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    Dance Of The Chupacabras
    Dance Of The Chupacabras
    Dance Of The Chupacabras
    Ebook497 pages5 hours

    Dance Of The Chupacabras

    By Lori R. Lopez

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    In Tome One of the whimsical epic adventure, a Mexican-American brother duo of folklore dancers and a desert farmer — along with a diverse band of mortals, angels, and ghosts — battle supernatural forces to protect an oracle-princess as well as past, present, and future times from an Aztec serpent god’s wrath.

    WARNING: Contains big words and inventive language.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLori R. Lopez
    Release dateMar 15, 2012
    ISBN9781476331331
    Dance Of The Chupacabras
    Author

    Lori R. Lopez

    Lori R. Lopez wears many hats as an Author and Speculative Poet of Horror, Fantasy, Suspense, Humor and more. She illustrates her books and has written songs, while being an Activist for animals and children. Growing up, Lori roamed graveyards and conducted funerals for dead birds, squirrels, insects and spiders. Her offbeat books include The Dark Mister Snark, Leery Lane, An Ill Wind Blows, Darkverse: The Shadow Hours, Odds & Ends, and The Fairy Fly. In 2023 Lori won Third Place in the Long Category for the SFPA Poetry Contest for "Wake Unto Death". Her Poetry Collection Darkverse was nominated for an Elgin Award and a Finalist in the Kindle Book Awards. Her poems "Crop Circles" and "Nocturnal Embers" were nominated for the Rhysling Award in 2020, "Social Graces" and "The Whistle Stop" in 2021, "Biting Sarcasm" in 2022, "The Whippoorwill" and "If Houses Could Talk" in 2023. Poems "The Maw" and "creatures of the macabre" received Editor's Choice Awards among other honors. Stories and verse have appeared in The Sirens Call, The Horror Zine, Space & Time, Spectral Realms, JOURN-E, Weirdbook, Bewildering Stories, Dreams & Nightmares, Impspired, Altered Reality, Aphelion, and anthologies such as California Screamin' (the Foreword Poem), HWA Poetry Showcases II, III, V, VI, and IX, Journals Of Horror, Grey Matter Monsters, Dead Harvest, Fearful Fathoms I, Terror Train I and II, Trickster's Treats #3, Speculations III (Weird Poets Society), and In Darkness We Play. A member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and Lewis Carroll Society Of North America. Visit the Fairy Fly Entertainment Website Lori shares with her two talented sons, and their YouTube Channel @FairyFly. They have a Folk Band called The Fairyflies.

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    • 3/5
      (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)I've already reviewed something by horror writer Lori R. Lopez before, the wispy story collection Chocolate-Covered Eyes, and mentioned at that point that I was looking forward to seeing something a little longer and heftier from her; and now here it is, an "Author's Draft" version (think "Director's Cut") of a full-length horror tale, a sweeping story that takes place over multiple periods of human history among a whole host of different Latin communities around the world. But I have to confess, I'm not much of a horror fan, which means that even a bit of the usual tropes of this genre is usually too much for me, of which there are lots here in this example -- the overly flowery prose style, the melodramatic plot, the 'BWOO-HAA-HAA' tone of the entire thing. But I never think it fair for a genre book to get penalized just for displaying the traits of its genre, simply because the reviewer isn't much of a fan of that genre; and so that's why I'm giving it at least a middle-of-the-road score here, and am humbly suggesting that you get the opinion of a more dedicated horror reviewer if you're truly interested in learning more about this book.Out of 10: 7.5

    Book preview

    Dance Of The Chupacabras - Lori R. Lopez

    DANCE OF THE CHUPACABRAS

    Tome One

    of

    THE DANCE TRILOGY

    (PART ONE OF THE TOME TRILOGY OF TRILOGIES)

    An Epic Tale by

    Lori R. Lopez

    Fairy Fly Entertainment

    All rights reserved

    No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any

    media without written permission from the author, except

    brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles.

    This is a work of fiction. Any and all references to real persons, events, and places are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places, events and details are fabrications of the author’s imagination; any such resemblance to actual places, events or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

    Copyright © 2012 by Lori R. Lopez

    Artwork by Lori R. Lopez

    Cover Design by Fairy Fly Entertainment

    Author Photos by Fairy Fly Entertainment

    E-Book Edition (EPUB)

    Table Of Contents

    DANCE OF THE CHUPACABRAS

    Table Of Contents

    MY UNAPOLOGY IN ADVANCE

    foreword

    THAT WHICH SCARES US

    prologue

    I. HEROICS

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    7

    8

    9

    II. BEASTLINESS

    10

    11

    12

    13

    14

    15

    16

    17

    18

    19

    20

    21

    22

    23

    24

    25

    26

    27

    28

    29

    30

    31

    32

    33

    34

    35

    36

    III. PROPHETICS

    37

    38

    39

    40

    41

    42

    43

    44

    45

    46

    47

    48

    49

    50

    51

    52

    epilogue

    THE TOME TRILOGIES

    About the author and artist

    A Visit To Zone Zero

    More works by Lori R. Lopez

    A dark Wonderlandish oddyssey that merges and contrasts elements of humor and horror; fantasy, reality, and literary nonsense; legends, myths, and history; Pop, Mexican, and American Culture; wordplay and swordplay. It is a modern legend, a rumpus of revelrous rompery about being lost and choosing the road least traveled . . . the path unknown.

    In Tome One of the whimsical epic adventure, a Mexican-American brother duo of folklore dancers and a desert farmer — along with a diverse band of mortals, angels, and ghosts — battle supernatural forces to protect an oracle-princess as well as past, present, and future times from an Aztec serpent god’s wrath.

    WARNING: Contains big words and inventive language.

    MY UNAPOLOGY IN ADVANCE

    I see no need to beg your indulgence, your mercy, your understanding. I write as I please, whether it meets your specifications or not. As long as it meets mine, only then will I finally be satisfied with the work.

    Suffice it to say that in this tome, and those to follow, something quite out of the ordinary occurs. It is almost as if the characters come to realize they are pawns in a vast mind game.

    Such is the Rule-Bending Theme herein.

    Perhaps we are all such characters and Life is a myth, an illusion. It has been proposed that dreams are reality and reality the dream. In my take on the perspective, lines are blurred between Reader, Narrative, Players, and Story. What is Truth and what is Fiction? The Myth is the thing, to semi-quote Shakespeare. The same, too, for The Story.

    This is The Tome Trilogy Of Trilogies, a grand epic based on books, so it is entirely logical that the characters should become self-aware . . . The Reader come face to face with The Writer . . . the plot become thicker than thieves and steal the scene, the spotlight, and the show.

    The Author

    For Noél and Rafael,

    My Heroic Sons

    Know no limits, for if you do not doubt yourself,

    then there is nothing to doubt.

    — Rafael Lopez, A Knight’s Code;

    also in A-Mazing World

    "As to dancing, my dear, I never dance,

    unless I am allowed to do it in my own peculiar way.

    There is no use trying to describe it:

    it has to be seen to be believed."

    — Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

    The sun shone bright and the birds sang sweet

    and Dorothy did not feel nearly as bad

    as you might think a little girl would

    who had been suddenly whisked away

    from her own country and set down

    in the midst of a strange land.

    — The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz,

    L. Frank Baum

    foreword

    Imagine, if you will, the sloooooow aggravating creak of a chamber door that swings inward upon cobwebbed hinges. Musty seldom-breathed air, thick with sediment inside a claustrophobic dungeon attic, suffocates your lungs. While the throbbing irregular rhythm of a heart being squeezed by the tense grip of dread shudders in your chest.

    And what if you should venture beyond this threshold, into the vast recesses of a disturbingly abstract mind? What then?

    Don’t look at me. I asked you first.

    Think! What should you do? The cuckoo clock is ticking and you must decide . . . Would you hesitate, or plunge forth with delicious anticipation, mercurial abandon?

    IT’S TOO LATE!!! The door has slammed. Are you locked in or out? That is the question.

    Mwa-ha-ha-haaa! The sinister guffaw resonates. It wasn’t me.

    And as you tremble, your kneebones knocking, your teeth chattering like castanets, you wonder what kind of mess you may or may not have gotten yourself into.

    Ahhh, that is another question.

    So here we are, poised on the brink of expectitude. (It’s a word! Look it up! Okay, it wasn’t, but now it is.)

    Well, have you decided? Have you made up your mind?

    It seems you are closer to losing your mind. These days who can blame you? Calamities abound. Everything is topsy-turvy. Nothing is going right. Boohoo! It’s scarier out there than here.

    This place is rather cozy. Snug and safe from all that bothers. You’re much better off, really you are.

    Ha-ha-ha-hah! The mad strains of pipe-organ mayhem arise, echoing wall to wall, bouncing from floor to ceiling, glancing off surfaces like a pack of banshees. And as sure as you’re a figment of my imaginings, you become aware that something hideous is afoot.

    Hey, you there! What are you doing in my skull? Get out! This is no invitation to trespass — it’s a snippetof gibberish I’ve decided to throw into the tome I am trying to finish, DANCE OF THE CHUPACABRAS (which should’ve been completed eons ago).

    Well, all right. Since you’re here, I guess you can have a peek around. But don’t bruise my cerebellum. I’m rather touchy about that. Ignore the dust and clutter, the piles and piles of unfinished manuscripts, the stacks of novels and reference tomes. I really should reorganize a bit, but there never seems to be time.

    Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about such predicaments. You’re here, which means you actually have time to spare! What does it feel like? Please tell me!

    On second thought, don’t. It might be better not to know what I am missing. Please excuse the outburst. My inner therapist insists I cease existing vicariously through others.

    Sure, I’m a little eccentric. Don’t sneer. Your sanity is also in question for visiting my ramblings in the first place. I must thencely assume you are so terribly awfully bored — or somewhat braindead — that you seek asylum from your everyday doldrums by embarking upon this peculiar sojourn. I suppose, then, that you have come to the right place. Here you will find the most extraordinary waste of minutes whatsoever.

    I am not your average author. I tend to twist and distort every concept of good writing. Propriety and etiquette are what you will not encounter. Conventions and orthodox standards cannot be tolerated here!

    But enough about you. Let’s talk about MEEEE. Must I be so anomalous? Do I have to be so fey? Do I need to behave with such bizarre dysfunction?

    Of course, silly! This is me we’re talking about, and I am slightly not all there! Or here, rather, since we are in my head.

    Before you protest that this fatuous impugnity makes no sense in the least and you could undoubtedly find some preferable way to squander your time, such as naming your dust bunnies, let me just say that you obviously came here for a reason. It was a very poor choice, I might add, a clear case of impaired reason-ing. I would stringently advise against proceeding further. If you persist, I shall not be accountable for my own mental actions — or any convoluted repercussions that befall you.

    This tour has concluded. Please follow the arrows to the nearest exit.

    Who left gum on my gray matter?

    THAT WHICH SCARES US

    What beasts reside in grottos deep

    Where dawnless deathly shadows hide

    Pale nocturnal slugmites creep

    Ghost-dancing serpents slide

    Where musty mildewed madness dwells

    Eternal pits crave midnight snacks

    The mouth gapes wide but never tells

    What lurks in caves or cracks

    What twilight gnomish beasts we fear

    Who wait concealed until tis night

    Whose scraping furtive tracks we hear

    Then vanish come the light

    Whose full-moon amber stares we heed

    The wolf-howl wind their wail

    From cactus tooth and claw we bleed

    Down some enchanted trail

    Wherein lies mist and graveyard gloom

    The heart betrays us loud or still

    As we expect to meet our doom

    Yet there least likely will

    At trembling hours of ghoul and ghost

    We heroes stand more tall

    For facing that which scares us most

    May banish monsters all.

    prologue

    OLDEN TIMES, WHEN MYTHS WERE BORN

    THE LEGEND GOES that two Mayan brothers, identical in age and appearance but different inside as the moon and sun, were destined to visit Underworld Xibalba and battle terrible demons.

    The warrior duo had been sired by maize god Hun Hunahpu, patron of scribes, known for a similar journey to the after-realm — where he and twin Vucub, challenged to a ritual ballgame against trickster lords, failed a series of preliminary contests that resulted in death.

    Bearing the sorrow of their predecessors’ fates in determined hearts and minds, the maize god’s heirs entered a cavemouth.

    Ay! Ah Puch! cried one of the sibs as they padded steadily downward, barefoot and loinclothed, clutching blowpipes and flint knives with keenly chipped blades.

    (Ah Puch, the postcarious mortifacted god of bane, was often invoked as a scapegoat by the twins, imputed as ripe excuse for woe. This aggravated the purgative nightmarrowish bone-clinker — made him avid to chastise the brashful brothers, if it took till Doomsday. The repellent scalawag shook an ivory fist at their fresh sacrilege and swore to retaliate.)

    What’s wrong? An echo of fraternal solicitude, albeit impatient.

    I stubbed my toe on a rock!

    You are such a mother’s boy, Hunah. Always whining, goaded the hero’s reciprocal.

    Speak of yourself for that is what you are, Xbalan.

    And likewise you since we are the same.

    You are more the same than me.

    That doesn’t make sense. Move your feet, not your mouth.

    I’m tired, and thirsty as the desert. Let us take a water break.

    We can’t. We didn’t bring any.

    And whose fault is that? Hunahpu needled, his sloped brow furrowed in a frown. You are the practical one. You are supposed to think of everything.

    Nohoch Yaah (Big Pain), do not blame each trouble on me. Kuhob share mutual responsibility. If I forgot water, so did you, asserted Xbalanque. His own canted brow, acquired as an infant (a cultural refinement, no twinly trait; fashioned with leather strips and wood), was creaseless and unconcerned.

    Ma’alob. We both forgot. I am still thirsty. Why aren’t we there yet? Is this even the right direction? Hunahpu berated.

    Of course it’s the right direction. We’re in a tunnel containing no branches, just an entrance and an exit.

    Are you certain it is not a dead end?

    How should I know? It’s dark, because nobody remembered a torch!

    Now who’s complaining? Be silent or I’ll give you a haircut — blind.

    Xbalan stifled a retort, preferring to keep his thick quilled tuft. His scalp, for that matter.

    Bolstered by bravado, the disputively jovial brothers strutted forth and eventually arrived at a massive gate, which they exerted to heave ajar.

    After you. Xbalan graciously gestured, clad in a jaguar pelt, bathed by a phosphorescent luster.

    No no, you may precede, Hunah declined. I insist.

    Ink spots tattooed the Mayan hunter, evoking their panther totem, their uay spirit. A gold stud penetrated the trough of his lower lip. Greenstone spools distorted punctured earlobes.

    The amicable pair shoved and elbowed their way across the threshold, angling to go last.

    The sibs were credited with slaying a monstrous vulture covered in feathers and serpents, then the tyrant bird’s giant ogrel sons. This subsequent errand, conquering The Land Of The Dead, seemed a fitting test for their courage and skill.

    Treading in the footsteps of their father and uncle, vying against otherworld lords, these affectionately feudal warriors survived perilous trials in houses of Gloom, Razors, Cold, Jaguars, and Fire.

    At the sixth house Hunahpu was decapitated by a bat god, his gourd pitched into a ballcourt to serve as the target of a Pok-A-Tok match.

    No mere game, this earliest sport of teams represented the lifeforce, cosmic passage through death and rebirth, the incessant rivalry of Day and Night for control.

    Hunah’s trunk participated, borrowing a squash for a substitute.

    Xbalanque nudged the ball — his brother’s winceful noggin — out of bounds with a deerhide-yoked hip. He then restored Hunahpu’s wholeness while opponents mistakenly pursued a hare.

    The stoic-nerved athletes next avenged their father and uncle, boisterantly bragging they could chop the lords to pieces and rebuild them too. The wily doubles duped the prankster deities by leaving them apart. Victorious, the twins decreed only sinners and evildoers should populate the nether regions. They pledged their ancestors’ names would forever be honored.

    Alternate interpretations tell of First Father Hun Hunahpu (or Hun Nal Ye) bringing corn to the people by dancing before Xibalban gods in a jade-colored costume, green for the maize plant, to become regenerated.

    Such tales are further linked to an emerald-plumed serpent of many aliases — among them Gucumatz, Nacxit, One Reed, Kukulcan, and Precious Twin — most commonly called Quetzalcoatl.

    And thus the cycle repeats, for upon the calendar wheel of days there is scored a continuous path along which valiant brothers will mishappily adventure through the ages.

    1521 A.D. — MEXIHCO TENOCHTITLAN

    A DWARF PROPHET limped down chaotic thoroughfares as the city of stone crumbled. Diminutive in stature though tremendous in personage, he awkwardly ushered his taller grandchild away from the destruction, hoping to reach an acalli (boat) and escape by canal.

    Pandemonium surrounded them, shrieks of misery, ashes, a shroud of despair. Famished and diseased corpses cluttered avenues beneath the wounded. The stench was nauseating.

    Notlahtlacol. A whisper of attrition. The psychic blamed himself for neglecting to warn his people.

    Messages received were of distant times. Concise symbols recorded by the tlahcuiloh, scribe, in a private ledger (aside from tedious tribute or census annals) were dismissed as halfling farce. They had yet to come true.

    But his omens were sincere not frivolous, not the conjectured conjurings from artificeful street sorcerers, who were apt to spout anything for a palmful of cacahuatl (peanuts or cacao beans).

    The oracle’s third eye had focused too far in the future to glimpse his present and describe the advent of

    a treacherous legion. He could not foresee Motecuhzoma’s humiliation; the sad demises of the king and his brother, Cuitlahuac — appointed after Tenochcah turned their backs and declared The Great Speaker a traitor.

    Ahmo. Aic. Murmuring comfort, the dwarf’s granddaughter Cuauhpilli (Sapling) reminded him what macehualtin grumbled, that their emperor’s confusion caused the disasters.

    Yei Cuetzpalin (Three Lizard) nodded. Adequate indications, valid tidings of The Fifth Sun’s ultimate dusk, of The Feathered Serpent’s promised reincarnation were long apparent, verified by the despondent huey tlahtoani’s royal magicians . . .

    Nightly for one year, a pinnacle of brightness in the east rising to the heavens.

    A storm column churning sediment. A lambent ascending cloud.

    Temples, burning for no reason or lightning-struck.

    A fireball scorching the sky, fragmenting thrice, traveling west to east.

    Lake Tetzcohco enraged, sundering houses near the shore.

    Nocturnal wails, a destitute mother weeping for her children.

    Two-headed thistle men who vanished on meeting the tecuhtli Motecuhzoma.

    Peculiar flights of birds, and a crane’s unique crest — a glistrous tussock emulating the stars then divulging what the psychic’s premonitions did not: an envoy of pallid warring pinoh, strangers, astride huge mazameh (deer) that lacked horns.

    There had been distressful signs for a decade, overt clues Quetzalcoatl would promptly sail back to obliterate their epoch with cataclysmic tremors.

    Yet unlike the ruler and his priests, despite the rolling dissonance of feignful tarnished knights, Cuetzpalin did not believe the world was ending. It was simply being revised.

    The seer had viewed tomorrow and it was very different, like a text that never ceased to be expanded, rewritten. Like the illustrated volume of predictions he had risked his life to rescue when metal-suited marauders attacked the besieged capital — bringing waves of rebellious natives and mercenary foes.

    Halting, breathing hard, the fugitives gazed behind.

    The prophet grunted with a fatal air of submission. His health and legs were spent. Unable to flee another step, he pushed the codex toward the timorous maid, his student. She had the inner eye, in ihtic ixtli, and a talent for pictographs.

    Guard this, Pilli, instructed the dwarf in Nahuatl. It tells my dream of a changed land, a future legend of hero brothers who fight nine battles to save the new world.

    Resolute hooves beat cobblestones.

    Book of visions clasped to his bosom, the scribe’s features carved an expression of weary acquiescence. Cuel ye tlahca, he rasped. It was too late.

    Armored raiders clotted the lane. Firesticks banged, harnessing thunder. Savage hounds rushed growling.

    Enemy warriors violating sacrosanct rites, the proper etiquette of engagement, bludgeoned or speared families deserting rows of whitewashed adobe homes set ablaze. A bearded soldier rode a jangling bucklike steed.

    The soothsayer recognized this gleaming invader who charged hefting a silver blade. Welcomed as glorious resurrected god Quetzalcoatl, the sun-plated light-skinned imposter had betrayed their king, had even offended the teteoh (divinities) by demolishing temple idols.

    In Tlalolin huitz. The Earthquake comes. Cuetzpalin squeezed his granddaughter’s hand, requiring no foresight to infer their destiny.

    Oráculo! An epithet.

    The matepuztli (sword) faltered then scythed, a deliberate sweep. The mammoth stag mowed the elder down. His cherished volume fell open.

    Across final unfolded bark-paper screens, two figures pointed war clubs at the profile of a many-headed beast.

    The upper dome was a fanged bat devil. The second depicted a wolf-mannish demon. A third, the bearded soldier. He was perhaps the most frightening as such men are, the visionary believed.

    A maroon splash of yeztli obscured six remaining visages.

    The creature’s hybrid torso was embellished by quetzal plumage, ophidian scales, appendages with three toes, and naked wings.

    Sturdy reptile legs, feet, and tail rested on strewn tomes — pages mangled and illegible, littered with nochtli cactus tears.

    A turquoise-crowned warrior stood after the tlacacemele, thrusting a cornstalk lance. Belowground in a cave a girl-child waited, prominent speech scroll before her mouth, an eye glyph above her head.

    Bordering the left pane, a snarling feathered snake. Opposite, a horned and limbed serpent edged the last screen, pennateless wings crimped. Tongues of flesh or flame, extending from crocodile snouts, undulated toward a mystick-scribe symmetrically rendered at the top conjoined corner of each panel. The wizard’s left fist held an effulgent wand. A paint-dipped stylus was clinched in his right hand.

    These portents had angered The Caxtiltecah. Historic documents were being deciphered with curious disdain.

    Inspecting the seer’s confiscated ledger, a padre gasped at un monstruo con cabezas de Hidra . . . El Rojo Dragón!

    A monster with Hydra heads. The Red Dragon.

    Cuetzpalin was ringed by cursing friars. He had obtained their language out of reverence and was compelled to admit that his drawings portrayed what could transpire, events unborn.

    Hostile astounded priests castigated him for defiling a holy manuscript and stealing the biblical revelations of a Christian apostle. Cuetzpalin denied copying the auguries. His book was discarded, then plucked out of an incendiary heap.

    Hernán Cortés, bearded magistrate, interrogated the midget about his other prognostications, and the king’s ten years of omens. A devoted client of astrology, Cortés seemed as afraid as the teuctli Motecuhzoma that the world might perish.

    For one leader, the signs proved accurate.

    Cuetzpalin’s life and inklings were tentatively spared when Tenochtitlan revolted, after myriad lines of dancing nobles had been slain.

    Motecuhzoma was killed. Foreigners fled. A mournful island rejoiced.

    The Mexihcah recovered their city and their dignity, only to lose an empire. Wicked arrogance, sins condemned by Caxtillan clergy must be atoned.

    Embers ignited the codex. Fig-tree fibers curled, glyphs melting.

    Barbarians thronged past shouting. Revulsion occasionally flickered in an eye, yet they obeyed their chieftain’s bidding: Matenlos! Quemen! Destruyan todo!

    Ravaged, utterly defeated, Tenochtitlan’s contradiction of decorous beauty and murderous custom would sink into its watery foundation.

    Staring at a parallel lake of undisturbed blue, a reservoir that could sustain and shelter a new era, the scribe trembled from the magnitude of the moment. Aztlan was established by prophecy and would fall by prophecy.

    Grisly images recurred to his waning mind.

    Loinclothed captives being marched up coatl (twin) staircases to ornate shrines, there snatched by shamans painted black — maguey-haired priests bathed in blood who stabbed exposed chests with obsidian knives, then tore out yollohtin with bare mitts and offered the throbbing organs to insatiable deities.

    Limbs hacked and cooked for imperial feasts by dark-robed accomplices. The vulgar reeking offal of someone else’s heroes, shorn bodies tossed heartless down the same slick heights, venerably smited to a stone base where trophies were displayed. Cuaxicaltin, skulls, stacked in macabre levels on an impressive monument of poles.

    Not every citizen favored the spectacle of sordid butchery at the summits of mountain-pyramids. Commoners had no appetite for the taste of tlacayotl, humanity.

    But wrong could never replace wrong to equal right. And one icy tendril of prescience chilled Cuetzpalin’s core. During ages ahead, as in days elapsed, more innocents would be slaughtered for holy wars, with the clashes of cultures, by soldiers and priests no better or worse than these.

    A dagger of grief pierced the dwarf. A maiden lay victim, life spilling from a wound at her throat, sacrificed to unknown gods.

    Lo viste así? Did you view it like this?

    Death’s blade reaped again, plunging through his soul. The prophet’s world — the old world — grew dim.

    1888 A.D. — ROME, ITALY

    THE CLANDESTINE CLATTER of footsteps hastened through a city consecrated by mythical twins Romulus and Remus. A capital magnified to a thriving empire, which famously toppled yet remained a perpetual token of glory and pride.

    Perdonami, Padre. Touching forehead, shoulders and lips, the gaunt figure embraced a stolen treasure as he darted along a network of cloistered lanes.

    In the alcove of a doorway he paused to listen. Was it the echo of his own shoes, or a counterfeit set of paces?

    Parce mihi! Condona mihi! Abruptly the man resumed his hectic gait. Apprehension dampened his brow. Accustomed to donning a cloak of secrecy, for he belonged to a universal order entrusted with a holy mission, he had never defied the authority of his religion. But this task was a vital link in the chain of events that must occur for the good of all. Adherence to his faith, to a higher voice, not the edicts of men or even popes, impelled him onward.

    Surreptitiously traversing a boulevard, the knight dashed another street then stopped before an entrance: Collegio Romano, a Jesuit enclave that boasted a new addition, The National Central Library.

    Va bene. Catching his breath, garbed in nondescript layman attire, The Tomekeeper swung open a slab of wood. Se Dio vuole, he murmured. If God wills.

    The fellow scurried, arcane bundle hugged to his midriff, heeding an explicit mandate. His mission was almost achieved when a firmer cadence of footfalls over marble rang out.

    The knight hid behind a pillar. A pair of forms wraithed by hoods swept past. They disappeared inside a hall of literature. Students, he estimated. Scholars equipped with writing utensils.

    The monastic soldier recited a brief prayer in Latin then sprinted to an office for acquisitions and donations. He presented a journal of ink and watercolor pitturas to a librarian — omitting that the artwork was smuggled from The Vatican, where the manuscript had been suppressed and scrutinized as a controversial object. The images were bound, a last drawing added to the collection, according to sixteenth-century dictives.

    The book must now be concealed in plain sight, decades later to be unveiled.

    Leafing through the delicate artifact, panels of illuminations accompanied by a few pages of text, the librarian agreed to a modest sum and bade the perspiring individual sign a ledger. Per favore.

    The financial book was closed, a pile of lira doled across the desk. Grazie, Signore Pivoli. A handshake and the transaction was complete. La biblioteca had purchased an intriguing codex of paintings, probably hundreds of years old, of some historical value.

    Signore Pivoli (not his actual name) stepped outside and expelled a terse sigh. It was done. Papal agents could loot the churches of the brethren, pilfer documents, handwritten parchments, but it was deemed remote they might think to search the shelves of a public library right here in Rome.

    The volume would be catalogued in la biblioteca’s annals then forgot, its significance unnoted for another century, when the pictures would be reported as the final predictions of French poet-prophet Michel Nostradamus. Due to grand design or chance, the discovery of this lost tome’s identity was to coincide with a page in the story of Mankind where admonitions would be critical, if not crucial, to the world’s survival.

    A dragon pried itself out of stone above a portal and took wing. The knight stared upward in amazement as the gargoyle flushed to vermilion. He had been detected, by a lawless eye which sought to promote some sinister purpose.

    Was it there to eradicate the book? Would il drago seize him aloft? He pressed himself against the collegio.

    Soaring a vacant square, the firedrake shot like an arrow to the edifice, hurling in a blur of menace toward the man, then arced slightly and assumed its original guise, as if to guard the library.

    Mea culpa. (I have sinned.) With an oath and gesture of benediction — In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, amen! — the monk hurried down a shadowed sidestreet grateful to be intact; arguing with himself whether to retrieve the tome or believe it safe.

    2012 A.D. — THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

    AS WINTER SOLSTICE DAWNS and The Mayan Calendar reaches a foregone conclusion, two brothers face off on an icy altitude, contrite symbols of opposing forces, to avert a potential apocalypse.

    Their journey has been a thirteen-year struggle fraught by doubts and insecurities. The siblings did not set out to be heroes, or choose to follow this path. Yet, with meritricious obligation and allegiance, they arrived at a point where the farthest corners of the planet converge. A period in space and time from which their futures and all futures are a blank book waiting to be penned.

    Poised on both a climactic and climatic precipice, the staunch dyad was drafted to enact a ceremonial duel, an Armageddon showdown at the brink of a new age — a crossroads of positive change, or a juncture when the horrors of manmade catastrophes could elsewise fuse with Mother Nature’s elements to destroy the very balance of existence.

    It is here at an elevation where life cannot endure that such a match will be conducted.

    Here upon the tip of Destiny, where earth meets sky and only the purest of heart can survive.

    The ecological clock is ticking. As the ancients believed, a sacrifice must be made for the sun to be reborn.

    I. HEROICS

    1

    A.D. 1995, THE TRUE MILLENNIUM — BAJA CALIFORNIA

    MALICE BUZZED, RATTLING in the air as if a lake-sized nest of hot diamondbacks were riled, glass-marble eyes blinkless, their scales gathered like coils of rope to strike. This atmosphere clung to vegetation, a blight of transparent malignancy, and fevered the soil with an army of infection. Sand stirred, composed of decay and pulgas, rambunctious ranks of blood-starved popcorn fleas springing from billennial-layered putrefaction — for what do we walk upon but the bones and flesh of History, the seasons of yesteryear?

    A farm truck jounced over a pitted lane segregating snaggles of scrub oaks, brush, and cacti that foliated the valleys and lomas between Tijuana and Tecate. It was an irregular playing field of magnetic geothermal activity where superior forces met to compete in the endless skirmish, Good versus Evil. Where basic laws of and discovered by Man no longer applied, and possibilities were infinite.

    The exclusive radius could not be located on maps except those sketched by harbingers of doom and minds of the demented, or brains of fluid fantasy. It was neither consistent nor concrete but a limber ductile amplitude that arose and diminished, swelled and receded, that dissembled and reconstructured hourly.

    The province existed when and where it chose, unless answering to a stronger will or wilder nature than its own. Beyond Tecate the hyperbolent-baric humus flowed. Gorgefully mawdacious. Gruffish, gurgent, griddily sequestering perditious bluffiant dunes. Flambeyantly gobbling easterly breadth toward La Rumorosa, The Whispering One, and a gamut of alpen crags. Providing relief from antagonism below by resorting to superficial mayhem.

    Harrowing these hills across centuries of todays, a forlorn caterwaul warped out of macrospatial fabric — implied implorings of a tormented woman whose sharpest fears were nigh: Nopilhuane . . . Nopilhuane . . . Tlazohtin Nihhuihuane, can anyazqueh? Oh, my children . . . Oh, my children . . . My Precious Feathers, where will you go?

    A solitary plume adrift, shed from wings of antiquity, fragile as a memory, substantial as a heartbeat, settled betwixt the tines of a nopal. Iridescent, ruffled by breeze, the blue-green quill wafted earthward.

    Tempestuous, an avian deluge of quetzal feathers carpeted la tierra. Coruscations of emerald, sapphire, amethyst hues glimmered. And as swiftly were gone.

    Within a linger of gloss was mirrored a vision of hale brotherly heroes in jade-green leather trekking the desert . . . till arid sands absorbed the pool.

    Ochre dust suffused the air. Tires bumped through rain-engraved ruts. Cannisters slid and clanked amid bales of barbed wire and sacks of chemical fertilizer on an enclosed flatbed.

    The sun’s rays reflected off a window with a starburst of light behind the laboring farm vehicle’s cab.

    Above this lonely stretch of chaparral, patrolling his domain, an eagle peered out of azure sky and shivered — attention drawn to the stellar glint, perceiving an absence of light as it cruised the ground.

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