by James Axler
She had seen him do it before. Ullikummis had moved rocks, drawing them from the surface of the Earth using some kind of sympathetic telekinesis. He had created a whole settlement, the stone construction called Tenth City. The number had been important, Mariah recalled. Clem Bryant had explained it to her.
The Annunaki had hidden in nine villes set across America. Nine barons, nine villes. Nine was the number of the universe, Clem had said. Nine was both creation and destruction; nine was the all.
“It is an ouroboros number,” Clem had said one day as they sat together. “It feeds upon itself. In Hindu belief, four is destruction, while five is creation. Add them together and you represent all the energy in the universe.”
Clem had been trying to explain to her why Ullikummis had chosen to call his settlement Tenth City, after Mariah had expressed her recurring nightmare of being forced to return.
“It’s entirely understandable that you’re worried about returning to the scene of the crime,” Clem said, indicating Mariah’s wounded ankle, where she had been shot while in Ullikummis’s ghost city. “But if you understand it, you can conquer your fear.”
Mariah wasn’t so sure, but she listened to Clem’s soothing voice, admiring the man’s fortitude and his passion for reducing everything to logic and emotion. “So if nine is the number of everything,” she’d asked, “why would Ullikummis choose ten?”
“In the simplest terms,” Clem said, “to suggest superiority over the other Annunaki overlords, perhaps.”
“But…?” Mariah had pressed. She knew Clem, knew how he would be working through the problem on several different levels at the same time.
“To be greater than nine,” Clem said, “to be more powerful than creation and destruction, to be more powerful than the all—that’s one ambitious godling. I daresay our godling has a god complex!”
Mariah looked at Clem for a long moment as he sipped his steeping tea. “You think there’s more, though, don’t you?” she asked.
“Human history,” he mused, “has been subtly dictated by the Annunaki. Their symbols underpin every development, every human endeavor. We have things, concepts, that show themselves in different ways across different cultures, but all seem to be in tune, as if they all came from the same source. In the Kabbalah, ten is the number of kingship. Known as Malkuth, it is unlike the other nine sephirot. The tenth is considered an attribute of God that does not emanate from God directly, but rather from his creation. God’s creation reflects God’s glory from within itself.
“In naming his creation Tenth City,” Clem continued, “Ullikummis was building a structure to reflect his own magnificence. That city design was a sigil, a powerful magical sign that can influence the course of events, and even the rational thinking of humans. You yourself were caught in its thrall.”
Mariah blushed, her acute embarrassment at recalling the event clearly written across her face.
Clem shook his head as if to chastize her. “Few people could resist that for very long, Mariah,” he explained. “There’s no shame in being trapped by its power. We—which is to say, civilized man—have these symbols indoctrinated into our thinking from a very young age. The cities of man, the great ones like Paris and New York and London—these all follow the sigil design, the same design Ullikummis used to create Tenth City. The Annunaki have been playing a very long game with mankind, one far more insidious than we first suspected.”
“So it’s possible that Tenth City is calling me back,” Mariah reasoned.
“You told me that the city was destroyed,” Clem said, “leveled to the ground by explosives. I doubt even a city can call to people from beyond the grave.”
In the cavelike cell now, Mariah wondered if perhaps this place was the city calling from beyond the grave, or at least clawing from it. Cerberus had been chasing after Ullikummis, bumbling into him since he had first arrived on the planet several months ago, but they had never considered what this monster could do. Typically, Cerberus had involved itself in engagements with the rogue Annunaki as they had with his father and family before him, but if they had considered what he could be capable of, they might have stayed one step ahead of him and prevented his successful attack on their home base.
Mariah eyed the wall under the dim, flickering glow of the recessed magma light, searching for a jutting piece. There, a little to her left, she spotted just what she was looking for—a piece of the rough stone, no bigger than her thumbnail, poking out on a tiny bridge of rock, barely connected to the wall.
Mariah reached across and pulled at it, worked it for a moment, pushing against the thin splinter that joined it to the wall. Given time and a little effort, it would break away, she knew.
The stone god had made a mistake in letting Mariah live. He had pushed her about in Tenth City, tried to kill her and failed. But killing Clem—that had been something new. A line had been crossed.
Mariah ran her hand along the rocky wall, then prodded the little jutting piece again, feeling it move just a little as she put pressure on it. “I know you, don’t I?” she muttered.
Sure, Mariah wasn’t an ex-Magistrate fighting machine like Kane, or a hyperintelligent warrior woman like Brigid Baptiste. All Mariah Falk was—all she had ever been—was a geologist. But a geologist knows rocks.
Using the heel of her hand, she gave a final push against the little jutting piece, felt it snap away. It skittered across the floor before bouncing off the far wall and coming to rest in the sand.
“Watch out, stone face,” Mariah whispered as she picked up the tiny shard. “I’ve got your number now.”
SELA SINCLAIR THOUGHT she could hear a marching band. The muscular, dark-skinned woman was ex-air force, and she had seen her fair share of parades and marching bands.
This music was coming from nearby, she was sure. She could hear it distinctly enough, although it seemed to be muffled, like voices from another room or music from the apartment above her own. It was at its loudest when First Priest Dylan visited her. Did she like him?
She was lying down, she realized, lying on something hard and cold, her eyes closed. She had been sleeping through the parade.
Sela opened her eyes and looked out on darkness. No, not darkness—not quite. As her eyes adjusted she became aware of a faint red glow above her, a red like blood seeping into her vision.
She rolled a little, struggling to make her muscles move. Her arms had gone numb thanks to the cold surface she had been sleeping on, and what little warmth she generated seemed to be lost in the cold place she found herself.
It was a cave, she realized, looking about her. A cave deep underground. At least, she assumed it was underground, though there was no real way of telling.
Sela pushed herself up from the cold rock, bringing her knees close and hugging them as she sat up, feeling the freezing cold of the chamber bite at her as she moved. “Where’s the band?” she muttered, peering around.
The music was still coming to her, as if from close by, perhaps from another room within her old frat house.
“They don’t have frat houses in caves,” Sela whispered to herself as the band played on.
She pushed herself up, finding it was a struggle, given the way her body seemed so heavy just now. It was as if she had been drugged, she felt so weary.
They don’t have bands in caves, either, Sela reminded herself as she looked around the space, still trying to fathom where the music was emanating from.
Slowly, her movements appreciably strained as if she had aged forty years in a day, Sela Sinclair walked around the little cave, searching for a doorway. There was none.
“What the hell?” she asked, rubbing her palm against her head as the music played on. She stopped suddenly, pulling her hand away. There was something there, in her head.
Tentatively this time, Sela brought her hand up and placed her fingertips on her forehead at her hairline, running them slowly down toward her eyes. On the second try she found the bump, a small calluslike thing loc
ated almost dead center of her forehead, where the mythical third eye was shown in those old trippy hippie paintings she’d seen years ago. Still standing, she bent over and ran her fingers around her forehead, reassuring herself that this was the only lump she was carrying. There were bruises and cuts on her face, and she winced once or twice as she probed at them, but the thing on her forehead was different. It seemed to sit there, a hard lump beneath the skin, moving slightly to her touch as if floating on a bed of Jell-O.
Sela pushed at the bump for a moment, using finger and thumb to trace its edges. It was quite large, about the size of her thumb joint, and it was entirely beneath her skin. She felt her head but could find no wound, no cut where it might had entered. Yet it didn’t feel like a swelling—it felt like a stone.
Sela couldn’t imagine what the thing was as she ran her hands over it again and again, worrying at it with the blunt edges of her short nails.
And somewhere, distant but not too distant, the music played on.
Chapter 16
“Wake up, Magistrate man.” It was a woman’s voice, throaty, with the lilt of an accent.
Kane’s eyes opened, the hard crust of sleep caught between the lashes of his left. He reached up, brushed the sleep away, trying to focus his mind.
“Are you awake?”
It was the woman’s voice again. Kane recognized it now as belonging to Rosalia, the street thief cum bodyguard who had accompanied First Priest Dylan into his cell.
Kane sprang like a jungle cat, grappling her legs and dragging her to the floor. He heard her head thump against the wall behind her, and she spit out a curse as she collapsed before him.
To his right, something barked, and Kane felt a furry lump of muscle barrel into his side—Rosalia’s dog, an ugly, pale-eyed mongrel. Kane kicked out, booting the animal away. It slammed against the wall, whined as it fell down.
Kane turned back to the woman as she struggled to get up, and his hand snapped out, thrusting her back to the floor of the cavern. He was on top of her in an instant, drawing his fist back, ready to pound her as she squirmed beneath him.
“Let me out of here!” Kane snarled.
With her hood and long hair splayed around her, Rosalia looked back at Kane through the semidarkness. “Don’t b—” she began.
But Kane didn’t let her finish. His hand snapped out, striking her across the face. When he pulled it back there was blood on it, and the woman’s lip was split, and bloody.
“Let me out of here!” Kane snarled again, his eyes fixed on the woman’s.
“Just wai—”
He struck her again, his open hand slapping across her jaw. “Let me out of here!” he repeated. Beside him, the dog was barking, baring its teeth but not quite brave enough to approach the ex-Mag.
Rosalia’s dark eyes fixed on Kane’s, and he was impressed to see they betrayed no fear. She waited, saying nothing for an extended moment while he crouched atop her, his hand poised to strike her again.
He waited but she said nothing, just holding his gaze with her own. The cavern was still sealed closed, with no sign of the door through which the woman must have entered.
Finally, Rosalia spoke. “Listen to me,” she said. “Just listen for a moment and stop thinking with your fists. Can you do that?”
Kane looked at her, relaxing his hand but still holding it above her like a threat.
She turned then, hushing the dog with a few calming words, the way a mother would address an irritating child. The dog whined momentarily, then fell silent, its tail brushing the wall of the cave as it skulked away. Then the beautiful dark-haired woman turned back to Kane, the trace of a smile on her cut lips.
“You’re a fool, Magistrate man,” she hissed. “We’re both trapped here. Don’t you realize that?”
“You were with him,” Kane growled. “Dylan. The first priest of the New Order.”
“Do you think I chose to be there?” Rosalia challenged.
“I dunno,” Kane snapped back. “The last time we met you were in the employ of street scum. I’m not seeing much difference, except this guy’s dressing up what he’s peddling as religion.”
“They tell you to submit, Kane,” Rosalia told him, and he realized she was using his name for the first time, “and you have to.”
“That’s not true,” he retorted.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “They don’t give you a choice. They ask and then they tell and then they force you.”
“They force you?” Kane asked.
“I don’t know how much you’ve seen,” Rosalia told him as she lay sprawled on the rock floor, “so if this sounds like lunacy then you’ll just have to trust me, okay?”
“You must be thinking of a different Magistrate man,” Kane said mockingly, turning her curse against her.
Rosalia ignored him. “They have things called obedience stones,” she said. “They plant them inside you. They block your thoughts, sap your willpower.”
Kane knew she was telling the truth. He had watched one of the stones the intruders had thrown as it tried to bury itself in his flesh. The Annunaki, for whom these people worked, were masters of organic technology. What she was saying sounded like madness, but it had the ring of truth.
“Go on,” Kane instructed.
“You think maybe you can get off me first?” Rosalia asked.
“Don’t push your luck, princess,” he growled. “So, these obedience stones. You have one?”
“Yes,” Rosalia said. “It’s in my arm. It’s how I got in here.”
“Say that again?”
“The doors are operated by a pulse from the stones,” Rosalia explained. “Only the faithful can come and go as they please in the new world.”
Kane could worry about that later. “But this thing—this stone—it makes you obey the big cheese? Is that right?”
“It works better on the weak-minded,” Rosalia said, “and needs a broadcast unit to have the desired effect.”
“Broadcast unit,” Kane mused. “So, if you’re in the gang, how come you’re telling me this?”
“It works on the weak-minded,” Rosalia repeated, and Kane noticed there was a degree of arrogance to the set of her jaw now.
“And you’re telling me,” Kane said slowly, “that you’re not.”
“I figured out a way to vent it,” Rosalia said. “Catch it quick enough and it can’t take proper hold.”
Something occurred to Kane then, and his hand tightened, ready to hit the woman beneath him again. “This a trick to get me to accept one of these things? To submit?”
“Oh, Magistrate man, you are so naive,” Rosalia mocked. “You’ve lived in a world of blacks and whites for so long that you’ve forgotten what it is to have color. Look at you. Look around you. You’re one man, stuck in a cell with no door, suffering from dehydration and slowly being starved to death. And you think I’d come here and trick you into giving up when they know you’re so close to doing so.”
“I’m not close,” Kane growled. But he could feel the light-headedness, feel the empty chasm of his gut.
“What, you think Dylan will say ‘We tried keeping him three days in a cell. Might as well give up and let him go’?” Rosalia challenged.
Kane thought about that, let the woman’s argument sink in. Finally he nodded, and then he climbed from Rosalia’s form, stepped away. As he did so, the dog snarled again, but Kane just glared at it, his tolerance exhausted.
Before him, Rosalia reached into her robe and produced a handkerchief, which she used to wipe the blood from her lip. The cut had dried now, and she spit on the handkerchief to moisten it and clean the blood that had dried against her skin. Standing, she brought her face close to Kane’s beneath the flicking magma light, gesturing to the cut. “All gone?” she asked. “Why?”
“They see I’m hurt and they’ll know something happened,” Rosalia explained. “Not good.”
There was a thin line of blood still on her chin, and Kane wet his finger to clean it.
His saliva was thick and gunky, as if he’d dipped his finger in sauce. “Stay still,” he instructed.
Once he’d finished cleaning her face, Rosalia continued her explanation. “You’re stuck here, Magistrate man,” she said. “It’s just a matter of time now, and they know it.”
“Dylan?” Kane asked.
“Others, too.”
“We saw fifteen, maybe twenty when they attacked Cerberus,” Kane recalled.
“More than that,” Rosalia told him with irritating vagueness. “They want you to submit because you’re a leader.”
“What about Lakesh?” Kane asked.
Rosalia looked at him blankly. “The name means nothing to me,” she admitted.
Kane pondered how much he should tell this woman, this potential enemy. But she was right—he was stuck here and she was all he had for now. “Lakesh Singh,” he told her. “He runs the Cerberus operation.”
Rosalia shrugged. “There are others being kept here, in this facility. So—maybe?”
Others, Kane heard, and his thoughts automatically went to his anam-chara, his soul friend. “What about Baptiste? And Grant,” he added.
“Kane,” Rosalia urged, “I don’t have much time here. You’re out of the game right now, you understand me?” He nodded.
“I’m offering to deal you back in if you’ll trust me,” she continued. “You in?”
Kane held out his hand to her and she took it. “I’m in,” he assured her.
“Then this is what we’re going to do,” Rosalia began.
Chapter 17
Domi lay in the semidarkness of her cell, the light above her fluttering like the feathers of a crow taking wing. She held one bone-white arm over her head, using it to cover both her ears, with hand and upper arm respectively. She was naked through choice, having stripped off the slight garments she had worn when she had entered this now-sealed cavern. Beneath the fluttering magma glow of the light, her goose-white skin looked orange, like an evening ray of sunlight snapped off and thrust into the cavern. Hidden by her right ear, her wrist bore the jagged scarring of a hideous wound, its blush of red looking horribly out of place against her pure white flesh. Domi cried in silence, thick tears drooling down her face from her eerie red eyes. She ached.