"All this makes me want to take up smoking again," I said, only mostly kidding. My chest tightened with a nicotine craving, and the desire to take a long, slow drag off of a cigarette filled my mind. The relaxation as I exhaled…The cancer and constant coughing! Snap out of it.
“How long has it been since you smoked, Riley?” asked Elias. “It has to have been before we met.”
“I quit the second I found out I was pregnant,” I said, still fighting a bit of a craving. “David was a happy surprise to us, or I would’ve quit when we startedtryingto get pregnant.”
"Let's get on track." Anthony chastised me. "If you want to make the journey to the underworld, then we'll have to sneak into the manor for a few more books. This one will get us started, but we need to find as much information as possible about the early days of our people."
"Can't we just go to Peru?" I asked. "I studied the Inca people a bit in college, and there are still a lot of people there that follow the old religions and worship the old gods. We could travel straight to the source."
Elias nodded his head. "That's mostly the plan, but we want to start with as much information as possible. Plus, the Inca descendants think the race of the Supay is a race of demons. They don't realize who and what we are. Their ancestors so quickly ran our ancestors into hiding that their legends made us into demons."
Anthony read over the book. "It's written in Quechua. Quechua was the language of the Inca, and many in Peru still speak it today. We’re taught to speak it during our studies as teens, but it's been a while and is a little difficult to translate." He looked up at us, embarrassed. "I'm rusty."
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and started to look up history on the Inca people. It dinged and played a little song as it booted up. I couldn't remember when I'd checked it last, so there was no telling when it turned off. I'd only brought it out of habit. There wasn't anyone for me to contact, except work.
I guess I've effectively quit that job.
A gust of air hit me, and my phone disappeared from my hand and smashed on the floor. My brain tried to process what happened. I knew I didn't drop it. Did a rogue gust of wind knock it out of my hand? If it was blown out of my hand, why didn't I see it fall? In an instant it was gone and shattered.
"Sorry, Riley."
I looked up at Elias questioningly.
"I didn't realize you still had your phone. We can’t have any devices with us that use GPS. If you want to look something up online, you'll need to use the computer in the living room, but I caution you not to log on to any social media or email accounts, so your location isn't pinpointed."
He knocked it out of my hand so fast I didn’t even see it happening.Will I ever get used to their abilities?
"It's been off, Eli. I actually don't think it’s been on since the last day I worked." I counted the days in my head. "I guess that would've been four days ago." The phone was totally ruined, but no pictures were on it, and the other data could be retrieved from the cloud later. Elias cleaned up the phone pieces and walked with me to the living room to get on the computer while Anthony poured over the book.
Chapter 7
We spent several hours reading websites about the Inca people and their descendants in modern Peru. Since the Inca didn’t have a written language, they’d used a series of knotted strings to relay messages. That’s part of the reason so little was known about the origins of the Inca and the Supay. Written Inca information today was legend passed down orally from one generation to the next.
Villages existed that kept to the ancient Inca traditions. They only spoke the Inca language of Quechua, and they strictly adhered to the old ways of worshiping the gods. They ate the food their ancestors ate and shunned modern vehicles in favor of a traditional llama.
Elias already knew most of the information about the Inca history and traditions. He left me to learn what I could while he went in the kitchen to start mapping out our route with Anthony. As teens, they’d both traveled to Peru under the guise of tourists. It was a Supay rite of passage to travel to their homeland and learn about the culture from the natives.
My eyes drooped after several hours of reading, so I wandered into the kitchen. Anthony was gone and Elias was making a grilled cheese sandwich. I sat at the table and propped my head in my hands.
“Where's Anthony?” I asked.
“He went to buy supplies for the journey. We’ll have to drive for a while,” he replied.
“And how exactly are you going to have enough blood the whole way?” I asked, uncomfortable with the idea of the two of them sipping from random people along the way.
“Actually, Riley, I wanted to talk to you about that,” he replied and placed a gooey grilled cheese sandwich and a big glass of milk in front of me. “Anthony and I don't need an excessive amount of blood to remain healthy. We’ll feel a bit hungry, but as long as we get a small bit every day, we'll be fine.” He sat beside me. “Eat.” I stuck my tongue out at him before complying. “We only drank a fourth of a bag of blood each this morning and could’ve done a little less. We’re hoping that between the bags we have left, and a little donation from you, we'll be able to make the journey to Peru before we would need a more significant amount of blood.”
“Donate. You want to tap my vein? Bag a little blood?” I teased.
His cheeks blushed bright red.
“Elias, it occurred to me. In the myths, a vampire’s blood volume depends on how much blood they drink. Sort of like the blood they drink is what fills their veins. But you just blushed. Obviously, you have actual blood of your own pumping through your veins.”
“We Supay function much the same as humans. We have our own blood supply, and the blood we drink is our food. If we were allowed in the sciences, we could pinpoint exactly what it is about blood that sustains us. We’re hoping the new Junta lead will begin changing the minds of the elders of the Unseen. No Unseen creature is allowed in the sciences; it’s not only the Supay. Anyway, if we're grievously injured, we do need more blood. I think that has something to do with the magic in our bodies. Blood is food for us, most of the time. If we don’t eat, we get weak, like a human would. We can eat some food and drink water and gainsomenutrients but not enough to sustain us without any blood.”
“Okay. I understand. Do we have any way to contact Anthony?” I asked.
“He has a burner phone, yes. I can call him. What do you need to tell him?”
