Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (8 page)

“That’s what I keep telling myself.” I pulled the bracelet away and looked at it. Such a simple token of love, yet the only promise I had that he would come back to me—a promise which, at that moment, was the only hope I had.

“Now, I hate to rush you, but if you’re feeling better, I have an altar to get to.” With that Ceila offered a hand to help me off the makeshift bed and pulled a cap low over her ears.

“People still worship Apollo?” I asked, zipping up my fleece jacket as we left her mountain top cave and began winding our way down an almost invisible trail in the misty light of dawn.

“This is California...everyone worships the sun!” Her laughter rang through the trees and the great canopy of leaves danced in response as if they had been called by an old friend. We came to a fork in the trail and she pointed out my way to the right.

“Take care of yourself, Faye. And don’t be a stranger! It gets lonely with nothing but trees for friends.” She patted my shoulder and took off down the opposite trail.

Campus seemed way too peaceful, silent as the mist clinging to its walls when I peeked around the last massive redwood that separated it from Mission Forest. I felt like an intruder as I stole my path, from tree to shrub, all the way back to Hawthorne Hall. Its stone facade loomed drearily in the early dawn, appearing as unwelcome to my eyes as it ever had.

Quietly, not wanting to wake the resident assistant whose room was immediately to my left, I slowly swung the doors open, sending up a quick prayer to whoever was listening that they wouldn’t squeak on their hinges. It took every bit of strength left in me—arms and legs strained to the max—to hold the doors back so they shut as quietly as possible. When they were both securely in place and I could breathe with relief, I tiptoed down the hallway to my room.

But my dorm room wasn’t any more capable of calming my restless nerves than the ghostly campus had been. It was the closest thing to home I had, but it still couldn’t settle me. Something was off. Something was really off, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

My cell phone beeped from the desk, telling me I had a missed call. When I retrieved it, I was shocked there hadn’t been a search party scouring the woods for me. Ten missed calls from Mattie, six from Sam, along with a dozen text messages from them. The first few messages wanted to know if I had checked my email yet, the other half wondered where in the heck I was.

I shook my head and took a deep breath, even further unraveled. No way could I call them right now. I would have to pretend to be excited about whatever gift they had given me, and my mind was far to shaky to have a conversation with either of them at that moment—they would only ask me about my night, and I was too exhausted to come up with the clever half truths that would satisfy them.

A shower. A hot, steamy, shower. That always calmed my nerves.

Thirty minutes later I was emerging from the bathroom, scrubbed, shaved, and pumiced in every possible place. The ache had left my muscles, but something still wasn’t right. Thoughts swam through my head, though I couldn’t focus on one thought long enough to grab onto it.

“Faye?” I startled when the resident assistant called my name.

Great!

I let out a sound that was half sigh, half groan, certain she had seen me sneaking in, even though I hadn’t made a single sound when I passed her room. She was a burly girl, co-captain of the women’s rugby team. By the sweats she was wearing I assumed she had been on her way to an early morning jog when she spotted me and decided I needed a reminder of the dorm curfew.

“Isn’t this yours?” She asked as I walked down the hall toward her, already worrying how I would explain where I’d been.

In her hand she held a gold circle, and my heart dropped straight through the pit of my stomach into my toes. I swallowed the automatic vomit that rose in my throat, clutching my toweled torso, and gasping for air that seemed to have been sucked out of the hallway by some cosmic vacuum.

With great, spasmodic jerks, I nodded and she dropped Dayne’s bracelet in the outstretched hand I offered.

My body was incapable of anything at that moment. I simply stared at the bracelet in my hand, glancing to the wrist it had never left, and then to the RA who was watching me with shifty eyes.

I didn’t speak because I knew the only sound that would come out were bellowing sobs. Instead, I curled my fingers around the bracelet, cradled it into my chest and turned back to my room.

“You’re welcome!” She called after me sarcastically. “You should really be more careful with that. Most people wouldn’t be so honest!” The RA yelled at my back as I disappeared into my room.

I fell to my knees as soon as the door closed, clasping my bracelet, trying to force it back onto my wrist. Tears flowed like rain from my eyes.

How had this happened? How had it fallen off and I not notice? Why had it fallen off? Did he not love me anymore? Had he let me go?

That night in the woods—when he said
the only way to love me was to let me go
—was that his goodbye? Had he been trying to tell me for months that it was over and I was just too stupid to see?

My forehead smacked against the cold stone floor when sitting upright proved too much of a challenge. I fell forward. Sprawled over the floor in a wet towel, damp, stringy hair stuck to my face, crying loudly and not caring if anyone heard me. My life was over, right there on the damned checkerboard rug on the campus of a college where I didn’t belong.

I never should’ve left Ireland. I should’ve stayed and fought for him.

Forceful sobs racked my body so violently I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs and ended up hyperventilating, sucking sharp lungfuls of air past my throat in a way that made me sound like a dying sea lion.

But I didn’t care. If he was gone, what did I have left?

Nothing.

The thought of running back to the river and letting the river nymph finish what we started was the first thought that popped into my mind. If I couldn’t make her give me answers at least it would be a quick way to go. Of course, it wasn’t rational, but at that moment nothing about my life was rational so what did it matter. I sprang up to throw on some clothes and my phone buzzed again.

I swatted at it as I threw on a sweat shirt, hoping the force of my hand would somehow kill the thing. It felt good to have a physical outlet for the emotional tornado whirling through me. Every inch of me shook and quivered in a way I couldn't possibly control. My brain felt heavy between my ears, throbbing and aching as it ran circles around the same realization over and over—my life was impossible without him.

The door knob was firmly in my white-knuckled grasp, my feet itching to run back to the woods when her voice filled the room.

“Faye? Faye, can you hear me?” I startled, jerking around as if a ghost had entered my room. It was Mattie. Somehow my swat had inadvertently answered my phone
and
turned it on speakerphone.

I dropped the knob with a sigh, the familiarity of her voice bringing me back from the brink, and dragged a hand across my forehead. Taking a few steps toward where the little black box lay, I fell to my knees again, huddled around the phone, almost afraid to pick it up, but knowing I had to.

“I’m here, Mattie. Can you hear me?” I sniveled as I wiped the back of my hand across my cheek and cleared my throat.

“So, I’m guessing these are tears of joy over your Christmas gift?”

Christmas gift?
Oh yeah. I had forgotten about that.

“Oh, I haven’t…”

“Haven’t booked it yet? Well, you’d better hurry up if you want to get a good flight back to Ireland!”

“Wh...what?” My brain was too heavy to process what she was saying, and I shook my head, rubbing at my eyes to try to clear it.

“The international buddy pass with my mom’s airline? Hello?” Mattie’s voice was excitedly sarcastic and I could almost see an unnecessarily confident smile curling her lips through the phone. “They only allow so many passes on each flight. If you want to be sure to get the itinerary you want, you better book it now.” A loud intercom voice boomed in the background wherever she was. “Oh! They’re calling for my connection into Charles De Gaulle, I gotta run. You can thank me later, girl! Merry Christmas!” With that Mattie hung up on me, and I was left staring at the rug once again.

International buddy pass with her mom’s airline?

I quickly pulled up my email where I found my Christmas gift, exactly as Mattie had said. A free round trip flight to any international destination I wanted. Mattie and Sam surely had assumed I would use it to go see Rose and Phin since my parents had abandoned me for the holidays. If I had read this email last night, I would have been booking a flight back to Clonlea instead of sacrificing myself to the water nymphs.

But not now.

I needed answers before I ventured back into LisTirna. And now…

I knew exactly where I was going to get them.

 

Three days later I was sandwiched in a cramped coach seat somewhere over the Andes, my stomach turning somersaults from the danger that lay in my future as well as the turbulence that shook the overstuffed plane like a tambourine in the sky.

But I wouldn’t turn back. No longer would I allow fear to stop me. So, what if Chassan was a harbinger of death? If he had the answers that would unlock my magic and lead me back to Dayne, risking my life to find him was worth it. What other option did I have?

Somehow the man to my left was finding it possible to sleep against the fuselage wall despite the fact that most of the passengers had their faces buried in barf bags. The flight was impossibly rough, flying over the constant air pockets that swirled over the looming mountains. Luckily, he wasn’t blocking the tiny porthole window, and I needed a distraction from the bile threatening my own stomach.

They started as foothills at first—low, lumbering mounds that, after millenniums of brutal attack by wicked pacific weather, had finally relented. Their slumped, faded backs rounded like massive charcoal briquettes into the distance.

A grassland, more golden than green, spread its fields for a brief moment amongst the mounds, the shadows of passing clouds darkening its vast expanse like great ghostly lakes.

The grasslands began to morph into fine, golden fingers, lifting heavenward from the fields, twisting and gnarling as they grew larger, larger, larger still, forming the unforgivingly rigid slopes of the great Andean Mountain chain that stood like great fists capable of smashing anything that dared to rise against them.

Row after row of towering peaks lifted into the heavens, some golden, some slightly green, a sprinkle of black with snowcapped white. They were endless, rising into the horizon with slopes like wrinkled paper bags. Puffs of white clouds circle the peaks, shrouding the tops of the ancient mountains in secrecy and wonder.

“Whew! I don’t recommend that.” Rhea pinched her nose and curled her lip for effect. “They must’ve run out of barf bags,” she gagged at the thought of the airplane bathroom she had just returned from and fell into her seat. “I’ve been a nurse for thirty years and I’ve never gotten used to other people’s throw up!” Her face twisted in disgust as she slathered on hand sanitizer from her pack.

I smiled.

Rhea had to be hiding a halo under the bright red handkerchief wrapped around her unruly salt-and-pepper hair, because she was certainly my guardian angel. Had she not grabbed me by the arm and pulled me through the Lima airport I’d still be wandering around like some poor lost soul.

No one in Peru knew, or cared, that I was the little girl lost in Ireland last year. But they swarmed me the minute I stepped off the plane anyway, knowing I was a tourist just by looking at me. A jubilant mob of coffee black hair, tanned round faces and brilliant onyx eyes had overtaken me, thrusting their handmade wares in my face. Not that I was ever in real danger. Most of them only came up to my shoulders, and every one of them wore a broad smile as they hawked their goods. But I had been so inundated by the locals I almost missed my connecting flight to Cusco.

That’s when Rhea swooped in and scattered the little vultures to the wind. She grabbed my arm and whisked me away to our flight bound for the last mountain kingdom of the Incas.

“So how did you know I was going to Cusco?” I asked when she put her hand sanitizer away.

“I noticed you reading a book on our flight from San Francisco about Machu Picchu. You have to go through Cusco to get there.”

“Is that where you’re headed?”

“Sort of.” Her answer was curiously vague, telling me there was more to it. She tucked her head and peeked from the corner of her eyes to see if anyone was listening. Satisfied her secret would be safe, she turned back to me, leaning in close. “I’m a member of an amateur archeological society. We meet every year over Christmas break to search for the lost city of Paititi,” she whispered the last part like she didn’t want anyone to hear.

“What’s Paititi?” I whispered back to her.

“You’ve never heard of Paititi?”

I shook my head. She tucked a loosened grey curl back into her bandana and continued.

“El Dorado?” she asked.

I nodded my head remembering a cartoon I had seen about the ancient city of gold.

“But El Dorado is just a myth. It isn’t real.”

“The Aztecs had El Dorado. The Incas had Paititi. Most say the Aztecs invented the El Dorado myth to confuse Spanish conquistadors. Paititi however, is a different story.”

“So what’s Paititi?”

“In Incan culture, one had to give the gods a gift of gold if they wanted their prayers to be answered. The Incas were a very rich culture. All that gold had to go somewhere. Paititi was where the gods kept it, guarded over by the Apus.”

“What are Apus?”

“Mountain gods. It’s hidden somewhere in these mountains just waiting to be discovered.” She leaned over me to look out the window, eyes blazing with excitement. “Just think! We could be flying over it this very minute!”

“So every year, you get together with a group of archeologists and look for it?” I hugged my stomach with my arms when we hit a rough patch of air and the plane lurched sideways.

“Um-hum.” She nodded, resting back against her seat. “My husband loved the legend of Paititi. He always said when he retired we were going to find it.”

“Oh. Is he with you?” I started to get up, wondering if I had taken her husband’s seat.

“He’s always with me,” she sighed, looking down at two golden bands on her left hand. One was a feminine circle, the other a chunkier, more masculine ring. “He passed away years ago. I do this as a way to honor his memory.”

“I’m so sorry,” I dropped my gaze as I sat back down, suddenly uncomfortable.

“Don’t be. He lived a good life. That’s all anyone can ask for.”

She was silent for a moment, as if thinking back over the life they shared with a distant smile.

“So what brings you to these mountains, Faye?”

I bit my lip as I thought about how to answer her question, nerves adding even more tumbling to my stomach for a moment.

“I guess you could say I’m looking for something, too,” I shrugged, looking down at my hands again, trying to be as vague as possible.

“Ah! I can tell you’re a woman with secrets! Fair enough. You can keep those for yourself.” Rhea reached out a hand to help steady an elderly woman as she stumbled in the aisle when we hit another rough patch of air and the plane plummeted.

When she was certain the woman was steady she turned back to me.

“You aren’t the only one who comes to these mountains in search of something. Machu Picchu is one of the most spiritual places I’ve ever been. You can almost feel the mountain breathing beneath your feet. If your soul can’t find what you’re looking for in a place like that, you might as well give up.” She patted my knee, assuming my quest was all about soul-searching and not having a clue that what I searched for was a living, breathing being who could probably give her turn by turn directions to Paititi if it were real.

“So, the gold in Paititi belongs to the sun god?”

“Um-hum.”

“Would that be Apollo?”

“Same god, different name. In Peru, the sun god is called Inti.”

“You know a lot about mythology, huh?”

“I’m a night nurse at an old folks home,” she said deadpan, rolling her eyes playfully at the thought. “The job is beyond boring. I need a way to escape more than most. The nights fly by for me when I read mythology.” She gave an unapologetic shrug.

“You use it as a way to escape,” my face twisted into what must have been an odd smile. She nodded.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Oh, my aunt does the same thing. But she always dreams about the Sidhe.”

“Irish fairies! I’ve read of them.”

“They don’t really like that word,” I giggled, slightly nervous about the next question that was waiting on my tongue. “So, have you ever heard of the forgotten gods?”

Rhea’s face went slack with shock, her soft brown eyes bulging to twice their normal size.

“How do
you
know about the forgotten gods?”

“My friend took a mythology class this semester. I’d never really heard the stories before.”

“And you probably won’t hear them again.” She shook her head, pursing her lips into a line. “Those stories were wiped from the history books.”

“Then how do you know about them?”

“My great-great grandmother was from Greece. I found an ancient book in her stuff when I was a girl. Almost too faded to read
and
in Greek. But I studied it day and night until I could make out the stories.”

“So do you think the forgotten gods are real?”

“Hard to say what’s real. Zeus forbade their names from being uttered. The book was written as nothing more than a story because those who worshipped the forgotten ones were cursed. But if you research the facts and cross-reference them with what we
do
know, there is little doubt of their existence.”

“Um... Do you know much about a child of Hera and Hades, a daughter born of fire who had the power of Zeus’ lightening bolts?” I twirled a curl in my fingers, hoping I was acting nonchalant about my question, even though my heart began pounding.

“Seraph.” Rhea nodded as she said the name, knowing exactly who I was talking about. The sound of her voice echoed in my ears.

“Seraph,” I said her name aloud and nodded, feeling the base of my spine ignite.

Rhea’s eyes danced like a little kid’s obviously seeing I was just as enamored with the gods as she was.

A loud voice boomed over the intercom, interrupting our conversation. I caught a word of Spanish here and there, but didn’t understand much else.

“Better tighten your seat belt!” Rhea said when the intercom clicked off, and she bent to the task of tightening her own lap belt. “We’re almost to Cusco and landing at an airport between two mountain ranges will make this bumpy flight look like a walk in the park!”