by James Axler
“That, plus thick muscle and strong bones around the vital organs, makes them harder to kill, but not impossible,” Kane added. “The damnedest part of it is that in the middle of combat, when you’re shooting at something, you don’t have a lot of time to adjust for shooting heads or chests instead of wings or cloaks.”
“That’s why those swashbucklers wore capes,” Grant mused.
Kane nodded. “The simple art of misdirection.”
“Fight smarter, not harder,” Grant said. “Or, in our case, fight smarter and harder.”
“Given the crap we have to stop, yeah,” Kane muttered. “All right. So we have an idea how to better deal with these creatures. And they went right to the river.”
“Given that they’re terrestrial, they probably aren’t water breathers,” Grant suggested. “But, with enough lung tissue, and maybe pockets in their skeletons, they can hold their breath fairly well. Penguins can actively hunt underwater for twenty minutes without taking a breath, and alligators or crocodiles can stay for hours on a river bottom.”
“That’s all well and good, but this gorge is full of whitewater,” Kane returned. “If they’re staying put anywhere, it’s not going to be at this part of the river.”
Grant frowned as he looked at the water. “There could be runoff ponds here and there along the river, but those would only be able to harbor one or two creatures.”
“That’s assuming they’d stay put underwater,” Kane replied. “Nathan said that these creatures chased him through the forest.”
“Why are you so against taking up Nehushtan?” Grant asked, springing the question in his usual blunt manner.
“You’re going to start on me with that shit?” Kane snapped back.
Grant took a deep breath. “It’s an ancient weapon. According to Brigid, that thing was able to imprison demons. And if it imprisoned demons, it either was used to battle creatures like the Annunaki, or their enemies, like Kakusa.”
“Big deal,” Kane grumbled. “We’ve done well enough without it.”
His friend folded his arms.
“You want to have this conversation here? In a forest potentially full of amphibious flying bat horrors?” Kane asked.
“Why?” Grant pressed. “Why can’t you pick up the stick and do some magic with it?”
Kane grimaced. “Because I’ve seen what happens with people who get sucked up into this technology. These ancient powers are left hidden for a reason. I don’t want to grab it, and have myself shredded. I mean, look at what happened to North!”
“What did happen?” Grant asked. “He’s almost human now.”
“And before, he was the biggest asshole around,” Kane declared. “You saw the human flesh he had on his whip, and he’d cleaned it. Before he had those nanites in his skull, he set up a bomb that could have murdered thousands in the town square, rather than cripple a demigod like Durga had become.”
“You’re actually buying that North turned over a new leaf,” Grant stated.
Kane nodded, and then in spat in frustration and kicked a rock into the turgid river. “I’m not going to be a meat puppet, even if a good guy’s pulling the strings.”
“Back to Lakesh,” Grant murmured. “He was directing you, needling you to the discoveries you made, which got us kicked out of Cobaltville.”
Kane nodded. “It was all for the best cause, the freedom of the human race. But damn it...”
“You don’t like being manipulated,” Grant said. “None of us do. But...that stick is a tool. It’s to be used.”
“It’s already dragged me across the planet to Africa,” Kane returned. “And it’s brought you and Baptiste along, right into another dangerous situation.
“Give it a touch, what could it hurt?” Grant asked.
Kane’s lip curled. “How much did you enjoy your trip into the past?”
Grant frowned.
“When you were no longer yourself. When you were something different, torn from your body, split into multiple pieces? How about when we were in the casements?” Kane pressed. “You weren’t yourself.”
Grant said, “But I’m still here. I’m still me, even after all those switches. So are you, after all of those casements. We are the line in the sand, and I’ve never seen you skittish about taking a risk.”
“Death’s one thing. Injuries can heal. But losing myself...” Kane shook his head. “I don’t want to lose my self. It’s a petty thing, perhaps....”
“Trust me,” Grant told him. “We got home from those other casements. You dragged me back from the slip between time and other dimensions. If anyone can survive even an Annunaki war stick, it’ll be you.”
Kane looked up at his friend. “Forgive me if I’m not in too much of a hurry—”
“Kane! Grant!”
The two men turned, to see Nathan Longa approaching again. He didn’t have the staff with him, meaning it was most likely back with Brigid Baptiste, who was studying it. Longa still had the rifle that the Zambians had lent him, and his personal handgun on his hip.
“This is a dangerous place,” Kane admonished. “You sure you want to be out here without the staff?”
“I’m not sure of anything anymore,” Nathan returned. “But I was getting claustrophobic in there. Any progress on finding where our winged friends took off to?”
Kane shook his head again. “We’ve had a hard time tracking them. It doesn’t help that they don’t even have to fly, just leap and glide, to break up their footprint trail, or coast down that whitewater.”
Nathan nodded, coming closer. He kept his eyes skyward, on the branches.
“We’re keeping an eye on things upstairs, too,” Grant mentioned.
“I know. But I’ve had these things chase me. They still have me paranoid,” Nathan replied.
Grant tipped his head toward Kane. “It isn’t paranoia if they really are hunting you. But don’t worry, Kane’s sharp. Nothing is going to sneak up on us.”
“Don’t make it seem so cut and dried,” his friend muttered, bristling at the sudden pressure put on him. “Things have hit us in the past, even when I was at my most alert.”
Nathan took special care to look around at the forest canopy near them, almost as if Kane and Grant were daring the gods. “Nothing yet...thank goodness.”
Grant smirked and rapped his knuckles against a tree trunk. “Not to be too superstitious, but given what we’ve run into...”
A rustle of leaves suddenly sliced through the big ex-magistrate’s mood. In a heartbeat, both Kane’s and his Sin Eaters snapped into their hands, launched on pure reflex. Even with all that speed, the hurtling forms of three kongamato were upon them in the space of instants.
Kane’s reflexes were the fastest of the three people, his Sin Eater up and barking, but even as the first slugs ripped out of the barrel of his machine pistol, the bat-winged kongamato brought up its hind feet and kicked him to the ground. The creature landed, hot blood splashing across Kane’s face, as the Sin Eater’s slugs had opened it up. Even wounded, though, the creature was big, strong and heavy, levering one long forearm across Kane’s throat, pressing down.
The Cerberus champion’s gun arm was pinned by one taloned, three-fingered hand, the other finger being an extended spine for the kongamato’s wing membrane. Kane grimaced and pulled the foot-long fighting knife from its sheath. With a mighty heave, he upset the creature’s balance atop him, left hand punching into its abdomen. The point of the blade went through much more easily than Kane’s center-of-mass gunshots, which had been slowed by thick, ropey muscle and keel-shaped breastbone that deflected bullets from the heart. Flesh and sinew parted around the point of the blade, and with a savage whip of his wrist, Kane found his stomach painted with kongamato blood and gore. Rubbery loops of intestines burst from the wicked, savage wound he’d t
orn, and the monster let loose an ear-splitting shriek.
Kane felt as if a bomb had gone off in his face, but the pressure of the monster’s mass was gone, and he clenched the Sin Eater back in his hand. His head rang like a bell in the aftermath of the batlike creature’s sonic assault, but he could see his opponent, one claw shoveling in loosened bowels inefficiently, eyes wild with pain. The ambushing kongamato was on the defensive now, and Kane didn’t think it would prove to be a threat. He had to assist Grant and Nathan in their battles. He turned away from the wounded beast, and instants later, the whiplike snap and whisper of the dactyl claw at the end of its wing brushed across his shoulder.
Smart polymers split, allowing only a minor scratch on Kane’s skin, but the shadow suits were designed to redistribute impact and provide protection fromenvironmental hazards. Powerful weapons could cleave through the non-Newtonian materials, or at least transmit trauma through fabric that hardened into a shell on impact. Cutting it was something Kane had seen in only rare instances, warning him that the wing claws of these creatures were deadly, and gave the kongamato a threat radius of at least eight feet.
He whirled as his opponent’s wing flashed out once more, the flickering hook of the talon whistling through the air over his head with murderous speed and intent. Had Kane not stepped back a foot, his throat would have been opened up, probably to the vertebrae.
He cut loose with the Sin Eater, snapping it to eye level and firing the gun on full auto. Heavy slugs tore the kongamato’s streamlined skull asunder, the extended rudder point on the back of its head flopping to the ground.
In the same moment that Kane faced his initial attack, Grant cursed that his reflexes were only a slight bit slower, enough of a delay that the big man’s kongamato had been able to bat aside Grant’s machine pistol before he could get a shot off. The squat, densely packed mound of mutant muscle collided with the tall, powerfully built human, and found itself bouncing off an immovable object, not quite the irresistible force it imagined itself as.
Grant was glad for the protective qualities of his shadow suit’s fluidlike polymers, which flowed and stretched, conforming to his physique without restriction. That, combined with his strength and greater mass, enabled him to withstand the onslaught.
The creature toppled backward, and Grant moved in toward it. The kongamato flipped up one winged arm, and though Grant was inside the arc of its dactyl claw, the force of the whole extended limb struck hard enough to push him off balance, bowling him to the ground. Grant let out a grunt, but even in midfall, twisted his lithe, muscular form, avoiding a subsequent swat by the kongamato’s wing.
The second slash of the powerful beast’s limb struck the ground with a thump that resounded like a drumbeat, pounding a foot-deep divot into the dirt. Grant was certain that if he hadn’t moved, the hammering impact would have tested the protective properties of his shadow suit.
The strength of the monstrosity before him was on the scale of impact force that the gun possessed, but this thing could back its power with claws of great strength. The kongamato lunged out with its other winged arm, and Grant pushed himself atop the limb, wrapping his brawny arms around it and tugging it off balance. The thing’s beaklike muzzle was jammed into the ground, and when Grant gave a savage twist, he heard joints and tendons pop inside the sinewy wing, while the beast unleashed a cry of pain into the earth.
Using all his strength and agility, Grant held on to the captive wing and threw himself across the broad, muscular back of the kongamato, wrenching its shoulder out of its socket. The idea of being able to capture one of these monstrosities alive for study was foremost in his mind, as was more than a little anger at being jumped, and knocked around so easily. He heard the thunder of Kane’s Sin Eater, and watched as the monster who’d attacked his friend fell, mostly headless, bits of it falling to the ground in ugly chunks.
“Go help Nathan,” Grant snarled when something wet and sticky splashed into his face.
Nathan Longa was the last of the three men to react to the assault of the kongamato, and he was bowled backward, knocked down by the speed and power of the winged predator. It was only Nathan’s reflexes and stubborn toughness that kept him from being hurled into a tangle of insensate limbs as he wrapped one arm around the conical skull rudder on the monster’s head. His rifle had been jarred from numbed hands by the creature’s tackle, but he quickly whipped out the tiny .45 from its holster and pressed it against the closest flat section of flesh he could find. A thumb back to the hammer, a press of the trigger, and the Detonics roared, sending blood flying from the creature’s back.
Nathan’s injured opponent dumped him into the long grass below while it hurtled through the air, blood and screams trailing behind. Nathan scurried to his feet, looking back to see the kongamato tumbling through the underbrush, then landing with a crash. The assault rifle was a dozen feet away, and Nathan whirled and charged toward it, knowing that it would provide a better account than his handgun.
Even as he neared the fallen rifle, he whirled and saw that the beast had gathered itself back up to all fours, one of its shoulders drooping, thanks to the damage of a .45-caliber slug. The kongamato’s eyes were red rimmed with anger, and it surged forward in a gallop. Nathan lunged and somersaulted, grabbing his rifle as he tumbled.
He spun and brought up the weapon, squeezing the trigger. The rifle chattered, spitting out lead when he spotted the thing within ten feet. Even as slugs struck the attacking creature, creating blossoms of blood across its upper chest, the thing’s wing slashed forward. Nathan hadn’t encountered the dactyl claw, the wicked carving blade at the end of the creature’s extended “pinkie.” At least not until it struck him across the chest, opening up muscle and slipping between ribs. The fabric of Nathan’s shirt was nothing compared to the shadow suits, providing no protection against the deadly hooked blade.
The kongamato shuddered violently in death, gunfire tearing through its heavy muscle and breaking its ribs, but its flickering claw had scored a brutal, vital hit upon the young man from Harare. Even as it collapsed in upon itself, furious glare dulling, it knew that there would be little way for the humans to preserve its enemy’s life, given the bright spray of oxygenated blood gushing from the wicked chest wound.
Nathan Longa’s life blood gushed, spattering into Grant’s face, his strength abandoning him. His legs folded, he reached out, letting the rifle fall away.
The cold darkness of death was brushing its fingers along Nathan’s spine as he gazed into the shocked faces of Grant and Kane. Then his eyes rolled up and he toppled backward.
Grant looked down at the creature he had pinned, then at Kane. “Get back to the redoubt!”
“What?” he asked.
Grant gave a mighty surge, feeling the neck bones of the kongamato in his grasp shatter. “I can stabilize him, but there’s no way we can deal with a deep lung laceration without a full-fledged med bay. No oxygen tanks, no surgical tools...”
He let the lifeless creature slump on the ground and immediately took out a wad of gauze and applied direct pressure to Nathan’s chest. “There’s only one thing within miles that can save this man’s life.”
Kane grimaced as he watched Grant staunch the flow of blood. Even though he was doing an admirable job of preventing the hemorrhage spewing from the cut, there was no doubt the young man’s thoracic cavity was starting to fill with blood.
“Nehushtan,” Kane answered.
And with that, without pause, he spun and raced toward the power station.
All concern for his “self” was thrown to the wind.
A very real life was in danger, and the ancient staff was the only tool with the conceptual ability to stop a needless death.
Chapter 7
Brigid Baptiste had spent years studying the secret history of the Earth, and in that time, she’d come across multiple dead lang
uages. In some cases, deciphering them was relatively easy, utilizing the local languages of humans in the same region. In the case of the Annunaki, she had taken a slow, difficult road. The symbology was dense, difficult, and many of the concepts “written” about were alien to the point of abstraction, even for her level of intellect.
The markings in the black coating on Nehushtan were of this sort. Some things flickered, danced on the end of recognition, vague echoes of reminders that frustrated the flame-haired woman. She had a photographic memory, a command of every experience she’d ever felt, every article she’d ever read, every object she’d ever seen. Some people considered her nearly supernatural in nature, in that she was able to retrace steps across a featureless desert to locate a well-hidden cache of supplies.
Brigid had her glasses on, thick black frames resting on her nose as she peered closely at the carvings on the odd staff. She couldn’t tell if the thing’s black coating had an effect on the original runes, or if they were an entirely new layer of impressions. At times it looked as if symbols were bleeding into each other, but in every instance of trying to get a bas-relief, rubbing a pencil and paper across the surface, she came up with a different result.
The staff didn’t feel as if it was changing, but the results that showed on the paper were incontrovertible. This was something solid, but just as Nathan said, it felt warm, alive.
Perhaps the coating was in some way animated. Or maybe the orichalcum beneath was in constant flux.
Either way, progress in deciphering the markings on the surface was nigh impossible. It was as if Nehushtan were truly alive, and sentient enough to stymie any attempt at delving into its mysteries. Just as it broadcast a low-level signal that caused North’s brain to buzz uncomfortably, it was taunting, tantalizing Brigid with new language, new secrets.
She leaned away from the object, turning to look at the archaeologist, who remained at a distance, repelled by Nehushtan as it produced a signal that caused a painful reaction in his enhanced brain. He glared, bristling at the secretive nature of this relic of a world history he’d devoted his life to uncovering.
