Dark Goddess, page 16
A streak of energy fanned scalding-hot air on Kane’s face. A flurry of ASP bolts lanced around him, striking the floor and the wall, stinging him with blizzards of white-hot sparks.
Whirling, depressing the trigger stud of his Sin Eater, he emptied the entire magazine in a thundering drumroll and whine of ricochets. The lumbering Nephilim staggered and stumbled, colliding with one another.
When the firing pin of his handgun struck the empty chamber, Kane flexed his wrist tendons to retract the Sin Eater into the holster. At the same time he unclipped his Copperhead from the combat webbing, focusing his attention on what lay ahead of them in the passageway.
The Arab guard stepped out of the security booth, an autopistol in both hands. He sighted down the barrel and squeezed off a shot. The bullet went wild, but before he could adjust his aim, Grant aligned his skull before the sights of his Copperhead. The kill dot from the laser autotargeter shone like a pinpoint of blood against the dark olive of his forehead.
Grant fired only once. The back of the man’s broke open in a slurry of bone chips, hair and a misting of blood. The Arab fell limply back inside the booth, and the Cerberus warriors raced past the security checkpoint toward the stainless-steel doors of the lift.
An ASP bolt sizzled past them, impacting on the wall beside the open lift doors, imprinting a plate-size scorch mark on the alloy. Brigid swiveled at the hips, firing a prolonged burst and bowling a Nephilim armored in silver-blue off his feet.
Suddenly, the doors of the elevator began sliding shut. Gritting his teeth, Kane increased his speed, running full-out, legs pumping. He quickly outdistanced his companions, his lungs straining to pull in enough air.
He reached the pair of panels when a little over two feet separated them. Not really thinking, moving only on impulse, he slammed his Copperhead lengthwise between the doors, jamming them open. He slid into the lift, gesturing frantically toward his friends. A cluster of Nephilim jogged down the corridor behind them, trailing by a score of yards. They weren’t able to aim their ASP emitters accurately while running.
One by one, Shizuka, Brigid and Grant squeezed under the Copperhead and between the edges of the two door panels. The fit was a tight one for Grant and he struggled and wriggled, uttering a breathless obscenity. Under other circumstances, the sight would have made Kane grin.
Securing a fistful of combat webbing, Kane hauled on the big man, yanking him into the elevator. Without hesitation, Brigid reached out and slammed the frame of the subgun with the heel of her right hand. The Copperhead popped out from between the doors and clattered loudly on the floor of the corridor.
Before the panels sealed, a globe of seething plasma blazed between them and impacted against the far wall with a flare of flame and a spurt of smoke. Everyone ducked, but the doors thudded shut and the elevator began to ascend. Faces damp with perspiration, panting heavily, the Cerberus warriors checked over their weapons.
“What’s the damn plan?” Grant grated, reattaching his Copperhead to its clip and unholstering his Sin Eater.
“Our options are pretty limited,” Brigid said grimly. She shifted the straps of the carrying case of the interphaser. “All we can do is make our way back to the canyon and the vortex point in the temple.”
Grant snorted. “That’s all? Let’s worry about getting out of this elevator.”
Brigid nodded. “Best bet is to do a Butch and Sundance.”
Kane and Grant didn’t request a clarification. The three people had watched the old movie together several years before.
“Too bad the interphaser doesn’t work like a portable mat-trans,” Kane commented with a sour half grin. “Just punch a couple of buttons, and hey, presto, we’re beamed back home.”
Brigid didn’t return his grin. “If you’re wishing for that, why not just wish that it could whisk us to a parallel reality?”
Shizuka crossed her blades before her, forming an X. She murmured tensely, “Yabaiyo.”
“What’s that mean?” Grant inquired.
Shizuka’s full lips twitched with a bitter smile. “You don’t want to know.”
The elevator platform continued to rise so smoothly that when the bottom edges of the wall tapestries appeared, it almost looked as if they were stretching downward.
“I assume there’s a welcoming committee waiting for us,” Brigid said dryly.
“I assume the same thing,” Kane replied, dipping into his war bag and bringing out a cylindrical concussion grenade of the Alsatex series, a flash-bang developed by the military two centuries ago for crowd control. “Let’s get ourselves set.”
“Set,” Grant and Brigid responded in unison, hefting their weapons.
Kane tweaked out the pin of the flash-bang, keeping the striker depressed with his fingers. “Everybody close their eyes. Once I toss it and it goes off, we need to start running and not stop.”
The elevator bumped to a gentle stop and the brass doors began sliding apart. Kane lobbed the metal-shelled grenade underhanded between them. It struck the floor and bounced. The four people squeezed their eyes shut just as the Alsatex detonated with an eardrum-compressing bang! The eruption of white light was so intense it registered even through their eyelids.
While the echoes of the explosion still rang in the air as if someone had pounded a bass guitar with a sledgehammer, Kane, Grant, Brigid and Shizuka kicked themselves into headlong sprints. They leaped over two whimpering Arabs writhing on the floor, hands clapped over their eyes.
Kane took the point, running low and running fast. His speed saved him. A third Arab, whose eyes were dazzled but not blinded, triggered a burst from a subgun. Bounding to one side, Kane ducked beneath the swarm of slugs as they dug long gouges in the wall. Kane shot the man down with a triburst from his Sin Eater. Then he heard a familiar crack-sizzle.
An ASP bolt flashed down the passageway and Kane dropped flat, painfully banging his elbows and knees. He heard a small, hand-clapping explosion behind him, then Shizuka cried out in surprise. Instinctively, he twisted his head.
He saw Shizuka, her back against the wall, slowly sliding toward the floor. She still held her swords crossed over a smoldering patch on her midsection. She kept her blades in place as Brigid grabbed her by the upper arms, easing her down into a sitting position.
Spinning toward her, Grant put all the power of his lungs into an anguished, wordless bellow that echoed down the corridor.
A cold fist clenching around his heart, Kane rose and made a move to join his friends but he turned his attention and pistol bore on the lean figure silhouetted at the end of the passageway.
The deep voice of Overlord Marduk floated to him. “Please oblige me by not surrendering, Kane.”
The overlord stood with his back to the cavern opening, his armored body outlined against the pallor of the diffuse sunlight. He looked implacable, an ASP emitter trained directly on Kane.
Gritting his teeth so hard he heard them squeak, Kane glanced over his shoulder at Grant and Brigid tending to Shizuka. Brigid’s eyes were jade bright in the shocklingly pale mask of her face. The reek of scorched cloth and seared flesh bit into his nostrils.
“You have to do it,” Brigid whispered hoarsely. “We don’t have a choice.”
Throat constricting, Kane cut his eyes toward Marduk, sighting down the Sin Eater, then back toward Brigid. He said, “Baptiste—”
“Do it!” Grant roared savagely as Shizuka sagged within the cradle of his arms. The katana and tanto blades fell from her hands, chiming dully against the floor. “Do it!”
Chapter 20
The steel walls of the room were windowless. The narrow door was barred and cross braced. Grant stood before it, gripping the rods of metal in his big fists, straining, twisting and tugging. Brigid leaned against the far wall, arms folded over her breasts, eyes full of worry. Kane sat on the floor, hands on his knees, and struggled to control his rage.
He judged the cell to be about twelve feet wide and fifteen feet long. There was no cot or pallet to sit on, so he had to settle for the hard stone floor. The floor was obviously old, worn smooth by countless feet in an area by the door. On the other side of the bars there was nothing to see but semidarkness. Weak illumination was provided by a small neon strip inset into the ceiling.
Uttering a snarl of frustration, Grant rattled the bars and spun to glare at the steel walls, then at Brigid and finally at Kane. “What are we going to do?”
Kane assumed the question was rhetorical, so he didn’t respond, but Brigid said soothingly, “Locking us up is a hopeful sign. They don’t intend to kill us just yet.”
Grant glowered at her. “There’s the torture first.”
“Try to relax,” Kane said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Until Marduk decides he’s let you twist in the wind long enough,” Grant argued. “He hates your guts.”
“He hates yours, too,” Kane shot back defensively. He glanced at Brigid. “And yours.”
“Yours most of all,” she replied casually, combing her fingers through her tangled mane of hair. “Just accept it.”
Kane had and did. As Baron Cobalt, Marduk had suffered a number of indignities and humiliations due to Kane and swore years ago he would one day arrange a reckoning.
Grant returned his attention to the bars, throwing all of his weight and considerable upper-body strength against them. He pulled, heaved and wrenched with no result other than sweat rivered from his pores.
Conversationally, Kane remarked, “This is a pretty low tech hoosegow for an advanced race like the Annunaki. But I guess you can’t really improve over steel walls and iron bars.”
Brigid smiled wryly. “I don’t think enlightened penal theory was one of the Annunaki’s favorite fields of research.”
Grant growled in frustration, but continued to pull at the bars. Brigid and Kane exchanged sour glances and exasperated head shakes.
After surrendering to Marduk, the Cerberus warriors had been disarmed by the Nephilim. Lilitu ordered Shizuka to be taken to a facility so her injuries could be treated. Only the promise that she was being tended to kept Grant from attacking the overlords and Nephilim bare-handed.
Although they hadn’t been mistreated, Kane’s thirst had grown from the intense to the painful. It felt as if the dry desert air had sucked every drop of moisture from his body.
Grant released the bars, leaning against them wearily. “I shouldn’t have believed anything Lilitu said. I should have broken her fucking neck when I had the chance.”
“I think you can take her at her word that she’ll do what she can to save Shizuka’s life,” Brigid replied calmly.
Kane angled a questioning eyebrow at her. “What makes you think that?”
“It’s to her benefit.”
Grant turned around to face her. “How so?”
“She threatened to attack New Edo and Cerberus if we didn’t agree to her terms, but instead we went on the offensive and tried to escape, right?”
“Right,” Kane drawled. “Me and Grant were there, remember?”
Musingly, Grant said, “So you figure that Lilitu will save Shizuka so she can use her as a hostage, promising to release her once we come back from Agartha with Ninlil?”
Brigid nodded. “Exactly.”
Kane shifted position on the floor. “Why does Lilitu think Balam will give up the baby to us?”
“She doesn’t care one way or the other if Balam gives her up,” Brigid stated grimly. “I would imagine she prefers him dead at this juncture…one less wild card to factor in, one less reminder of the time the Annunaki’s children turned on them.”
In a low tone, Grant said, “They’ll be taking us out of here eventually. It would be nice to have some kind of plan before then.”
“I don’t think jumping the Nephilim is a sound one,” Kane said, pushing himself to his feet.
“Neither do I,” Brigid agreed. “We don’t have the element of surprise.”
“What the hell do we have?” Grant demanded harshly.
“We’ll have to let the overlords think we’ll do what they want.”
Grant’s brow creased. “If it means saving Shizuka, then we’ll do it.”
Kane stared at his partner in disbelief. “You’re not serious.”
Grant met his stare, unblinking and defiant. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Before Kane or Brigid could respond, they heard the quick scuff of footfalls in the passageway outside the cell.
“Here we go,” Brigid whispered, pressing herself against the wall.
Grant turned to gaze out into the gloom. “That doesn’t sound like the pitter-patter of Nephilim feet.”
“No,” replied the brusque voice of Rhea. “They sound like my feet.”
The hybrid woman appeared at the door, expression and bearing very grave. “Are you well?”
“I hope you’ve brought us something to drink,” Kane said. “We’re parched.”
Rhea did not address his comment. “My sister has sent me to fetch you.”
Brigid’s eyebrows rose. “Only you? Why?”
“Lilitu seems to think that whenever you are faced with threats of physical violence, you invariably react with violence yourself…the exact opposite of the way she thinks you should. So she assigned me this task, to come to you, unarmed.”
Her gaze flitted to Grant. “Lilitu wants you to know that if you wish to see the woman you call Shizuka again, you will cooperate with me.”
Grant nodded. “Of course.”
Rhea produced a cylindrical metal key from the breast pocket of her bodysuit and inserted it into the lock. Tumblers clicked and she pulled the door open, swinging it wide.
Grant took a swift forward step, his right hand stabbing out and closing around the slender column of her throat. She gasped loudly, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish.
“Why don’t I bring you to Lilitu like this?” Grant rumbled. “Force her to trade your life for Shizuka’s?”
“Grant—” Brigid said warningly.
“Answer me, you inhuman little bitch,” Grant growled, leaning down and staring straight into her eyes.
Rhea gagged and fumbled at Grant’s fingers. Her eyes were wide and full of fear. “She cares nothing for me,” she said, her lips working. “Using me as a hostage, trading me for Shizuka wouldn’t work. Believe me, I hate her as much as you do.”
Kane stepped forward and said in a level voice, “Let her go, Grant. This won’t get you, us or Shizuka anything but dead.”
Grant’s face remained as immobile as a mask carved from mahogany, then he opened his hand and Rhea stumbled backward, breathing hard, rubbing her throat, blinking repeatedly. The red imprint of his fingers showed against the pale flesh of her neck. The big man glanced behind him at Kane and Brigid and rasped, “Let’s go.”
For most of his adult life, Grant had been the ultimate Magistrate in attitude, behavior and thought processes. Over the past ninety-odd years, both the oligarchy of barons and the Mags that served them had taken on a fearful, almost legendary aspect. Both Grant and Kane had been part of that legend, cogs in a merciless machine. Although they had been through the dehumanizing cruelty of Magistrate training, they had somehow, almost miraculously, managed to retain their humanity.
However, when it served their purposes, the two men could revert to the cold and cruel personae that had characterized them as baronial enforcers.
Rhea went first, Grant falling into step behind her. Kane gestured for Brigid to precede him out of the cell. In a reversal of the usual procedure, he brought up the rear. He walked slowly, knowing that it might be the last walk he would ever take.
It surely seemed like the longest.
Chapter 21
A circular pit was inset into the stone floor, fifteen feet in diameter and surrounded by an raised metal rim upon which a confusing pattern of glyphs were inscribed. Within the pit, from wall to wall, amber mist seemed to coil, but it was like a dim veil of frozen, semitransparent gold.
Deep within it, the pale naked figure of Shizuka floated suspended, her black hair surrounding her face like a cloud. The livid edges of the raw wound marring her midriff seemed to undulate and ripple.
“She is sedated,” Lilitu said. “I promise you she is not in pain.”
Grant, Brigid and Kane stared down into the pit without speaking. None of them made contact with each other or with Lilitu, Ishkur and Utu, who stood nearby. Rhea lingered by the door.
At length, Brigid prodded the metal ring surrounding the pit with the toe of her boot and said, “This is Danaan technology. I can tell by the markings.”
Utu and Ishkur snorted simultaneously. “What difference does that make?” Ishkur demanded.
“Not much, I suppose,” Brigid admitted. “Just making an observation. I imagine this device served as the foundation for the Celtic legends about the Cauldron of Bran, also known as the Chalice of Rebirth.”
“Yes,” Utu said. “It has been a boon to my people for many millennia.”
Kane glanced at Utu’s scarred features and laughed tauntingly. “You could’ve fooled me.”
Utu was not offended. Fingering his face, he replied, “You should have seen me before I entered the chalice. As it was, it was almost too late to save me at all. Time is a factor.”
“The same cannot be said for your beloved Shizuka,” Lilitu interjected. “She will make a full recovery.”
Grant did not remove his gaze from the pit. “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”
“You should,” Lilitu countered waspishly. “I did not ask her to come here. She accompanied you of her own accord, hoping to exact a measure of revenge.”
“How do you know that?” Kane asked suspiciously.
“Because it’s what I would have done.” Her eyes glinted in sudden anger. “She killed several of my Nephilim. You should all be grateful that I am trying to save her life instead of ending it.”
“How does this thing work?” Grant demanded.
