Sun God Seeks...surrogate? (34 page)

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 experience. 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.

I rushed outside. “Emma, calm down!” I yelled.

“I’m going to kill him, Penelope! Kill him!” She looked down at the man who lay on the ground writhing in pain. “Do you hear me, Tommaso? Do you? You’re a dead man. You fucking traitor!”

Tommaso? This had been the man who’d betrayed her.

“Lock him up,” I commanded the two Uchben soldiers, who suddenly resembled deer in the headlights.

“We were given orders to take care of him,” the taller of the two spoke up.

Emma screamed at the top of her lungs. “No! I get that honor. Me!”

The soldier shifted his weight. “No. We were given the order to
care
for him, make sure his wounds are bandaged.”

The soldier helped Tommaso stand. I could tell he was a man who’d seen better days; he was very thin and haggard. His dark hair was straggly and his eyes—
hell, they’re turquoise
—could only be described as desolate.

“Who? Who told you take care of him?” I asked the soldier.

Unexpectedly, Tommaso reached for Emma’s hand. “I would never betray you.”

She snapped it away. “Liar! It should be you who’s trapped. Not Guy!”

Zac chimed in. “Emma, he tells the truth. Guy told me before he left—in case anything happened. Tommaso did not betray you; he went back as a spy, to prove himself to us and the Uchben.”

Emma froze. “What are you trying to say?”

Tommaso, a braver soul than I, stepped toward her. “Guy had me free your grandmother to gain her trust and get me back inside the Maaskab. But I got caught when I saved that woman—they said she was an angel and were torturing her with their sick fucking experiments.”

Um. Wow. I wasn’t sure which part of the story was more shocking, the freeing of Emma’s grandma or the part about the angel.

I went with the latter.

“Angel? Like, as in, fluffy wings, lives in heaven…yadda yadda?”

Tommaso gave a nod.

Hmmm. So we had gods, vampires, ex-vampire demigods (like Andrus and Niccolo), evil priests (Maaskab), vampire evil priests (Mobscuros)—
or are they now dead ex-vampire evil priests?

I think we call those “dead.”

Oh yeah.

Then there were the gods’ mortal daughters (Payals); demigod Payals who were immortal (like Emma); a half-vampire, half-human baby (Niccolo and Helena’s baby); an ex-god who’s now mortal (Kinich); a human who’s now a god with no dang clue about her mortality status and is pregnant with the ex-god’s baby (that one is me, in case you were wondering); leprechauns; and—deep breath—angels.