The Fifth World Read online

  “Are you Tess Mitchell?”

  An indigenous-looking man nearing forty, with a thin beard and a face weathered by the sun, yanked her out of her thoughts as he stepped out of a red minivan that had just pulled up alongside her car. He wore a brightly colored poncho with geometric motifs that she could barely make out, because his headlights were still on.

  “How . . . ?”

  “What? How do I know your name?” He smiled. “A good friend of yours told us. Professor Jack Bennewitz.”

  As he spoke, two other men stepped out of the minivan and walked over to her. She had a difficult time seeing them because, despite the clarity shed by the first-quarter moon, the hotel lights suddenly went out, and with them all the lights in the neighborhood. Tess jumped with a start.

  “You don’t have to be afraid anymore, miss,” the indigenous man said.

  “Anymore? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That time has reached its end and the cosmic clock has done its job. We have just crossed the threshold from the twenty-first to the twenty-second of December.”

  Then he added:

  “Welcome to the Fifth World, Miss Mitchell.”

  Tess shook her head.

  “Please don’t be afraid. Yesterday we paid a visit to your physics professor to convince him not to publish the information he had regarding the solar storm that the two of you detected. The same information that you are carrying right now in that laptop of yours.”

  “You . . . you were the ones who killed him?” Tess was incredulous. More than reproach, what echoed in her voice was fear.

  “Oh, come on! We only sped up his passage, Miss Mitchell,” the man said, without a trace of emotion. “We couldn’t risk allowing Dr. Bennewitz to reveal his findings to the scientific community because, without realizing it, he would have prevented the sky from opening up as it just did.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .”

  “I’m sure you understand the scientific jargon better than I do, miss. But what just happened, though you and many other people may not realize it, is that earth has experienced a blast of cosmic energy so powerful that it produced a dimensional leap. Our position in the universe has shifted, and just as was foretold thousands of years ago, a new world has been born.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” replied Tess. “Who are you people? Where did you come from?”

  “We are the survivors of the Mayan people, miss. Descendants of those few people who remained on this plane of reality when our ancestors transcended dimensions at the end of the Third World. The world that just left us—forever, in fact—was the fourth.”

  “Well, I . . . I haven’t noticed a thing!”

  “Oh, really?”

  The man’s ironic smile, fixed on his face, made her wary.

  “Have you tried to make a phone call? You won’t be able to,” he said, laughing as he watched Tess unsuccessfully dial the emergency number from her cell phone. “Have you heard anything at all on the radio in the past few hours? No. And from now on you won’t, not ever again. Have you tried plugging anything into an outlet? You might as well say good-bye to all that forever. In the Fifth World none of that will work anymore. The sun has altered the electrical balance in the ionosphere and, as such, in the entire planet.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Look!” One of the other men with them pointed upward. The night sky had transformed into something phantasmagoric, surreal. The silvery sky seemed to have morphed into a spongy substance that flowed as if dragged by the wind. It was a kind of aurora borealis, one that was nothing like anything any human had ever before seen on Earth.

  “Now do you believe us?” the man asked. “Everything is mutating. Even you. You don’t realize it, but your entire molecular structure and DNA are changing at this moment.”

  “Right . . . ,” she said, quivering. “So, what do you want from me?”

  “We’ve come to deliver you a message: Professor Jack Bennewitz is waiting for you at the Teotihuacán ruins. He wants to explain everything.”

  “Jack . . . ?” Tess was unable to finish her sentence.

  FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, BILL DAFOE checked, but without luck. The conventional communications grid, including the high-resolution microwave signal, was down. The order to search for Tess Mitchell hadn’t made it beyond the four walls of the embassy. Instinctively, he leaned out the window of his office on the sixth floor of the building. To his surprise, all the Christmas lights lining Serrano had gone dark. Not a single bus traveled down this street, one of Madrid’s main arteries, and even the many Santa Clauses that just a few hours earlier had been clogging the sidewalks of this commercial zone had disappeared into thin air. The city seemed deserted.

  “I have to check something,” he said to Eileen, and bounded down the stairs. The elevator, along with all the electricity in the building, had gone dead as well.

  When he arrived at the building’s front gate, the Marine Corps guards and the National Police in charge of watching over the embassy precinct were in a state of distress. Everything had stopped working. Even—and this was the strangest thing of all—the diesel engines of the two assault tanks that the Spanish police used to guard the surrounding streets.

  “Bill! Now that’s funny!” shouted the officer responsible for allowing outsiders to gain access to the building. He knew Dafoe from their years as schoolmates back in Lexington, Kentucky. “With this damn blackout I had no way of calling up to let you know. You’ve got a visitor. In the waiting area.”

  “A visitor?”

  “Yeah . . . Let’s see,” he said, automatically glancing down at the embassy’s entry and exit list. “His name is Francisco Ruiz, and he says that you and your partner have a folder of his that he’d like to pick up.”

  “Francisco Ruiz?”

  A SOLEMN ATMOSPHERE PERVADED THE CEREMONIAL complex of Teotihuacán. The grayish silhouette of the massive pyramids and the hulking magnificence of Cerro Gordo on the horizon shone dramatically beneath the powerful glow of the moon. Next to the smallest pyramid, in a plaza adorned with reliefs of the Quetzal, a curious cross between bird and insect, Tess just barely made out the familiar image of a man dressed in white. It seemed as though he’d been standing there for a millennium, waiting for her.

  “The best place in the world for us to find each other again, Tess!”

  Jack Bennewitz’s booming voice reverberated between the empty structures. Tess Mitchell didn’t understand anything, and her face showed it. Right at that moment, she was tempted to think that everything she had been through in the past few hours had been nothing more than a bad practical joke.

  “It’s me—Jack!” he said, opening his arms wide. “I don’t know what the boys told you, but this is real! At midnight the planet entered into a totally new vibrational phase. All matter, including dark matter, has begun to resonate at a frequency that was unknown up until now. Do you understand, Tess?”

  “But . . . you’re alive!” she exclaimed.

  “Alive, dead . . . what does it matter? Those are states of being that belong to the old world. We’re in a new dimension now.”

  The young woman’s hands stroked the soft white cotton of Jack Bennewitz’s suit. It had to be an illusion.

  “Come on, Tess! Okay, maybe I didn’t enter this dimension voluntarily, but the men who killed me knew that they were just speeding up my passage by a few hours. They even left you a sign so that you wouldn’t worry . . .”

  “They didn’t leave me anything!” she protested, stepping away from him.

  “Yes, they did, Tess. They left you a Quetzal butterfly, like the ones on these reliefs. Don’t you recognize it? For the people that built Teotihuacán, as well as the ancestors that established the Mayan calendar, the butterfly symbolized the passage of time. The shift from one dimension to another. I just stopped being a larva before you did. But now both of us are like them . . .”

  The young woman touched her handbag, feeling
around for the little box she had taken from Jack’s office. Jack looked at her, content.

  “And the rest of the world, Jack? What’s happening to them? Are they all butterflies now, too?”

  “The rest of the world too, Tess. Little by little they’ll all begin to realize it.”

  Jack Bennewitz put his arms around her shoulders before saying anything else. His touch was real. Physical. Just as it had always been.

  “You know something?” he said. “It’s funny that your instinct brought you here to this place tonight, a night of such transformation.”

  “Funny? What’s so funny about it?”

  “Well, Tess. You should know that Teotihuacán means ‘the place where men become gods.’ And now that you and I have died, that’s precisely what we have become. How does it feel to be a god, Tess?”

  About the Author

  JAVIER SIERRA, whose works have been translated into thirty-five languages, is the author of The Lost Angel, The Lady in Blue, and the New York Times bestselling novel The Secret Supper. A native of Teruel, Spain, he currently lives in Madrid.

  ATRIA BOOKS/SIMON & SCHUSTER AUTHOR PAGE

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Javier-Sierra/35013262

  AUTHOR WEBSITES:

  JavierSierra.com

  TheSecretSupper.com

  TheLostAngelBook.com

  TheLadyinBlue.net

  ABOUT ATRIA BOOKS

  ATRIA BOOKS was launched in April 2002 by publisher Judith Curr as a new hardcover and paperback imprint within Simon & Schuster, Inc. The name Atria (the plural of atrium—a central living space open to the air and sky) reflects our goals as publishers: to create an environment that is always open to new ideas and where our authors and their books can flourish. We look for innovative ways to connect writers and readers, integrating the best practices of traditional publishing with the latest innovations in the digital world. We are committed to publishing a wide range of fiction and nonfiction for readers of all tastes and interests.

  The first book published under the Atria name, The Right Words at the Right Time by Marlo Thomas, became an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, and since then Atria has gone on to publish more than 185New York Times bestsellers. Atria is the publishing home to many major bestselling authors, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jude Deveraux, Vince Flynn, T.D. Jakes, Shirley MacLaine, Kate Morton, Jodi Picoult, Sister Souljah, Brad Thor, Jennifer Weiner, Lauren Weisberger, Zane, and Rhonda Byrne, author of the international bestsellers The Secret and The Power.

  In recent years, the imprint has placed a strategic emphasis on publishing for diverse audiences through the acquisition of the African American–oriented press Strebor Books, the launch of Atria Español, and co-publishing agreements with Beyond Words Publishers and Cash Money Records. Atria Books also publishes literary fiction and topical nonfiction in trade paperback under the Washington Square Press imprint, and popular fiction and nonfiction under the Emily Bestler Books imprint, launched in 2011.

  Atria—books that entertain and enlighten.

  Facebook.com/AtriaBooks

  Twitter.com/AtriaBooks

  ASK ATRIA

  Ask Atria is a place where you can ask all your questions about book publishing—ask an editor, a publicist, a publisher, or a marketer!

  Visit vyou.com/AskAtria

  THE LOST ANGEL

  New York Times bestselling author Javier Sierra returns with a heart-pounding thriller about mankind’s most ancient desire—and the modern evil some will unleash to obtain it.

  In approximately seventy-two hours, a little-known Middle Eastern terrorist group plans to bring about the end of the world. Convinced that they are the descendants of angels and on the verge of at last returning to heaven, they kidnap scientist Martin Faber, whose research has uncovered an extraordinary secret. Martin’s only hope for survival is the rare psychic gift of his young wife. But Julia Alvarez must find the courage to save her husband while running from religious extremists and clandestine government agencies.

  Book Trailer for The Lost Angel:

  http://www.thelostangelbook.com/multimedia.php

  To download the full eBook, visit your favorite retailer today!

  Javier Sierra

  The Lost Angel

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Atria Books eBook.

  Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Atria Books and Simon & Schuster.

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com