Sun God Seeks…Surrogate?

  I took a slow breath, trying not to let it all tear me up. The world now hung on a razor-sharp edge.

  Selfishly, I could only think of Kinich.

  ***

  At twenty minutes to midnight I followed Zac through the vacant lobby of a two-story office building situated at the edge of the Uchben camp. This didn’t seem like the sort of place where strategic world decisions were made.

  We walked down a long, narrow hallway with glass walls and empty, dark conference rooms on each side. We turned the corner and encountered two heavily armed guards next to a harmless-looking elevator.

  “Sir,” one of the men nodded stiffly when we stepped inside.

  Zac, like the other gods, towered over any human. Hardened, battle-seasoned men looked miniature sized in his presence.

  “God of Intimidation?” I asked.

  He smiled with that knowing, insanely charming smile. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  He pressed the Down button, and I realized that the modest structure we’d entered was a façade. The heart of the operation was buried twenty stories belowground, given that he’d pressed B-20.

  After a short ride down, the doors slid open. As we stepped out, perhaps due to the absolute silence of the long, dark hallway illuminated by red bulbs, I felt intensely aware of Zac—a god who didn’t know his path or purpose, yet glowed with confidence. He exuded absolute comfort with his place in the universe.

  Funny how one man could flourish in the face of uncertainty while it crippled others.

  “How do you make the whole ‘not knowing’ thing look so easy?” I asked.

  He gently placed his hand on my lower back to guide me along. “When we each came to light, most knew right away which gifts they carried while others merely felt power, but were unable to command it. Over many centuries, those gods spent all of their time honing their gifts.”

  “But not you.”

  We continued along the eerie, dark hallway until we reached an iron door.

  “No,” he replied. “This is why I spent my time developing in other ways. Finding peace was one of them.”

  He truly had a Zen-like outlook on life. I was jealous.

  “Are you saying,” I asked, “you’re okay with never finding your gifts?”

  “No. But it will happen when it is meant to be. And I believe I am close.”

  “Really?” I asked. “How do you know? Do you get a tingle or a special feeling?”

  “A god finds his powers when he or she experiences the strength that they house. Acan didn’t know he was the God of Wine until he tried it about two thousand years ago.”

  Zac punched several numbers into a keypad beside the steel door. The pad beeped and the panel door slid open.

  “How exciting. So, if you took a stab, what would you guess your power will be?”

  He looked straight ahead. “It is something I’ve only recently discovered: love.”

  ***

  Zac’s little comment boggled the mind, my mind.

  The God of Love?

  It made sense. From the get-go, I wasn’t able to articulate or rationalize how it was physically possible for me to feel anything for a man I didn’t know from Peter or Paul, but I did. I felt nothing but warmth and affection in his presence.

  Yes. It made perfect sense. Suicide made me angry and depressed. Acan made people want to party—not me, for some weird reason. Zac made me feel loved.

  Except that Kinich gave you the anti-god whammy. You’re immune to their powers.

  Nooo. It must’ve worn off. I wasn’t that sort of girl, the kind that hopped from one lily pad to the next. Kinich was, without a doubt, the one I loved.

  He left you. Don’t forget that.

  “Ready?” Zac’s towering frame turned to the side as he held the door open.

  I shook my head. “Not really.” I paused in the doorway and looked up into his arctic-blue eyes. They had specs of green that seemed to dance around the pupils.

  Mesmerizing.

  “Zac, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” he replied.

  “Do you really think this is the end if we don’t win?”

  His warm smile melted away. “Yes.”

  “I see.” I turned away and continued until we reached yet another door. “Then we better kick ass.”

  The door swung open in front of me. “Penelope! Where have you been?” Emma barked. “They’ve started! Oh my god, it’s a fucking mess!”

  “Shit!” I followed her into a large stadium-style room. There were ten tiers, each one about ten feet wide. Each tier had a station every five feet with a computer bank, monitors, and a person frantically speaking on a headset or typing into a keyboard. A giant floor-to-ceiling screen was situated in the front of the room displaying an infrared satellite feed with little, moving, colored dots.

  Emma darted to a station at the top tier’s center where a woman with golden spirals stood frantically talking with a man.

  “Helena. Andrus. This is Penelope,” Emma said.

  “We’ve already met.” We exchanged polite nods.

  Helena, a petite, little thing, looked up at me with her bright blue eyes. “They are getting their asses handed to them. We have to do something! The Maaskab are sifting in and out of their portals so fast we can’t kill them.”

  Andrus shook his head. “They must have turned. Every last one of them—only vampires move that fast.”

  Yes, we’d known that the Maaskab had joined forced with the Obscuros; but that they’d all turned into vampires? Christ, that was bad. According to Gabrán, the Uchben were a strong match against the Maaskab, and Niccolo’s vampire army could take down any Obscuro. But we were unevenly matched if the enemy had all turned into this hybrid army of sorts.

  “Where’s Guy?” I asked Emma and pointed to the screen. The dots were moving so fast, I couldn’t tell who was who.

  “He went inside a portal with Niccolo and two hundred vampires to flush out the Scabs.”

  “Why can’t we see them?” I asked. “I thought the satellite could pick them up from anywhere?”

  Emma bent over, panting. “We don’t know. They faded off the screen the minute they jumped inside. Then the Scabs started flooding out of their portals like angry swarming bees.”

  This was, without a doubt, an occasion that called for a very, very strong word. “Fuckitty-fuck.”

  I leaned over and wrapped one arm around Emma. “It’s okay, Emma. He’ll be all right.”

  She shook her head. “No. No. It’s over.”

  I spoke in a low voice so only she could hear. “I’m here for you. Your sister. Remember? Whatever happens, we’ll face it together.”

  She pushed out a long, steady breath. “I can’t lose him, Penelope. I can’t face—”

  “I don’t believe it!” Helena pointed at the screen. In between the purple, green, and blue dots, red ones began appearing in droves.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  Andrus replied, “Not what. Who. The purple are the gods. The green are our vampires. Blue are Scabs. And the red dots…are humans. Hundreds of them.”

  As clear as day, little red dots were popping up all over the center of the screen. I cupped my hand to my mouth. “The Payals…it’s got to be them,” I whispered in amazement. Niccolo, Guy, and the vampires must have found them and gotten them out. Was my mother there, too?

  I noticed Gabrán standing on the bottom tier toward the front of the room, frantically screaming into his headset. I darted down the stairs to my left. “Gabrán! Look. Look at the screen. People!”

  His head snapped. “Christ almighty. Humans? They won’t stand a chance if we can’t get them out of there.”

  “Do something!” I screamed. My mother could be with them, I thought.

  “I cannae, lass. We’ve get every last man fighting, and they’re dropping like flies.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. I was supposed to be the leader, but I had no clue what to do. I had no battle ex
perience. None. But one thing was clear. We were losing. If we didn’t do something fast, there would be no one left.

  “Call them back. Retreat,” I ordered.

  Gabrán looked at me. “Guy and Niccolo command the army, lass. I cannae without their orders.”

  “Well, what the hell did they tell you to do if they both got captured or injured or something?”

  “Well,” he said, “the issue never came up.”

  Ugh! Stupid, arrogant men.

  “Look at me,” I said in a stone-cold voice. “Look deep into my eyes. They have disappeared. I rule the House of the Gods, and I’m in charge now. Call them back, have your soldiers grab the Payals and run. Tell them to regroup at the fort.”

  There was an old Spanish fort about one and a half miles away where we’d set up small armory and triage.

  He paused for a moment, as the noise and commotion swarmed around us. He knew we had to do something.

  He gave a nod and the expression in his eyes spoke volumes. “Let’s hope you’re right, Sun Goddess.”

  He spoke into his headset, and the dots on the screen began shifting away from the fight, but then something very unexpected happened.

  “The Maaskab are falling to the ground,” someone screamed out from across the room. The entire room fell silent and everyone stared at the infrared satellite feed on the screen.

  Each and every blue dot—the Scabs—stopped moving.

  “What does it mean?” I asked Gabrán, as he stared at the blinking satellite image and listened on his headset.

  “Lass, it’s a bloody fucking miracle.” He looked at me, his green eyes sparkling with excitement. “Brutus says the Maaskab are dropping to the ground—giant black holes are appearing in their bodies.”

  Andrus appeared at my side. “Holes? That means their vampire blood is dying.”

  Whatever the hell was happening was completely lost on me.

  “We must attack!” Gabrán looked at me. “They are vulnerable now.”

  I had to trust that whatever was going on, they knew what they were doing. “Do it.”

  Gabrán turned and faced the men and women in the room. “Tell everyone tae go back in! Do nae stop until the priests are dead.”

  The dots blipped back toward the middle of the screen.

  A wide smile stretched across Gabrán’s face. “They cannae even fight back lass, the Scabs are completely crippled. We’ve won. We’ve bloody fucking won.”

  We won? We won? An enormous weight lifted from my shoulders.

  I just prayed my mother was with the group of humans they’d freed—she had to be!

  I began to jump up and down with excitement. I ran up the stairs to the top tier and grabbed Emma. “We’ve won!”

  Emma’s eyes were filled with tears. “I can’t believe it! Oh my God.”

  We hugged each other tightly. I turned and found myself looking straight up a mountain of muscles. Zac’s blue eyes glowed with joy. He bent down and kissed me.

  My cell phone rang, startling me. I pushed away and blinked several times.

  He smiled with that devilish grin. “Sorry. I guess I got carried away.”

  I shook my head and turned away.

  Caller Unknown. It was very strange because very few people had my number.

  “Hello?” With all of the commotion, I had to cover one ear to hear.

  “Penelope.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  Kinich.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  He spoke, but I couldn’t hear him. “Speak up! There’s too much noise! We won, Kinich! We won. The Maaskab are dropping like flies. It’s a miracle.”

  There was no sound, none that I could hear above all the cheering, anyway.

  “Kinich? Are you there?”

  “Yes. I am glad to hear the news.” His voice didn’t sound happy. He sounded distressed. He sounded like I’d told him we’d lost.

  “Kinich, where are you?”

  “Is Cimil still there with you?” he asked.

  Why did he want to know?

  “She’s at your house, staring at a wall, I think. What’s going on?”

  “If we do not speak again, I wish you to know that…”—his voice broke up.

  “What? I can’t hear you! Speak up!” I walked through the cheering crowd, out the exit into the hallway. “There. I can hear. What do you want me to know?”

  No response.

  I pulled the phone from my ear. Call Ended flashed across the screen.

  “Who was it?” Zac leaned in the doorway.

  I looked at my feet. A cold sensation filling me with dread hit like an avalanche. “Kinich. But we got cut off.”

  I dialed him back, but got a busy signal.

  “Do not worry, Penelope. I’m sure he will call back.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Something told me that the call wasn’t him checking in. No, he sounded like a man saying…goodbye. Really saying goodbye.

  I followed Zac back inside, and noticed that not everyone was cheering. Helena’s eyes stayed glued to the screen.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Niccolo and Guy never came out of the Maaskab’s portal,” she muttered.

  Emma froze at my side. “There must be some mistake.”

  Helena shook her head. “No mistake. One of Niccolo’s men, a vampire, attempted to sift inside to look for them. It’s closed.”

  Oh God. No.

  CHAPTER 38

  The next thirty-four hours were a bittersweet whirlwind. I’d never felt so polarized in my entire life. Our army—the Uchben soldiers, ten gods, and the vampire army—easily took down thousands of evil vampire-Scabs as they helplessly flailed on the ground while their vampire blood died.

  Reports then began pouring in from all over the world of Obscuros dropping in their tracks, turning to dust.

  Andrus explained that whoever had been their maker, two things were absolutely certain: first, he or she was an Ancient One, an original of the six first vampires; and second, that Ancient One had been killed.

  So who killed the Ancient One? How? No one knew, and frankly, we didn’t care.

  It was the miracle we needed. The added bonus being that for any regular Maaskab who still lived, they no longer had the upper hand without their vampire blood. They would no longer be able to sift or hide “in the spaces.”

  Fate. It was fate, everyone said.

  But victory did not come without a price. We’d lost over one thousand Uchben and vampires in those first twenty minutes. Had the “miracle” not occurred, our entire army of twenty thousand would’ve been wiped out in a few hours.

  We got off lucky. Except for Emma and Helena.

  Of the two hundred who sifted inside the Maaskab portal, Guy, Niccolo, and forty vampires never came out. The Uchben team in the Control Room had carefully analyzed the satellite footage and confirmed it.

  Even worse, we’d learned it wasn’t only the Maaskab portals that had been sealed shut. The entire sifting dimension had somehow closed. Not one of our vampires could sift. They said it was as if the “spaces” had been filled with cement. Impenetrable.

  Emma and Helena were devastated, but, like the strong women they were, they kept it together and focused on finding a way to rescue the men, as did everyone else.

  And now it was my turn to face my worst nightmare.

  “Ready?” Zac asked.

  I stared at the morning sky and stretch of flat desert. No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t ready. But there was no getting around it.

  The Uchben and vampires who still stood after the battle had had their hands full dealing with the injured and taking inventory of the dead from both sides. The only thing we knew was that there were approximately two hundred humans—Payals we assumed—coming our way. The Uchben medics in the field had said they were physically okay. But mentally? We didn’t have a clue. Was my mother one of them? No one knew that either, because the women weren’t able to speak.

  Emma, Helena, and
Zac stood at my side inside the small, glass-windowed room attached to the hangar. We watched quietly as the camouflaged carrier touched down over the dusty landing strip at Camp Uchben.

  I tried to maintain my composure, to be strong like Emma and Helena, but I had to face facts: I was at my tipping point. Who could blame me? Watching as the world’s fate had hung in the balance, finding out I was pregnant, Kinich’s leaving, my becoming something I didn’t want to be—the Sun Goddess—and now I was supposed to pretend I was all right if my mother, the one person in the world who really loved me, my only real family…I was supposed to pretend I was okay if she wasn’t on that plane?

  No. I wouldn’t be okay. I just…wouldn’t. A person can only handle so much.

  Please, please be on the plane. Please be on the plane. I closed my eyes tightly as I heard the engines wind down.

  “They’re coming out,” Helena whispered. “There are so many.”

  I opened my eyes and felt overwhelmed with sadness. Their eyes were so empty, their expressions so bleak and forlorn. What had those monsters done to them? God, my heart cried out for each and every one while my eyes desperately searched the line of women in tattered clothing, marching toward the hangar. Soldiers and medics rushed to their sides and began taking them to the underground hospital.

  But the nameless faces continued passing. “She’s not here.” I turned away and began to sob. I couldn’t bear it.

  Zac wrapped his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest. I wished it were Kinich, but it wasn’t, and now I hated him for it. I hated him for leaving me to deal with everything on my own. I hated him for not loving me enough to stay with me. I hated the Maaskab for robbing me of my world. I never knew there could be so much hate inside me.

  Zac stroked the back of my hair. “Don’t lose hope, Penelope. Another plane with more humans is still on the way.”

  “I don’t effing believe it!” Emma darted out the door and launched herself on top of a large man who had been walking with the Payals into the hangar. She began beating the fallen man in the face, “You bastard! I’ll kill you!”

  Two soldiers rushed in and pulled her off. With her red hair a wild mess, I couldn’t see her face, but I sensed she was getting ready to unleash her Payal power.