Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

crew and making boatloads of cold, hard cash. My mother and siblings never went without anything. I provided for them in all ways, but I had to do so from a distance. My mother hated me for working for the cartel. Can you believe that? She never once said thank you for all the things I did for her and the children! I killed for her! And she never—!” Don Luis caught himself starting to go off, stopped, and collected himself.

As Maya listened, she began to form an understanding of this man. He was too far down the road for her to truly sympathize with him, but she did begin to see the link between who he had been then and who he was now.

“Many people despised the cartel for its methods, but what they failed to understand is that it provided a type of order. Its methods were in reality no more brutal than any government of the world; sometimes, people need killing for the order to be maintained, for the money to flow. And it always flows uphill. It’s easy to hate a cartel and love a state. But what cartel ever killed as many people as any of the world’s wars? The dons always gave back to their community and protected those who knew their place and didn’t cause trouble. Now that I look back on it, those days growing up is where I studied and learned my methods. I run this city on the same principles, and everyone here, every single man, woman, and child, is infinitely better off under my wing than on their own, out in the chaos of the world. That is a truth that everyone in Old Puebla learned when the Storm came.”

They reached an intersection of stairs, one leading up and the other down. Don Luis gestured to the set leading down, and Maya nodded her understanding, keeping silent to allow him to continue his soliloquy.

“You see, the people never saw the actual order and stability that the cartel brought to the city until it was gone. When the Storm came, and the east coast was flooded, and the ground broke open from all the earthquakes, the seams of the system began to unravel. The head of the cartel, a man named Garcia, died along with his inner circle in the first quake. A gas main ruptured and caused an explosion that took out all the upper management in one instant. Ambitious lieutenants and rivals took advantage of the missing, dead, and distracted leaders of the cartel. War broke out nearly overnight. Food and clean water shortages caused the common people to turn on each other. The cartels were broken and weren’t able to maintain order in the common population, and so chaos ensued.” Don Luis paused, both in speech and walk, and turned to look at Maya. A fire smoldered in his undead eyes.

“Then the Drops happened. What was left of the cartel's soldiers tried to fight off the first wave of monsters, but without their leadership, they soon degenerated into small gangs. Before a month had passed, it was all just a memory. There was no civilization left. If Garcia had lived, he could have maintained order and things would have been different. Without him at the helm, the people, the masses,” Don Luis nearly spat the word, his voice dripping with disdain, “the useless feeders who always bemoaned their status under the cartel, were finally free to run the show themselves, and just look at how they handled it. Not even a month to go from their stable lives to complete barbarism.” Don Luis laughed at this.

Maya wondered at the mind that could think and believe such a spin on the story of the Fall. They walked down one last flight of stone steps and came to a large, circular slab of rock that served as a door.

“My mother and siblings all died shortly after the world dipped into madness. They say nature abhors a vacuum and I believe it. Without a ruler, without the cartel, my people were lost. No better off than animals. This changed all that.” Don Luis let go of Maya’s hand, stepped up to the door-slab, and placed his hands on it.

Even in the dim light cast by the torches now some distance above, Maya could see that the round slab was not featureless. Every square inch of it was covered in an Aztec motif, much like the ubiquitous tattoos that decorated the necks of every human in the city. The carvings were raised, embossed, and she could see what looked like a primitive depiction of what could only be described as a demon’s face in the center of the slab. It had several fanged mouths and many eyes. It was monstrous, alien, and non-mammalian. Even in her guise as a vampire-enthralled Lily Sapphire, Maya was unable to suppress the slight cold shiver that ran up and down her spine, causing a wave of goosebumps. Her soft arm and neck hairs stood up as if being drawn toward something on the other side of the slab, as if by the pull of a dark star.

She watched as Don Luis slid his hands into two of the door-demon’s mouths. He hissed in masochistic pleasure and then removed his hands, now bleeding. It looked like he had reached his hands into a bucket of gore.

Maya began to wonder about the nature of the door’s mouth and the source of the blood on Don Luis’s hands, but then watched as the red streams dried up and vanished like a pond in a drought.

That was his blood. But why? What is this?

Tiny trickles of blood leaked from the stone demon’s mouth, and then the slab began to roll to the side, opening the way to the chamber beyond. The light from the torches did not penetrate the room; it was as if the darkness, normally a simple lack of light, were an actual curtain here, blanketing the