The Black Madonna (The Mystique Trilogy)

by Traci Harding

  ‘Take that, you Nefilim pussies!’ Pax stuck two fingers up at the craft in the ceiling.

  Taejax pulled him up. ‘Pax, a little respect, please,’ and he motioned to me.

  ‘Apologies,’ said Pax. ‘I’m not used to being around anyone worth respecting.’

  ‘No harm done,’ I said with a smile and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘So how are we going to break through to—’

  Before Pax had completed his query I was burning a hole through the ice using the violet flame channelled through my palm. I aimed the beam at the lower hatch door of the mother ship—a craft Kali was very familiar with. A tunnel formed through the dripping ice and the lower hatch was exposed. I silently commanded the door to open, then willed a rope to manifest in my hands. I hung it over my shoulder then with one mighty leap launched myself headlong through the tunnel of ice and into the vessel. Once inside, I straddled my feet each side of the hatch door, secured the rope and dropped it down.

  Pax was staring at me in utter amazement. ‘So why did Your Majesty need us again?’

  ‘Come on up and I’ll show you,’ I told him.

  This hatch opened into the bowels of the ship, which was very convenient; it would have been hellish trying to access the upper floors of the frozen, blacked-out craft.

  ‘Could anything have survived in here for all that time?’ Taejax queried, as he followed the green light of my glowstick.

  ‘There’s a good chance,’ I replied.

  I looked around the icy wreck and remembered how it had looked when I walked its halls during my first lifetime on Earth. I began to recognise features, and suddenly I knew where I was and my pace quickened. I found the door to my lab and, using the violet flame, defrosted the ice around it. When I pushed the door open, my Dracon companions gasped to feel the blast of dry, warm air that came out. They squinted at the light within the chamber, even though their sights adjusted to such changes far more rapidly than a human’s did.

  I was delighted to find the incubation tanks were still running. ‘The ship must have detected the active life support units and transferred all power to this lab when it was going down,’ I said.

  When Taejax and his recruits saw the occupants of the tanks they could barely believe their eyes. ‘They’re Dracon,’ said Taejax, overawed.

  Pax jumped backwards when he saw the large rounded breasts of the subject he was viewing. ‘They’re female!’ he cried, and came closer to look again.

  Jinx, another of Taejax’s warriors, looked angry. ‘The Nefilim had them all along!’ he said, but Taejax placed a hand on his shoulder and the Dracon calmed.

  ‘How many are there?’ Taejax asked me, as I punched instructions into the system to shut down the incubators.

  ‘Just these six.’

  ‘Only six?’ Taejax was immediately concerned for the female Dracon’s welfare. ‘They will cause a riot!’

  ‘That’s where you all come in,’ I explained. ‘You need to keep them safe until I open Amenti. After that, every Dracon will realise the Anu within and return to Sirius B.’

  As the seals on the tanks broke and opened, the Dracon looked unnerved, which amused me. ‘Relax, boys, they won’t come around right away, they’ve been asleep for a very long time.’

  Pax, the keenest, approached the now open module and gazed upon the female within in total wonder. ‘She looks like an angel.’

  ‘Funny about that,’ I said. ‘Her name’s Angelica.’

  Pax repeated the name under his breath, and nodded in approval.

  ‘She, like all my Draconesses,’ I smiled as I used my pet term for them, and the warriors grinned too, ‘is completely peace-loving—opposite to the original cast of the male Dracon in every way. Ill wanted the females to be warlike too, but I was interested to see if the Dracon could have a peaceful nature.’

  ‘And you were successful,’ Taejax assumed, his eyes fixed upon Jezabel.

  ‘Too successful,’ I said, ‘for almost as soon as they came out of incubation as Dracon, they began transforming into Anu, which is why they appear like angels to you,’ I said to Pax, who could only grin with happiness. ‘That’s why Ill demanded I put them into hibernation until he’d decided what to do with them, as they were developing psychic skills and becoming too powerful. I know he planned to kill them, so your revolution most likely saved their lives.’

  ‘All right!’ Rattus, another of the Dracon warriors, cheered. ‘We’re knights in shining armour…’ He looked down at his tarnished uniform. ‘Well, armour anyway.’

  ‘These ladies were what led me to suspect that we, Nefilim and Dracon alike, had been lied to by the Pantheon. All of us had souls and we all belonged to the same soul group as the Anunnaki who were lost in the Tara disaster. But because the Nefilim damned the gene pool of the Anu here on Earth, where all the lost Anunnaki souls from Tara were supposed to incarnate, most were forced to enter the bodies of the lizard drones the Nefilim created to do their dirty work. Not even Ill would have realised that he was persecuting his own people.’

  ‘Like he’d care anyway!’ Rattus jeered.

  Jezabel began to stir, and I moved to greet her upon her return to Earth. I held her semi-Dracon, semi-Anu face between my hands to warm and calm her. ‘Jez,’ I said softly.

  ‘Mistress!’ Her lizard eyes opened, then immediately closed again for the shock of the light was too great. ‘Ah!’ She raised a long, slender hand to cover her eyes.

  ‘No need to rush your recovery,’ I told her. ‘I have some gentlemen here who have kindly offered to—’

  The entire ship suddenly activated—all the lights came on and the heating too, which immediately began to defrost the interior beyond the lab.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Pax.

  ‘Could have been remotely activated,’ Jinx theorised.

  ‘Whether or not the Nefilim are on board, Ill is attempting to break this ship out of the ice, so we need to go.’ Taejax picked up Jezabel in his arms. ‘Now!’

  Each of his men grabbed an unconscious Draconess and we made haste back to the hatch. With their ladies over their shoulders, the Dracon slid down the rope into the Signet station, where Polaris, Dexter and Ereshkigal waited, urging us to hurry.

  I was the last to leave, and as I lined up to jump down the hole the ship jolted and I fell to land with a thud on the cracking ice sheet.

  ‘They’re actually going to do it!’ I heard Dexter cry out. ‘Take cover!’

  The next thing I knew I was being dragged across the frozen surface as icicles like daggers dropped from the ceiling. Huge ice chunks crashed down as the ship tore free from its ice capsule and flew off into the sky, leaving a massive hole in the ceiling of Signet Station One.

  ‘Oh great!’ grumbled Dexter as he assessed the damage.

  ‘Now that’s a security breach, if ever I saw one,’ Polaris said. ‘We’ll get Meridan down here—she’ll have it fixed in no time.’ He let go of my hands and crouched next to me to see how I fared.

  ‘Too numb to tell,’ I said, peeling my battered body off the ice. He helped me to stand.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said as I saw the extent of the damage. With a single powerful thought I raised all the fallen ice back into place. The cracks smoothed out and the ice hardened again into a solid barrier.

  ‘Thanks awfully for that,’ Dexter said, although his smile faded as he considered a bigger problem. ‘What do you think Ill plans to do with the ship?’

  ‘Attack Giza?’ Polaris suggested.

  ‘As long as he doesn’t plan to flee in it,’ I said, as he still had Mathu.

  I turned and headed for the Klieo, eager to get back to Giza and help with the extraction of my prince from Ill’s realm.

  CHAPTER 40

  PASSIVE FORCE

  By the time the Klieo arrived back in the cavern of Mamer, all the female Dracon had awoken and were now excitedly chatting with the Dracon warriors who had saved them from damnation at the hands of Ill. They were intrigued to hear the
y had been sleeping for the better part of Earth’s evolution and delighted to learn about some of what had transpired in the interim.

  ‘Did you ever think of going into matchmaking?’ Dexter commented to me as we watched the Dracon from the doorway to the conference room where they were gathered. ‘I remember not seeing my love for hundreds of years,’ he went on, ‘but I cannot imagine how it would feel, never having known a woman, to suddenly be united with the female of your race after hundreds of thousands of years. It must be amazing!’

  My thoughts turned to Mathu and I sighed, disappointed that we had yet to be reunited. ‘Amazing, indeed.’

  Dexter gave me a supportive smile.

  Polaris came towards us from the control deck. ‘We’ve got a few problems,’ he said. ‘Killian went after Mathu, and Arcturus and Meridan went after Killian. And since then there’s been no word from anyone.’

  He looked at me apologetically and my heart sank in my chest: my lover, my parents and my dearest friend were all in peril.

  ‘I need to get back to Amenti pronto,’ I said.

  ‘Ill also has a very powerful EMP weapon aimed at Giza,’ Polaris went on.

  ‘His mother ship,’ Dexter guessed and Polaris nodded. ‘Anything else?’ Dexter looked deflated by the new set of challenges facing us.

  ‘Actually, yes.’ Polaris drew a very deep breath. ‘This cavern is crawling with Dracon.’

  He kept his voice low, but the statement still drew the attention of all in the conference room.

  ‘They don’t know we’re here yet,’ he assured everyone, ‘but it won’t take long before they figure it out. One of the flying Dracon is bound to run into us before long.’

  ‘Damn it, I should have gone directly to Giza from Dexter’s station,’ I said. Still, I was glad I’d stayed with my Draconesses until they felt comfortable and had been brought up to speed on the situation.

  ‘I could take us to another Signet station,’ Polaris suggested.

  The problem with that idea was I wouldn’t be able to get the Dracon to safety that way, as using any of the Signet stations meant taking them through the Giza complex, where they weren’t permitted.

  ‘This is the most direct route to Lugh’s realm,’ I said. I could see Jezabel and the others safely there, and the route would also give me fastest access to Irkalla.

  Jezabel stepped forward. ‘You have nothing to fear,’ she said, ‘we may continue this way.’

  Was she naive or did she know something I didn’t?

  ‘Honestly,’ I told her, ‘I can’t promise to get all of you to safety through a Dracon mob.’

  ‘They will not harm us.’ Jezabel sounded very confident.

  ‘Jez, you’ve been in incubation all your life,’ I pointed out timidly, not wanting to insult her. ‘There are horrors in this world that I would rather you never know.’

  ‘I know what you fear, Mistress,’ she told me, ‘but there is no need.’

  ‘Okay,’ Polaris cut in, ‘we’ll give this passage a whirl. If it doesn’t work I can go back in time and change the outcome.’

  ‘How will that work?’ I asked, not knowing about the captain’s new-found talent.

  He skipped the details. ‘Trust me, I have a gift.’

  ‘And we have a plan,’ Dexter decreed. ‘I’ll get the weapons.’

  ‘No weapons,’ Jezabel requested. ‘If you do not have them, you will not use them. Pure intention is always the best weapon, then there can be no misunderstanding.’

  ‘Do you want to tell that to our friends out there?’ Dexter retorted. He was all for peace, but I believed he felt his previous experiences with the Dracon made him a greater authority on their true nature than Jezabel.

  ‘I do indeed,’ she said, and walked past us into the corridor, followed by the rest of the Dracon entourage.

  ‘She’s very wilful,’ Taejax said to me on his way past, and smiled. ‘I like that.’

  ‘But is she right?’ I asked.

  ‘Let’s find out.’ He invited us after him, as excited as a kid on a sugar high.

  The male Dracon, led by Taejax, exited the craft first, which brought a round of cheers from the Dracon mob, because they believed their comrades had captured the now decloaked vessel. When the Amenti staff emerged, however, there was confusion. The reptilian warriors began launching themselves onto the Klieo in preparation for an attack.

  ‘I really don’t know about this,’ Dexter said, keeping an eye on the encroaching hordes as he gave Jezabel a hand out of the hatch.

  The instant she emerged, a wave of hushed muttering swept through our enemy. Then the cavern fell deathly silent as the other Draconesses emerged—until one of the mob whistled and a flood of leering began.

  One very large Dracon slid down the mainsail to confront our party on the deck.

  ‘Ruffinnic,’ Taejax whispered to us, ‘a general.’

  ‘What kind of treachery is this?’ Ruffinnic demanded of Taejax and his men, whilst observing Jezabel closely.

  ‘No treachery,’ Taejax replied. ‘These females are as real as you and I. Ill has been hiding their existence from us since our last uprising.’

  This news was not well received, which was very much in our favour. But then Ruffinnic turned the tables on us again.

  ‘So when were you planning on telling the rest of us about this?’ he said to Taejax. ‘Or were you going to keep this little secret all to yourselves?’

  The general grabbed Jezabel’s arm, and I held Taejax back from jumping to her defence at once.

  Jezabel looked deep into the warrior’s eyes. The angry expression on his face slowly melted into a soft smile of understanding. He went from demon to teddy bear in a matter of minutes, and allowed Jez to gently remove his hand from her arm.

  ‘This is the beginning of the end of our struggle here on Earth,’ she said, and her voice echoed around the silent cavern. ‘We will no longer live in the shadows, or be forced to commit atrocities in the name of survival. The meaningful life that has eluded each of you since your cold and lonely birth into this world is now within your reach!’

  The mob cheered.

  ‘The Nefilim’s rule on Earth can come to an end before midnight—’ Jezabel’s words were drowned out by applause and catcalls. She paused to smile and then spoke more loudly, ‘And all you have to do to facilitate this process is…absolutely nothing.’ She let her hands drop to her sides to emphasise her point, and then laughed heartily as her adoring crowd chanted their support.

  ‘And you were worried,’ I said, looking at Dexter, who was grinning broadly.

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day when humans and Dracon were on the same page,’ he said as the crowd parted to make way for us to pass, Jezabel on General Ruffinnic’s arm.

  ‘The situation simply needed a woman’s touch,’ I replied. ‘Now, finally, the Dracon can know what it is to have the goddess in their lives.’

  Taejax overheard my comment. ‘Thanks to you, I was lucky enough to know the goddess much sooner.’

  The comment was so sweet and sincere that I had to give my old friend a hug. Arm in arm, we fell in behind the party making its way towards the portal to Giza.

  CHAPTER 41

  UNITY

  MIA DEVERE—MERIDAN

  Arcturus and I landed safely in the outer chamber of the Giza complex, not far behind Ill. The chamber was filled with Anu warriors and all the Amenti staff members not out on other missions. Everyone gasped to see that Ill had managed to take out Killian and now held the Staff of Amenti in his hand.

  ‘Meridan, how could you?’ Denera’s eyes filled with tears. Beside her stood Ereshkigal with daggers in her eyes.

  ‘I don’t understand it either,’ Arcturus said to me quietly as he set Mathu’s weary form to rest on the chamber floor.

  ‘Now, you all know I have to be nice in order to be here,’ Ill said in a girlish, patronising voice. ‘So don’t force me to clear a path into Amenti.’

  Everyone quietly
stepped aside as he requested.

  As I watched the dark lord enter the holy of holies, I wanted to die. But I would not doubt what my gut instinct had told me. I got to my feet and pursued Ill as fast as I could.

  He didn’t stop or look back as he entered the corridor containing the forty-nine symbols of Christ consciousness, which led to the passage to the Amenti complex. As Ill neared the end of the corridor, Killian’s spirit swept past me and remerged with his old form. I heard my sisters gasp as they followed behind me, and knew I was not the only one to see the apparition.

  At the end of the corridor, instead of turning right towards the Amenti complex, Ill turned left and headed into the labyrinth.

  ‘Wait a second!’ he protested, not understanding why he was being sidetracked. ‘Where am I going?’

  He began to squirm in an attempt to resist the force that had taken control of his body, and when he turned and tossed the Staff of Amenti to me, I could have died of happiness.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Denera demanded.

  I smiled at her. ‘It’s Killian.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ereshkigal grabbed hold of me.

  ‘He begged us to let this happen,’ I tried to explain through tears of relief and excitement. ‘Killian said he could do this.’

  ‘Do what?’ Denera appealed.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ I confessed, as much in the dark as everyone else.

  ‘Where could he be taking him?’ Ereshkigal asked, unsure if she should be grieving or thrilled to know that Killian was still with us, in spirit at least.

  We all gasped again as we saw Ill approach the Hall of Records.

  ‘You can fuck me gently with a chainsaw, but I’m not going in there,’ he yelled, and grabbed the doorframe in an attempt to resist entering. But he was no match for Killian and his body was forced inside.

  TAMAR DEVERE—KALI

  I was shocked when I entered the outer chamber at Giza to find my prince lying on the floor, whilst a crowd of our people cluttered up the route to Amenti.