Paradisus (Awakened Book 6)

by Harley Austin

  “And now he is a liability with two of us laying dead. How many more of us must be killed before we take action?”

  “Solis.” Arcus began. Again, patiently. “Your relationship with Hera was renowned. We, all of us, understand your pain. Your anger and the anguish you must be feeling. This is quite unsettling to all of us; not just you.”

  The anger drained away from his face as all could now see the pain in his eyes.

  “Rigel,” Athena began. “take no further actions against the assassin. We must have time to reflect and deliberate. The prophecies did not reveal such a disturbing event.”

  “With the Council’s approval, I will take my leave.” Rigel bowed.

  “You may go, my friend.” Arcus dismissed him.

  Rigel left the Grand Chamber, closing one of the great doors that led to the hall. He walked the tall subterranean corridors with their tall Gothic domed ceilings. He took a shortcut through the tombs where the skulls and bones of countless and now nameless warriors of his people lay out in the open, neatly ceremonially stacked to preserve their ancient memory of gods long passed.

  He then climbed the ornate stairs until he’d ascended to main floor of the grand cathedral. A cardinal in full dress bowed slightly upon seeing him. Rigel nodded his greeting to the ancient Ra as he left.

  41

  O H! Jesus. That was freaky.” Ethan was suddenly standing on the shore of the most beautiful clear-blue water beach he’d ever seen in his life. Thea’s fingers were still locked in his.

  She looked at him with a mirthful smile. “Okay?” she asked.

  “Yea. Wow. Where are we?”

  “Maldives. I love the feel of the white sand here and how clear the water is.”

  Ethan looked around the beautiful beach and the crystal clear light blue water. Dressed like a tourist couple in matching white swimwear, both walked pensively along the uninhabited atoll beach, barefoot, moving in and out of the beautiful water that lazily lapped up the long shallow shore. Ethan felt like he’d just been transported to Heaven.

  “Did you and Ty have fun talking about me last night?” he asked.

  “He says you talk in your sleep.”

  “Nice. All my foibles are out in the open.”

  “It’s cute.”

  Both walked a ways along the beach in the sun.

  “Ethan, I wanted to apologize for what happened yesterday. Between us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m usually not so forward. I behaved like a college girl. I’m old enough to know better.”

  “You don’t need to apologize. I was there; it was a little spontaneous. Ty and I sort of happened that way. I guess that’s how I am as well. Spontaneous.”

  “I think that’s what surprised me. I was being that way myself.”

  “Bad combination?”

  “No. Good combination. I like being spontaneous with you, Ethan. I just like being with you.”

  “I can feel that. I just—I wonder why?”

  “I’m trying to understand that myself.” She looked pensively into the water as a tiny wave moved up over her feet.

  “Are we too different?”

  “We don’t feel too different. Do we?” she asked.

  “No. I like feeling you inside me like this.”

  “I like having your feelings within me as well.”

  They walked hand-in-hand down the beautiful sun-drenched sands, slipping in and out of the crystalline waters and watching tiny sea life dart and crawl through the tiny waves and along the beach.

  “Ethan, I didn’t mean what I said the other night. About wishing you didn’t have a body.”

  “It’s okay. I know what you meant.”

  “Do you think it matters?”

  “Thea, as long as we can feel each other like this, does it really?”

  She took hold of his arm gently pulling herself close to him, but it was what Ethan felt inside himself that made him want to pull her physically closer to himself as well.

  42

  T onight on Larry King, Gods and Goddesses, do they actually exist? Or is this just an elaborate hoax being perpetrated on America and the world by some enterprising group looking to grab the media spotlight?

  “My guest this evening is the current Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Robert Hamilton. Rob, it is both a pleasure and an honor to have you here with me tonight.”

  “My pleasure as well, Larry.”

  “So let’s talk about this video that’s been circulating on YouTube and Facebook for the past week. Close to five hundred million views on YouTube alone, showing Kent Levi, the man who was almost killed by an assassin’s bullet during the Heathcare Hearings, blowing away federal agents and destroying a downtown Seattle restaurant, not to mention killing scores of people in the resulting fire that burned the place to the ground. It’s a pretty spectacular piece of footage.”

  “Indeed it is, Larry.”

  “But is it real? This looks like something a group of kids dreamed up in film school and posted on social media.”

  “I wish it were a piece of fiction.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m dead serious, Larry. Unfortunately, the video you’re seeing is not the product of special effects; it’s raw, uncut security video taken directly from the restaurant’s own cameras.”

  “You’re not bullshitting me, are you?”

  “No, Larry.”

  “So you’re saying this footage is real?”

  “It’s real, Larry. Homeland discovered the video footage and collected it as national security evidence. It was highly classified. No one in the public was ever supposed to see it. Ever.”

  “Well, how did it get onto YouTube?”

  “A new contract analyst hired by DHS decided that the world needed to see this. She fed the material to Wikileaks.”

  “She?”

  “Correct.”

  “Who is she?”

  “That’s currently classified, Larry. She’s been arrested and is being prosecuted. That’s all I can say.”

  “But the cat’s kind of out of the bag now.”

  “It is, unfortunately.”

  “It looks like in this video that Kent Levi is literally toasting the building with all kinds of people inside. Federal agents are shooting at him? Why?”

  “Those aren’t actually federal agents, Larry. They’re specially trained international U.N. law enforcement.”

  “International?”

  “That’s right. People like Kent Levi aren’t actually American Citizens, Larry. They’re what we call ‘guest entities’, and they have been a big problem for a very long time.”

  “Long time? How long?”

  “Since before the Roman Empire.”

  “Rome? Really?”

  “Governments have been banding together to keep these people from becoming too numerous and literally taking over the world for centuries, even millennia. The natural privilege these people hold over the rest of Humanity is uncanny. And it is dangerous.”

  “These people, what are they, exactly?”

  “We don’t really know the answer to that, Larry. They are like an advanced culture. Ten thousand years ago when the rest of us were learning how to build farms in the Levant, these people were building aircraft with jet engines.”

  “Oh, my God. Wow!”

  “They’re way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of their knowledge and technology. Way ahead.”

  “How do you keep that a secret?”

  “Well, they’re very smart people, Larry. A lot smarter than most of us.”

  “They’d have to be. And Kent Levi, he’s obviously one of these—gods?”

  “They’re not gods, Larry. That moniker is misnomer. They’re actually called Ra. And to the ancient people living and writing about this advanced culture, sure, they probably looked like gods because that is how the primitive cultures back then saw them.”

  “Ra? Like the Egyptian sun god?”

  �
��Exactly. A lot of our own mythologies were lifted from aspects of the culture of the Ra. Apparently the Ra had quite a bit of influence on the ancient Egyptians as well as the ancient Hebrews. They didn’t understand the technology back then so they just wrote down what they saw. It’s no different than if you suddenly showed up in the middle of some primitive tribe in Africa today in a helicopter, you’d be looked at like a god to them.”

  “I’m sure. I’m just really befuddled that a people like this could keep themselves a secret for so long.”

  “They’re actually very good at that, Larry. These people hide within our own populations. They’re very much just like us in how they look. We’re not always smart enough to see them for who and what they are.”

  “How do you know? Is there any way to know if you’re working with or maybe going to school with one of these Ra?”

  “Well, Larry, first of all, there aren’t that many of them around anymore. The chances of any of us actually meeting one are extremely slim today.”

  “But they are around, right?”

  “Sure, but again, you would probably never even notice unless you know what you’re looking for.”

  “Like what for instance?”

  “Well, off the top of my head, they heal very quickly. You saw the video of Kent Levi, he’d been shot I don’t know how many times resisting arrest; the wounds were almost gone by the end of the video. It’s why it takes so much firepower to bring one of them down if they decide to resist. They’re practically invulnerable.”

  “They heal that quickly?”

  “They do. It’s also one of the reasons why you won’t ever see a Ra with a scar or even a tattoo.”

  “What about his wife, Lisa, is she one of these goddesses?”

  “Honestly, Larry, they’re not gods or goddesses.”

  “She looks like a goddess in her commercials,” Larry chuckled. “Let’s have a look at one of these goddesses working for Seattle Denim—”

  Both the host and the deputy secretary watched the one minute commercial clip of the silky-haired auburn brunette sleekly dressing her unimaginable curves, pulling the soft stretch denim over bare ass, while the camera caught subtle shots of her beautiful smiles, nipped-out breasts and even a little manicured muff as she zipped herself bare into the sleek new jeans.

  “Wow, is she hot or what?” Larry offered after the short clip had played.

  The deputy secretary pursed his lips, half frowning. “The Ra are very comely people, that’s true.” No one had bothered to tell him that the commercial was going to play. Lisa Levi wearing nothing but an opened-fly pair of jeans wasn’t helping his cause.

  “So what are people supposed to do if they think they see or know one of these Ra?”

  “Well, Homeland has a hotline you can call.”

  “And there it is, you can call the number is at the bottom of your screen if you suspect someone of being a Ra. What else can people do?”

  “The best thing to do is call us, or just notify your local police department and let them contact us. Whatever you do, don’t engage them. They are very dangerous people. Just let the international security force do its job. That’s the safest thing to do.”

  “And then what? What is Homeland doing with the Ra they find?”

  “Well, first of all, let’s be clear, these people are not American Citizens. They’re here as our guests. As long as they obey our laws, we usually just leave them alone. However, we don’t want the Ra mingling with the American population, Larry. They’re actually toxic.”

  “Toxic? Like how?”

  “A long time ago these people genetically modified their own physiology. They’re like a walking AIDS epidemic waiting to happen. If you come in contact with their blood, it will put you into a coma in a matter of minutes, a coma you most probably will never wake up from. And there’s no cure, Larry. We don’t want to expose people to that kind of danger. Whenever we see a Ra, we tell them to stay away from others. If they don’t, then we have to take action to protect the people in our cities.”

  “Is that what happened with Kent Levi?”

  “It is. Mr. Levi was living in the mountains, well away from others. He has been asked numerous times to stay away from our population centers, Seattle in particular. He can be lethal to other people around him. When he didn’t comply, he didn’t leave us with much of a choice but to enforce our own laws. The video pretty much shows what it takes to subdue a Ra, and in this case, even with the best international law enforcement we had, he leveled the place in a matter of minutes.”

  “These gods sound dangerous.”

  “They can be very dangerous, Larry. But, again, they’re not gods.”

  “Levi is tossing around lightning bolts the dining room of this restaurant, Rob; he looks like a god in my book.”

  The Deputy Secretary appeared to sigh in frustration. “Sure, Larry …”

  * * * * *

  Ethan and Thea floated softly together, enclosed by the soft warm light and cocoon-like crystalline chandelier of her chamber. Her long avatar hair flowed like soft waves, wrapping all around them. Both moved intimately together, an occasional sweet kiss between them; a long, slow sensual fuck as Ethan moved his solid cock intimately within her. But it was their tightly entwined feelings that moved each of them in an invisible passion.

  “Ethan,” she felt to him in an empathic sensation. “You’re going to make me—Ethan!”

  Ethan sweetly pushed her over the edge almost without trying. He felt the intense wake of her emotion and her glow splashing all over his skin, her feelings moving through him as her euphoria took her. Every fiber of his being was tingling as her ecstatic light moved through him. Her pure emotion was like nothing he’d ever felt before. His body convulsed softly with hers as wave after wave of her pure rapture released for several minutes.

  While his body spilled his seed over and over within her, it was the feeling of her own passion that took him by surprise. Thea’s emotion for Ethan was deep; but still, his own feelings fully extended could not reach all she felt for him. Thea’s feelings surrounded him completely.

  Finally, she recovered. She watched Ethan not just splashed but completely bathed in the light of her deep elation. She could feel him slowly recovering.

  “Oh, Thea,” Ethan breathed softly. “What are you doing to me?” He stretched warmly around her, his body still singing with the intensely sweet sensations she’d delivered into him while his cock throbbed empty within their intimate physical connection.

  “Ethan? Ethan! Are you okay?” Concern was all over her feelings and her face.

  “Sure.” He breathed, still slowly recovering, his body rapidly healing from the pure intense rapture. He’d never felt anything so powerfully euphoric in his life.

  Thea wrapped herself around him, holding him tightly in her light. After long minutes he began kissing her sweetly.

  “Oh. My God. Thea. I love what you do to me.” He stroked her hair and her feelings sweetly.

  “You have to be careful—Ethan.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t do that to me again. It’s too much. I—I could really hurt you.”

  “It already hurts,” he exhaled. “In a good way. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

  “Please. Ethan, you can’t touch me like that again. I don’t know that I can control my emotions with you going that deeply.”

  “I’ll be careful next time.”

  “Please.”

  43

  T y walked arm-in-arm with Ethan along the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Although cooler, there were still quite a few people mulling about in the late morning sunshine. The pair were a defining and striking couple that turned the heads of men and women while they walked taking in the sights and sounds of the iconic park.

  “Are you okay?” Ethan asked him.

  “Just—sad I guess.” Ty lamented.

  “I’m still attracted to you,” Ethan assured.

  “But you haven’t bee
n around long enough for it to matter.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ethan, I get it. You really like hanging around Thea. I just wish I could compete with that on some level.”

  “You do. I’m not attracted to Thea.”

  “You act like you are.”

  Ethan frowned. In many ways Thea had her own kind of attraction; her personality, her warmth, the way she made Ethan laugh. Ty was fun to hang around with as well, but he wasn’t Thea. Ty made Ethan’s body feel amazing, but Thea—she somehow fed Ethan’s soul.

  “Our people have made all kinds of relationships work in the past, but, you’re excluding me. I don’t know if it’s culture or something more.”

  “It’s not you Ty. I’m sure it is just the way I was raised. Guy meets girl—

  “Thea’s not a girl—or a guy for that matter.”

  “I know. It’s who she chooses to be though. At least around me.”

  “I guess I’m stuck just being me,” Ty bemoaned.

  “I’m just as stuck, Ty. My mind is trapped in my head, just like yours is.”

  Ty sighed as they passed another couple walking pensively along the boardwalk.

  “Thea and I used to stay up for days talking when I was a kid, about what it was like not to have a body. She has a body you know. It’s just not corporeal.”

  “I’ve seen her,” Ethan responded.

  “I always hoped that Thea would find someone. Even though everyone else like her had gone.”

  “They were just like us; at one time—the Masters.” Ethan offered.

  “I know. They evolved. Just like we will one day. Hopefully we can join them. Wherever they went.”

  “Do you think that’s actually possible?” Ethan asked. “For people like us to become like Thea? Maybe somewhere they left behind the knowledge of how they evolved and where they went?”

  “I’m sure they—” Ty began but then suddenly stopped. Both looked up from the pavement at two people standing in front of them.

  “Rowan.” Ty said, his brow automatically furrowing.