Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (12 page)

“This is where the fun starts.” The corner of Chassan’s mouth tugged up in an almost smile as he slid the jeep into a makeshift parking space along the roadside.

“Fun?”

“This is where we start hiking!” He actually did smile then, his mouth breaking into a wide toothy grin shockingly out of place on his usually stoney features. His mood was a complete 180 that left me wondering if he was mental, or doing his best impression of a human so no one would suspect what he really was. I wasn’t sure, but I nearly fell out of the jeep when he began to whistle like Snow White’s dwarves, pulling hiking packs from the back seat and adjusting the straps that covered them.

Ten minutes later, I was having to learn to walk again with a sixty pound pack strapped securely to my back as I stumbled to keep pace with Chassan’s stride on the wide walking path.

“Is this absolutely necessary?” I asked, grabbing onto a nearby tree to catch myself when I swung my weight too far left.

“Yep. This is the only way to the Q’ero.”

“How far?”

“A day, maybe two. Depends on how quickly you learn to carry that thing,” Chassan turned around, snapping a photo of me struggling to stand with one of the long lens cameras slung around his neck.

“Is
that
necessary?” I asked, huffing at a tendril of hair escaped from my ponytail.

Chassan actually laughed—a sound I once thought incapable of passing his solemn lips—as he continued up the trail, using a large wooden hiking staff and flicking though the images he had taken on the camera’s digital screen.

Two hours later, I was in major need of some relief—from the pack and for my bladder. After Chassan unhooked the behemoth bag from my back, he set off to find fresh water.

When he was out of sight, I scrambled off the trail and slipped into the jungle cover to find a private place. The only problem was I didn’t really pay attention, or maybe the jungle all looked the same to me. When I was finished, I couldn’t decide which way to go.

Sunlight spilled through the forest unfiltered to my left, something that told me there must be a clearing. In jungle so thick, a clearing was probably the trail. Pushing away the giant leaves and gnarly vines, and picking delicately through the heavy underbrush, I emerged into a clearing of sorts, but it certainly wasn’t the trail we were traveling.

It was a complete circle, maybe twenty feet in diameter, with a moss covered cave entrance at the far end. A breeze blew, and the dancing sounds of wooden wind chimes clattered softly from the trees, mixing with the constant chatter of forest birds. Split logs lay around the opening to keep the jungle at bay and provide a stable walking path.

Obviously, the place was made by the locals for something, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what. Walking over the logs, thankful to finally have a somewhat even surface to walk on instead of a rocky, washed out goat path, I made my way to the great stone at the far end, arms out to the side for balance as I tiptoed from log to log. What I had thought was a cave from a distance was no more than an alcove recessed into the side of a mountain wall, its black rock slicked over by green moss so it blended into the jungle.

On the alcove’s floor sat a pile of old embers and ashes, as if someone had taken shelter here not long ago and lit a fire for warmth. All innocent and practical enough, but there was something unsettling about the place. Something that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise in the soft wind blowing down the mountain.

Lingering in my nostrils like it still burned at my feet, the ember’s heavy, smokey stench choked out all other smells. Not that it was unpleasant, especially not to me. moonfaced, I found myself breathing deeper, greedily taking it all in, the smell relaxing the deeper parts of my brain.

I closed my eyes, pulling air deeply into my lungs, unable to believe that the suffocating sting of smoke was as fragrant to me in this new life as flowers had been before. An audible sigh slipped from my throat, and I turned my face up to feel the sun’s warmth.

That’s when it happened. The calm darkness of my closed eyes was stolen by the visions of a child. Only it was a child I knew. A familiar vision. The same little moonfaced girl with long black braids and a gap toothed smile that had found me at St Anne’s. She stood a few feet before me on a trail, holding out her hand to call me forward and looking over her shoulder to where a hidden path diverged from the main road. Instinctively, I smiled and reached for her hand.

The logs jostled behind me and, just like that, the vision vanished. I whirled around to find Chassan, the solemn, angry look firmly back on his face. He stormed toward me like a charging bull, so angry my heart sank to my toes and I shrunk against the cold, stone wall.

“Why did you leave the path?” His foul temper was palpable as he grabbed my arm and began dragging me back the way I had come.

“What is this place?” I broke free from his grasp and took a few steps away from him, refusing to be dragged around like a little child, even though he terrified me at that moment.

“It’s an altar. The locals offer sacrifices to the Apus here,” he growled as he impatiently reached for my arm again.

“
What kind of sacrifices?” I demanded, sliding from his grasp again. He sighed, dragging a hand over his face, pulling his features taut in his frustration with me.

“I don’t think you want to know.”

“I think I do.” I put a hand on my hip and tucked my chin in a take-no-prisoners kind of way.

“Human sacrifice,” he leaned into me and whispered. My eyes went gadfly wide, darting all around the clearing like there might be ghosts lingering in the shadows.

“But like, from long ago, right? Not recently.” I tried to shake my head but it was more of a shudder, certain I didn’t really want to hear the answer I feared he was about to give me.

“You aren’t in America anymore, Faye. These mountains are just as primitive as they’ve always been.” He reached out to take my arm again and this time I gladly let him drag me from the cursed place. “If they found us here, they would kill us. Or at least try to. Human presence desecrates such a holy site.”

“But, we aren’t human
.”
I gulped as I said the words.

“We aren’t the gods they worship either.”

“Who do they worship?”

“My father. And he’s long gone.”

From the tone of Chassan’s voice, and the cold way he spit the answer over his shoulder at me, I knew better than to push the conversation any further. Chassan was alone, and for some reason, that was a really touchy subject with him.

He hastily saddled me with my pack and we continued up the rocky mountain trail. Chassan quickly disappeared from view, hiking so quickly he attacked the trail with his staff like he was mad at it. Every now and then he would call back to me, just to be sure I was still behind him. Other than that, the afternoon passed in silence.

My mind was reeling and I couldn’t get the image of the ash pile, or my little imaginary friend, out of my mind. Had that been the remains of a human? Burned on some ritualistic altar to gods that didn’t exist anymore? How could human life hold such little value in these mountains?

Alone with my thoughts, I had a long time to ponder such questions. Yet I never found answers that satisfied me. Chassan’s foul humor was back, in full force and even after he slowed his pace enough to keep me in sight, we still didn’t talk. No matter, I was quickly learning that the jungles of Peru were almost as beautiful as LisTirna, and way better company than an angry sun-god.

The cool green and rocky grey were alive, dancing with the shimmery wings of butterflies, so dense they traveled in colorful clouds through the forest, brushing my cheeks with powdery kisses a few times along the way. Feathers rained down on the trail from time to time, the forest canopy so full of avian life the leaves constantly rustled overhead as birds fought for the best limbs to sing and soak up the sun.

It was a magical place, the microclimates changing every time we descended over a ridge or climbed higher. We went from thick, dense rainforest where it was difficult to breathe and walk, to arid grasslands where the sun was so bright it burned my eyes, to high altitude jungles that were cool and slick. The weather and terrain constantly changing as we progressed.

The sun hung low in the western sky along an exposed ridge when Chassan finally stopped.

“We’ll make camp soon,” Chassan said, staring at the sun as it blazed low on the horizon. I came to rest beside him, the sun casting shadows deep into the chiseled lines of his face, making him look more like a god than he ever had before. His shoulders fell heavily down his back, thrusting his chest out as his chin rose infinitely higher, eyes closed, drinking in the sun as if his heart ached to see it go.

Ignoring me like he did, it was obvious he wanted to be alone, so I continued on, following the worn line along the ridge as it traced its way into the forest a few yards away.

Seconds later, a bright orange glow sliced through the trees at a severe angle, telling me the sun was saying goodbye for the night and the sound of Chassan’s long stride was behind me again.

I’m not really sure how it all happened.

One moment, I was walking along in the fading orange glow, the next I was flailing wildly through the air, smacking against a tree with a force so violent it would have crushed me had my pack not softened the blow.

Chassan lunged in front of me, hunkered low to the ground like a prowling animal ready to strike. His body spread wide enough to shelter me and gain traction to attack whatever rustled the tree-line ahead. The forest was precarious during the day. At nighttime, when the real predators awoke hungry and ready to hunt, it was down right deadly.

My heart hammered in my chest, feeling as if it might beat out of the hollow at the base of my neck. A hand instinctively went to my throat, remembering Chassan’s deathly grip on me the night before and knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to snap the spine of whatever was unlucky enough to emerge from the forest.

When a familiar red bandana and singsong voice appeared in the fading daylight, I knew exactly who Chassan was preparing to attack.

“No!” I screamed as he lurched forward. “Stop!” Recognizing his quarry as human in mid air, he twisted his body and landed with catlike reflexes almost in the same place he had been before.

He turned to me with an animalistic hunger lighting his strange ochre eyes, his chest rose and fell with great heaving breaths, ones I knew weren’t from exertion, but the bloodlust of the hunt. If anyone saw him like this they would know something wasn’t right with him. They would suspect he wasn’t human. He was wild, unbroken, dangerous in a primal way.

“Rhea?” I pushed off the tree I had fallen against. Running around Chassan, giving him a few precious seconds to compose himself. He looked physically pained as he pushed whatever demons had bubbled to the surface down to where they belonged, but I couldn’t stop to see about him if I was going to keep Rhea from knowing what he was…what
we
were.

“Faye?” Her face wrinkled into a mix of surprise and squinted eyes as she peered through the falling evening light to where I approached.

“I’m here, Rhea.” I reached for her hand, clasping it in my own as I pulled closer to her. “What in the world are you doing here?”

“Looking for firewood,” she said, trying to peep over my shoulder to where Chassan stood with his back to us. I moved with her, blocking her view at every turn. “We’ve got a campsite set up over there.” She threw a hand behind her to point the way. “What are
you
doing? Found your soul at Machu Picchu already?” Her confused looked morphed into a naughty wink and she waggled an eyebrow at me as she nodded over my shoulder.

“Um….” I blushed, looking down as I picked at my fingernails. “We’re headed to the Q’ero.” I shuffled from one foot to another nervously, knowing she was already deciding that Chassan and I were a
thing.

A rush of wind brushed my back, telling me Chassan was at my side. I traced up his arms, to his shoulders, over his neck, and then saw his strong features, which were arranged into the most welcoming smile instead of his trademark scowl.

“Hello, I’m Chassan,” he said offering a friendly hand to Rhea as if he hadn’t been seconds away from killing her.

“Chassan?” Rhea took his hand, tilting her head to the side as she studied his face.

I wasn’t sure if she was trapped in the rugged curve of his smile, the deep, startling pool of his eye, or the same intangible force that pulled me to Dayne. Whatever the reason, Rhea was momentarily paralyzed by Chassan’s touch. He wrapped her hand in both of his. The smile fell from his lips and his face went blank, as if he was looking at her with some internal eye that was way stronger than normal vision. As Chassan focused a look hard enough to bore a hole in granite at her head, Rhea didn’t move a muscle.

I looked between the two, so confused by the interaction I reached for Rhea out of sheer concern for her health. Chassan swatted my hand away, shaking his head with a solemn look. I crossed my arms at my chest and glared at him. What was going on?