the ride, scowled. The six Sleepers, cousins of my father and closer to him than most, grinned but went to handle the work before their fathers could become cranky with them.
The Sleepers didn’t particularly care if they angered the Originals, but I appreciated they understood we did not need extra drama.
We had drama aplenty.
Making our way down the side of the ziggurat, we discovered an entrance on the level below us, which had been cleared of vegetation.
A few blue lizards skittered out of our way, and one, quite possibly lacking a brain, froze on the toe of my shoe.
Raising a brow, I bent down and picked it up around its belly.
Something had gotten hold of the poor thing’s leg, which hung limply at its side. “That’s sad. It escaped a predator, but it isn’t going to make it like this.”
“So take it home,” my father suggested. “I can’t promise it will live, but it’s not like it is going to live here anyway. There are enough other lizards to provide supper for the other wildlife.”
The reformed necromancer laughed. “This is a blue anole, and they generally like living in the trees. I am quite surprised to see a thriving colony of them; these are native to a sacred island off the coast of Columbia and should not be anywhere else. My people would make pilgrimages to the island to prove their worth and strength, bringing back a male and a female blue anole. My people revered these little ones, for they reminded us of the sky and the powers of our gods. Whenever we found one hurt, we viewed it as our gods instructing us to make use of our powers for good. We could not complete our rite of passage without tending to the needs of at least ten blue anoles in the wild on the island. And as such, most of my people learned the other side of necromancy, which is the healing arts. We just acquired our power through death rather than plundering our own resources to heal another. There is more than enough power here for this small of a working. Hand it to me, and I will see what I can do for it.”
As the worst thing the man could do involved putting the lizard out of its misery, I handed it over.
He took great care with the little beast, turning it this way and that before making a thoughtful sound.
“The injury is new, and as you surmised, acquired from where it fled a predator. Its lack of fear of humans is unusual. Perhaps the women were given a nest of them to keep them quiet? These little ones are charming as far as reptiles go. It does imply Breckenan and his ilk have been to Gorgona and that we should pay the island a visit to see what else we might find.” He touched the blue anole’s leg, and an inky void surrounded the reptile.
Moments later, the miasma dissipated, leaving behind the lizard with a straightened leg.
The poor thing went limp in the man’s hand, and he offered it back to me.
“This one is a little girl, and she will sleep for several hours. Perhaps the priestess can offer her warmth while we work.”
The woman came over, reached out, and touched the lizard. “Easily done. This temple is a celebration of life, and helping such an innocent goes well with its purpose. This is not a temple of your people, is it?”
“No. My people had come and gone long before the Muisca rose into power. While I was born in Mexico, my people expanded into what is now known as Chile and Argentina. We began our decline as the glacier retreated and revealed the once buried lands. When my gods awoke, it was a time of turmoil, and I still, to this day, do not know if I was punished or rewarded for my attempts to bring prosperity to my people. There are none left of my tribe; all who endured with me passed on in peace of their own volition.”
“They found a way to suicide?” the priestess asked, and she sucked in a breath.
“They sacrificed their hearts to the gods of other tribes during the rise of the Conquistadors, hoping to delay the inevitable. My hand held the sacred blades and presented their lives. In some ways it worked. The Conquistadors did not kill all. Most, but not all. This is why I claim I am of Mexican descent; these tribes were the last tribes I associated with in my long life. Now I roam until it is time I rejoin my people.”
That would give me a great deal to think about in the upcoming days. “You were alive during the time of the dinosaurs.”
“I witnessed their decline. I felt the rise of vampires in distant lands, and I mourned for what it meant for them. That tragedy worked out better than I anticipated, I must admit. But yes, for as long as there have been people here, I have endured.”
“Is that why you won’t tell anyone your name?” I asked, unable to keep my curiosity at bay.
The reformed necromancer chuckled. “In part. Those are bitter memories, and I am indecisive over what I wish to be called. As such, I simply introduce myself as a reformed necromancer. It establishes the truth well enough.”
I supposed it did, and I considered the lizard I held. “These little lizards also witnessed the time of the dinosaurs?”
“They were dinosaurs. They evolved little because they did not need to evolve. For as long as there have been rainforests, there have been little lizards like her. Of course, some of those lizards had feathers and could fly, but that is a different matter.”
“Wouldn’t that make them birds?”
He laughed. “No. They were lizards. They could not maintain their own body heat, and they basked on rocks in sunny locations, just like a lizard. Flight just allowed them to survive in that era. When they no longer needed the power of flight, they shed off their feathers and became like you know lizards today. Some dinosaurs became birds. And some, over time and millions of years, became humans. We are all, in some way or another, descended from the dinosaurs of old.”
I needed to stop asking questions, especially of the necromancer.
He would answer me, and his answers always found some way to disturb me.
“Well, I’m going to be thinking about that for a while. I’m just going to hope the blood you are sensing is a supply of blood for the vampires he somehow turned.”
“The temple would have helped his efforts,” the necromancer replied with a small smile.
“This is, as the good priestess said before, a place of life. Fortunately for us all, he did not realize that this is also a place of final rests, and if he had brought his family’s bones here, he guaranteed the failure of his plans and allowed them to escape to the great beyond.
Should we find their bones, I will finish the ritual that will reduce them to even less than dust and ensure there is no hope of another life. ”