Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3)

by Melanie Nilles

  The Shirukan aren't the only threat to the Starfire shard Raea bears...

  An alien enemy has awakened to reclaim the crystal that was theirs, and those last survivors of a war that nearly destroyed Inar'Ahben aren't afraid to kill anyone who stands in their way.

  An ancient monument to a mythical civilization on Earth may hold the key to unlocking the mystery, if it can be deciphered. Raea is running out of time to solve the most puzzling question of human history and resolve the conflict brought to Earth. If she fails, she may lose more than the Starfire…

  CRYSTAL TOMB

  Starfire Angels Book 3

  By

  Melanie Nilles

  Prairie Star Publishing * North Dakota

  Crystal Tomb is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters, names, places, or incidents to reality is pure coincidence.

  Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels Book 3)

  Paperback Copyright © 2011 by Melanie Nilles

  E-book Copyright © 2011 by Melanie Nilles

  Cover Art

  Copyright © 2011 by Melanie Nilles

  Published by Prairie Star Publishing; Bismarck, North Dakota.

  Smashwords edition.

  All Rights Reserved.

  For information, contact Melanie Nilles at mailto:melanie_nilles@yahoo.com or online at www.melanienilles.com.

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Ancient Mysteries

  Eye of God

  Risaal

  Lights Out

  A New Threat

  Finding a Lost Past

  Conspiracies

  Subtleties and Instigations

  Bathroom Break for It

  A Cold Dark Night

  The Day After

  In the Beginning…

  End of the World

  A New Life

  Life Changes

  The Fall of Atlantis

  Lazarus

  Feedback Clue

  Anita Cross

  Unexpected Ally

  Desert Mirages

  Crystal Keepers

  In Memoriam

  So Close

  When All Hell Breaks Loose

  Revelations

  Perceptions and Misconceptions

  Reprisal

  Ancient Mysteries

  Talk about a major distraction from practicing her valedictorian speech.

  No way. Raea stared at the computer screen, her breath frozen in her lungs. Her eyes fixed on the image of a round stone monolith with etched script in concentric circles around a central red stone. The caption said the object was found in the shallow waters off the coast of an islet west of Spain, in a location thought to be the site of the fabled civilization of Atlantis. According to experts, for more than twelve thousand years, it had rested on the ocean floor. It had existed before human civilization.

  The headline over the picture said the monolith had disappeared three days ago from a tractor trailer hauling it with the rest of the Atlantis exhibits making their way to the next leg of the U.S. tour.

  Scanning news headlines was a great way to procrastinate on practicing her valedictorian address and see if she should be worried about the Starfire, but Raea hadn't expected this. The writing was Inari and it was found on Earth dated long before the Starfire came to them. That couldn't be right. The dating must have been wrong. The Starfire didn't allow the Inari to visit Earth until six thousand years ago, about six thousand Earth years too old. How was that possible?

  Sure, Inari were far more advanced than humans, but twelve thousand years ago was a long time. Why would they have been on Earth? How could they have reached it?

  Something inside her itched to know. Maybe Elis knew.

  Raea twisted in the desk chair to where he sat on the bed behind her playing with a ball of Starfire energy between his hands. "Elis."

  An eye blink later, the lights dimmed around her. The room faded and merged into another. But the lights hadn't dimmed; her vision had. She stared at the same round stone, but not through her eyes…

  .

  Padina's reflection gazed back from the glass case. She studied the stone monolith on the other side, her brown hair hanging around the source of the view and the Starfire crystal hanging at her chest. Familiar script formed concentric circles of text from the center to the outer edge of the stone plate.

  "No one knows what it means. Some speculate that it's a clue to the location of Atlantis," Scott said from somewhere out of the picture, which shifted to reveal his youthful appearance and the glasses he had always worn. "But it's supposed to be around twelve thousand years old."

  The image blurred from movement and focused again on the round stone behind the glass, the flowing script clarifying in their pattern.

  "Fascinating. Isn't it?"

  Padina said nothing but stared at the monolith.

  "Paddy? What are you doing?"

  She waved him away.

  "You memorizing it?"

  The scene continued to focus on the stone with no word from her.

  "Maybe I'll just wander a bit, until you're ready." Footsteps tapping on tile faded away.

  After some time, the image shifted to reveal a larger room of display cases.

  "Paddy." Scott stepped into the image. "Finally done with that thing?"

  Scott's eyes drifted past her to the display and the scene shifted to the monolith once more. "Atlantis is just a story, but ancient wonders are interesting, especially when they seemed to know so much and lose it all. A lesson for generations to come."

  .

  "Raea…Raea."

  She blinked away the vision and glanced down at the crystal hanging on her chest, the same Starfire shard her mother had worn. They did it again. The entities had shown her a vision from their memory of a day long ago. Her mother had seen the same monolith in a museum display.

  "I'm all right." She turned aside to Elis, who knelt next to the desk chair, a look of concern from the deep purple eyes behind the wild black locks. "Just another Starfire vision."

  "Because of that?" Elis stared at the image on the screen.

  Yes, that. This time.

  The Starfire visions came whenever they wanted her to understand something. Two months ago, it had started with visions of her mother, both on Earth and on Inar'Ahben before Padina fled to Earth to escape the Shirukan, the elite soldiers of the Shirat Empire. At first, the pain of remembering her mother in all the beautiful details had hurt, because her mother and stepfather had been dead for thirteen years. But Raea had grown to value the memories after accepting that she wasn't human like her friends and that she bore a responsibility even her mother had been reluctant to accept—protecting a shard of the powerful Starfire crystal. The visions had continued since then, usually when she least expected it.

  "Mom saw it herself in a museum display, probably when they lived in Minneapolis." No museum in North Dakota, least of all the small town of McClarron, had the capacity for a traveling display like that, much less the security it must have required.

  Apparently, security lacked since it had been stolen. Who would want an Inari artifact? Rather, who would steal to possess an artifact believed to be from Atlantis? Unless they were one of the twenty-one other Keepers on Earth—and Keepers wouldn't steal—they wouldn't know it was alien in origin.

  Okay, so maybe a few hundred people with an obsession for rare antiquities might want to get their hands on it.

  Whatever the case, the real thing was gone, but she had memories.

  Elis rose to his feet but hunched over to gaze at the screen. His hand gently
slid hers off the mouse and claimed it for himself. A click on the image saved it to the hard drive. While she watched, he pulled it up as a slightly larger image, but the writing wasn't as clear as the scene burned into her memory from the Starfire's revelation.

  "According to radiocarbon dating, it's supposed to be over twelve thousand years old," she said as he gazed intently at the image.

  "Over fourteen thousand Inari years."

  Five Earth years to six Inari years, based on the shorter days of Inar'Ahben and a shorter revolution around the sun of their home system.

  "What were they doing on Earth?"

  Elis said nothing, leaning over the desk with an intensity in his eyes she hadn't seen in a while. He studied the image as her mother had in the vision.

  Silence filled the small bedroom around them, his bedroom. Judging from the quiet, Evelyn Johnson must have fallen asleep. The old widow had provided him a home—including that room—on Earth for the last two years. Raea imaged her in her favorite recliner near the front window of her sitting room with her chin on her chest and her fingers twined at her middle.

  But she grew impatient with the silence.

  "Elis?"

  Nothing. He stared at the image.

  "What's it say?"

  Still no response. And she thought her momentary visions were annoying.

  Enough of this. She poked him in the ribs and he flinched.

  "What's it say?"

  "Didn't you read it?"

  "Not exactly. Someone's head is in my way."

  A cute grimace of guilt twisted his mouth and he backed away. "Sorry."

  And his eyes fixed on reading it again. Raea threw her head back against the chair and rolled her eyes. Typical.

  "It talks about a war on the homeworld, an invasion by some other species; I'm not sure about some of the writing. It's old, even for us."

  No kidding—fourteen thousand years. He'd said it himself.

  "It sounds like the Miru knew about a compatible world far away and offered to take as many families as they could. It was inhabited, but from their exploratory studies, it was a perfect match."

  A perfect match and the answer right before them—Earth. Then it was all true—the Inari had established a colony over twelve thousand Earth years ago, a colony remembered as Atlantis. She could accept that. But— "Who are the Miru? What are they?"

  "Allies…sort of. One of our more advanced allies. We've never been able to crack interdimensional travel without the Starfire. They had ships that could for as long as we've known them. No one knows their homeworld or how to contact them, but they've always helped other species. From this—" He pointed to the image on the flat screen. "It sounds like they brought a few hundred Inari to Earth to save our species from destruction. It doesn't say why the outsiders attacked, though, only that they were destroying the homeworld when the refugees escaped."

  "Obviously the invaders failed." Inar'Ahben was alive and thriving as a world.

  He frowned and his eyes pinched as if focusing on part of the image. "Can you read that?" He pointed to the blurry inner ring around a central sphere of round red crystal.

  Raea closed her eyes and recalled the image in perfect clarity from the Starfire vision with her mother. This was one time she was grateful for the unfading memory the Starfire in her genes gave her.

  Raea studied the smaller characters clear in her memory but didn't understand more than a couple, and those didn't make sense. She'd only been learning to read and write the language of her species for a little over two weeks. "I'm not sure."

  At a soft sigh from him, she opened her eyes. "The language is old. Things have changed," he said.

  "But Inari were on Earth long ago, before the Starfire came to them."

  Elis stepped back and sat on the edge of the queen bed filling most of the space in the room. His eyes shifted from the monitor, past her in the desk chair, to somewhere else. He wandered lost in his thoughts again, the quiet guy who had brooded around school and earned the nickname Creeper because of it, until he became a hero.

  "The mystery deepens." With him as much as with the monolith.

  Elis exhaled sharply but said nothing, his expression one of deep thoughts she could only guess.

  Not even a glance? Not a kiss or a touch to acknowledge her?

  He really was focused, but she could change that.

  Raea move from the chair to sit on his thigh, forcing him to take notice. The monolith represented history past and gone; he didn't need to spend all his time worrying about it. This was the present with its own challenges and trials. Still, for once he didn't think about the Shirukan, the elite soldiers of the Shirat Empire, who had come after her for the Starfire; she supposed that was an improvement.

  A warm hand slid around her middle, the security of his arm holding her close to the firm, fit body beneath the dark shirt. Although she still wasn't sure about bonding permanently—sharing his pleasure and pain through a sort of telepathic connection that would build from physical contact—she couldn't imagine her life without Elis, her dark angel and the most sensitive and caring guy she'd ever known. Not even her friend Josh could compare, although he came close but only as a friend.

  Raea laid her arms around Elis's shoulders, a shiver of anticipation coursing through her from the light trace of his fingers on her side.

  She combed aside the black locks from his eyes, the soft strands slipping like silk through her fingertips. When she'd escaped from Inar'Ahben to return to her Earth home, he said he'd cut his hair if she really wanted, but by then she didn't want him to. It gave him a dark, mysterious look that fit him. Elis was the Dark Angel, after all. She couldn't ask him to change.

  Her hand settled along his smooth cheek and she leaned close. "Don't think about it so much. It's old history, lost at that," she whispered.

  "I'm not…anymore."

  Exactly what she wanted to hear.

  ["I was thinking you need to study harder."]

  What a way to ruin the mood. Why did he have to be so serious?

  No. He teased her. Ooh! She'd wipe that coy grin from his face.

  "You—"

  While holding her tight, he pulled her down on the bed with him and laughed. So clever, and weird. He had changed so much since the Starfire brought them together.

  All right. So…he'd taken her by surprise. That was unusual for him. Elis usually shied from too much intimacy.

  Raea pushed herself up on one arm, her brown hair sliding over her shoulder to hang alongside her head. She could play along with this game. "School's out, I'll have you know."

  "I know."

  Not that again. Raea growled and her eyes narrowed, until he lifted his head to kiss her. She tried to pretend to be mad with tight lips but she couldn't when his kiss sent shivers of anticipation through her and touched the deepest desires of her body. He drew her back down beside him on the bed.

  This wasn't the Elis she had known for two years and avoided. Had she known he could make her fly without wings, she would have asked him out sooner. He'd been nothing but sweet and caring to the point that he never asked for anything in return for giving her whatever she needed.

  She would have done anything for him.

  Oh, God, that felt good.

  The hands sliding along her back and sides found all the right places to make her pulse race, which made her more agreeable. His lips pressing against hers stole her breath and inspired a pleasurable warmth which coursed through her and urged her to press against him for more.

  As usual, he pulled away at that point.

  He lay close so his breath blew warm across her mouth. So tempting.

  "You're forgiven," she whispered in the hopes he would take it as a hint.

  He lay in silence, his breath steadying and his hands enticing her with the gentle massage along her side and hip.

  After what felt too long, Raea frowned and studied his face. Something was wrong. She set her hand on his cheek to get his attention. "
I was only joking." She wasn't mad. Surely he realized that.

  Since her return from Inar'Ahben, she told him she would bond with him. He shouldn't be afraid anymore, but she had hurt him by almost rejecting him. Did it still bother him that much?

  His eyes dropped from her and his touch disappeared from her side to her hand on his face, which he grabbed in his and pulled to his chest. Now she knew something was wrong. Her insides ran cold with dread. What had she done?

  "Elis?"

  His fingers rubbed hers and those purple eyes stared at her and through her at the same time. This wasn't right. Oh, God.

  "Did I do something wrong?" Say no. Please say no.

  "No." His fingers tightened around her hand.

  Whew! But that still didn't tell her anything. "Then…what is it?"

  He released her hand to softly comb the hair from her face.

  The distant ring of the phone filled the silence as his hand slid down her shoulder to her back, and he pulled her close so her face tucked into his shoulder. She held tight to him, unwilling to let go for any reason. Everything felt right when they were together and nothing else in the universe could separate them.

  "I would never do anything to hurt you," he whispered.

  She swallowed the lump of emotions sticking in her throat, afraid yet eager to know what he tried to say. "I know."

  His swallow sounded loud in her ear and spiked her through with dread. "Everything is happening so fast and… "

  "Elis! Raea!" The shout from downstairs chilled the room.

  No! Evelyn couldn't have worse timing.

  "And what?" Not yet, Evelyn. She had to know what he meant to say. A million ideas raced through her mind, some of them bad.

  "Raea! Debbie needs to talk to you!"

  No! Not now. Her aunt had the worst timing. They were next door. Couldn't she wait?

  His arms loosened around her. "It's not important."