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

“You mentioned that it has been on Earth before?” she asked, wanting to seize the chance to possibly illuminate Ratt’s mysterious message.

“Oh, yes,” Don Luis gloated. “To say that I became obsessed with my god is an understatement, my dear. For the last sixty years, I have sent my agents into the lands of Mexico-That-Was. To hunt down any clue that might help me to understand what I had become. After many long decades, the search paid off.”

“What? What did you find?” Maya asked, pressing herself closer to him, gazing longingly into his eyes. “I want to know everything!”

“Come, let me show you.”

“Behold, the evidence,” Don Luis said, gesturing to a large book, propped open with care in an ornate wrought-iron easel that adorned his bedroom’s largest oak table.

Maya slowly approached the book. Even from across the room, she could make out faded illuminations, the kind she had not seen firsthand in well over a thousand years.

“Written and illustrated proof that our maker has been with us for some time,” Don Luis said from behind her, hanging back.

The book looked heavy. Heavy and old. As she came to it, she cautiously extended two fingers and brushed their tips across the rough and crackled edges of the painted and time-stained pages. Handwritten text in the patient style of calligraphers past filled the majority of both pages currently on display. The ink appeared to be made with actual silver and gold, as it was radiant, too radiant for its age. She recognized the language instantly, although the nuances of the dialect were older than Don Luis Fernando ten times over.

Spanish. Old Spanish.

Besides the ancient text, the top half of the right page was filled by an illustration, illuminated in the way of countless religious frescos and manuscripts.

When Maya leaned in and studied the depiction closer, she gasped.

“Stunning, isn’t it?” Don Luis asked softly, his approaching footfalls punctuating the space between Maya’s accelerated breaths. “The iconographers captured its likeness perfectly.”

On the open page, a hand-drawn simulacrum of the Demon Urchin stared at Maya with open, fanged sucker-mouths at the end of its multitude of tentacles.

“H-how?” Maya asked, honestly puzzled. She had existed on Earth for millennia and hadn’t seen a single interstellar being walk, or slither, on its surface since the first imprisonment of her late husband, Enki.

Having reached her side, Don Luis gestured to the book. “This,” he began, “is the Codex Sitis Autem Sanguis. Compiled by religious brothers in my country’s first Dominican monastery. Its founders, the very calligraphers and iconographers that wrote this book, were among some of the first priests brought to the new world at the request of Cortez, a man I admire, a man who knew how to achieve his goals. A kindred spirit.”

Maya looked into Don Luis’s eyes and could see that he was telling the truth. And why should she doubt him? The proof was staring her in the face. She turned back to the book and allowed her gaze to loiter on the icon. There was no mistaking it; it was the urchin. Her gazed drifted over the calligraphy. Words jumped out at her: blood, fire, devil, Lucifer, sunlight. She shivered.

“The conquistadors of Spain came to this new world in search of gold. Instead, they found the devil himself.”

“So it has been here since before the Storm. Before the Drops,” Maya stated, more of a proclamation than a question.

“We aren’t actually sure. It may be that it merely visited somehow.”

Maya spun on him and studied him, her face begging the unspoken question.

“See here?” he said, and stepped in closer, reaching past her and carefully flipping the thick, stiff pages of the Codex one at a time. “Ah, yes, right here.” He pointed to a long passage of handwriting, the only illustrations the decorative frame around the letters and a crucifix on the bottom of the second page.

“The brothers tell here of having met with Juan de Zumárraga, the first Bishop of my country, and his Franciscans. They discuss here their knowledge of the demon’s weakness. See?” Don Luis ran his finger across the strings of letters.

“They accompanied the soldiers and Cortez himself to the devil’s lair, prepared to do battle with fire ‘with God on our side,’ they say. But when they arrived, the beast disappeared before their eyes, never to be seen again. They report strange colors in the sky, and what can only be an earthquake. ‘The land itself shook with the wrath of the Lord, crumbling stone, and toppling trees. The earth broke open and swallowed the unwary. The heavens parted, and we beheld the glory of our Lord, flashes of relámpago, lightning, and a host of angels filled the night sky. When we arrived at the lair of Lucifer, we watched in disbelief as he faded from our eyes, surrounded by flashing cubes. God himself had done the work for us, blessed be his name, Jesu Christo, nuestro Dios.”

“Incredible,” Maya said, not sure what else to say. Her mind was aflood with questions, however, questions that she couldn’t ask without revealing to her host that she was older than he and possessed a deeper understanding of the world’s history than a traveling troubadour ought to.

“Do you think it could happen again?” she asked, genuinely wanting to know.

“Perhaps. But I certainly hope not. Without me to protect it, my fate would be uncertain. And I, my bride-to-be, am in no hurry to die.”

“Man, I am starving!” Carbine said, rubbing his belly to emphasize his spoken lament. “What I wouldn’t give to be down there in Ratt’s place and get me some real tacos.”

“We still have three tubes of ration paste left, bud,” Jon reminded him.

“Oh. Boy. Ration paste. My favorite,” Carbine said in a monotone voice and went about digging the tube out of his ruck.

“Jon? Boys?” a voice in Jon’s ear called.

When Jon heard Maya speak his name into the necklace radio, he nearly