No Such Thing As Werewolves (26 page)

“Ok, let’s say you’re right. You’re not—we have too much evidence to the contrary—but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all these places were built with magic,” Blair allowed, crossing his arms and giving a smile of his own. He had her now. “What happened to the magic, Liz? Why did these cultures stop using it? Why don’t we use it today? People all over the world call themselves magicians or shamans, but not a single one anywhere can demonstrate anything concrete. They’re not throwing fireballs or conjuring demons. They’re not healing the sick or levitating twenty-ton stone blocks through the air. Why not, Liz?”

She was quiet for a long moment, staring up at the moon while she bit her lower lip. Then she straightened suddenly, eyes alight as she turned back to him. “This pyramid came
now
, of all the times it could have appeared. You remember all those 2012 prophecies, that the world was going to end? It was based on the Mayans; their calendar ended in 2012.”

“I’m familiar with it. They called it the long count,” Blair said, quirking an eyebrow. “I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

“The Mayans believed time was circular, that it flowed in a great cycle. So what if magic is a part of this cycle, that it comes and goes,” she said, as excited as Blair had ever seen her. Liz’s energy reminded him a little of Bridget. “Maybe magic has been gone for a really long time, thousands of years. We have legends about it, but people today can’t duplicate it because its been gone for some reason.”

“And you think its back now?” Blair asked. He wasn’t sure what to think. On the one hand, it sounded crazy. It was just the sort of rationalized pseudo-science that he’d contended with his entire career. On the other hand, he’d turned into a
werewolf
, and a pyramid from the Mesolithic had appeared all on its own. Like magic.

“Exactly. Maybe it’s been building up slowly and we’ve hit some sort of tipping point,” she said. It was obviously a topic she was passionate about, and that passion made her even more beautiful. “If it’s cyclic, maybe the magic got weaker, and that’s why by the time the Egyptians built the pyramids, they had to do a lot of it with conventional labor. That explains the evidence you said we’ve found. It could also explain why they built them to conduct energy. Magic.”

“If you’re right, if there is some sort of energy we’d think of as magic, then that makes a kind of sense,” Blair said. He didn’t like where this was going, but he couldn’t fault her logic. “If it was fading away, then the Pyramids could have focused what remained. Maybe it was a last gambit to keep their magic alive. The Pyramids were built during the fourth dynasty, what we call the Old Kingdom. Maybe they worked for a little while, but by the time the Middle Kingdom rolled around, they were just lumps of stone. That could also explain why they don’t have any adornment inside. The Egyptians love to decorate their monuments, but the insides of the Pyramids are completely bare. If they were functional, not decorative, that would make sense.”

“We’d have to rethink history,” Liz said, with a genuine smile. “Every ancient civilization has their myths about magic. Atlantis. King Arthur. Ancestor worship. Gaining strength through human sacrifice. What if all those legends are based on something real? They were real in the beginning, but as magic faded, all the miracles stopped. That’s why no one believes in it today.”

 
“This is an interesting theory, but I’m not comfortable calling it magic,” Blair said, shaking his head. The boat creaked as it crested a wave. He squinted. There were city lights on the horizon.
 

“Then what do you want to call it?” Liz asked. She leaned against his shoulder. It wasn’t a cold night, but her warmth was welcome for other reasons.

“Something the beast in my head said. Shaping,” he said, wondering exactly what the word meant.

Chapter 34- A Spiral

Ahiga laboriously placed the last stone, as large as a man’s head. He added it to the growling spiral, hot sand kissing his bare feet as he completed the spiral’s third revolution. It was far larger than the ones he’d created in ages past, but power was thin, and he needed all the focus the stones could provide. It was the only way to accomplish what he must.

He shaded his eyes against the harsh sun, large in the sky over the western horizon. It nearly touched the water, its yellow brilliance already fading to orange. Soon it would become red; then it would vanish into the ocean, like some slowly cooling ember. Already, the moon hung in the sky, the fat crescent pale and weak. Drowned out by the sun’s lingering majesty.

Ahiga took slow, deliberate steps across the sand. He followed the spiral inward, his breathing shallow as he approached the center. When he reached it he squatted, knees out-thrust slightly with his forearms resting against his thighs. He closed his eyes, crouched at the exact center of the spiral. The apex of the power it could provide.

“What are you doing?” a voice said, the high shrill of a young child.
 

Ahiga’s eyes snapped open, and he turned his gaze on the unexpected interruption. The beach was empty save for a small girl of perhaps six or seven. She wore a bright-blue bathing suit, and her long, dark hair sent runnels of water down her bare shoulders. Too young to fear a stranger and armed with all the curiosity such a young child could muster, she watched him with large, dark eyes.
 

He scanned the beach and spied two figures in the distance. A bare-chested man sat on a bright-red blanket while his mate emerged from the deep-green waves. She wore tiny white garments that barely covered her chest and crotch, highlighting bronzed curves rather than hiding them. The child bore a strong resemblance, the same hair and heart-shaped face.

“I am gathering power,” Ahiga told the child, turning his attention back to her. She was too young to accept the gift.
 

The child’s parents are of the age,
his beast rumbled, voice echoing through his mind.
They could be slain quickly.

He considered that option; then discarded it. Imparting the gift would cost both power and time, and he had precious little of either. He would need all that he possessed for the ritual he must enact. He had to know how quickly the champions were spreading. More importantly, he had to locate the whelp, or all would be lost.

“No, you aren’t,” the child said, planting her hands on hips. “You’re just playing with rocks.”

He blinked, taken aback. Few among the blooded questioned his word. None among the unblooded would dare. Yet here was this simple child doing just that. Ahiga leaned his head back and laughed.

“I am, child. These stones help to focus my power. They will enable me to perform a ritual of great power, one that will send my consciousness winging across the sky. Higher than any bird can soar,” he said, though he knew she couldn’t possibly understand what he was doing.

“The rocks are going to help you fly?” the child asked, her tone dubious. “People can’t fly. Not like birds. We have to take an airplane.”

Ahiga didn’t need to pluck the concept from her mind to understand. The strange silver birds in the sky were conveyances, carrying people from land to land with shocking speed. He’d already puzzled that much out.

“I will show you,” he said, closing his eyes. Establishing a link to the child’s mind took a bare trickle of energy compared to the vast expenditure required by the ritual.

He focused on the first stone, feeling the weight and substance of it with his mind. Then the second. Then the third. Faster and faster, he touched them, working his way outward across the spire. The world faded away, the crashing of the waves and the hot sand gone as he rose from his body and into the sky. He could see pinpricks of light dotting the world beneath him, dozens of them.

They radiated out from the Ark, like the arms of an octopus. One arm curled down into the River of Life and the vast jungle that surrounded it. The rest snaked through the mountains, toward the ocean, growing wider as they reached the strangely sprawling cities. Excellent. Many had reached large population centers, and that meant the champions could spread swiftly.

The lights closer to the Ark pulsed strongly, while many of those in the cities were weaker. Each indicated the relative strength of a champion. None were potent enough to be the whelp he sought, but then he hadn’t expected them to be. Ahiga cast his will north, across the waves. He followed them until he found a pair of lights in the vast ocean of darkness. They blazed like the full moon, both potent. The whelp and his direct progeny.

He studied the ocean around them, casting his will still further north until he located the land they would arrive in. It had housed a great empire in his day, but the climate had shifted dramatically over the millennia. Arid plains were now choked with jungle, and only a few cities dotted the land. That was good, in a way. It limited the destinations the whelp could be seeking. The tall structures dotting the beaches must be this
Acapulco
he had plucked from the whelp’s mind. Their vessel crawled sluggishly toward it, perhaps a day or two away from the crowded port.

It would cost him, but Ahiga could move far more swiftly than they. Wolves were strong swimmers, especially when fueled by the power of the moon. He would reach this city on the heels of his quarry. Ahiga released the vision, returning to his body with a dizzying sense of vertigo.

He opened his eyes, unsurprised to find the child slack jawed and gaping at him. Her chin quivered, eyes even larger. She backed a step away, turned abruptly, and started sprinting across the sand to her parents. She began to wail, terrified by the vision he’d shared with her.

Ahiga smiled and then rose from the spiral and strode toward the water. He hated swimming, especially across such a vast distance. Would that he possessed a slipsail. He chided himself for the thought. There was no sense lamenting what he did not have.

Ahiga dove into the water, energy flowing through his body as he began the change.

Chapter 35- Acapulco

Blair peered through the filmy cab window as it rumbled to a halt outside the Crowne Plaza, a towering structure with sloped sides, a little too reminiscent of a pyramid. Palm trees decorated with streams of hanging lights blazed away on the walk outside the building, which perched in opulence on the boardwalk along Av Costera Miguel Aléman, the main artery running through Acapulco. A 747 dipped across the sky, disappearing somewhere to the north.
 

“This is it,” Liz said, squeezing Blair’s arm. She leaned forward to speak to the driver. “Cuante le debo?” The two had a rapid exchange. The driver seemed angry, and Liz had gone tense. Blair wished again that he’d paid a little more attention in his high school Spanish classes.

“He says it’s thirteen pesos for each of us, and he won’t take the money we brought from Peru. He will take American currency though,” she explained, opening the cab door and slipping out. She leaned her head back into the car. “I’m going to run inside and grab the package my brother sent. Then we can pay the cab and get our room. I told him you’d stay here.” She slammed the door, hurrying up the walk and disappearing through the glass doors into the hotel.

Slay this wretch, Ka-Dun. He should be honored to render service for the blooded. If he will not serve in life, let him serve in death.

“I’m not going to kill the man to save a few pesos,” Blair whispered under his breath. The driver had sharp ears, his gaze shooting up to the rear-view mirror when Blair spoke. Man probably thought he was crazy. He might not be wrong.

They waited in silence for an eternity, just Blair and the driver. The cab had been considerably more crowded, but apparently theirs was the man’s last stop. The system was an odd one. The cabs just kept picking up passengers until they were full, more like a bus than an American taxi. Of course, they were also really cheap, which was a very good thing for people with limited means. What little cash they had wasn’t going to get them far, unless Liz’s brother had sent them enough to afford airfare to northern Mexico. Staying at the Crowne Plaza seemed an unnecessary waste, but because Liz’s brother was paying for it, Blair supposed he shouldn’t complain.

He lost himself in the drone of car horns and the steady stream of drunken tourists winding their way down the boulevard. This city had a reputation for never sleeping, and from what he saw of the clubs they’d passed, he found the reputation to be well earned. Hundreds of bikini-clad women and bare-chested men clogged the streets as far as the eye could see, most cradling brightly colored plastic glasses. It reminded him a great deal of the Vegas Strip, though most of the people were darker skinned and probably didn’t speak much English.

Within minutes a familiar heartbeat approached. Blair looked up to see Liz, her bulky white blouse and matronly skirt decidedly out of place amidst the frolicking tourists. She clutched a rubber-band-wrapped bundle in one hand, pausing to withdraw a twenty-dollar bill as she stopped next to the cab’s now open window. Blair popped open the door and joined her on the curb as she settled their fare with the driver. He handed back a wad of brightly colored Mexican bills and then sped off before Liz had a chance to count them. The battered cab left a cloud of acrid exhaust in its wake, disappearing into the cacophony of the busy thoroughfare.

“How much did your brother send us?” Blair asked as the two headed up the walkway, toward the lobby.
 

“A thousand dollars,” Liz answered, pausing to thread around a cluster of drunken teenagers. “That should be enough to get us some new clothes and tickets to Tijuana. Trevor will meet us at the border into San Diego. From there we should be able to find a lab and hopefully get some answers.”