Gadreel made a deep, breathless sound, his expression beatific. ‘Sidona,’ he said, putting a hand on the motionless body.
‘Sidona – my wife,’ echoed Zan.
‘Yeah, I figured that part out for myself,’ Nina snarked.
‘The high priestess of the Nephilim,’ he continued. ‘She is safe, and now she will awaken the rest of my people.’
‘Okay, great,’ she said with forced cheer. ‘Well, if he doesn’t need me any more, I’ll be on my way!’
Gadreel looked at her with annoyance, pointing at the key. ‘You will wake my son, Turel, then my warriors. She will take . . . I think he means a few minutes,’ Zan said, ‘to recover.’
Nina reluctantly returned to the coffin, but other than an unpleasant bleach-like odour, the air was clear of residual gas. She took the key and went to the third central sarcophagus. The shadowy form inside was almost as tall as Gadreel, but even through the distorting crystal it was noticeably more slender, wiry rather than muscular. Under Gadreel’s watchful stare, she activated the key.
Again a new eye opened inside her mind, drawing her into the strange parallel realm of energy. This time, the process of awakening the sleeper was almost routine. She took a moment to widen the scope of her perception, trying to feel the fortress itself. The result was unnerving. The forces lifting its mass clear of the ground in defiance of gravity were vastly more powerful than she had imagined.
Could she affect them? Not from here, she realised. The key was merely a conduit, while the central altar in the throne room was indeed a kind of a control panel, intimately linked to the fortress’s levitation.
Shifts in the energy flow brought her mind back to more immediate matters. She released the key, drawing back from the opening sarcophagus. Gadreel leaned over Sidona’s coffin. The glassy strands enveloping the Nephilim woman had now fully withdrawn, patches of warmer colour appearing on her pallid skin.
He glanced impatiently at Nina. ‘Now wake my warriors,’ Zan intoned from the stairs.
The revival process became practically rote, setting several more Nephilim on the road to recovery. She released the key – to find another person in the chamber. Sidona was now standing, her back to Nina as she donned a long purple robe.
The priestess turned and regarded her with barely veiled contempt. She spoke, her voice having the same strange reverberation as her husband’s. Zan’s translation was tinged with nervousness; Nina guessed she had treated him with the same disdain. ‘She wants you to give her the key.’
‘She’s welcome to the damn thing,’ she replied, holding out the artefact to the giantess – who looked down at the floor as if expecting Nina to kneel at her feet before handing it over. ‘Not gonna happen,’ she muttered. Sidona’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed, but she snatched the key away, then turned and spoke to Gadreel.
He gestured at the figure in the third central coffin. For the first time, the leader’s face revealed genuine pleasure. His wife’s resurrection had been a relief; his child’s was a source of delight. The youth stirred, slowly opening his eyes. He blinked, bringing his parents into focus. All smiled as the family was reunited after one hundred and thirty millennia. Gadreel spoke, but Zan opted to let them share the moment in private.
Turel was helped out of his sarcophagus. If he were human, Nina would have guessed him to be in his mid teens, but considering the race’s extended lifespan, for all she knew he was in his fifties. He started to dress, donning a blue robe and a belt on which was hung a trikan, its blades retracted. Nina backed quietly towards the stairs, but the Nephilim leader gave a sharp command. She halted. ‘He wants you to go to the throne room,’ Zan told her.
‘That was kinda my plan,’ she said. ‘Although I meant to keep on going to the exit!’ That made her think of Colonel Wu; he had not reappeared, but with the fortress floating high above the ground, there was no way he could escape it. Where was he, and what was he doing?
She climbed the stairs. Gadreel and his son followed as Sidona checked the other sarcophagi Nina had activated. The crystal pillars in the throne room’s walls were now brightly aglow. More daylight shone in through the long windows. She glimpsed parts of the outer hull, seeing the same iridescent shimmer that had appeared on the fortress in the ice. Some other earth energy effect, but what?
Gadreel went to a window with Turel, the two men gazing across the landscape, then spoke again. ‘What’s he saying?’ Nina asked Zan.
‘I have returned to you in victory,’ the translator replied. ‘Our persecutors are no more, we have . . . outlasted? Outlived them. Now we must claim our inheritance. We will awaken our people here, then find Tartarus.’
The truth dawned as Nina heard the name. ‘The Nephilim captured by the Veteres were put in stasis in Tartarus just like Gadreel’s people here,’ she realised, ‘except the Veteres had no intention of ever reviving them. They could still all be there – and Gadreel wants to wake them!’
‘But where is Tartarus?’ said Zan.
‘I don’t know . . . but he’s got a good idea.’
The Nephilim leader kept glancing at the qi tracker while talking to his son – at the Chinese base, he had seen the map of earth energy flowing around the entire globe.
Sidona, carrying the key, emerged from the mausoleum and called out to her husband. His interest in the tracker was confirmed when he pointed at it. She gave the Chinese technology a quizzical look, then went to it. The two Nephilim men started towards her, Gadreel issuing instructions. ‘What does he want her to do?’ Nina whispered to Zan as she set the key in the altar.
‘He says it will lead them to Tartarus – and we will show them how it works.’
‘Oh, we will, huh? This might be a good time for you to tell him that not only am I not a weapons designer, I can’t even read Mandarin—’
Movement behind Gadreel and Turel, a shadow shifting in the stairwell – and Colonel Wu appeared, pistol raised.
Nina instinctively dropped behind the nearest altar. Zan stared at the officer, frozen in surprise, but he was not Wu’s target. The gun found Gadreel—
His son reacted to Nina’s movement, realising there was a threat. He spun and shoved his father aside – as Wu fired.
The first bullet slashed Gadreel’s forearm. The next two slammed into the younger Nephilim’s chest. Turel fell, knocking down his father and crashing limply to the floor.
Zan snapped out of his shock and sent a burst of fire at Wu. The colonel fled back down the stairs.
Sidona screamed and rushed to her family. Gadreel gasped as he flexed his wounded arm, but forgot the pain as he saw his son slumped beside him. ‘Turel!’ he cried. The youth did not respond, eyes wide and unmoving. Sidona crouched beside him, breathlessly repeating his name.
There was no reply.
She sagged, starting to sob. Gadreel’s face, however, filled with pure fury. He glared at Nina and Zan with such intense hatred the archaeologist feared he would kill them on the spot – then snatched the trikan from Turel’s belt. He clenched his fingers around the handgrip and raced after Wu.
Nina looked back at Sidona as she wept over her son, feeling a gut-wrenching pang of parental sympathy. But then survival instinct took over. This might be her only chance to escape . . .
Gadreel charged down the stairs. Zan started after him – then fell with a cry as Nina body-slammed him to the deck. The rifle spun away across the smooth metal.
She snatched the key from the altar and sprinted for the stairwell where she’d first entered. Zan scrabbled to retrieve his weapon. She reached the stairs—
Sidona shouted behind her, voice filled with rage and grief – but she was still in control, issuing an order. Nina glanced back. To her horror, she saw two of the Nephilim warriors she had revived emerge from the mausoleum. They didn’t need to understand what was going on, what had happened to the world during their long h
ibernation; all that mattered was that their high priestess had commanded them to kill her.
She jumped down the stairs and sprinted along the metal and crystal corridor.
The giants pursued her.
30
Colonel Wu ran for the exit tunnel, cursing. His ambush had failed; the presence of more of the monsters had caught him off guard, making him hesitate before firing. A second, less, but it had saved Gadreel’s life.
And now the giant was pounding after him. There was no way he could outrun him, and even if he got outside, the fall to the ground would be fatal. He had to stand and fight . . .
He darted into cover behind one of the glowing crystal ribs. However big Gadreel was, three shots to the centre of his mass would drop him like any man. The thudding footsteps grew louder. Wu readied his gun as he came into sight down the curving corridor—
Gadreel’s right hand lashed out as if cracking a whip. A blur of golden metal flashed from it. A trikan, Wu realised – but the yo-yo-like weapon was heading well wide.
He locked his gun on the giant’s chest—
The trikan swerved at him.
Its whirling blades snapped out and hacked chunks of flesh from his raised arm. Wu fell back with a scream, a reflexive shot clanking uselessly from the ceiling. The trikan whisked back towards Gadreel on its wire. The Nephilim held up his hand – and the weapon returned to its resting place in the handguard with a clack, the blades retracting.
Pain almost overcame Wu, but he forced himself upright. Ragged strips of bloodied muscle cut to the bone hung from his arm, tendons severed. The gun fell from his paralysed fingers. He crouched to find it with his other hand, but froze as Gadreel advanced. His expression filled the colonel with a new fear. The Nephilim’s rage would only be satisfied by his death. He turned and ran.
Gadreel raised the trikan – and flung it again.
Wu heard the shrill of the wire and the blades slicing through the air. He lunged behind another crystalline column—
The trikan made another impossible change of direction in mid-air.
It struck just below his right shoulder. The blades carved straight through skin and bone like an axe. The colonel screamed. Gadreel yanked his hand back, the trikan whirling home – and Wu’s arm fell to the floor amidst a fountain of blood.
Somehow, he overcame the agony and shock, stumbling along the wall into the passage leading to the hatch. Dust gusted past him in a stinging vortex. He tripped, thudding face-first to the dirty floor when he tried to catch himself on an arm that was no longer there. Whimpering, he shuffled forward on his knees.
Gadreel rounded the corner behind him. He saw the wounded man and stopped. The trikan, blood dripping from the softly glowing blades, remained in its grip. Wu glanced back, hoping to see some glimpse of mercy in his pursuer’s eyes – but instead he knew he was about to die.
The knowledge galvanised him. He staggered to his feet and faced the towering Nephilim. ‘Well? What are you waiting for, you shit? We should have burned you and your bastard breed the moment we found you!’
Gadreel’s lips curled in disgust – then he burst into a run with the force of an Olympic sprinter, scooping up the colonel like a child in his free arm.
He didn’t stop, charging through the hatch and across the fortress’s upper hull. The surrounding landscape opened out before him. He barrelled onwards as if to hurl himself over the edge with his prisoner – then halted abruptly just short of the sixty-foot drop.
A rasping cry escaped from the injured man. Gadreel grabbed his chest, buttons popping and seams tearing as he clutched his uniform like a claw. Wu gasped again – then cried out in fear as the Nephilim held him over the edge.
‘Major!’ said a soldier, pointing. ‘Up there, look!’
Wu Shun broke off from her call over the helicopter’s radio. She saw two figures on top of the hovering fortress. One was Gadreel, the Nephilim leader holding a man over empty air.
Her father.
She dropped the handset and ran towards the crater. ‘Father!’ she shouted. ‘Dad!’
Colonel Wu dimly heard his daughter’s cry. He forced open his agony-clenched eyes to see her running towards him.
Knowing she was there ignited a last spark of defiance. He would not die without a fight – especially with his only child watching. He kicked, trying to overbalance the giant and send them both over the edge—
Gadreel suddenly stepped back – and let go. Wu landed heavily at the hull’s lip. He groped at the shimmering surface, feeling an odd vibration even before he touched it, but then his hand found the strange metal.
He looked up. The Nephilim towered over him, staring down dismissively as if he were nothing more than a bug . . . then turned and walked away.
Despite his pain, fury rose within the colonel. This thing had attacked him, maimed him – and was now insulting him, not even bothering to finish him off. He managed to stand, swaying in the wind. ‘Hey,’ he snarled. ‘Hey! Look at me, you coward! You piece of pigshit! Face me!’
Gadreel kept walking . . . but then the trikan slid from its guard.
And Wu realised with horror that the Nephilim had not finished with him. He had merely paused, to give him a moment of false hope before delivering the final strike.
The weapon started to spin, blades charging up with rippling light – and Gadreel snapped around to face the Chinese. The trikan became a blur—
Then it sliced at Wu in a sweeping arc.
The colonel brought up his remaining arm in a futile attempt to shield himself. The trikan slashed through bone as if it were paper, then continued into his torso, blood splattering from a diagonal slash that cut from his shoulder down to the opposite hip – and out, arcing back to clank into its guard.
Wu coughed, crimson gushing from his mouth . . . then fell backwards. His legs and lower torso slumped onto the hull, spilling organs across the shimmering metal.
The rest of him plunged towards the ground sixty feet below.
Colonel Wu had just enough air in his lungs for a final scream—
It ended with a sharp crack as he hit the broken rocks at the crater’s edge.
Major Wu saw the burst of red erupt ahead of her. ‘No!’ she wailed, scrambling up the slope – to see her father splayed across the bloodied stones.
She knew there was no way he could still be alive, but ran to him anyway. ‘Dad!’ she gasped, clutching his hand. Every finger was broken, bone grinding in her grip. He did not react, his pain over.
Her own welled within her. She dropped to her knees, holding his hand against her forehead. Tears rolled down her cheeks – then she looked up at the dark shape hanging above. ‘You bastard,’ she gasped with sudden venom, standing. ‘I’ll kill you. You bastard!’
The last word was shrieked at the sky. Not caring if it had been heard, she ran back to the helicopters. ‘Take off!’ she shouted. ‘Shoot that fucking thing down!’
Gadreel hurried back into the throne room. Sidona was still slumped over Turel’s body, sobbing. He glared at Zan, waiting nervously near the altars. ‘Where is the woman?’
Sidona raised her head. ‘She took the key.’
His gaze snapped to the empty recess in the central altar. ‘We can’t wake the rest of our people without it!’ He rounded on Zan. ‘Why didn’t you stop her?’
The translator cringed at the giant’s fury. ‘Sh-she took me by surprise,’ he stammered.
‘Stupid beast,’ Gadreel growled. These animals had wiped out the People of the Tree? He could hardly believe it possible.
‘Two warriors chased her,’ said Sidona, looking up as another newly awoken man emerged from the mausoleum. ‘Where is the one who killed Turel?’
‘Dead,’ Gadreel replied with no small satisfaction – though not enough to dampen his rage. He ordered the newly arrived warrior to join the hunt fo
r the woman, then looked out at the distant city. It was huge, larger than any he had ever seen before. The humans had done much in his long absence . . .
But it was time to remind them they were not the true inheritors of this world.
He marched back to the central altar and held his hands over the crystals and stones set into it. Only a priestess could control earth energy for complex and subtle purposes – but all Nephilim, men and women alike, could use it in more simple ways. And simple did not necessarily mean weak. ‘Help me fly the fortress,’ he said.
Sidona came to him. ‘What are you going to do?’
Another resurrected warrior entered, unsure what was happening. ‘Go below and charge the lightning spears!’ Gadreel told the man, who hurried from the chamber. The Nephilim leader put his uninjured hand flat on the console. He felt the tingle of force run through it – a force he could guide. ‘We shall show these beasts the true power of the Nephilim!’
An effort of will – and the energy he felt through his hand changed, its flow altering as if rounding a stone dropped in a stream.
The entire fortress responded.
Sidona braced herself as the floor tilted. The city slid across the windows until it was directly ahead. Gadreel moved his hand again – and the fortress slowly picked up speed, gliding away from its burial pit.
A voice echoed from the altar, one of the glowing crystals pulsing. Sympathetic energy vibrations linked it with another in a room below, allowing the man he had dispatched to communicate with him. ‘The lightning spears are ready, my lord.’
Yet another warrior emerged blinking from the mausoleum, realising from his leader’s look that he was needed for immediate action. ‘Go to them,’ Gadreel ordered. ‘Raze that city to the ground!’
Both helicopters’ engines were running, but their rotors were not yet at take-off speed. Wu Shun used her angry impatience to dam her tears. The monster who had killed her father would pay, no matter the consequences—
The Resurrection Key Page 33
