by James Axler
North’s obsession with history and archeology had been so great that he’d allied himself with unsavory types as he hunted treasures and mysteries around the globe. One group had been the Millennium Consortium, currently among the most unrelenting opponents that the heroes of Cerberus had to deal with. Where the overlords had physical power, technology and Nephilim minions, the millennialists were insidious, able to infiltrate the postapocalyptic societies, luring them to their side by either force and blackmail or promises of safety and security.
Where Brigid and her allies sought out knowledge in order to improve the lot of mankind in a world stripped of its technological wonders and hope, North sought knowledge for the sake of his insatiable lust. He didn’t want power, though he had garnered enough to seek revenge with the millennialists. It had been a while, so the man may have changed, but the ire written across his features was an indication that he still relished the acquisition of secrets. He was jealous, on edge, wanting to pry the staff from her and delve into its mysteries on his own.
Of course, that could have merely been supposition on Brigid’s part, but she wouldn’t put it past North, if only Nehushtan wasn’t protecting itself from his hands....
The staff gave a sudden lurch on the table where it lay. Brigid looked down at it, but there was no one near who could have disturbed it, and it was far too heavy to have been shifted by a breeze, if there had been one. She reached toward Nehushtan, and it shook, trembling like a nervous animal. Brigid had a brief mental image of an elongated puppy, its tail wagging with excitement at having its master return. The conjuration was a slap in the face, cold water splashing all over her, giving her a chill of surprise.
Brigid extended her hand once more. Nehushtan seemed awake now. Alive.
There was only one reason for that.
“Kane’s coming for the staff!” she called out to North.
As if on cue, the moment she mentioned that, Nehushtan jerked from the table into her hand. It was a short hop, but something that should have been impossible for an inanimate staff, even if it was made from an ancient alien alloy.
But this was a legendary item, a relic of ages before mankind, a tool that had been utilized by biblical figures. Moses had utilized it to command miracles and summon plagues, and Solomon himself had battled the demons of hell, driving them from his kingdom into the depths of Africa.
If anything had a spark, a bit of a soul, it had to have been this staff, this odd walking stick whose pedigree allegedly stretched back to Atlantis, or whatever the Annunaki or Tuatha de Danann equivalent was.
Then one thought surged through her mind.
“Go!”
With that impulse, Brigid whirled and barreled straight past North, nearly running him over, the proximity of Nehushtan to the archaeologist causing him to stumble backward as if blasted full in the face with pepper spray. Brigid didn’t care about North. He had brought this upon himself, for no matter how much he appeared to be on the side of angels now, he had been a devil before. Let him suffer, let him writhe in pain for what crimes he had committed unto others in the past.
Brigid ran, her long legs carrying her in ground-eating strides. Even as she reached the heavy doors of the underground redoubt, the massive vault barrier meant to repel the forces of an atomic blast, she was receiving the first buzz of communication from Kane’s Commtact.
“Baptiste! Baptiste! I need the stick now! Nathan’s been injured!” Kane’s voice cut through her skull, his words a shout that made the implanted nodes in her jaw vibrate powerfully with the thunder of his urgency.
“I’m on my way,” she replied. “Nehushtan knew you needed it!”
“What?” Kane grunted.
Brigid hurtled up the stairs, taking them three at a time, using strength she’d never realized she possessed, power and agility surging through her from the warm, throbbing contact she had with the staff. She glanced down at it even as she reached the door to the power station, looking out toward the fence, and the forest beyond, where Kane, Grant and Nathan Longa and been exploring. For Nathan to have been injured, it had to have been an attack by the kongamato. For Grant to be apart from Kane, he had to be applying first aid to the injured young African.
And for Nehushtan to respond, unbidden, to Kane’s thoughts and sudden acceptance of the need for it, the conclusion was obvious. The staff had a mind of its own, either of a living spirit, or perhaps some form of strange artificial intelligence, something built into it by the alien hands of the Annunaki. The concept of living technology was not unknown to the explorers of Cerberus. The Annunaki blurred the line between biological and machine, with their smart metal armors and ASPs, and the great ship Leviathan, which had come to Earth and awakened the overlords from their centuries-long slumber inside the genetic patterns of the humanoid barons.
The life and power within the staff itself seemed to transmit through her, and her brain hummed, abuzz with dozens of fluttering, racing thoughts that dashed across axons and neurons too fast for her to even contemplate. Images flickered across her mind’s eye, even as she raced to the fence, her feet moving deftly, avoiding hazards even as her concentration was occupied by the incredible surge of pictures assailing her.
She realized that she was through the gates and bounding through the forest with the swiftness of a gazelle, her legs pumping as she leaped over tangling shrubs and long grasses. This must have been what it felt to be someone like Fand—possessed of more than human ability in mind and body.
And then she extended Nehushtan in her hand, holding it out.
Another took the staff.
In a moment, Brigid crashed back to normal. She’d been touching the might of the gods, and now she was once more limited to a mere human shell. Even her amazing eidetic memory couldn’t make out a tenth of the events that had been played across the screen of her mind’s eye. She dropped to her knees, not that she was gasping for breath. Her lungs and muscles didn’t want for oxygen, not when she’d possessed the staff, or rather, it possessed her. She’d run, she’d raced along in the space of seconds.
“Baptiste?” Kane asked, looking down at her.
“Go,” she whispered. “Nathan needs you.”
“I didn’t get fifty yards since I called you,” Kane remarked.
Brigid looked up and saw Nathan on his back, Grant applying direct pressure to his chest. She blinked, eyes welling up with tears at the realization that Nehushtan hadn’t hesitated once it felt the call. The first reaction, the sudden jump. That was the staff’s realization of its owner’s wound. The rest had been a response to Kane.
There was a new weight within her mind, a concentration of thoughts and ideas, jumbled and snarled so that even her intellect couldn’t unkink it, make it intelligible.
However, that jumble settled, sinking into a miasma of muddled confusion. Brigid prided herself on her flawless memory, but the staff had given, and now it had taken away.
Frustration at forgetting something was a new experience, and she hated it. But Nehushtan had its reasons. The one thing she’d pulled from her brief contact with it, its momentary control of her body and senses, was that it was indeed alive, something that existed and knew and felt.
Kane’s eyes seemed to glaze over for a second as the staff pressed into his grasp. It was only a momentary lapse, as if Kane were taken away, pulled elsewhere. And then he was back, running toward Nathan Longa and pressing the head of the snake-entwined staff against the side of the young adventurer.
Brigid Baptiste would have given anything to be in Kane’s head for that brief moment before he jolted into vital activity.
* * *
KANE WAS A fast man, one of the fastest runners in the Cerberus redoubt. So when he broke into a run toward the Zambian power station, he expected to be halfway there before the Commtact could penetrate the bunker and pass the low-level radio i
nterference that accompanied Nehushtan. The underground African redoubt, inured against nuclear assault and the radiation and fallout released, was naturally going to resist a radio signal.
But even as he made the decision to take up the staff, maybe a few moments of hesitation afterward, he heard Baptiste’s frantic breathing come over the cybernetic implant.
“Baptiste! Baptiste! I need the stick now! Nathan’s been injured!” Kane called. She might have taken a brief respite from examining the staff, grabbing a gulp of fresh air. If he could urge her on, he could cut down on the amount of time it would take to retrieve Nehushtan. This was an instance where seconds mattered. Grant was good at first aid, but a deep lung laceration was a nightmare of an injury to deal with. A man could do only so much with direct pressure to control the bleeding, especially if a brachial artery had been severed.
No, there was no if in this instance. The bright blood bubbling on Nathan’s lips was unmistakable. He was bleeding fresh arterial blood, and he was coughing it up. The young man had minutes, and every moment was one step closer to death, either through fluid building up in his chest cavity or a loss of oxygen as the lung was no longer able to infuse the blood with the life-giving gas.
Kane’s worry for Nathan’s well-being was interrupted by Brigid’s breathless response.
“I’m on my way,” she cried. “Nehushtan knew you needed it!”
“What?” Kane grunted.
He paused a half step as the woman, seemingly breathless, spoke to him. The staff knew that Kane and Nathan needed it? His decision to use the stick and tap into its legendary healing powers couldn’t have been broadcast, not if Brigid was still underground and Nehushtan producing a signal with which to repel Fargo North. They’d learned of the staff’s radio interference capabilities when the archaeologist had drawn closer to the relic. Their Commtacts picked up the signal, obviously operating on a similar frequency to that of the cybernetic nanomachines that North had picked up in Garuda, the city of the Nagah.
But now Brigid was coming in loud and clear. Kane couldn’t imagine that she had Nehushtan in her hand, but didn’t wait for proof, and continued racing on. After ten seconds and over fifty yards of all-out racing, he spotted a shape bounding toward him along the trail to the power station. At first he thought it was another assault from the kongamato, but as soon as his eyes focused on her, he recognized Brigid Baptiste, moving with a speed and agility that he’d never seen before in any human, let alone the lithe, toned archivist. She had improved in her physique, her athleticism since her initial exile from Cobaltville, but no human could make five-yard strides or spring from tree trunk to tree trunk like a bouncing ball.
When the woman came to a halt, she held out the staff. Kane paused, stunned at the sudden surge of strength and speed that she’d displayed. He grabbed up Nehushtan as she offered it, her eyes blank, distant, as if she didn’t even notice his presence.
Judging by his fear of the staff, she probably didn’t. Even as he took the stick, he could feel a warmth, a living pulse within the wood, or maybe it was just his own heartbeat throbbing in the palm of his hand, amplified against the hardness of the staff.
“Baptiste?” Kane asked, looking down at her.
“Go,” she whispered. “Nathan needs you.”
“I didn’t get fifty yards since I called you,” Kane returned.
Brigid looked around, dazed, as if she’d been awakened from a dream. And then the world seemed to melt around him.
“Every time this happens,” Kane heard a voice say. “Every time we meet, there is an uncomfortable moment. Sometimes it lasts even as we’re together for years. Other times, it is mercifully short.”
And with that, Kane was in Africa, but gone was his Sin Eater and the skintight shadow suit. His jaw was bare of the cybernetic pintles that made the Commtact possible. He was clad in rough, grime-black clothing, his slouch hat covering his eyes against the harsh sun of an open field in the dark continent. An ornately handled Spanish sword, complete with a basket to protect his knuckles, rested in a belt sheath, while a simple cloth sash provided support for a pair of heavy, single-shot black powder pistols, the bottoms of their butts thick and round, like primitive clubs, perfect for use in smashing faces or breaking skulls when their powder and lead were spent, and even his had fallen by the wayside in battle.
He looked upon a man very similar to Nathan, an almost identical twin, though he was clad in a wrap that tucked up over one shoulder, his face lined with more years in the harsh African wilderness than the young man Kane had met. This person’s facial features seemed wizened, his skin lined endlessly, sallow and gaunt. But judging from his physique, the decades bled off, for his arms and chest were corded and taut, his limbs lean and muscled. The stranger had a timeless quality about him.
“Nay, N’Longa,” Kane heard himself say. He realized that he was a phantom, a fly on the wall of his own skull, a mere audience, not a participant. “I will not truck with your black arts. I am a man of faith, and neither I nor my Lord will suffer witchcraft.”
“I insist, Solomon,” N’Longa returned. It didn’t escape Kane’s notice that he shared Nathan’s family name. This made sense, and perhaps it answered some of the questions he had about this sudden psychic episode and the doubts he felt about the staff. “The juju of this walking stick comes not from below, but from on high.”
His hand reached for the haft of the staff. And once more he was jolted, hurled backward down the corridors of time.
Then he was in a cloak, a leather breastplate of armor, a metal band replacing the slouch hat. Again the staff was in his hands, but it was warm, and he felt an unending dread of the device. Once more there was a man resembling Nathan.
“But, sire...this is your staff. This is your standard!”
Kane blinked, looking at it. “It is too powerful for the hand of any one man.”
“Then why give it to me, Suleiman?” Nathan’s doppelgänger asked.
Kane watched himself rest his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Because I know you. Your heart is good. And if any man knows how to use power, it is he who was without it.”
Nathan’s ancestor took the staff, cautiously. “But what of you? What of your needs?”
Kane looked around. There was smoke rising from a distant battlefield. Odd creatures lay twisted, scorched.
“Should I need this again, I will know where it is,” he heard his voice say. “But what has been done this day...”
He turned away from the younger man, casting his eyes over the carnage strewed for miles.
“I need to get to Nathan,” Kane interrupted.
“This has already happened. Here, in your mind, it unfolds at a seeming leisurely pace,” Nehushtan told him, using his own voice. “But this is only an instant. You have the time necessary to save Nathan Longa’s life.”
With that, Kane snapped out of it. Nehushtan was in his grasp, and he was by Grant’s side.
On instinct, he reached down, took Nathan’s hand, and with both of them holding the staff, there was a sudden surge of warmth through the ancient tool.
Grant looked from Kane to the young man he was tending, then removed his hands from the deadly laceration. Already he could see little golden embers of light shining within the rent flesh, stretching out and bridging the deadly gash.
Kane grimaced, his body racked with the same pain that Nathan must have felt, or maybe it was something worse. Energy was being channeled through him, and he felt as if his whole body were a pair of hands clamped tightly around a rope, friction burning flesh across every cubic inch. Tears stung his eyes as the agonizing action of his body filtering untold power held him stone still, insensate to anything except the force that surged through him.
And then the pain was gone, and Kane toppled backward, landing in the dirt beside Nathan.
“Kan
e?” Grant asked nervously.
“I’ll live. Nathan?” he croaked.
“His wound is closed,” Grant answered. “And right now, he’s hacking up whatever blood was in his windpipe.”
“That’s what that wonderful sound is,” Kane grumbled.
“How do you feel?” Brigid asked.
“Like a human tea bag,” Kane responded. He sat up. Nothing hurt at the moment, but the memory of the trauma, the searing fire slicing through his nerves, was fresh and raw.
For now, that didn’t matter.
Kane—and Nehushtan—had saved the life of a brave young man.
But Kane couldn’t forget the horror that he’d seen from the life two steps back. The horrible wreckage, the carnage, the dread of “Suleiman” as he gazed upon the remnants of a war. And that the only soldiers on the fields of the dead were himself, Nathan’s ancestor and utterly destroyed alien monstrosities.
The fear of Nehushtan was not something new. It had been with Kane through prior lives, and the fact that the staff remembered him only made him feel chilled under the hot African sun. Something that terrified one of his former incarnations, something worse than whatever army he chased to Africa and destroyed, had raised an alarm, summoning Kane to war with a terrible relic of a weapon.
Chapter 8
Nathan Longa and Kane were subjected to the incessant worries of the others for about an hour, which was about thirty minutes after they stopped feeling the last tremors of their predicaments. Nathan wiped anxiously at the corners of his mouth, still feeling the flakes of dried blood and spittle, despite having cleaned them off.
Kane, on the other hand, was still a little off balance. He tried to reconcile what he’d seen of the staff. He’d been shown the last two changing of hands in the space of a heartbeat, played out as if in a dream. The world was a better place for those transfers. More hints, more flashes of memory invaded his fevered brow, splayed there like a vid against the screen of his mind’s eye. The details were hazy, half remembered, carrying with them the wild incredulity of a waking nightmare. If he could relate half of what he imagined... No, this wasn’t imagination. This was Nehushtan, an ancient staff, wielded by god-kings and wayward champions.
