Raven’s Blood

CHAPTER ONE September 23, 2010 Hilazon Tachtit, Northern Israel Jake Lalonde groaned, massaging a pain in his neck that had awakened him. He had slept badly. He had spent the night on the edge between sleep and wakefulness, leaving him questioning if he had slept at all. The camp was up and the crew were fixing breakfast. Some were packing their belongings, preparing for their ascent up the mountain. Jake discarded the jagged rock he was lying on and shrugged off the pain. Then he stuffed his backpack with his things. He watched the expedition leader give orders to make haste. She wanted to reach the cave by tomorrow afternoon. Her body swayed as she moved, directing preparations. She was fluid, almost ethereal about her movements. There was something odd about Sophia Saveriano, something that drew him to her. It was not anything sexual or emotional, or even intellectual...nor anything as simple as curiosity. It was more powerful than that. Like something touched him deeply, lowered him to the very basis of his core. The lowest primitive feeling that existed, the level of pure sensation. He felt solid in her presence. That was the only way he could describe it. “We must leave now!” she shouted. “Anyone who is not ready will have to catch up on their own.” The expedition started off, cheerfully, along an old goat track peppered with dried dung. The younger members of the crew laughed and told jokes to kill the time. The local guides, surly but polite smiled under their kerchiefs smug in their knowledge of the terrain’s peculiar dangers. The hours passed, and single file they climbed rock and scree, mostly silent now. The sun arced into the sky, the light filtered by a grey mist. The trek was difficult. Jake’s feet flung dust onto the back of his jeans, while dark splotches of sweat soaked the armpits of his shirt. Hours later when they stopped, Jake pushed past the grumbling hikers to learn the cause, and saw that two objects poked sharply from the hard earth. The object nearest was the tip of some large bird’s wing and beside it lay a severed foot. The bird might have been an eagle, a hawk or a raven, but the foot was human, rotted away to clean bone, whitened by the sun. “Witch,” the peasant boy standing beside him spat. Dust flaked off Jake’s lips as he eased his camera bag to the ground. “Why do you think the bones belong to a witch?” The boy went silent. “We’ll make camp here,” Saveriano said. The sky was red, the grey mist had settled on the outer rim of the valley. Jake dropped his pack and settled his camera bag to the ground, walked to the ridge of the hillside and surveyed the landscape. The air was warm and reeked with the roasted scent of animal waste. Downwind breathing was easier, and he gazed across the hills to rusty pockets of land, speckled with sparse, green scrub and raw, white stone. When he turned back some sort of stew made of goat meat was ready for dinner. Its piquant aroma evaporated into his nostrils, the flavour strong and exotic. After they ate it was dark, and most of the crew turned in. Jake was restless. He took a flashlight and walked back to where they had seen the bones. He sensed eyes on his back, and he half-hoped Saveriano planned to join him. She was strangely uncommunicative and he had questions for her, many questions. But it seemed the time was never right, and she kept her distance. It was the boy who watched him. Jake lifted a stick and casually dragged it over the ground. He stopped when he caught sight of one of the crew hunched over the bones in the moonlight. The young man rose, smiled sheepishly. “Weird, eh? But then the locals are pretty superstitious. Well, guess I’ll turn in.” He shoved his fist into the pocket of his cargo pants and left. Jake squatted to get a closer look. A star was scored into the earth around the bones where no such marking had existed earlier. It resembled the Star of David or Satan’s star, but it was neither. He had seen this symbol before. The spicules of each point, radiating from a perfect circle, showed the acute angles of an arrow. He glanced around. Hmmm, that was odd. The boy had disappeared and the young man who had just left was zipping something into a plastic bag. Jake dropped his gaze to the ground, felt a sudden need to touch base with Vincent. He had agreed to see the mountain caves of Hilazon Tachtit with him, but where was he? Vincent had left word that they should meet in town, but when he failed to show up the expedition had left without him. Was he already at the caves? Jake sent a text, then lifted his lightweight digital videocam, and aimed it downward. He raised his eyes over the camera toward the camp and saw Saveriano staring at him; he switched his attention to the star, and then to the bones that lay in its centre. He pried out a toe bone and examined it. Surely, the bones were archaeological? But their presence was chilling. The ankle had been cleanly axed. Before turning in, he checked his cell phone for messages. Nothing. He went back to the camp and stopped in front of the expedition leader who had watched his approach. “Vincent never told you where he was going before he was due to join you here?” “No,” she said. “He did not. I assume something came up.” “Shouldn’t he have left a message with someone? He asked me specifically to join him.” “Then that is his problem, and yours. Not mine. Vincent and I are simply colleagues who happen to be interested in the same thing—at the moment. We agreed that whoever reached the cave first would take possession of its prize. It is not my concern that he has forfeited the race.” “I was unaware there was a race.” “A figure of speech Dr. Lalonde. A figure of speech.” That night Jake tossed and turned. It wasn’t the lumpy ground that had him awake. He’d slept on worse. No, it wasn’t the ground. It was the dream. Half awake, half asleep; whispered words, surreal visions; a high-pitched whine in his head. What was happening to him? It was as though he were dreaming someone else’s dream, like the dream had been transposed from a stranger’s mind into his own. A dark taste persisted on his tongue. The smell of mould lingered, cupped in the cavities of his sinuses. Was he hallucinating? Or were the sensations the after effects of a rather noxious goat stew? An aura, a scintillating stream waxed out of the shadows of the mountainside, and flowed in a multi-coloured chaos around his ankles. Jake almost shot out of his sleeping bag. But he knew he was asleep, his muscles paralysed, eyes deeply shut, only his thoughts had any life. This is it then. I must follow her to the sleep of death. Jake felt himself in the dream, a dream where his eyes and mouth were wide open and his body separated from his mind, and he had no will but to lie back and watch. The shimmering circled his throat. His hands flew up to stop it, but there was no quitting now. It swelled and sucked and surged, lifting a jagged piece of sculpture into the air. He saw the familiar symbols, recognized the frieze—the slim fragment he had stolen from the cave. It plunged like a living knife toward him. Heart hammering against his ribs, sweat pouring like hot oil down his neck to his spine, the aura pulsated around him. His vision was dimming, his hearing gone. Arms numb, tongue thick, legs useless as butchered meat. Only his brain remained clear, a severed link to the reality that was somewhere out there. Nausea began to rise and a pain exploded in his gut. Shock and horror, understanding struck him at last. She had lied. Lied! He was not the one. He was going to die, and that was all. He fell over backwards, hands raised, his final thought: “Whatever you do, do not listen to her.... To the lies.” Jake sat up in a cold sweat.