The Black Madonna (The Mystique Trilogy)

by Traci Harding

  He swallowed, bewildered by my strength and speed, then raised a finger to his lips to indicate the need for silence. He pointed to the wall in Killian’s office that backed onto the kitchenette. There was a rather large hole in it, and I moved at once to investigate.

  Sabine Labontè was in the kitchenette, speaking very intimately with André.

  ‘Are you sure it’s authentic?’ she asked.

  ‘I retrieved it from the chasm myself,’ he replied. ‘Did you bring what I require in exchange?’

  She pulled from between her breasts a vial filled with sparkling particles and I stifled a gasp.

  ‘What is it?’ Emmett whispered, put out by my taking over his investigation.

  I shook my head and refused to give up my vantage point.

  ‘Molier is gone, but your addiction can live on…for quite some time,’ Sabine teased the Frenchman.

  Christian Molier had been André’s employer on the Sinai excavation at Mount Serabit, where my parents had first got together. Molier was an abomination of nature due to his addiction to Star-Fire—the potions of the gods that gave its users immortality. Star-Fire had already damned the souls of all the Nefilim and it transformed Molier and his followers into creatures of the night, not unlike the vampires of myth.

  André grabbed for the vial but Sabine kept it from him.

  ‘The stone,’ she said, and held out her hand.

  André placed a velvet case in her palm. She opened the case to check the item. I couldn’t see the contents, but she smiled and handed André the vial of Star-Fire. André looked relieved to have the vial in his possession, so much so that he didn’t seem to mind that Sabine Labontè’s seductive manner ceased as soon as she had what she desired.

  ‘Have a lovely, long, young life,’ she said with a smile, knowing that André’s addiction to youth and all things material would damn his soul for all time. The more humans with Star-Fire addiction the better as far as the Nefilim were concerned.

  I looked at Emmett as Sabine left the kitchenette and held a finger to my lips. We were both silent until she had departed the site office; then I went to speak with André, despite Emmett’s whispered protest. I had no time to waste on being discreet.

  ‘Bonsoir,’ I said, startling André, who instantly shoved the vial he was admiring into his pocket.

  ‘Tamar? Wow!’ His lustful eyes scanned my outfit. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  I walked straight up to him and gripped his head between my hands. ‘What did you give her?’ I stared into his eyes ablaze with desire which spiralled into fear as he was overpowered by me.

  ‘Who?’ he said, denying all knowledge of what I was talking about, but I could see into his thoughts and they showed me my father’s ringstone.

  Although I called the ringstone my father’s, it never actually belonged to him. It was a stone that took the form of a ring due to the hole at its centre, and such a stone was essential for the casting of an ancient Wiccan spell. During the incantation Ashlee Granville-Devere had called upon the spirit of my father, who agreed to attach his soul mind to the stone so that he might counsel and aid Ashlee during the course of her investigations in the Near East. Many centuries later my mother found the ringstone, and it was through this old family heirloom that she first met my father and helped free him from his curse. The ringstone had been stolen by Molier and cast off a very high cliff in the Sinai, around the time I’d been conceived. Whether my father’s soul mind was still in any way connected to the ringstone was a mystery, and one I didn’t want unravelled by the Nefilim.

  ‘That was my mother’s!’ I said, and slapped André’s face for the betrayal. He seemed to enjoy it for he smiled. I grabbed the vial from inside his pocket and, as he desperately tried to retrieve it, I knocked him to the ground.

  ‘You idiot!’ I said, checking the substance to confirm my earlier assumption. It was Orme all right. ‘Time to rejoin the human race, mon ami.’

  I pulled out my weapon and fired at him. I heard Emmett cry out in the next room as a liquid-light bullet embedded itself in André’s body.

  ‘Holy shit, Tamar!’ Emmett rushed into the kitchen to find André having a fit on the floor. ‘What the hell did you shoot him with?’

  ‘Pure love,’ I replied, concealing my weapon again, then racing past Emmett to the door. I hoped to prevent Sabine Labontè leaving with the ringstone. ‘He’s just finding it a little hard to process.’

  The limousine was halfway up the valley road by the time I made it outside. I cursed and went back inside to see how André was faring. He was dry-retching and cursing in French, as black muck oozed from his mouth, nose and ears.

  Emmett was speechless as he struggled to process what had just happened. He looked at me and backed up a few paces. ‘You’re some kind of alien, aren’t you?’

  ‘Aren’t all thirteen-year-old girls just like me?’ I batted my eyelashes at him.

  ‘Of course, I should have known by the stature.’ He observed my height with trepidation and awe. ‘You’re one of the Nefilim.’

  ‘I am Anunnaki,’ I barked. ‘Big difference.’

  The intensity of André’s convulsions increased.

  ‘We should call an ambulance,’ Emmett said.

  ‘He’ll be fine.’

  I moved to the sink and dampened a tea-towel. André was running out of fight; exhausted from his purge, he stopped struggling and relaxed as I crouched down beside him and wiped all the black muck from his face. He smiled at me. ‘Un ange.’

  I nodded and placed the tip of my index finger on his third eye. His eyes closed in rapture and he grinned intently until I withdrew my contact, whereby all expression dropped from his face. When he opened his eyes once more, he was disorientated.

  ‘What happened?’ He clambered up from the pool of black slime he was lying in, repulsed by the smell.

  ‘You were sick,’ I told him, and winked at Emmett who was watching the situation with great interest and amazement.

  ‘Sick!’ echoed André, observing the black bile all over his clothes.

  ‘What the hell have I been eating?’

  ‘How do you feel now?’ I asked.

  He ceased being revolted long enough to consider this. ‘Why, I feel…fantastique!’ he cried, throwing his arms wide, then wincing. ‘On the inside.’

  The Orme he had ingested had extended his youth somewhat, but time had caught up with him now. The spiritual cleansing inflicted upon him by the liquid-light pellet had returned him to his true age and physique. He was clearly surprised by how his limbs ached, for he had no memory of his previous addiction.

  ‘I should go take a shower,’ he said, moaning as he stretched his sore body. ‘Emmett, could you—’

  ‘I’ll clean up,’ Emmett cut in, pre-empting André’s request.

  André smiled. ‘You’re a good lad,’ he said, and wandered towards the door in a daze. ‘Remind me to give you a raise,’ he added.

  ‘I will,’ Emmett assured him, suppressing his shock. André was usually a miser with funding.

  When we were alone, Emmett looked at me in wonder. ‘That was really amazing.’

  I folded my arms and tapped my fingers. ‘What to do about you?’ I thought aloud.

  ‘Please don’t do the finger thing on me,’ he pleaded, obviously realising I had tampered with André’s memory of events. ‘I can help you.’

  ‘I don’t need help,’ I said. ‘It’s safer for you if you’re ignorant.’

  Emmett didn’t bother trying to escape—he knew resistance was futile. His adoring gaze touched my frosty heart with its sincerity; it wasn’t how I looked that attracted his admiration, but who I was.

  ‘Well,’ he said as I came closer, resigned to his fate, ‘it was nice meeting you.’ Then he delayed my finger gently. ‘Wait. Who are you really?’

  He was going to forget in a moment anyway so I decided to indulge his wish. I whispered my true name in his ear. As he gasped in astonishment, I pressed my fing
er on his brow and willed him to forget.

  Emmett opened his eyes and looked completely bemused. ‘What the…?’ He observed the mess on the floor.

  ‘Looking at it won’t get it cleaned up,’ I said.

  ‘Pardon?’ He looked at me, puzzled.

  ‘You promised André, remember?’ I prompted. ‘He’s going to give you a raise.’

  Emmett did have a vague memory of this and nodded. ‘It had better be a big raise,’ he said, considering the task ahead with disdain.

  ‘Later,’ I said, and headed back through the common room. I wanted to find my parents and tell them about the sale of the ringstone, but as I reached the door, Killian Labontè entered.

  ‘Wow!’ He looked me up and down and laughed. ‘Are you trying to get me arrested?’

  ‘From what I’ve read, you don’t need any help with that,’ I said, and moved past him.

  ‘Very true,’ he conceded. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘I just need to see my mother for a second—’

  ‘Your parents are down the hole,’ he said, sounding a little put out at the delay. ‘Why don’t you call them on the mobile in my car?’

  He led me towards a brand-new Porsche Sportec Turbo in gunmetal grey.

  I shook my head. ‘It’ll keep.’ I had my own means of getting my message across to my mother that didn’t involve sharing our private affairs on the open airwaves.

  The conversation en route to the club in Bordeaux was a little stilted at first. Killian was all riled up about his parents arriving on site unannounced, and was struggling to suppress his anger so as not to bore me with it. He spoke of his wish to be anybody but who he was, and of his utter disdain for his family.

  ‘Your life appears charmed to me,’ I said, wanting him to reveal what was so detestable about his parents. Could it be that he knew what they truly were?

  ‘Looks can be deceiving.’

  I tried a more leading question. ‘Have your parents abused you in some way?’

  ‘No,’ he said, glancing at me and then back to the road. ‘But they intend to.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Was he aware that he was destined to share the same fate as his parents—was this the pending abuse he referred to?

  He grinned at the question. ‘No offence, but I don’t know you well enough…I’d hate to scare you off.’

  ‘I don’t scare as easily as you might imagine,’ I said, but he shook his head and remained silent.

  ‘So many mysteries,’ I teased, letting him know how intrigued I was.

  ‘Not so many really.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, grinning in challenge, ‘if you won’t confide in me about your private life, perhaps you’ll tell me what you expect to find beneath Montségur?’

  ‘I expect to find some answers,’ he said, then, seeing I wasn’t satisfied, he added, ‘to an old family mystery.’

  ‘The Grail family?’

  He looked startled by my frankness.

  ‘I just co-wrote a novel on the subject,’ I said, easing his suspicion.

  ‘Then you know about the Rod of Power?’

  I nodded. ‘But I don’t think it was ever kept here for any length of time.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but the rod is somehow connected to our mount. There are depictions of it in the labyrinth we’ve unearthed.’

  ‘But the Grail family have many amazing treasures connected to their legend—what fascinates you about the Rod of Power in particular?’

  ‘It has the power to defy the gods,’ he stated.

  Perhaps he intended to use the staff to protect himself from his formidable parents? ‘You plan to defy the gods, do you?’ I asked.

  ‘Only if provoked.’ He downplayed his conviction, but beneath the flippant comment I sensed a great severity.

  ‘I want to be on your team then,’ I said with an equal amount of humour and assurance.

  He gave a half-laugh, amused. ‘Not even I want to be on my team. But I’ll be thankful for any support you may want to give.’

  The paparazzi went into a frenzy when we arrived at the nightclub. We hit the red carpet that led straight inside—as opposed to the other entrance, where hopeful patrons were lined up for miles. When the press asked who I was, Killian replied, ‘Isn’t it obvious? Tamar is the most beautiful woman on Earth.’

  I could already see the headlines in the papers the following morning. My mother would be livid.

  ‘Are you dating?’ several reporters were quick to ask.

  ‘We’re business associates,’ Killian teased them, then escorted me inside, leaving a barrage of questions in our wake.

  I turned back to the press and made a peace sign. ‘Keep it green,’ I said, one of Killian’s signature sayings.

  It delighted him. ‘I didn’t think you knew that much about me.’

  ‘I’d have to be from another planet not to know about you,’ I chided and he forced a laugh.

  ‘Do you believe in other planets, in the existence of extraterrestrials?’ he asked, trying not to sound as interested as he was.

  I didn’t reply, distracted by the prickly, uneasy feeling that crept over my body as we approached the bouncers at the front door. Their auras showed the telltale signs of Orme abuse, and beneath their human guise I spied Dracon.

  The Anunnaki souls who had been on Tara at the time of the explosion had also been cast into this universe. As the Anunnaki were not human, they could not be allowed to evolve through the Amenti system as they would have caused a mutation in the human blueprint. It was hoped that the lost Anunnaki would incarnate into the Anu, who were already on Earth, but the devolution of this race into the Nefilim had made this impossible. Thus, with nowhere else to go, the lost Anunnaki incarnated into the Dracon, the race of lizard drones created by the Nefilim to mine the gold required to feed their Orme addictions. They were enslaved by the Nefilim for a long time, but eventually some suppressed soul minds within the lizard people began to become self-aware—and resentful of the Nefilim’s favouritism for the human race. There was an uprising, the lizard warriors overpowered the Nefilim and killed every human they could lay their hands on. The Nefilim fled Earth for thousands of years, sure that as the Dracon were all male, the race would die off.

  They did not die, however, and have thrived to this day, becoming one of the primary threats to the Amenti Project. Some of the Dracon formed alliances with the Nefilim, who have long since returned to Earth and re-established themselves in very high places in government, religion and society. Others formed their own hunting packs and based themselves in third world countries, where large numbers of humans could vanish and never be missed. But others became enlightened to their dormant souls within and slowly began transforming back into Anu, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

  Killian acknowledged the tall, muscular bouncers, who knew him by sight and cleared a path for us, no questions asked.

  Inside the club my foreboding trebled. There were Orme-addicted Dracon in disguise everywhere! They all appeared beautiful on the outside—trim, tanned and highly fashionable—but on the inside they were hideous. How had my people become so lost?

  ‘These are your friends?’ I asked Killian, who was waving and blowing kisses at various people, human and Dracon alike.

  ‘Just social acquaintances really,’ he said. ‘My friends will be upstairs, in the VIP area.’

  ‘Of course,’ I pretended to hit myself in the head, ‘what was I thinking—you down here among the commoners?’

  Tonight was an invitation-only event. There was an all-girl early-century revival band on stage, pumping out a song that had been written before I was born; and on the dance floor I recognised a heap of faces from the tabloids—a good number of whom were Dracon, or dating one.

  Killian grinned. ‘I warrant you’ll be thankful to escape to the VIP area before long.’ He cast his eyes around the club, having noted that every eye in the room, male and female, was on me. ‘It seems I’m not your only admirer,’ he
whispered.

  I smiled at his flattery, but on the inside I was concerned about the company Killian kept. Was he leading me up the garden path, or was he blissfully unaware that his social circle was filled with the same body-snatching beings that had taken over his parents?

  I strode, head high, through the ranks of my fallen subjects, unafraid of a confrontation. They weren’t sufficiently psychically adept to see through my luscious disguise to who I really was—their judge and redeemer.

  At the side of the stage was a staircase guarded by more Dracon, who welcomed my date and me as if we were royalty.

  ‘I want to introduce you to my band,’ Killian shouted to me as we scaled the stairs. ‘We might play tonight, if we get the urge.’

  ‘Cool,’ I replied over the din.

  Killian and his band, Daddy’s Bitch, didn’t seem to take their music career very seriously, but because they were the famous progeny of the social elite they were a charting success worldwide. They never toured, but did surprise gigs, which they streamed to their fans over the net for free. I’d never really listened to their music as it was rather dark and heavy, but it looked as if that blissful oversight was about to be corrected.

  The VIP lounge was sparsely populated and it was easy to spot the company Killian sought. The members of Daddy’s Bitch and their sycophants were gathered around a lounge setting by the large Gothic fireplace, fiddling with their instruments, drinking and smoking dope. There were three others in the band that Killian fronted. The only female, Co-co Yamamoto, was the daughter of the Japanese banking tycoon, Taro Yamamoto. Co-co played bass guitar but was more famous for beating unwanted reporters to a pulp, as she was a triple black belt in karate.