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And he was asleep. Beyond him, there was a woman, and another woman beyond that.
There was no one who matched the voice that had tickled her ear, threading legends from ancient times. Lyta straightened her gaze up to the sky.
The agony of just that slight movement, holding her head to see who was talking, had all been in vain. And it stole the last dregs of strength she had for the day.
She closed her eyes, wishing that her sleep would be eternal.
Now is not the time for any to sleep. Death will die, and the Queen awakens, stirring from her millennial slumber.
Lyta opened her eyes again.
And as she did, she looked up into a pair of catlike eyes, slitted in the middle, amber wreathing the narrow flames, and a flat face framed by a cobra-hood of muscle flexing in sheets from top of head to shoulders.
Before Lyta could open her mouth to scream, scaled fingers covered her lips, and a hiss issued from his.
Chapter 2
As always when the Cerberus warriors said goodbye to those whom they’d assisted, the parting moments were filled with a quiet sadness and embraces that seemed to last a moment too long. Of course, Brigid Baptiste might have had a biased view of those hugs, especially since she realized that she was an attractive and desirable woman. She’d noticed that among the other women they’d traveled with, too: Domi and Sinclair were offered extended and enthusiastic embraces by the Zambian soldiers. Meanwhile, Kane and Grant kept their farewells to hearty handshakes.
“Ah, dear Brigid, your presence here in our little outpost has been an experience,” Lomon said. “I wish it were all delightful...”
“I understand,” Brigid responded. “You and your men have been excellent hosts. We’ll miss you.”
Lomon nodded. His eyes glazed for a moment as he thought of the past couple of days and the losses incurred. They had come under the assault of a pair of groups; each had taken turns at controlling the strange clone hybrids called the Kongamato. The Kongamato, named after an African cryptid, were brutish, powerful winged creatures that were equal parts bat and gorilla. They had killed a great number of Zambian troops, first the outpost defenders at the power station attached to the redoubt, and then a company of soldiers who had been on their way to relieve the besieged trio of survivors.
“Don’t worry,” Brigid spoke up, breaking the elder Zambian soldier from his recollection of the horrors he’d endured. “We’ll find the ones responsible.”
Lomon rested a hand on her shoulder. “I wish I could send an army with you, girl.”
Brigid smiled, looking toward her companions, former Cobaltville Magistrates Kane and Grant. “We’ve taken care of armies before. I doubt that Durga has that much of a force left. The Millennium Consortium members were wiped out, and Gamal and the Panthers of Mashona turned out to be using him as a distraction.”
Brigid wanted to feel regret over the deaths of the members of the Millennium Consortium betrayed and murdered by Makoba, but there had been more than sufficient bad blood between the millennialists and Cerberus over the past couple of years that all she could manage was disappointment at the consortium’s vetting process for new members. Even then, she wasn’t too surprised at the millennialists picking the wrong person for the job. Austin Fargo and Erica van Sloan both boasted affiliations with the assembly of technocrats who sought to create their own new world order.
This time, the Millennium Consortium had thrown in their lot with Durga, the fallen prince of the Nagah, as both parties searched Africa for Annunaki wonders and ancient technology. In the process, the combined force had stumbled on a subterranean facility attached to the Victoria Falls redoubt that had a breed of mutants inside it to serve as their new shock troops.
Durga had maintained control of the monstrosities, but only for a brief period of time, until an African named Makoba had betrayed both the Nagah prince and the Millennium Consortium by stealing the control “crown.” Makoba was the brother of a local warlord, Gamal, who himself had already discovered the technology to control the Kongamato and had usurped control of them. With a major contingent of Panthers of Mashona soldiers and the means of growing an entire army of winged horrors, Gamal had been poised to conquer the continent of Africa.
Unfortunately for the deadly warlord, Gamal had run straight into the heroes of Cerberus redoubt. Grant and Brigid had disarmed Gamal of his control system, and Kane had set off a self-destruct after the Kongamato horde was summoned back to their birthplace. The self-destruct brought down the cloning facility and the winged monsters with a blast nearly as powerful as a nuclear weapon.
The threat of an army of cloned winged horrors was ended, as well as the more conventional threat of Gamal’s forces, thanks to planning, positioning and surprise on the part of the Cerberus operatives. With grenades and precision rifle fire, they’d scattered the bandit army, then watched as an ally wrested control of the creatures to send them to their doom in the self-destruction of the cloning facility.
That ally walked outside the group, standing at the edge of the Victoria Falls hydroelectric power station. Thurpa was freshly healed from major injuries inflicted by the ancient artifact that had brought Kane running to Africa. Thurpa himself was an artifact, a member of the Indian Nagah, a race created by the benign Annunaki Enki to watch over the subcontinent of India.
He’d come, one of the fallen prince Durga’s last followers, as an emissary for the crippled regent. Thurpa had been a true believer, having a low opinion of the Westerners who made up the bulk of the consortium gunmen who’d joined in this African trek.
And then the millennialist Makoba usurped Durga’s control of the Kongamato, and Thurpa was wounded, on the run, about to be killed by his prince’s perfect living weapon. What had saved him was the intervention of Kane and his allies.
Thurpa had gone from contempt for mammals—as he called normal humans despite his half-mammalian DNA—to a new appreciation for people. Kane and the others had protected him, had trusted him more than they trusted one of their own human companions, had nursed him back to health. Then when it came time to engage in final combat with the Kongamato, Thurpa had only barely survived Makoba’s betrayal of the millennialists to Gamal. Had it not been for the warlord summoning all the winged horrors to aid him against Grant and Brigid and the other Cerberus Away Team, Makoba would have killed the last of the Zambians.
With only a rifle, Makoba had taken one of the injured men hostage, only to be ambushed by Thurpa and beaten to death with a length of steel rebar. It was then that Thurpa and Lomon had combined their wits to take the stolen control headset and work with the Cerberus heroes to send the beasts to their doom.
After that, Thurpa had denied the newly healed and awakened Durga’s demand to rejoin him. The fallen prince had teleported away, using an Annunaki relic, abandoning Thurpa in a strange land among strangers.
Brigid and Lomon walked toward the Nagah man. He was wearing a pair of Zambian uniform pants that replaced his standard clothing. Thurpa’s upper body was covered with iridescent scales, predominately bronze in hue, but there were other glimmers of color along them, as well as black striped designs. His chest was plated in heavy panels of the same scales, only larger. Those same scales were present on the soles of his feet, as thick and durable as any boot. Had he worn a shirt, he might even have seemed fully human, except for his head and the hood of sheeted muscle that flexed between his shoulders and the sides of his head. His scaled face was fine featured, flat nosed, with yellow-amber jewels for eyes; the pupils were slits that adjusted to brightness by widening or turning to mere slivers.
“You are welcome to stay among us, Thurpa,” Lomon offered for what was the eighteenth time in the past day, by Brigid’s eidetic recollection. There may have been instances when she hadn’t been present to hear such a request.
Thurpa looked to the elder officer. “I’m honored. And I’d love to return, but there’s a lot of damage I feel I have to undo.”
“Helping the injured and rescuing Jonas went a long way,” Lomon said.
Thurpa smiled weakly. “It doesn’t feel like far enough.”
“We’re honored to have you with us,” Brigid said. She offered her hand.
The young Nagah accepted the hand. His palm and finger plates were smooth, supple and slightly warm, a sign of his mammalian metabolism. He still seemed uncomfortable around people, and Brigid could empathize. Her intellect had isolated her when dealing with others in years gone by. Only since she’d thrown herself into the world as one of the exiles from Cobaltville, adventuring around the world, had she lost her self-consciousness. Even so, there were times when she felt like an alien in the room; others did not possess her perfect recall.
Extrapolating that outsider’s discomfort with an inhuman exterior appearance must have been a crushing bit of alienation.
What made it all the more painful was Thurpa had aligned himself with Durga, a traitor and murderer, responsible for the deaths of many of his people and intense suffering. Returning home would be just as alienating. People would remember.
And they would shun him at the very least. At worst, his life would be in constant peril.
Maybe the Cerberus redoubt would be a good place for Thurpa, and, ultimately, Brigid would invite him to become a part of their ragtag family of misfits, exiles and refugees. But for now they needed him and his knowledge here in Africa, especially as CAT Beta had returned to Cerberus in order to protect the redoubt and respond to other emergencies if necessary.
Brigid worried for the young man. Life with her, Kane and Grant was not an easy one, not with all the enemies they’d made. And Thurpa had made himself just as much a target since he’d turned his back on Durga, the very sociopath they were off to chase.
The other newcomer to their little assemblage was Nathan Longa, a young man from the city-state of Harare, in a territory that used to be the nation of Zimbabwe.
“Thank you again for the use of the pickup truck,” Brigid said to Lomon.
“Think of it as repayment for helping us hold the line against the Mashona Panthers,” Lomon replied. “And be thankful that there were enough spare parts from damaged vehicles to keep it running.”
Brigid nodded. “And that it was one which I had read the specs on, including an exploded view.”
Thurpa chuckled. “You and the others exploded enough trucks as it was.”
Grant, six foot four with rippling arms, hefted the first of the last pair of jerricans into the bed of the pickup. He then used both hands to pick up the other. Forty pounds wasn’t much of an effort for the big former Magistrate, but it was still impressive to see his shoulders bulge and flex as he put the cans on board.
Kane opened the nozzle on each and took a whiff before closing and writing on the sides, separating fuel from water. There wasn’t going to be a guarantee of access to fresh and potable water on their journey. The maps and layout of the countryside differed vastly from the current high-altitude satellite photos of the region. The Earthshaker bombs used in the megacull had not been kind to the continent.
“It’s not a Sandcat, but it runs,” Kane pronounced. “Ready to saddle up, cowgirl?”
Brigid chuckled. “Don’t make me regret showing you those old Westerns.”
Kane smiled back, then offered a hand to Nathan and Thurpa and helped them into the bed of the truck with him.
“You ride with Grant,” Kane said. “I’ll enjoy the breeze in my hair.”
Thurpa looked dubious as he rested an arm on the sidewall. “We’re out in the open, aren’t we?”
“It beats walking,” Nathan said. “Besides, Kane will pick up any danger. That’s his thing.”
Thurpa nodded. Lomon and the Zambians had given him sufficient equipment to deal with most threats. He’d gotten a Heckler & Koch G3 rifle with a stock that collapsed, nearly halving the length of the weapon for easier carry and storage, and a Colt .45 automatic, which shared magazines with Nathan Longa’s own pistol. After the conflict with the Kongamato, Lomon knew that Thurpa would need power and mobility. As it was, Thurpa had almost died in hand-to-hand conflict with one of the creatures, saved only by being out of reach and blinding it with his natural cobra venom. The G3 and the .45 would go a long way toward making Thurpa the equal of most challenges.
Especially if he were beside the explorers from Cerberus and the wielder of the Nehushtan.
The trouble with that thought, Brigid mused, is that we’ve got plenty of enemies who shrug off bullets as if they were grains of rice. Even Durga qualified as bulletproof for a moment.
Brigid slid into the cab beside Grant, who took the wheel.
“Heavy thoughts?” Grant asked.
Brigid blinked, then looked at her friend. “Heavy thoughts. Yes. We’re going into uncharted territory in Africa, hunting a man who nearly killed us as he’s searching for the means of returning to godhood. Kane says that he’s hooked up with a queen who was dangerous enough that the Annunaki imprisoned her, rather than kick her off the planet or kill her, and who has enough power to psychically reach out and even pluck people from their bodies. Add to that we’ve got two young men to take care of, because as much training as they’ve had, they haven’t seen a tenth of the shit we have.”
Grant frowned. “You make it seem as if we’re badass just because we’ve fought gods, dinosaurs and living mountains.”
“We had the luck of surviving and outwitting them,” Brigid said. “Remember, a lot of our friends have ended up dead.”
Grant nodded.
“We’ll do our best to protect them. We always do,” Grant said.
Thurpa rapped his knuckle on the window on the back of the pickup’s cab. “You do know Nathan and I can hear you, right?”
“Not doing a lot of good for our confidence on this mission,” Nathan added.
“Hey, we protected Lomon,” Grant countered.
“And defeated an army of winged monsters,” Brigid spoke up.
“We were there,” Nathan said.
Thurpa nodded. “Not totally impressed with the protecting Lomon’s men part. In fact...”
Grant smiled at Thurpa. “You did some protecting yourself, son. Both of you. That’s why we want to keep you with us.”
“Any particular reason why Kane just doesn’t take the stick himself? He utilized it pretty well when we were in the cloning facility,” Nathan inquired.
“Because I’m not used to running around with a walking stick,” Kane replied. He slapped his hand on top of the pickup truck’s cab. “Let’s go.”
“Sure thing, grouch,” Grant returned. He started the engine, and the Cerberus explorers drove away, waving to the Zambian contingent they’d come to befriend.
Brigid returned to her doubts as they drove toward their future reunion with the Nagah prince Durga and whatever horrors he planned to awaken.
Already Nathan had spoken of an assassin who had slain his father, a mysterious, seemingly amorphous entity with translucent skin that shimmered in the firelight.
The killer with no apparent visible features seemed as if it might have been a trick of the mind or the shadows. But Brigid Baptiste knew a thing or two about human perception, as well as the intricacies of memory, especially since hers was completely photographic. Her time as an archivist had only been enhanced by the ability to recall every detail she’d ever seen, and Kane often wondered aloud if she were a “doomie”—a Doomsayer mutant who had some manner of psychic ability. Brigid doubted that she had transcendent mental abilities, but she presumed that her brain chemistry was somehow different, as her recollection skills and natural curiosity served only to increase the ever-growing database between her ears.
That Nathan Longa didn’t have the same kind of intellectual function as she was not an indication of the untrustworthiness of Nathan’s description of the assassin who’d slain his father, the previous protector of Nehushtan. Also, the moment had been one of intense fear and shock, meaning that Nathan’s senses would have been enhanced by adrenaline, his eyes sharper, probably dilated further to gather even more light, so shadowy hints wouldn’t have been so indiscriminate as he’d assumed. Plus, Brigid had gone with Nathan over the incident a couple of times, and she had asked questions about more than visual descriptors. She’d asked about the sounds, the smells, the feel of the room.
The smell of the murderer was something that made Brigid feel that the description as gelatinous had more validity. The thing smelled, according to Nathan, of salt and copper, two major components of blood. A translucent outline with no physical features, backlit by firelight, could easily have been a nontraditional physical entity. Supporting this observation was that it had disappeared in the brief instant that Nathan had looked away from the killer to see his father on the ground.
There were no windows that a full-grown man the bulk of the slayer could escape through, but there was a window open about three inches high. There was the sticky, slurping sound of fluid as the being moved, and Brigid could imagine an entity with no skeletal structure could easily have compressed itself down to three inches to squeeze out the window. She knew that octopi could fit through any opening large enough to accommodate their beaks, the only hard part of their anatomy, and that small rodents with skeletons could flex their bones to fit through openings only half the diameters of their bodies.
That was the cement for Brigid’s assumption of the assassin being a nontraditional physical entity, an expression she’d coined on the spot. Kane had asked her why she didn’t just call it a “blob,” but Brigid was not certain if it was an entirely fluid-based organism, a mollusk-like humanoid or just one with an extremely flexible skeleton as per a mouse.
Brigid coupled the appearance of that creature with Kane’s account of the void entity he had battled while he’d been comatose, left within a prison constructed in his own psyche. He’d also described her—it had taken on a more feminine appearance and addressed itself as “the queen”—as originally an amorphous, almost fluid-formed entity constructed of void. The limited shape-shifting on her part had a similar “feel” to Brigid’s presumptions about the killer who’d slain Nathan’s father.
The similarity between Kane’s psychic opponent and the elder Longa’s assassin was too coincidental for Brigid’s tastes. She’d studied more than enough mythology and parallel stories to realize that if something was vaguely related in the views of two separate people, there might be even stronger ties once exposed to the light of day.
Thurpa had added to the chain of coincidences. There was a strangely hued woman, Neekra, who seemed to come from nowhere, then disappear, and who could peer into Thurpa’s thoughts. She was at once dangerously alluring and viscerally disturbing, and she seemed cast in rust-or cinnamon-hued flesh that flowed easily.
Mind reading. The ability to appear and disappear like the wind. A voluptuous, curvy woman whom Durga had offhandedly referred to as his “queen.” Mind reading would not be too far off from the skill of telepathy and the construction of mental illusions, such as had been the case with Kane’s daylong, coma-like imprisonment.
Kane had described the queen’s interaction with Durga as more seductive than tortuous, as it had been with Kane himself. Thurpa had noted the obvious romantic relations between this very healthy, odd-hued woman and Durga. Right now, Brigid wasn’t entirely certain of who this Neekra was, but she knew full well that she and the queen were as related as the amorphous assassin and Kane’s psychic tormentor were.
Neekra was this woman’s self-appellation, and Brigid immediately returned to the dream wherein Kane had become aware of the artifact Nehushtan and the tales of a Puritan adventurer in the heart of Africa. Neekra matched up with not one but two names: Negari and Nakari—a hidden city and its queen, an immortal, vampirelike queen.
Nathan’s father had died of massive blood loss, and yet there had been very little blood spilled in the Longa home. The smell of blood was quite salty and coppery, Brigid knew from too much experience. Perhaps the reason no blood had been spilled was because it had been ingested, swallowed by the murderer.
Brigid’s mood turned black. A vampire queen and a hidden city.
Before skydark, Africa had been known as the Dark Continent. Now Brigid was certain they were going to find out exactly how dark. And that darkness could swallow them all whole.
Literally, Brigid feared.
Chapter 3
Kane’s mood was not good as he and Grant crept through the forest, closing in on the caravan that had crossed their path. Normally, he wouldn’t have been too interested in another group traveling through the jungle, and they had hidden their pickup truck, parked well off the formation’s route so as not to draw unwanted attention.
The group was armed to the teeth, and they had settled down for the evening not far from where Kane and his companions had set up their camp for the night. Traveling all day by truck was still tiring; there weren’t many roads, and the suspension could only take so much out of the bumps and jolts, especially for those who rode in the bed of the truck.
It was just good strategy for Kane and his allies to scope out a new group before coming out and greeting them, and seeing the column’s armed guards was more than a little unnerving. What made things even more tense was that they wore the uniforms of the Panthers of Mashona, the very militia they had battled back at Victoria Falls. While it was unlikely that Gamal could have communicated with this column, Kane was keen on keeping a low profile.
Well, he had been keen on that low profile.
Then he saw the row of naked Africans lying on the ground, connected to each other by chains and heavily burdened with steel yokes.
“We’re not going to leave well enough alone,” Grant murmured, counting on the Commtact to amplify the words in Kane’s ear.
“Slave traders. Damned straight we’re not leaving this alone,” Kane answered.
Grant nodded. Kane turned to regard his friend, and the massive former Magistrate’s brow wrinkled, knit with a mixture of concern and anger. His drooping gunfighter’s mustache only served to deepen the man’s frown into a grim mask.
Grant had no sense of solidarity with the blacks of Africa. Sure, his skin was dark like theirs, and they shared general facial features, but, culturally, Grant was a product of a world where race and familial history removed ties to anything other than fellow Magistrates. But here, Grant felt for the poor victims, lying immobilized by steel collars on their necks and shoulders, evidenced by the cracked, dried rivulets of blood on their torsos and the raw redness of scraped-off skin near the edges of those inhumane yokes. Kane heard the tendons in his fists pop as he flexed his big hands, and anger swiftly bled away as his eyes flitted from guard to guard.
Like Kane, he was sizing up the armed resistance, thinking of ways to kill the Panthers and to free their prisoners.
