For a moment Song had forgotten that Fen lived on in En Noah, but with his words Song felt his resentment and suspicion melt away — Noah’s presence, like Fen’s, had a calming and healing influence.
‘Human spirituality has primarily developed through the perfection of the emotional body, whereas Draconians have evolved primarily through the perfection of the mental body, much as the Nefilim did. Although that will make it a little more difficult for us to understand each other, it is no excuse to allow our egos to get in the way of our cooperation, which could reward both our peoples with perception and insight previously unknown to us.’ He smiled graciously in conclusion.
‘There doesn’t seem to be anything amiss with your mental body,’ Aysel awarded, disarmed by his spiel. ‘No wonder your people are called the Chosen Ones.’
‘I do have a query, however,’ Noah put to Aysel. ‘This emperor who survived the old universe and fled to this one, did he have a name?’
‘Whatever name you have given to the ultimate evil force in the universe, that is his name,’ she advised.
Noah nodded as if he’d expected as much. ‘That particular entity is an old friend of an old friend of mine.’
‘What?’ Song and company were baffled by the claim.
Noah smiled encouragingly to assure them it was quite true. ‘I think I might know how to get in touch.’
By dinner time that evening, the governor’s party had still not returned to the lake house, but there was a mighty good smell wafting up from the kitchen. Hudan, who was feeling a little better, was now beyond starving and so ventured downstairs.
‘How are you?’ Huxin queried from the breakfast bar where she and the Draconian were seated watching Wu Geng cook up a storm in the kitchen, with Song assisting.
‘Hungry,’ Hudan replied, wondering at the stunned look on everyone’s faces.
Song nodded. ‘Well, you would be —’
Wu Geng elbowed Song and a strange look passed between them.
‘After being so sick all morning,’ he stressed in Wu Geng’s direction.
Hudan was immediately alarmed and looked to her sister.
‘I didn’t say anything, about anything.’ Huxin was baffled by their odd behaviour also.
‘It was me.’ The Draconian put a hand up to confess. ‘I see auras.’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t realise no one knew about your condition.’
The news was like a double sucker-punch to the chest. Not only did this seem to confirm her pregnancy, but everyone knew about it, and very soon Dan would know too. ‘You’re sure then?’
The Draconian nodded solemnly, and everyone else present appeared as horrified as Hudan felt.
‘Whatever you decide to do,’ Song spoke up to break the heavy silence, ‘we’re all with you.’
‘No.’ Hudan put her foot down, as that was exactly what she was afraid of: getting them all killed. ‘This is no one’s affair but my own.’
‘I do believe it is also our captain’s affair,’ Huxin stated.
‘What is my affair?’
The sound of Dan’s voice startled Hudan to an about-face, and for a moment she and the others were stunned speechless.
‘Well, someone say something!’ Dan prompted, taking a few sniffs of air. ‘Is something burning?’
‘Damn.’ Wu Geng snapped out of his shock to remove a large saucepan from the heat and give it a stir.
‘I … need to set the table.’ Huxin slid off her chair to escape the captain’s questioning gaze.
‘I’ll help you.’ Aysel quickly followed her out.
‘Me too.’ Song departed, and Wu Geng left his saucepan to cool.
‘I need to supervise.’ He exited swiftly after the others.
Now Dan was looking very curious. ‘How many psychics with psychokinesis does it take to set a table?’ he queried Hudan, but she was still lost for words as she looked to Telmo and Rhun, who were both as baffled as Dan by the mass exodus.
‘I wonder where En Noah is?’ Telmo queried Rhun, to give them a reason to remove themselves from the awkward moment.
‘Probably down in his study,’ Rhun suggested, looking back to Hudan and Dan curiously. ‘We should go and update him on the situation.’ They both headed downstairs.
‘You have news?’ Hudan hoped to change the subject.
‘It will wait,’ Dan advised. ‘So are you going to tell me about the affair?’
Hudan attempted to find the courage but sick with hunger, she felt too weak and distressed, and shook her head.
‘No!’ Dan was surprised by her reaction. ‘Why no?’
Hudan held up a finger to beg his patience, and made haste to the pot of stew Wu Geng had left aside, and filling a bowl, she immediately tucked into it.
‘You are a little hungry, my love?’ Dan posed, amused. He’d never seen her so ravenous.
‘Starving!’ she emphasised between mouthfuls. ‘I’ve been sick all morning!’ Hudan gasped in the wake of her comment as Dan appeared to have a joyful revelation, but upon further consideration his elation turned to woe and before his emotions stabilised, he looked to her.
‘If this affair is what I think it is, it is very much mine, I should hope.’ He raised his eyebrows in mute appeal for more information.
She didn’t want to break the news, not even to herself. She opened her mouth to confess but her welling tears choked the words, and she shook her head in protest at the hand they’d been dealt. ‘How could this happen now?’ she entreated her husband, tears tumbling down her face for the umpteenth time that day.
Dan, momentarily stunned to see her so emotional, joined her behind the servery and she welcomed his embrace.
‘I hate being so emotional, but I cannot turn it off,’ she continued to blubber into his shirt.
‘We’ll work it out,’ he assured her, although the myriad complications she’d been considering all day must have been bombarding his brain all at once. ‘If this has happened now there must be a reason, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hudan just buried her head deeper in his chest. ‘My brain has gone to mush and I just don’t want to be the one who prevents the team getting home, or gets us all killed!’
‘We are not going anywhere, any time soon,’ Dan assured her.
‘But we can’t take this baby with us, you know that!’ Hudan pulled away to speak seriously about their next move.
‘But we can cheat time,’ Dan cautioned her against panic.
‘Not if we are dead,’ she insisted.
‘It will only take one of us getting through to make it all come out right in the end,’ Dan reminded her.
Hudan gasped at the suggestion. ‘Are you saying we just stay here until this child has a life of its own?’ That thought was just as horrifying.
‘I’m saying that just because we cannot see the solution or reason in this very moment does not mean we never will,’ he advised, and Hudan calmed and collapsed back into his arms again. ‘I know you like to have the answers yesterday, but sometimes you just have to wait for them to present themselves, which they will, in their own good time.’
Hudan nodded, unsure if she believed him, but they both needed a little time to absorb the situation before they decided what their best course of action was.
‘All settled then?’ Song crept back into the room to ask on everyone’s behalf. ‘’Cause if it is, your starving crew would dearly love to eat.’
Hudan sucked back her fear, cracked a smile and waved them forth.
Down in En Noah’s study, Rhun and Telmo found Jahan sitting quietly at the desk where the monitoring equipment for Noah’s meditation chamber was located.
‘Noah is inside?’ Rhun motioned to the closed chamber, and Jahan nodded to confirm.
‘He left me here to ensure he wasn’t disturbed … said something about needing to revisit Armaros.’ Jahan shrugged, ‘I have no idea what that means?’
‘Armaros!’ Rhun looked to Telmo, wondering if he was familiar with the ent
ity who was Noah’s Grigorian personification.
‘He’s had the same thought as Dan,’ Telmo realised. ‘Consult a higher power. Although I didn’t realise your advisor had Dan’s ability to consult with disembodied spirits?’
‘He doesn’t,’ Rhun concurred, a little perplexed by this. ‘But he does have otherworldly influence and he did unlock the Nefilim lord Enki’s Sensor-sphere.’
Telmo frowned, curious to know more. ‘That must have been after Taliesin departed this universal scheme for I have no memory of such a thing?’
‘It is an otherworldly technology that offers a crash course in cosmology, and insight into the pertinent eras of the development of human consciousness into matter — which you experience first-hand via all your senses.’
‘How wonderful,’ Telmo imagined.
Rhun nodded to confirm. ‘I myself took the course under En Noah’s guidance, but it only awarded insight into the human consciousness experiment. I don’t remember seeing anything about an Eternity Gate?’
Telmo raised his brow, not really surprised. ‘Probably because humans have had very little to do with the wonder in question. The Grigori, however … their involvement seems more likely.’
The door to the meditation chamber opened and Noah emerged, looking grave.
‘En Noah?’ Rhun queried his expression. ‘What were you doing in there?’
‘Past life regression,’ he answered simply. ‘I ventured back further than I have ever dared go before.’
Rhun was a little confused, knowing that the sage had relived his lives as far back as his first human incarnation in the ancient city of Edin of Earth’s evolution. ‘You went back to before you were ever incarnated as a human?’
Noah nodded gravely. ‘And it is as I feared.’
‘What did you fear?’ Telmo sought to clarify.
‘Those few Empiric elite who escaped the old universe and brought their virus here,’ Noah prompted and received a nod of comprehension from them. ‘That was us.’
‘The Grigori, you mean?’ Rhun followed his train of thought.
Noah gave a firm nod. ‘I recommend you ask Wu Geng to take our Draconian visitor for a walk after dinner. We need to have a meeting.’
5
THE BLACK SHEEP
‘The Empire was backed into a corner — mind-eaters were out of control. Only one planet in the entire universe remained uninfected: the Empiric capital. The emperor was planning an exodus through the Eternity Gate, which was once, and still is, open to everyone. There is only one hitch … no weapon will pass through the gate. Now, the emperor was not about to invade a new universe with no weapons, so an advance team was selected to pass through the gates, carrying incubated mind-eaters that had yet to be unleashed. As this weapon was actually organic, it was believed they would pass safely and undetected through the gate. These specimens, unlike their predecessors that had run amuck in the old universe, had been refined so that they could not procreate, but only feed on one host until the host died, at which point the entity was free to feed on the next victim to wander into its proximity.’
‘That diagnostic is sounding a lot more like the entity I’ve seen pass from one dead reptilian to another.’ The captain interrupted Noah’s discourse from the lounge, where he was seated listening to the governor’s advisor with the rest of his crew and the governor himself. ‘Were we really so brainwashed as to agree to do such a thing — when we had already seen the devastation done by those creatures in our universe of origin?’
‘No, we were not,’ Noah reassured him with a sincere, although joyless, smile. ‘We were the fallen, who rebelled against the fallen, which was exactly what would set us apart as the Chosen in this universe. As there were so few free-thinking beings left in our universe, you refused to risk your crew by carrying the virus in the first attempt to breach the Eternity Gate … but you did agree to execute the recon mission and establish a base in the next universe. We were foolish to believe that the emperor had agreed to our terms for the mission.’ Noah looked very remorseful. ‘We should not have allowed you to attend that last meeting with so little backup, but if we had accompanied you, then … perhaps we would have had a much bigger problem to deal with now.’
‘The emperor infected Azazèl with a mind-eater,’ Dan surmised.
‘That was not discovered until after our passage through the gate succeeded,’ Noah concluded. ‘At least, I suspect that is what happened, but I have no proof, only an instinct.’
‘But how could Azazèl rid himself of the mind-eater and repair the damage it must have done his psyche?’ Dan quizzed. ‘And how did the reptilians get infected with the virus in his stead?’
‘I have no idea how it was done, only that the Nefilim may have somehow been involved, considering their forte for genetic engineering and soul extraction,’ Noah was sorry to say. ‘Only Azazèl really knows what happened. But as far as repairing the damage to his psyche, maybe he never did, as after all you led the Grigori into sin in this universe; hence our lot to keep incarnating into human form until human evolution is complete.’
‘Hold on,’ Rhun was a little confused. ‘Was the emperor of the Old Universe, Satan? Because I was told that that soul-mind evolved into my parents.’
‘Both,’ Noah stated to a muttered ‘what?’ from everyone and perplexed frowns. ‘In the old scriptures of our planet of origin, you will note that Satan is actually called “Ha-Satan” meaning “the opposer, the obstructer, the adversary,” et cetera. It is more a title than a name.’
‘So what you are saying, En Noah,’ the captain summed up, ‘is that we may only be dealing with one of these mind-eaters.’
‘If indeed I am right in my suspicions,’ he confirmed.
‘Well, that is kind of good news,’ Song supposed.
‘Still,’ Noah looked back to the captain and his wife. ‘I do think it would be helpful to discover firstly if Azazèl was infected, and secondly how the Nefilim managed to extract the virus from Azazèl and relocate it elsewhere?’
Obviously from the expression on Hudan’s face, the mere thought of doing past life regression made her stomach turn.
‘I shall do it,’ the captain volunteered, much to his partner’s relief. ‘I am planning to contact Azazèl in any case, although I feel he will only tell me to do as you have suggested and discover the truth for myself.’
‘Probably,’ both Noah and Song agreed at once, as they were — beside Hudan — the only souls present who were consciously familiar with their Grigorian counterparts.
‘Good job, my friend,’ the captain awarded Noah his due, ‘in bringing this course of enquiry to light. That was a clever piece of cosmic detective work.’
‘I do my best for you, Captain,’ he replied graciously.
‘So why are we wandering around outside at night again?’ Aysel obviously wasn’t buying Wu Geng’s assertion that this was just a spontaneous invitation.
‘I just thought you might be tired of being cooped up.’ He shrugged as they strolled around the lake bank.
‘Tired of being lied to, would be more on the mark.’ She gave a disgruntled sigh and strode off ahead.
‘All right,’ Wu Geng relented and she turned about to hear his resolve. ‘They wanted to have a meeting and they didn’t want either of us present … happy?’
‘Why don’t they trust you, Wu Geng?’ Aysel walked back to speak with him more intimately. ‘When to me you seem a most trustworthy being.’
He forced a smile at the awkward question, realising he probably should not have brought up his division from the ranks of the timekeepers. ‘I was not always so,’ he replied simply.
‘But once a soul has repented they should be exempt from suspicion thereafter,’ she asserted.
‘Under normal circumstances, yes,’ he agreed, ‘in our circumstances, no.’
‘How are your circumstances so extraordinary?’ She made it sound like he must be exaggerating.
‘If I could tell you that,’ he pro
ffered, ‘then we would probably be at that meeting and not out admiring this lovely scenery.’ He gazed at the beautiful moonrise over the lake.
‘I suppose asking you where home is would be another question avoided?’ She seemed far more interested in him than in the view.
‘It’s so long since I was there, I barely remember,’ he looked aside to find her intently focused upon him. ‘How about you tell me of your home instead?’
‘If you won’t share information then I am certainly not going to.’ Aysel sported a seductive smile, her eyes giving him the once-over. ‘But, you’re right, the view is rather fetching.’
Wu Geng raised an eyebrow at an uncomfortable loss for words. ‘So what shall we talk about?’
‘We don’t have to talk at all.’ She unexpectedly stole a kiss from him.
The encounter was short but ravenous and caught him quite off-guard — the delight had ended by the time Wu Geng thought to protest the rather forward and presumptuous gesture. ‘Forgive my apprehension,’ he backed away to hold her at arm’s length, ‘but your people don’t understand love, nor act on their own initiative, therefore seducing me can only be a tactical manoeuvre.’
‘Did I not already explain that since Vugar has cut himself off from the hive, we of the upper echelons of Dracon have acquired free will and free thought?’ She argued his protest amicably, as she inched closer to him once more. ‘And although we do not feel love, we do feel attraction,’ she said, laying hands on him again. ‘And I find you deeply attractive.’ Her lips melted into his own once again, as she rubbed her heavenly form up against him in close, slow writhing motions. There was no denying that her advance was diverting — he could not even recall the last time he’d had sex — but Wu Geng grabbed both her hands off his behind and urged her to back up.
‘No offence to you,’ he explained his resistance, ‘but it is unfair to initiate such an act with me when I have no idea what I’m getting myself into and nor do you.’
Aysel rolled her eyes at his dramatics. ‘It’s just sex, for heaven’s sake.’
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