The Book of Bones (Harvey Bennett Thrillers 7) Read online

  The Book of Bones

  Nick Thacker

  Contents

  Prologue

  Prologue

  Prologue

  1. Ben

  2. Victoria

  3. Ben

  4. Julie

  5. Garza

  6. Julie

  7. Ben

  8. Ben

  9. Reggie

  10. Julie

  11. Garza

  12. Ben

  13. Julie

  14. Reggie

  15. Ben

  16. Reggie

  17. Ben

  18. Reggie

  19. Ben

  20. Julie

  21. Victoria

  22. Victoria

  23. Reggie

  24. Victoria

  25. Garza

  26. Ben

  27. Ben

  28. Reggie

  29. Victoria

  30. Julie

  31. Victoria

  32. Ben

  33. Ben

  34. Victoria

  35. Reggie

  36. Ben

  37. Julie

  38. Ben

  39. Reggie

  40. Julie

  41. Reggie

  42. Julie

  43. Ben

  44. Reggie

  45. Reggie

  46. Ben

  47. Julie

  48. Ben

  49. Julie

  50. Reggie

  51. Ben

  52. Ben

  53. Victoria

  54. Julie

  55. Reggie

  56. Victoria

  57. Ben

  58. Victoria

  59. Ben

  60. Reggie

  61. Victoria

  62. Julie

  63. Victoria

  64. Ben

  65. Reggie

  66. Ben

  67. Reggie

  68. Ben

  69. Victoria

  70. Ben

  71. Julie

  72. Ben

  73. Ben

  74. Ben

  75. Julie

  76. Victoria

  77. Ben

  78. Ben

  79. Reggie

  80. Julie

  81. Ben

  82. Ben

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by Nick Thacker

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Chachapoyas Region, Peruvian Andes. 1601

  The apu rose high above the others, a mountain among mountains. Snow-capped this time of year and high above the tree line, the peak was a desolate, bare crag, wrapped in rock and nothingness. It gave the impression of an easy ascent, a simple conquest.

  But Jeronimo Valera knew better. The forty-five-year-old man may have been more wiry, thin, and less agile than he’d been in his younger years, but with age came wisdom. He had heard the legends of this peak and its inhabitants since he was a boy, and while many of his men seemed to toss those myths aside as fairy tales, he knew the danger in letting his guard down.

  The peak would be their final destination. It would allow them to see across the vast region of mountainous peaks and wide valleys, and it would allow them to set up a camp on the highest ground in sight.

  First, though, they would need to cross the dangerous valley that lay in front of the massive mountain they were aiming toward. The danger didn’t lie in the known factors — treacherous terrain, predatory jungle life, and a fast-moving river crossing. Instead, the danger Jeronimo sensed was in the unknown. The fear he felt arose from what he couldn’t see, yet knew lay waiting for their arrival.

  The peak loomed above, beckoning. But the actual goal of their expedition was something that he sensed would be waiting for them somewhere between their location on the opposite side of the valley and on the steep slopes of the mountain. They hoped to use the peak as their lookout, but their true desire was to find what they were looking for, and he suspected that they would find it in the dense, dark jungle down below.

  He took a breath, then let it out, not seeing condensation but feeling the sharpness of the cooling air. At this elevation and time of year they would be in danger of getting stranded in a snowstorm, but he knew they were running out of time.

  His men — five Jesuit priests from his order, and five more Inca warriors he had hired for the three-month journey — stopped behind him, and he knew they were all wondering the same thing: would he make them go through the valley?

  He would, and he sensed that they knew it. He had told them of the treachery of the expedition, of the danger and possibility that none of them would return, but he’d also explained to them the importance of it. The mission was simple: descend into the depths of the Chachapoyas, into the area that had never been explored, and find the wak’a — the ‘sacred place.’ From what Jeronimo had read, he believed that they would discover the wak’a ‘beneath the great apu on the final zeq’e.’

  There were 41 zeq’e, or lines, that pointed to the great round stone tablet in Cuzco, the Inca capital, and each of the lines radiated outward from the stone in different directions, each forming a ‘sightline’ back to the homeland. According to his translations, Jeronimo assumed that on one of those invisible sight lines was where they would find the hidden Temple of Wiraqoca Pacayacaciq, or Viracocha, the creator and father of the Inca.

  The god had come out of the sea to teach the scattered bands of Inca refined ways, agriculture, and science.

  He had created civilization.

  Then Viracocha had disappeared, by walking out into the ocean and returning west, promising that one day his followers would return.

  The temple Jeronimo was looking for was all but a myth, but he had more of a reason to find it than simply hunting for long-lost sacred sites.

  He turned to the man who’d stepped up next to him, Luis de Acosta, and waited for him to meet Jeronimo’s eyes.

  “It is down there, my friend,” Jeronimo said.

  Luis nodded, but didn’t speak.

  “We are within a day of the base of the apu, where we will find the temple.”

  “We hope.”

  “Have faith, brother,” Jeronimo said. “It is there, just as the prophecy states. We will find it, and we will find him.”

  Jeronimo saw a quiver of hesitation in his friend’s eye. He didn’t fault him or his men for doubting — his brother, Blas Valera, had supposedly died in Spain four years earlier. His brother, the son of a Spanish conquistador and a Chachapoyas woman, had long been chastised for his mestizo blood, yet held in high regard by some Spanish courts for his deep knowledge of Quechua. He had worked hard to marry the interests of the Inca with those of the Spanish, but that had ultimately ended in failure and his death.

  But Jeronimo had heard rumors. Stirrings, really. There were whispers that a light-skinned Inca had returned from Spain and immediately headed to the Chachapoyas region, where he had disappeared.

  Rumors spread, and Jeronimo discovered that there were a few people who believed the man had fled to the hidden temple to join the ancient race of giants created by Viracocha just before he had created the human race. It was a tall-tale, to be sure, but Jeronimo didn’t care about any of that.

  He wanted to find his brother.

  Prologue

  Jeronimo took a deep breath and tried to relax. We are here, he told himself. We will find him.

  He felt a conflict of emotions. He was excited to find his brother, but he also knew there was a reason no one had ventured into this area before. Or, if they had, they had never returned.

  He thought about his brother, Blas Valera. A member of the Jesuit order, lik
e him, Blas had always been a rash, risk-taking leader. He was a man of strong moral principle, and it had caused him no shortage of grief over the course of his life.

  Blas had been born to a Spaniard father and a Chachapoyas mother, which had allowed the boy to gain an insight few people in the world had: he understood the Quechua language of his mother’s people as well as the rich history of his father’s. He respected both and used it to his advantage. Blas had become one of the crown’s trusted advisors, helping translate Quechuan manuscripts and interpreting some of the more challenging Inca texts.

  He had then turned his eyes on religion, and that was where he had gotten himself into trouble. Blas felt that the religion of the Inca was as deep and profound as Catholicism, and that the language of his mother’s people was so nuanced and complex that it held up to Latin.

  The Spanish, of course, took issue with this theory, and Blas had eventually ended up in prison in Cadiz, where he lived out his final days.

  But Jeronimo Valera did not believe that his strong-willed brother had allowed himself to be defeated so easily. He had spent what little he had to put together this expedition, hoping that it would prove fruitful.

  Finding anything in the valley would be cause for celebration — his people had lived in this region for centuries, and the legends and stories of what existed in this part of the jungle had evolved into fantastic stories of treasure and gold. Jeronimo did not believe many of the stories, but he did believe one thing: something was out here, and it had never been found.

  Had his own brother set out on this very expedition four years ago? Had Padre Blas Valera found the legends itself?

  And if he had, had it consumed him?

  Jeronimo shook off the weariness of the unknown shifting through his mind and stepped forward, now eager to continue his journey. His men and the Inca warriors behind him followed suit.

  “We are close, Jeronimo,” Luis said a few minutes later. “The air is different here.”

  Jeronimo smiled. His Jesuit brother had a keen sense of the jungle, which was a part of why he wanted him along for this journey. Luis had grown up in a small village that had nearly been destroyed when the Inca conquerors came to annex it, then again by the Spanish many years later. As such, Luis had learned to make the jungle his home, to move through the trees and stay off the well-trod paths. Before he had joined the Jesuits, he had been revered in his village as a great tracker and hunter.

  Jeronimo hoped the man’s experience would help on this journey, as well.

  “How far?” Jeronimo asked.

  “A day to the apu, like you said,” Luis said. “But…” his voice trailed off.

  “But we do not know what might be waiting for us down there.”

  Luis nodded gravely.

  “We are no threat to them,” he said. “We are simply looking for answers.”

  “Many have died in the quest for answers,” Luis said. “But you are correct. It does no good to worry. Our Lord will protect us.”

  “Our Lord may not be able to.” Jeronimo had not intended to blaspheme, but his fear had caused him to revert to his human instincts. This land was not theirs, and it had never been. To invoke the Lord’s help, he feared, was to invoke a power that might be met with an opposite — and far more sinister — power.

  There was a small rise in a clearing in front of him and he walked along in silence until he had crested it. At that moment he noticed the volume of the rainforest drop.

  From this spot he could see in every direction, though every direction looked remarkably similar. Dense brown and green jungle sat like a wall on all sides, a sentinel that silently guarded this clearing. The jungle itself had been silenced, the animals and insects seeming to have sensed their arrival.

  He held his breath as he waited for the sounds to return. This phenomenon had been common as they had moved through the densely forested areas. The birds and animals knew that outsiders had arrived, and their silence served as a warning to others.

  Luis and a few of the Inca joined him on the rise, each looking in a different direction.

  After a few more seconds, Luis frowned and turned to Jeronimo.

  “It is quiet,” he said. “The sound of the jungle should have returned by now.”

  Jeronimo felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as his senses tuned to the forest. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, no movement behind the tree line, no activity or rustling of birds.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “It means there is something else here.”

  One warrior nodded slowly, apparently able to understand enough of the Spanish to agree with Luis’ assessment.

  “We keep moving,” Jeronimo said. “There is nothing for us here, and to stop could be more dangerous than to continue.”

  Again, the Inca man nodded. Jeronimo hoped that it meant he agreed with his assessment.

  They trekked on for another three hours, the humidity and heat of the afternoon sun finally beating out the cooler weather, and Jeronimo began to sweat. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, then stopped.

  “Wait,” he said, softly.

  “You see something?” Luis asked.

  “I think. I believe we are near a zeq’e post.” He walked over to a section of trees that had grown together, their canopies now condensed into one great mass of leaves and vines. Their bases were spread apart, dotting the earth with twenty thin trunks. Jeronimo reached a section where two of the trunks were spaced about ten feet apart and their vines and branches reached all the way to the ground.

  The effect was a natural wall, an impenetrable thicket of jungle growth. He reached a hand into the thick, twisted growth and grabbed a handful of vines. He yanked back, and the vines ripped apart, breaking their seal with one another and pulling down a mess of leaves and sticks.

  When he had finished, Luis gasped from behind him.

  Where there previously had been a wall of tree branches and vines, there was now a wall of stone. Hand-carved stone, built of interlocking bricks.

  “We are here,” Jeronimo whispered. “We have found it.”

  He couldn’t read the pictographs on the stone, but he didn’t need to. To find a zeq’e post this far in the jungle meant only one thing: they had found a lost temple.

  Prologue

  “Move swiftly,” Jeronimo said. “And quietly. We do not know what is out here.”

  “There is nothing here,” one of the Jesuit men said from somewhere behind Jeronimo.

  “Perhaps you are correct,” he replied, “but we will take no unnecessary chances. If my brother is here, he may have been captured. We must not attract attention.”

  As he said the words, Jeronimo examined their surroundings. In front of him, three massive huicungo trees grew together into a tall collection of huge fronds, their foot-long, spindly green leaves dancing with one another as they moved in the wind. Behind the huicungo in that area Jeronimo could see another, smaller rock totem, this one likely a sacrificial stone from a long-lost civilization or a simple relic of a larger structure.

  The rest of the area was just as densely packed. A Cashapana, the ‘tree with many legs’ as he knew it, loomed over the group, its many thin trunks winding around one another as they rose from the ground and combined into a larger form. It was larger than any he’d ever seen, and the ‘legs’ were thicker and more numerous, creating an impenetrable wall on that side of the clearing.

  He took a few steps forward, toward the huicungo and the stone rectangle just beyond. As he grew closer, Jeronimo realized that the stone structure sat right at the end of a path, one that wound around a few more trees and disappeared out of sight.

  He felt his heart quicken. We are close, he thought, echoing Luis’ words. We are very close.

  He could hear his brother’s voice in his mind. They laughed together over two cups of Madeira shared between them. He missed his brother, but he truly had more important — and more pressing — reasons for finding him.


  His brother had rushed off to Spain before Jeronimo could confront him about his expeditions with the Spanish. As a man versed and fluent in both Spanish and Quechua, Blas Valera was a popular addition to many of the Spanish conquests in and around their homeland, and as such had traveled more than anyone else Jeronimo knew.

  Further, Blas had written to Jeronimo that he needed to ‘confront the King about the death of our Inca leader, Atahualpa.’ Blas believed that Francisco Pizarro had executed the Inca king for reasons besides attaining gold and fortune.

  He would not explain further in the letter, for fear of sabotage and espionage, but Blas hinted to Jeronimo that he believed the Spanish — and their largest benefactors, the Catholics — wanted something else. They had enough gold and treasure, and they would have an endless supply for the rest of all their lives.

  What they wanted instead, Jeronimo had inferred, was something of far greater value.