12.21.12: The Vessel (The Altunai Annals)

by Killian McRae

  One moment, there was nothing, and the next, two beings—one female and one male, apparently human though both Shep and Alex knew better—were standing amongst them.

  Shep grunted as Alex forced his head down, avoiding the celestial beings’ gazes.

  “What the hell, Alex?”

  “Sorry, Shep,” he apologized, pointing at the two perfect specimens of beauty before them, “but when the royalty that holds your life in its hands appears before you, you should kneel.”

  Chapter 31

  Despite Alex’s attempts to keep him from it, Shep managed to look up. Tall, slender, ivory-skinned, and with hair so fair it was more translucent than blonde, the sibling Altunai approximated every clichéd image of angels, other than wings, Shep had seen in cathedrals from Madrid to Moscow. Though the venom with which they spat their words made it difficult to comprehend, the tongue sounded oddly Semitic to his ears.

  Shep pulled on Alex’s sleeve. “Hide!”

  “But …” Alex pointed vaguely to the brewing riot.

  No sooner had they cleared the space and taken shelter behind a surviving pillar than the commotion started. Dmitri leapt forward and took Ra to the ground, pinning his shoulders under his legs and circling his hands around his adversary’s throat. Isis and Victoria turned circles and insults on each other. Ra retaliated with ease. Barely moving a muscle, the same flickering of bluish light crawled over his surface, gathered over the prince’s chest, and blasted Dmitri on to his back.

  As Ra rose to his feet, he summoned his power on the outstretched palm of his hand, as though cocking back the trigger of a loaded pistol and taking aim. Dmitri rolled up unto the palms of his hands, though his body remained ground level. He turned and froze, looking death in the face. Knowing his advantage, Ra sneered and pulled back his hand, about to drive the energy forward, when Victoria threw herself over Dmitri, blocking him.

  “So sure you want to do that, Ra?” she said, out of all things, in Ancient Egyptian. “You’re on my playground now, and I decide who gets to be in the game in these parts.”

  Isis’s glare, equal parts of surprise, confusion, and bitter rage, narrowed. “Osiris, how can you allow your Vessel to speak to the prince this way? Have you taught her no manners?”

  “Such arrogance!” Ra retorted, his lip curling in disgust as he looked at Victoria. “But what else can we expect from food.”

  Victoria refused to yield. “We can start with this.”

  She pulled back a hand and manifested fire. The ball of flame hit Ra square on the chest, throwing the prince backward. A second volley sped toward the queen, but Isis ducked out of the way.

  “You arrogant Vessel!” Isis readied lightning on her fingers, pulling sparks down from the sky, before directing the volts at Victoria. She found her target, but Tlalli took the blow in silence. “You dare consider yourself our equal?”

  “No, Your Highness, I know I’m not your equal. I’m better than that. I am Sekhmet, defender of this land, and wife to Osiris.”

  Isis’s lightning lashed across the divide. “Whore human! Osiris loves only me!”

  Struggling to her feet, Victoria leapt out of the path of danger. Perhaps the queen thought too little of her; the Vessel’s speed bested Isis’s efforts to track her down.

  “Oh, come now, auntie!” Victoria landed a punch to the queen’s face before porting behind her, sweeping a kick to the back of her calves and bringing her down to her knees. “Didn’t Ra ever tell you I was his child? No? I’m guessing, then, that he also never told you that he asked me to seduce Osiris. You can look into my memories for proof, if you want. I mean, you’re going to anyway, right? Right before you off me and bring in the rest of your generals to start dividing the human race in to snack size portions?”

  “Tlalli, stop!” This time, it was Dmitri who placed himself in the way.

  The queen couldn’t see Dmitri’s face, but Shep could from where he sat. He saw the Lord of the Afterlife wink at the Vessel, and caught the momentary glance Dmitri pushed in his direction.

  He pushed Victoria back and faced the queen, helping her to her feet, giving Victoria a momentary reprieve.

  “You don’t need to look in her memories. My Queen, my loyalty and my heart have always been with you.”

  It was then that Shep heard Victoria’s voice inside his head. “Be ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Shep asked

  “What?”

  Shep hadn’t realized he’d asked the question aloud until Alex spoke. He pointed indicatively at Victoria, trying to somehow signal that she’d been “speaking” to him, but Alex didn’t follow. Which Shep suddenly realized, she didn’t mean for him to. When the Altunai had first spoke, it was in a tongue he didn’t recognize. Victoria had changed that, however. Why in the heat of everything going on would she make sure everything spoken was in a dead language that Shep spoke with near fluency?

  “When I call for you, bring me Cleopatra’s blood. You, not Alex, understand?”

  Passing glances between her brother and Dmitri, Isis seemed confused. After a moment of consideration, she pointed one of her elegant fingers toward a swirling, shimmering expanse of air that was the gate they had arrived from.

  “Brother, return.” Isis lifted a hand to stroke down Dmitri’s cheek. “Your presence here is no longer required.”

  “But, sister,” Ra stumbled. “Surely you don’t believe her. I may have taken of her body, but she is not my progeny—”

  “She has our eyes!” Isis said, cutting him off. “And no Vessel has ever been able to harvest elements. I’m not surprised to learn of another of your bastard children, Ra, but the Vessel? And did you really think my beloved Osiris would betray me? Just because he tarried his time by using the Vessel for recreation doesn’t mean she owns his heart. I almost feel sorry that she’s deluded herself into thinking it. Killing her now will be more than a duty, it will be a kindness.”

  Dmitri’s eyes turned cold as he turned back to Victoria. “Did you really think you meant anything to me? You’re beneath me. I am a god, and you are a common whore.”

  Shep looked on in confusion as, with a quivering lip, Victoria rose to her feet. “But you told me … you told me you loved me.”

  “You weren’t even that good of a lay, as you humans would say.” Dmitri laughed back. “Did you think that just because an Altunai was your father that you’d be anything more than a tool to me?”

  Victoria turned, pulling herself along for several steps before falling to her knees. Shep felt Alex shift, trying to go to her, but he pulled him back, shaking his head.

  Dmitri placed two hands on Isis’s shoulders, turning her about so her back was to Victoria. “My Queen, let me kiss you. It’s been far too long, and I want to show you how I feel.”

  As Dmitri pressed his lips to Isis’s, Victoria’s wide eyes shot up, looking at Shep as he peeked around the edge of the pillar. “Now!”

  Without time to explain, Shep grabbed the statuette from his brother-in-law’s hold, placed his hand over the shaft of the filled cylinder within, and bolted. Despite the fact the he could not remember ever having moved so fast in all his life, the scene around him seemed to unfold in slow motion. The professor rounded the pillar and caught sight of Isis going limp. A moment later, Dmitri pulled back, and he saw the queen fall to the ground, her wide, dead eyes fixing on the stars. Dmitri ported, as just behind Shep Alex chased. From the corner of his eye, a halo of light burst out when his brother-in-law was encircled by the God of the Afterlife, before the pair evaporated in to nothingness.

  Shep wanted to stop, wanted to call out for Alex, but he’d already reached Victoria. She stretched out, and he fell forward, trying to maneuver the icon into her grasp as her arms erupted in to flame, licks of gold and orange light crawling over her. Victoria’s right hand wrapped a
round the statuette as Shep felt his body surrendering to the ground. He knew he’d be aching and maybe even injured, given the speed at which he’d be running. He smiled as she pulled the statuette in close, knowing he had succeeded at giving her what she needed to close the dock.

  However, when he saw her whip the statue to the side and a sanguineous fan arc into the distance, he felt his stomach dropping away and his smile retreat. He faced the ground, preparing for it to assault him, when he felt Victoria squeeze his elbow and jerk him up into her arms.

  “No, Shep, you’re my key.”

  The world picked up tempo and then some. In a blink, Victoria turned to the gate and threw out an arm. Pressing herself to Shep, he felt a consummating rush of energy between them. Shep called out, he didn’t know if from pain or pleasure, and watched as Ra, who had been rushing toward them, stopped in his tracks and looked back over his shoulder in horror. When the gate melded with the air about it and flattened out of existence, becoming no more than a memory, she tightened her arms around him even more, closed her eyes, and ported.

  The last thing Shep saw from the Altunai was an arrow of lightning emanating from Ra’s hands.

  Chapter 32

  Darth Vader was somewhere in the room. And possibly R2D2.

  Someone was breathing through a straw. But unlike the polyphonic droid, Shep realized that the cadence of beeps were rhythmic, steady, normalized. It was a pulse. As he tried to sit up and heard the rhythm pick up tempo, he realized it was his pulse. He fell back against the bed and decided just to start with opening his eyes.

  Light scorched his irises as his eyelids fluttered open. There was a residual burn in his gut and the taste of metal on his tongue. Worms were crawling up his nose and across his cheeks. Oxygen tubes, he realized, as he reached to his face. The heart monitor continued to measure the moments in dub-lub time.

  His body was simultaneously numb and supersensitive. As his pupils adjusted, the blurry images sharpened. A hospital room, just as he suspected: floral print walls, plastic-curtained barriers hanging from tracks, a white loose stitch quilt over his body. Sterile. All in all, typical.

  He tried to sit up, even though his head pounded harder with the effort. When he got to the halfway point, he froze as the pain shot through him. With a hiss, he surrendered back to the bed. A pulsing sensation just under his right pectoral made him aware of a sore ache. He drew a hand to the tender spot and found a bandage. Where is the call button? he thought as he glanced around his immediate vicinity. There, on a utility table next to his bed, he saw it. His hand stretched out, but the voice that rose up behind him made him stop.

  “He’s awake!” Alex called out. A moment later, his brother-in-law had circled around the bed and dived atop him, hugging him. “Holy shit, Shep, I thought you were a goner for sure. When Victoria and you showed up back at the house, you look like you had just French kissed an electric eel.

  The words made no sense. When they’d showed up? From where? “Huh?”

  Alex withdrew, examining Shep at arm’s length. “Ra threw lightning at you. It touched you just a little bit, but lightning is lightning, you know. Victoria was a mess, she was convinced he’d killed you. Luckily, Dmitri convinced her the best thing was to get you to a hospital.”

  “What about the gate? What about the Altunai?”

  “You and Victoria were able to close the gate. She and Dmitri ported us out of there to protect us. Ra is trapped on our side, but we don’t know where he went to. Without the gate open and without a nearby Vessel to convert energy, he’s powerless. For now, anyway.”

  “For now?” Shep repeated.

  Alex nodded. “Dmitri says as soon as Ra feels like he’s found a human he can manipulate and trust, he’ll create his own proxy. For the moment, though, we’re safe.”

  He supposed it was as good a turn of events as any of them could hope. “And Victoria, is she …”

  “She’s in the waiting room. I told her you woke up, so she’s coming up.”

  “Told her? How? You haven’t left the … Oh, yeah. The psychic thing, huh?”

  Alex nodded. “She was right about one thing, it beats texting.”

  “And after looking at the bills I’m bound to have from last week, saves us a lot of money.”

  Dressed in a white gown, her hair arranged in an elegant bun atop her head, Victoria looked just as attractive as she had when he first saw her in the Veracruz airport a week ago. Only now that he knew the truth, he could see things about her that that day he was blind to. Like the wisdom she carried in her eyes, the way she always paused before answering a question, as though considering all her options before committing to speak.

  “Thanks for letting me know, Alex. Dmitri’s jet is fueled up and waiting for you. When I get back to England, I’m meeting that girl finally. Do you understand?”

  Alex leaned in, kissing Victoria on the cheek. “Yes, Mom,” he whined. “But seriously, now that you and Dmitri are back together, can you two play up the kissy face thing when you meet her? Monique says otherwise, but I think she’s convinced that you and I have something going on.”

  A blushing smile spread over Victoria’s face. “Giving the way he’s treating me, you’ll be lucky if he stops with my face. Now go. You should get home just in time to spend Christmas Eve with her.”

  Shep’s brother-in-law gave him one last handshake before grabbing a backpack off the chair by the door and dashing into the hall.

  Victoria inspected Shep with a more critical survey. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fried,” he grumbled.

  Laughter wasn’t the reaction he expected. “Well, you were hit with lightning by a powerful ancient god only yesterday. Good thing we sealed the gate and ported out of there when we did, or you might be recovering in the morgue right now instead of intensive care.”

  “Yeah, speaking of that. Last night, how did I—”

  “You’re descended from Cleopatra,” Victoria said, cutting him off.

  Shep’s jaw fell. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re descended from Cleopatra,” Victoria repeated. “More importantly, you’re descended from the line of her daughter, Cleopatra Selene, who I took as proxy, and the Altunai bond has carried down through the centuries. In your case, that bond was reinforced when you consummated your marriage with my proxy, Christine.”

  A queer thought entered his mind, remembering how they had once almost kissed. “Are we … related?”

  “Not in the traditional sense, no,” she answered. “And even if we were, it would have been very distantly, so don’t think that kiss would have been, you know, incestuous.”

  Synapses he never even knew he had fired faster than a jack rabbit on meth, trying to piece together the fragments. As he found focus and realized all that had happened the night before, another memory surfaced, one that did not make him happy about the fact that Victoria had come away from everything that happened unscathed.

  The heart monitor measured out beats in allegro time as his ire rose. “Murderer.”

  “No, Shep, I didn’t kill Christine. Dmitri did. And there’s a good reason I stood by and let him.”

  “Speak of the devil ...”

  The sound of Dmitri Kronastia’s voice made his blood boil. As the gangster impostor strode into the room, Victoria rose from the bed and fell into his arms. Like they were on autopilot, their lips met. With a sense of unfulfilled vengeance, Shep growled. Victoria and Dmitri exchanged a look full of dialogue. Their eyes darted around as, no doubt, they spoke within the confines of their own minds. After a moment, Victoria shook her head.

  “He just woke up, I hadn’t told him yet.”

  “Allow me?” Dmitri asked. “Could let me get back in good standing with him, don’t you think?”

  She nodded. “Of course. I’ll wait outsi
de. Shep, we’ll see each other again soon. I’m sure Anathea will be happy to see you now, if you’d still care to visit her. You’re on her select list of all-access researchers.”

  With a wink to him and another kiss to Dmitri, she turned toward the exit.

  “Victoria, wait!” Shep called. At the door, she paused and turned. “So, that’s it? You just admit you two conspired to kill my wife, and you walk away guilt-free? You’re not going to be sorry at all about Hector or Anton’s death? You’re just going to be happy-happy no matter how many lives it took?”

  “I understand how you’d see things that way. I’ve lived a very long time, and there are many wrongs I can never make right. But I had to do everything I could to be certain Osiris survived. Otherwise, many of our debts could never be repaid.” Victoria exchanged a sympathetic smile with Dmitri. “I guess you’d be better at explaining that part. I’ll be outside.”

  “Of course, love. I’ll be along directly.”

  As they were left alone, Shep wanted to leap up, grab the IV pole next to his bed, and impale Dmitri while the getting was good. If it hadn’t been a dream, then the memory of what had happened to his Christine—and who had done it to her—was as real as it was raw.

  “Come on, Shep, I’d port out before you could stumble to your feet.”

  Realization dawned in him. “You’re reading my mind?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Without any trouble?”

  Dmitri nodded. “As long as I’m within a few hundred feet of Victoria, I’m fully capable of using all my powers. It’s always been that way, which is why she’s avoided me. She didn’t trust me to use my abilities to benefit humanity. I think it’s safe to say that after what happened last night, she’s giving me the benefit of doubt. For now, anyway. Can we get to why I’m here now?”