by James Axler
Durga glared, then looked to Makoba. The consortium men had already started an IV of saline solution to help with his blood loss. In the meantime, Makoba’s arm was being administered to, gauze sopping away drying, clotting blood before packets of coagulant went into the wound, front and back. Makoba’s eyes were glazed and unfocused, but when he was requested to shift position to make his treatment easier, he responded.
“So who shot him?” Kane asked.
Durga turned back to him. “Traitor.”
“That narrows it down,” Kane joked.
“Every word that he speaks is an effort,” Magruder interjected. “When you destroyed his enhanced body, you crippled him.”
“And this is why you’re wandering around Africa—looking for a cure? Or a way to become snakezilla again?” Kane asked.
“Walk again,” Durga admitted. After a couple breaths, he sounded exhausted, and resigned to his condition. It seemed genuine, at least at first blush, but Durga’s acting skills had disarmed Kane’s suspicions once before. “No more.”
“How is he doing?” Kane asked. He was fighting the urge to simply pull the Sin Eater and put a bullet through each of these beings here. He’d been in open conflict with the Millennium Consortium on several occasions, and Durga’s machinations had harmed Hannah and Manticor badly. There wasn’t a single friend here, and yet things looked so desperate, his humanity got the better of him. Even so, he kept a wary eye on his surroundings, making certain he knew where everyone present was positioned at all times.
“He’ll live,” Magruder said. “But his pulse is weak. He’d lost a lot of blood, and I’m pretty certain that the rifle round that went through his shoulder smashed the joint to splinters.”
Kane grimaced. “So, he’ll lose the use of that arm, maybe for months, if not longer.”
“Cripples, easy prey.” Durga spoke up. “Two. Useless. Men.”
“You can drop the pretense about being ignorant of what’s with our group,” Kane said.
“No lie,” Durga replied. “Know it.”
Kane remained silent. This group had only one gun among the five of them, but having been down here for at least half an hour, they could have had plenty of opportunity to stash more weapons away. As well, a fully healthy Durga had his natural Nagah fangs, deadly teeth that could tear through a human throat, inject a very lethal venom or spit burning poison that blinded.
And Makoba was big enough that his ham-sized fists could be utilized as hammers. Kane had fought opponents of his size before, and had the blows from their fists rock him to the core. It would take speed and strategy to survive a battle with Makoba. Even a glancing punch could stun Kane enough to leave him a sitting duck for a rain of subsequent and ultimately lethal impacts.
And yet with all those doubts, he knew there was a horde of winged predators on the rampage, having gone as far as the outskirts of the nearest Zambian city, and wreaking havoc upon local men who were simply doing their jobs in protecting the power stations. The more fighting men Kane could assemble against the legendary horrors, the better.
“Doubt me. No blame,” Durga sputtered. Every word came slow and painfully, with a contortion of his reptilian features. “But we are all meat.”
“Baptiste?” Kane muttered under his breath, the Commtact picking up the vibrations of his vocal cords through his jawbone.
“We’ve got movement outside the doors. Even if we don’t heal him, we definitely need to get down that stairwell,” Brigid responded. “Sooner or later, a kongamato is going to take a poke at the lobby doors.”
“My friends are coming down,” Kane announced promptly. He added an aside to Magruder. “Thurpa is with them.”
“We figured you didn’t come here alone,” another of the men said. Kane got a better look at him and spotted scuff marks and cuts on his face. He recognized that kind of beating, having had to run and leap through a thick forest himself. Being chased at high speed through trees and brush tended to hammer a person pretty hard.
These men had quite literally been running for their lives, pursued by the kongamato, or some other opponent.
“So who was the traitor?” Kane asked.
“It was one of our own, a member of our party by the name of Jacobs. He took the control helm for the kongamato, shooting Makoba for emphasis,” the man replied. “I’m Gibbons. That’s Davis.”
Kane nodded in acknowledgment. They wore the uniform of the consortium, but had been sticking close to Durga. From the emergency gurney he lay upon, Kane could quite easily take them both for being bearers of the incapacitated prince. However, he didn’t think that the former Nagah monarch would have deigned to ride on a blanket tied to sticks. Somewhere along the way, things had gone south.
“We found Jacobs. He was torn open by the creatures he wanted to control,” Kane said.
“Helm?” Durga asked.
“Nowhere to be seen,” Kane responded. “But it’s possible that one of them could have shredded it, or even swallowed it.”
“Shit,” Durga cursed.
“So we have nothing to control those things with,” Makoba said, slurring, sounding almost drunken, but looking a bit more animated now.
The door opened, and Grant led the way, big rifle out, but aimed at the floor. The intent was unmistakable. The Cerberus warriors came armed to the teeth, so any surprise was going to be blown in half by one of the largest portable firearms on the planet. Anyone causing that surprise was going to get cleaned up by Brigid and Domi, each gripping their Copperhead submachine gus. They were backed up by Nathan with his borrowed Zambian rifle, as well as Nehushtan over one shoulder. But he was there mainly to keep North in line, and train his attention on Thurpa, just in case.
Kane looked back to Durga.
“Please,” the slumped, fallen prince said. “Hate...broken...body.”
“You remember how badly it hurt when you healed me,” Nathan offered, keeping his distance from North and Thurpa.
“Heard ’em hit lobby doors,” Domi said. She was on full alert, speaking tersely, dropping her articles and pronouns. “Just testing.”
“It was difficult to surmise if they were aware of our presence. We’d killed the lights, and the doors were closed,” Brigid added. “By sight and sound, we were very low profile, but it depends on how good their other senses are. If they have an acute sense of smell...”
“We’ll keep our ears open for them.” Davis spoke up. “We’ve got a comm outside the door.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t hear him,” Gibbons argued.
“You weren’t supposed to,” Kane countered.
“Don’t worry about that,” Magruder interrupted. “When those winged bastards come down, they’ll make a hell of a lot of noise tearing the doors off the stairwell.”
Durga looked at the staff on Nathan’s back, then toward Kane. The Nagah prince seemed as if he was going to break into tears. Kane knew that if he ever gave such a kindness to Durga, it would likely end in suffering and torment. Even so...
“Stop looking like a kicked puppy,” Kane growled. “Nathan...?”
Brigid glared at Kane. “Really? You’re going to risk your life and health for...for that?”
Kane clenched his jaw. “And Makoba.”
“How many have died because of him?” Brigid pressed. “And you don’t have to answer that. I remember every detail of what he has done.”
“And do you remember the kongamato? And the presence of a militia?” Kane countered.
Grant grumbled, then patted the big Barrett rifle. “Lay some healin’ on that asshole. I’ve got my own five feet of magic to take away whatever health he abuses trying to kill us.”
“Have...advant...age,” Durga sputtered.
Nathan looked askance at Brigid Baptiste. She had been the voice of dissent in giving th
e Nagah prince a chance to walk, to stand, to fight alongside them. This was an instance, however, where expedience depended on every person present being able to resist the monsters assembled outside. Nathan handed Nehushtan to Kane.
The Cerberus explorer held the ancient staff, feeling the tingle of electricity running up his arm, flowing into his chest, warming him from within. Kane took a deep breath, and that inhalation seemed to make him surge even more with strength and confidence. He glanced toward Durga, holding out his other hand.
“Just remember, Durga. This can take what it bestows,” he said, as if the thought had just been kicked loose from the tip of his tongue.
Durga paused before forcing his hand to meet Kane’s. At the brush of their fingertips, the world suddenly sparked, lightning crackling around the pair of them.
The blue flames that engulfed Kane and Durga seemed to burn through every nerve in both their bodies. One writhing tentacle of energy spit between their foreheads, a pulsing, churning hell of heat and agony that made Kane feel as if he were being pulled and stretched as thin as wire.
Molten copper poured through his veins, and he could see the same within Durga. For that moment, they were one entity, combined by the odd energies stored within Nehushtan.
As soon as they were connected, Kane felt his opponent suddenly rampaging in his mind. The two beings were gripped by rage and confusion, their deepest emotions bubbling to the surface. Kane could feel his fingers stabbing into Durga’s throat, and the Nagah’s pointed nails sliced Kane’s skin at his neck.
Both men’s faces were twisted, contorted, and their bodies seemed to be hanging weightless in space, neither of them able to gain the leverage to crush the opponent in his grasp. It was a sudden, all-out physical war, giving Kane a surge of strength and energy, while at the same time disorienting him.
“Durga! Last I remember, I was trying to heal your ungrateful ass!” Kane bellowed. His breathing didn’t seem hindered by the clutches of the Nagah prince.
The Nagah’s eyes blazed with anger and rage. “Only after...”
Suddenly the raging electrical storm enveloping the two men seemed to fade, as though gravity had still not taken hold. The two looked around at the space they hung in. They were looking down upon their bodies, and the rest of the group who had been assembled. Time stood still as they hovered in the air.
“Out-of-body experience,” Durga grumbled.
Kane remembered that Durga had been in telepathic conference with Enlil on a couple of occasions. Kane’s own psychically caressed mind had picked up the whispers, the tingles in the background of his thoughts when the two had conversed, and the Annunaki overlord had very nearly slain Kane with a psionic assault. Only CPR by his allies had been able to restart his heart after Enlil’s mental death blow. He gave Durga a glare, but couldn’t hold the words in.
“You’d be familiar, wouldn’t you?” Kane asked.
“We’re on the mental plane,” his opponent growled. “Keeping your surface thoughts hidden is nigh impossible!”
Kane kept his eye on Durga. “So, if you’re plotting something, I’ll know it.”
The Nagah prince’s lip curled as his eyes gleamed like black pearls. “You may believe what you wish, fool.”
“Or you’ve learned discipline while dealing with Enlil,” Kane mused.
Durga looked as if he’d just punched him in the gut.
“Is this a trap?” Kane snarled. “I can undo—”
“No, you cannot,” Durga responded. “It’s not my trap.”
Kane paused. “You said your trap.”
“Jacobs,” Durga said. “Or whomever he was working with.”
Kane immediately looked to North. The man was null, empty space in an otherwise normal room. Nehushtan was unable to “see” him, Kane presumed, because both Kane and Durga were projected into astral forms by the staff. He turned back to Durga.
“I do not trust that ape,” Durga growled, pointing to the spot where North should have been.
Kane frowned, a sudden realization striking him. “He said that Nehushtan was transmitting a signal to repel him from it.”
“And yet he is gone, disappeared from our view, if we truly are here because of the manipulations of the old staff of Solomon,” Durga responded.
Kane shot a glance at him. “So what do we do to get back into our bodies?”
“Return to them?” he replied with a shrug.
The two men turned toward their bodies, then tried to swim through the empty air toward their frozen forms.
That was when North’s void form shifted, spread. Cold red eyes glowed within that gray shape.
“Oh no, Kane, Durga,” the figure said. It sure as hell didn’t sound like North. It was something different. Metallic. Resonant. “You are not going to ruin this.”
With that, the creature lifted its hand, and Kane and Durga were tossed about like leaves in the wind.
Kane roared in impotent rage as he was hurled away from his body and into the void.
Chapter 14
Brigid Baptiste watched Kane place Durga’s hand on the staff, and then a moment later, both men collapsed to the floor. She immediately wondered if Kane had gone to the well one too many times, utilizing the staff’s healing abilities, but neither man looked as if he had been put through agony, not like when Kane first sealed Nathan’s deadly claw wound. No, this instance made it seem as if they were marionettes with their strings severed. Alarm filled the Cerberus archivist, and she rushed to cradle Kane’s head, checking for vital signs.
She let out a sigh of relief that he had a pulse, still breathed, still was warm to the touch. However, that relief chilled and shattered like icicles when she saw his eyes, open, blank, soulless.
“Kane?” she asked.
No response. He didn’t even blink when she touched her finger to his eyeball. Dread supplanted any gratitude that Kane’s heart and lungs worked.
“What happened? Are they dead?” Thurpa asked. He was as confused by this as the rest.
“It could be the staff.” North spoke up. “Kane tried to revive Durga...and if Nehushtan wanted little to do with me, then...”
“So it killed them both?” Grant asked.
“They’re alive, physically,” Brigid returned. “But there is nobody home in there.”
Grant looked at his friend, then to Durga. “You sure it was the stick?”
“What else could it be?” Makoba asked. He struggled to his feet, a little unsteady, but he no longer seemed to be oozing blood. His arm no longer sported a bullet hole. He looked down, surprised to have been returned to health. “Why didn’t I become catatonic, as well?”
“Because you weren’t in physical contact?” Nathan suggested. He looked at the staff, then picked it up. Brigid watched for any change in his demeanor or health, or any response from Kane or Durga.
Unfortunately, nothing happened to the pair of comatose men. She gave her bottom lip a chew, then heard the thunder of the stairwell door being hammered off of its hinges at lobby level. There was an immediate echo down by Davis, with his radio. The look on his face confirmed her suspicions. “There’s no back way out. We’re going to have to hold the doorway.”
Grant opened his war bag. “I’ve got a few charges that can slow them down.”
Gibbons pulled out a duffel from a hiding spot by the wall. “We might have a way out....”
With that, he dug into the bag, tossing aside a couple Calicos, both of which were retrieved by Davis and Makoba. Finally, Gibbons came out with a large jewel, and something that made the blood drain from Brigid’s already pale features.
“Where did Durga get a Threshold?” Brigid asked.
Gibbons looked at her. “How do...” He thought the better of debating it. “Durga never said.”
Thurpa swallowed. “That was how we got from India to Africa. A hell of a lot safer than riding the Indian Ocean.”
Brigid glanced toward Thurpa. “Did he inform you how to operate it. Did he inform any of you?”
From the pause and blank expressions on the faces of those present, none of them needed to speak. While she had seen a Threshold before on a couple of occasions, and had even been ferried about by one with Ullikummis as Brigid Haight, she didn’t have the personal knowledge of how to operate the device. Since much of Annunaki technology tended to operate on mental interface, she presumed that if she had the proper instructions, she could open a portal, but just holding the thing and making wishes would be counterproductive.
Reluctantly, she turned toward Fargo North. “Give the Threshold to him.”
North glanced at the jewel-like ancient artifact. “You presume that—”
Brigid’s icy glare, accompanied by the curl of her upper lip, cut him off. “We do not have time for your duplicity. Operate the Threshold or we will all perish.”
North narrowed his eyes. “I thought that you’d want to do your hero thing....”
“We’re outnumbered, and in a death trap basement,” Grant growled as he packed explosives into the ceiling in front of the door. He stabbed radio detonators into them. The plan was simple, yet canny, Brigid decided. The explosives weren’t able to produce a lot of concussive or shrapnel damage to intercept kongamato crashing through the door, but in the arc that Grant was setting them in, he’d drop the ceiling atop the marauders, crushing them, hopefully.
Brigid returned her attention to North. “Unless you part with some of your ill-gotten knowledge, we are all going to be ripped to shreds.”
The renegade archaeologist reached out and grasped the Threshold. North peered into the facets of the Annunaki artifact, handling it and observing it almost as if it were a newborn babe. He ran his hands across its surface, lips silently moving, like a prayer to Enlil himself. The whole acquaintanceship with the Threshold unnerved Brigid, making the hairs on her neck stand up straight. She scanned the room, and noticed that even the comatose Kane’s neck hairs were erect. There was static energy in the atmosphere of this subterranean chamber, and then the Threshold released beams of laser light, sheetlike plasma clouds undulating off rays.