DRACULA OF THE APES
Book Two: The Ape
G. Wells Taylor
Copyright 2014 G. Wells Taylor
Smashwords Edition
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Cover Design by G. Wells Taylor
Edited by Katherine Tomlinson
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Table of Contents
Dedication
October, 1894.
CHAPTER 1 - Goro’s Land
CHAPTER 2 - The Tribe
CHAPTER 3 - Eeda
1894 - 1899 - One to five years of age.
CHAPTER 4 - The Night Ape
CHAPTER 5 - Grooming Rock
CHAPTER 6 - Mates and Playmates
1900-1902 - Six to eight years of age.
CHAPTER 7 - Friends and Enemies
CHAPTER 8 - Mystery and Danger
1903 - Nine years of age.
CHAPTER 9 - Special Son
CHAPTER 10 - Omag’s Mischief
CHAPTER 11 - The Lair of Fur-nose
CHAPTER 12 - Treasures
CHAPTER 13 - The Shining Fang
1904-1905 - Ten to eleven years of age.
CHAPTER 14 - A Jungle Joke
CHAPTER 15 - The Call of Dreams
CHAPTER 16 - The Pride of Prey
CHAPTER 17 - A Great Killer
1907 - Thirteen years of age.
CHAPTER 18 - Seeds of Ambition
CHAPTER 19 - The Two Trees
CHAPTER 20 - Magnuh
CHAPTER 21 - The Bakwaniri
CHAPTER 22 - Demons, Curses and Crimes
CHAPTER 23 - The Guilty Parties
1907-1909 - Thirteen to fifteen years of age.
CHAPTER 24 - Life Flies Forward
CHAPTER 25 - Strange Apes
CHAPTER 26 - The Lions
1910 - Sixteen years of age.
CHAPTER 27 - Harkon the Huntress
CHAPTER 28 - Lurking Vengeance
1912 - Eighteen years of age.
CHAPTER 29 - Heirs to the Crown
CHAPTER 30 - Skin-stones and Doorways
CHAPTER 31 - The Cripple’s Cane
CHAPTER 32 - King of the Apes
Sample The Curse Book 3 in the Dracula of the Apes trilogy by G. Wells Taylor
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Connect with the Author
Acknowledgments:
A special thanks to the irreplaceable Katherine Tomlinson who edited these books.
This trilogy is dedicated to the authors of the classic novels that inspired its creation.
Bram Stoker
Dracula
&
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan of the Apes
October, 1894.
CHAPTER 1 – Goro’s Land
The jungle seemed to go on forever. This African rainforest was so overgrown with verdure that the midday sun could barely penetrate its leafy covering. Some beasts could make the climb high into the thick canopy, there to watch the mist and fog that crept through the upper reaches and clung to the loftiest branches until it was dispelled in the tropical heat.
Indeed, so thick was the jungle canopy that raindrops often failed to reach the ground, were instead consumed as they dripped and fell from the heights, sucked right into the red-mawed gullets of the arboreal denizens, or soaked into moss-covered branches as thick as trees, captured to form waterholes for high-ranging animals roaming through.
The upper reaches teemed with living things. A cycle of life and death consumed each day.
As it did on the ground, where it was dark and shadowy; where the undergrowth grew thick with leaf and thorny vine; where perpetual twilight gripped the land from sunup to sunset and threw endless shadows amongst the mammoth tree trunks.
The jungle seemed to go on forever, but it did not. Few of its inhabitants understood that because few had marked many days on any calendar. It was “day one” in earth’s history for most of them, or “day two” or “three.” Some lucky few had a grasp for greater spans of time, but with that often came the curse of sentience; and in such a case, fear of instant death would bind those so endowed much tighter to their own beating hearts, and the “days” they could appreciate became dangerous to dwell upon.
They lived in the “now” because a lapse in that focus could make any moment their last.
But sentience was a rare and dubious prize in the jungle, so to most “forever” existed in varied lengths, but was always marked between birth and death. Both of those states were in profusion in the wild, and so “forever” varied from creature to creature.
A basic primitive law was created within these numerous perspectives that stalked each creature to the end. The length of life was inconstant, counted in days, and measured in paces, footfalls, or the flap of wings as one traveled between water supply and food sources, between colony, flock or herd, and mates, offspring or enemies.
A day’s walk from the Gypsy Horvat’s yurt, a tribe of unusual anthropoid apes had stopped to forage in a small clearing lush with berry bushes and ripe grasses. They were heading back to the fruit-rich forests that bordered the sandy beaches to the west after taking a long meandering loop south to eat tubers, water chestnuts and grubs in the swamps before heading north again to the Grooming Rock where they had stayed for three long days.
The tribe of apes moved constantly throughout their range in search of food and water, a search that took them east along elephant trails where they traveled inland to clearings rich with grasses and other delicious foliage; or as the season dictated, they crossed overland on a southern course to swampy coastal lowlands. At other times, they would employ these traveling methods in tandem by walking northeast along the elephant track until a hike through thorny ravines brought them to where mango and nut-bearing trees covered the low hills.
Their constant wander brought them at times near to the sands by the great blue water where they dined on shellfish and other tasty shore dwellers that were trapped in a shallow harbor where a long segmented arm of stone stretched in pieces out into the waves.
There the bravest apes could wade in search of the delicious sea creatures that made their homes in the dimpled stone.
When they weren’t raiding these tidal pools, they
