All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or
otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or
distribute it by any other means without permission.
Fiction
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names,
characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of
the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely
coincidental.
Moral rights
Dennis M. Sweatt (D.M.S.) asserts the moral right to be
identified as the author of this work.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sweatt, Dennis M., [2020-2026]
The God Breakers, Book 1– The Plunge Mystery: a novel/ by
Dennis M. Sweatt
First Edition
ISBN: 979-8-218-59834-1
ISBN: 979-8-234-04964-3
Lore—Ancient Mystery—Action—Urban Fiction
Chase—Human Origin—Dark Romance—Mythology
Cover Design: by DMS - Photoshop CS2 - Canva
Eye Of Horus, God - Pixabay by Kyraxys
Cover Photo: Dr. Kyle Snook
Copyright © <2026>
All rights reserved.
The God Breakers – Ch. 1
Daughter of the Assassin
“…Sara, so like her mother, I could be dead within the
hour…”
The broken body of a stranger on a living room floor.
Guts seep into pearl-white carpet. Thirsty shag drinks our
blood. These hands again.
Before you turn away, I wear a suit jacket off the rack.
Book bag, day-old stubble, worn-out shoes. Once a
professor of ancient knowledge. I do not get mad in traffic.
I am agreeable. You wouldn’t point a finger and cry, killer.
This requires explanation.
Withering Lane—homes dark, cadaverous. Street lights
dying. Frozen ground numbs my knees. Watching this house
for a day. Grey clouds hide the half-moon. A last lead to a
child I never knew existed.
A midnight storm threatens my safety. Shadowy
contacts—spooks and ghouls, gone like winter moonlight.
One shot. Then nothing. Emilia left me a gift I did not
imagine. I couldn't save my wife. I vowed to save our child.
Sara is here. She must be.
A thin light beckons through a curtain darkly. Hope has
lied to me before. The horizontal cellar door, a weak point.
I swallow the liquid, a promised insanity. An acrid purple
solution—Plunge. Tinged with the
blood of the Anunnaki.
The old gods. The first gods. Their rage, their strength.
Pristine focus. Eight minutes.
An old model Jeep in the driveway.
At the cellar door, I use the pick-tools—resisting the
urge to twist it free with the strength of Plunge. The old
door protests. The basement exhales mold and darkness.
Down the moss-covered steps, across the dark, up the
1
broken stairs. Crossing the kitchen floor. Silence. Should
have been a warning. I control my heavy breath and my
threatening heartbeat.
The first creak at the living room—the dying room.
Stone-faced. His fists flurry with machine mayhem.
Emilia’s training my shield. Minutes pass like seconds, my
blood drips. Vision double. What you get when the bricks
hit back. Plunge lasts for eight minutes. I slip left and
right, running the room, running out of time. Throwing
chairs, books, and the couch. Desperation has poor aim.
Plunge will burn off soon—I'll be defenseless. My chest
heaving. He’s getting warmed up. His knees hinge like a
trap. Veins pulse in his arms and neck. This soldier of Enlil
paces me in tandem. Those eyes, black as the void—the
Anunnaki blood raising his endurance. I drank my last
bottle, taken from the dead.
Fractured frames, fake family photos, lay about white
shag. A spill of puzzles. What could have been. Vase
fragments at my feet—I'm sure two of my ribs are
shattered. A silent fish gasps last its breaths in a wet glass
mosaic. Questions unanswered. We understand each other,
dying.
Sara’s guardian speaks, "Professor Marcus Mitchell,
husband to Emilia Margaret Mitchell," his voice baritone,
"You have disrupted The Order."
"Asshole..."
Not my best. Blood filling my mouth.
I have learned to adapt—by force. University professors
aren't trained for witty repartee. We live in the footnotes
and die of old age.
"I'm just getting started!”
My middle finger the
exclamation point
Better.
I slip left, behind the overturned couch. He steps to the
same music—a dance macabre. Below me, a spear of wood.
Fractured from the innocent bookshelf. It see-saws across a
large crystal bowl. Red and green potpourri, blood and
leaves, Christmas without her. He focuses on me, the couch
between us, the wood unnoticed. Plunge, nitrous in my
veins—my heart a blood-hammered piston. A broken clock. The last beats of Marcus Mitchell.
My face, fear, and desperation. He reacts with revulsion
and jumps. I raise my arms to keep his eyes up. I kick down,
the board rises. It drinks deep from his liver. The wood,
sharp, Cathedral. His hands fall short of my throat. Heavy
and fast, he is. The board stops at his spine, bending him
over. The machine breaks. He looks up from the floor to
speak a final warning or curse—he manages a phlegmy
gurgle. Blood flows dark from his ulcerated gut, soaking his
shirt. It sparkles with Plunge.
Blood of the Anunnaki can
also heal him. I use the crystal bowl as my final epithet as
it rings his skull—blacken pupils roll up into his brain.
Death takes him.
In the kitchen, I wipe blood from my ear and wash my
hands of it. The killing bowl filling with water. The fish
darts inside the stained glass. Seconds from death and
caged again. Something of madness in its look. Judging me.
Now, time to save my daughter from these insane
killers.
Once a hunter of ancient secrets in the blaze of desert
sun. My hands claw the sands of foreign soil, digging for
bits of bone—shards of forgotten stories. Much of the me I
hoped to be, missing then. Then she was there. Then she
was not.
Emilia fell. She didn't scream.
My wife gave birth to Sara before the fall. Emilia kept
our daughter in secret. Both lived in the barbed embrace of
a power older than the pyramids. The old gods, and their
modern servants. The Order of Enlil. They used my life to
their own ends twice. I helped them do it. Once upon a
time, I taught Ancient Mesopotamian history, the first
Sumerian civilizations. You’re nodding off. I get it. No
lectures.
This is a story of the roads we are all forced to travel. I
have touched a sleeping god—one of the Anunnaki—they
who created us.
Prepare yourself for their return.
This is a field manual.
Sara Margaret Mitchell, the daughter I do not know.
Tied to a chair. My knots.
Emilia, mother to Sara, fell from Coit Tower. From these
hands. I am not the hero of this story. A year of wandering,
lost without her, searching for reason. Living after the rain
of fire, when the satellites lit the sky. Slept with my back to
a cold wall, dreaming of my wife. The nightmares of Emilia
falling to her death began to fade. The ivy halls of my
university were rebuilt, my absence forgiven. I threw
myself into the work, pursuing tenure as Professor
Emeritus.
We wait for Sara to be conscious.
I removed myself from a killing life. Alone as intended
for twenty years, partially retired. Teaching part-time in
relative safety. One day, lost in melancholy over what could
have been, an old man reeking of death appeared from a
shadow in my office.
"This is your daughter. They have her."
He refused to reveal his motives or identity. I argued
the impossibility until I saw her photo. Hair of fire, eyes of
jade. Fierce and beautiful. Emilia's child. My legs gave out.
Looking up from my office chair to find him gone.
He gave numbers of two contacts. If they were willing,
if I could afford the bribes. Those contacts lead to others.
My dead wife had secrets. I didn't know she was a killer
when we met. She smelled of garden flowers after cold
rain. Gems for eyes. If she had a title, it would have been
"Ancient Cult Murder Queen," though, at times, she
answered to Mrs. Mitchell.
The guardian has fallen. Servant of an ancient cult no
more. Plunge is closing my wounds. I sift through the house
for crumbs to their trail—The Order of Enlil. Attempt to
grasp their essence, you clutch gossamer threads. Ten
thousand years of smoke gone in a breath. This cult is more
murder than metaphor. They invite you to the knife. I have
the scars. This lead promised my daughter would be here.
I search the fallen. Hundreds, perfectly stacked.
Drained Plunge bottle. One key. Strange angles. No lock I
recognize.
I take it anyway.
My hands in dead pockets—hair aflame, Sara erupted
from the closet. Heel kick. A blur. Her foot whistles past my
jaw. Fast. Sharp. Tempered. The last vial of Plunge
swallowed eight minutes before. My blood is lava. A god's
blood, before the fade. The warning bell sounds. She
weaves through my defenses, knowing my every move. Not
this: The Water Strike. Emilia taught her everything.
Everything but this. Months to learn and months to recover.
Her mother's daughter, student of the world—our violence
in common, we fight.
"Sara, stop!"
The response is left, right, left, swift, accurate. Her fists
seek vengeance. Her kicks scythe through the silent air. No
choice. My fingers a knife's edge strike her artery. I reduce
speed to avoid permanent harm. The impact stops blood
from reaching the brain. Enough for a short nap. She drops.
My guts braid themselves.
With frayed rope from the
basement, I tie her to a chair from the kitchen. Staring at
her slumped body, trying to imagine her childhood. Riding
bikes, birthday cake, laughing with Emilia. No avail. Plunge
sharpens my focus, burning off dopamine, blunting my
imagination. This ancient liquid is destroying my body as it
alters my destiny.
Feeding me—Power.
She stirs.
I wait for Sara's green eyes to focus on me. I lean
forward, hands woven over my knees. Through her copper
hair, she leers, straining the ropes.
"Your struggles can cease. Your mother taught me those
knots. Listen to my side, then decide. Or get disappeared,
as your mom would say."
An angry, flightless bird, Emilia's lessons hold her
there.
"I am, was…disappeared. I know why she kept me from
you..."
"...Not the reasons you think."
I sit in the other kitchen chair, "Sorry about your
friend." I nod at her guardian.
"I knew him as well as I know you. I don't want to in
5
either case."
"Your mother warned the Order of Enlil will tighten its
grip. Those people are evil, Sara. Whether a person is good
or bad, it won't make a difference. It's about population
control and some nutty prophecy."
"You really think I need to be saved?” Sara squints, “Are
you going to fight The Order all by your lonesome? One
aging professor against a global cabal. Get bent."
"There must be a price. This is not my life. I'm
drowning in blood!" Not my voice.
She glances at the body and the new color of carpet.
"For what they did to my wife...I need more Plunge. I
need to find the head of your cult. And you, my daughter,
will help me get it. Who is the Adashur?" Her eyes widen,
"I need to find them. Face the head of The Order."
Under a tight brow, hers were Emilia's eyes, too. Wide
from revelation and anger, and so green.
"Look at your protector with a bowl-sized cavity in his
head. How many false leads, how many countries, how
many times they made me hunt for you? I didn't give up."
Sara Margaret Mitchell raises her head.
"She was using you as cover. Someone's probably using
you right now. I hate you. She hated you."
...ouch
"Your lies are the lies they gave you. Yes, I was being
used in the beginning. And from the beginning, I loved her.
Nothing these cultists said, or you believe, will change
this," I centered my eyes on hers, "Nothing."
"Ha. You’re insane—Plunge has ruined your mind."
The effect of the ancient liquid still dilating my pupils.
"How’s your neck?" I walk around the body and to the
window, pretending to peer through the louvers. "This
house is deep black. Your mother taught you to fight well.
Who feeds the fish? Did your mother tell you how we met?"
The concoction wearing off, I am rambling.
"It doesn’t matter," Sara says, looking away from me,
"You let her die."
"No. Not ever. She is my world. Your mother was leaving
The Order."
