The Lilitu (The Lilitu Trilogy Book 1)

by Toby Tate

  Suddenly, a light clicked on inside of her brain, and Olivia smiled.

  Chapter eighteen

  Fatigue was beginning to wear her down. The sun was coming up and Gabe had not eaten since the previous day. She had only slept for two hours, and she had not had water for some time. They say the human body can go weeks without food, but only a few days without water. Gabe always thought it ironic that people seemed to place the most importance on their physical possessions, while something as simple and life-giving as water was taken for granted. Water supported virtually every aspect of our existence, from the very cells in our body, to the vapor that insulated our atmosphere. The clothes we wore, the cars we drove and the houses we lived in could not have been made without water. That dependence became even more pronounced were we suddenly forced to be without it.

  Gabe had done extensive training in the art of survival with the CIA, but she had also been raised near the outback. She knew of several ways to get water in the desert. Unfortunately, those took time, and time was something she didn’t have right now. Olivia was probably hours, if not minutes, behind her, and Gabe knew she wouldn’t stop until she had the flash drive, along with Gabe’s head on a pole.

  If she was in Western Australia or the Northern Territories, she might find a baobab tree, which could store thousands of liters of water in its trunk. But of course she couldn’t be that lucky.

  She had to press on, keep heading east. The problem was that the sky was covered with a thick layer of clouds, and without the sun, there was no way to tell if she was still going east. But her instincts said she was, and she had learned over the years to trust that still, small voice. At least the cloud cover was cooling it off somewhat. If only it would rain. Ironically, the fact she wasn’t carrying a backpack and a grenade launcher made the trek easier, though she would rather have her supplies back, and her weapons.

  As she walked across the arid landscape, she sensed a presence behind her, and quickly whirled around. There, no more than a few meters away, were three dingoes, staring at her with hunger in their eyes.

  Then, they began advancing toward her.

  * * *

  One of the many talents the Lilitu possessed was their ability to mesmerize animals—something Olivia had learned at an early age. Hiking in the woods while backpacking through the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, she had suddenly come upon a black bear standing in her path. The bear hadn’t been frightened at all, and in fact started coming toward her. The girl was frozen with panic. She had never seen an animal this large up close that wasn’t on the other side of an electrified fence or safety glass. The bear had to have been at least five hundred pounds, with absolutely no fear of humans. Her first thought was to turn and bolt.

  That was when she remembered—she wasn’t human.

  She stood her ground, and slowly began to growl from deep within her diaphragm, looking directly into the bear’s eyes…and it stopped advancing. It sniffed the air and began to glance around, as if wondering whether it really wanted to get any closer to this growling thing. In a matter of seconds, it had made up its mind. The bear turned and trotted off into the woods without a second look.

  She had soon learned that she could control any animal simply by imposing her will on it, sending her thoughts out into its primitive brain. Any picture she formed in her mind would be followed through, including attacking another animal, or a human. It was almost like driving a remote-controlled vehicle.

  That was exactly what she had done with the dingoes. She pictured Gabrielle’s face in her mind, and then pictured her being attacked and savaged. Then she sent that thought into the brain of the pack leader. Whatever the leader did, the others would follow. She figured right about now, little miss CIA would be pissing herself.

  Then, when they had done their deed, Olivia would close in for either the kill, or the cleanup.

  Either way was good with her.

  Chapter nineteen

  Gabe had never seen dingoes act this way. They were coming straight at her in a loping gait, their heads hung low, their eyes burning with malevolence. They fanned out, one on one side, one on another side, one in the middle, as if blocking any escape. She knew there would be no outrunning them. What the hell was making them act like this? It was rare for them to come after a healthy human. But maybe they sensed her beginning to weaken, and it was just enough to set them off. Or maybe…

  Olivia.

  They had been programmed. Olivia had sent them out, using that damned power of hers to override their instincts and insert her own will. She had seen it before, and knew that it wouldn’t end well. Gabe felt bad for the animals. They were just pawns in a sick game of chess. She pulled the two blades, one from her ankle, one from her waist, and held them at her side as the dogs neared to within a meter, so close she could almost feel their hot breath upon her. They stopped, glaring at her with red-rimmed eyes, a low, guttural growl emitting from the beast in the center.

  They were larger than she had expected. Their fur was a reddish brown, the color of desert dust. She could smell something that she figured for rotten meat, probably their last meal. She didn’t plan on being their next one.

  She crouched low, her eyes on the pack leader, holding the knives in clenched fists. The beast crouched as well, snarling, showing pointed, ivory teeth from its long muzzle.

  It suddenly sprang at her, teeth and claws aimed at soft flesh, ready to tear and rend.

  But it never got the chance as Gabe spun with the War Sword extended, slicing deep into the dingo’s furry throat, sending a spray of blood across the sky. With a yelp, the big canine fell to the ground in a quivering heap, rasping out its last few breaths as Gabe kept her eyes on the other two animals.

  They both hesitated, as if rethinking the whole strategy of attacking this human. They eyed their fallen comrade, glanced back up at Gabe as she crouched there with knives at the ready, then turned and ran off into the desert.

  Gabe stood, watching the two animals fade into brown spots in the distance. She knew they would be back.

  * * *

  The clouds had finally dissipated and the sun hung in the sky like a golden beacon pointing the way east. Unfortunately, it made the temperature rise another ten degrees, as well. Seemed there was always a trade-off.

  The hunger was beginning to grind away at her guts and Gabe considered eating the dingo, but decided she wasn’t quite famished enough to do that. Yet.

  A nice emu, on the other hand? That would definitely sate her appetite. Maybe even a kangaroo. Harder to catch those buggers, though, and if you got too close they would kick the shit out of you.

  But as bad as the hunger was, it was nothing compared to the thirst. She needed water, and she needed it soon. Even if it meant letting Olivia catch up to her. She would have to deal with that eventuality, anyway. She couldn’t keep running forever.

  She walked on until she came to the foot of a hill. It seemed she was at the bottom of a small valley, which meant water run-off. She grabbed the bayonet out of its ankle sheath, knelt down and began to dig.

  The longer she dug, the more she began to realize how exhausted and dehydrated she was. She had been pushing herself onward for miles and miles, barely even stopping to rest. Dizziness and disorientation washed over her as she dug, but Gabe pushed through until she regained control, stabbing at the hard ground and flinging dirt into the air, making slow but steady progress. If only she had a shovel. She would have to dig down a good three feet before hitting water. She just prayed that she would be able to last that long.

  Chapter twenty

  Olivia stared down at the dingo carcass matted with dried blood, its tongue lolling out the side of its head like a bloated worm. Flies buzzed around it, as if trying to find the best seat at a buffet table. This was beginning to get annoying. The woman should be half-dead from thirst by now, maybe even on the verge of hallucination. Yet somehow she had managed to kill what was probably the most fearsome predator in the outback. Exc
luding her, of course.

  She was going to have to do something more drastic, more dramatic, stop that bitch in her tracks once and for all. She would have to pull the rabbit out of the hat, as it were.

  Olivia glanced up at the sun without even blinking. She loved the darkness, but the sun had its good qualities, too. For instance, its heat could wear down your enemies, dehydrate them until every cell in their bodies screamed for moisture. Yet it had little effect on her, except maybe to warm her or give her a tan.

  She glanced out across the landscape and although she hadn’t found any tracks as of yet, Olivia knew she was close. She could sense it, smell it, almost taste it, like a cat eyeing a plump bird. Not much longer and little Gabrielle would be cat food.

  She stole another glance at the dingo, and then took off in a jog across the desert.

  * * *

  Crouching in the hole she had made, Gabe figured she had probably dug down about two feet. Her fingers were beginning to cramp and blisters formed on the inside of her hand where the knife rubbed against it, but it didn’t matter. If she didn’t get some water soon, she was going to be in serious trouble.

  She stopped to catch her breath and glanced up across the desert. No more than ten meters away was a baobab tree, its trunk swollen with water. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? As she continued to stare, the tree shimmered and then disappeared. An illusion.

  That was bad. She was beginning to hallucinate, which meant she was much worse off than she had figured. Hiking through the desert, fighting off the woman, the dingoes, the sun baking her tender flesh like brisket in a pressure cooker—it was all taking its toll.

  She also hadn’t noticed it before, but her head was throbbing with heat exhaustion. Soon she would suffer sun stroke. How could she have let herself come to this? She was a highly-trained survivalist, raised in this very environment, not some tourist. She should have paced herself instead of trying to push beyond her limits.

  But it wasn’t really all her fault. Most survivalists weren’t trying to stay a step ahead of a murderous supernatural being straight out of ancient mythology.

  She glanced back down at the hole and resumed stabbing her way further into the earth, praying that life-sustaining liquid would come seeping up through the ground as the blisters began to burst and tear. After another fifteen minutes of digging, her knife blade plummeted into the dirt for the thousandth time and she was finally rewarded with the feeling of cool water soaking her bloodied hand. She had never felt anything so wonderful in her life. The water barely covered the bottom of the hole, but with a little more digging, she would have enough to cup in her hands and drink.

  She climbed out of the trench and glanced around for some grass. Spotting some, she shuffled over and grabbed a handful of the longest blades, then went back to the hole and climbed in. She dug until there was a good six inches of water in the bottom, then laid the grass blades over it, filtering out the dirt as it seeped through. She cupped her hands together and pushed them into the grass, allowing the water to pour in, then raised her hands and waited as the sediment settled. Finally, she could wait no more and put the cool liquid to her parched lips. She could not remember anything ever tasting so good—the nectar of the gods.

  That was when she heard the growling, and looked up to see the two dingoes standing over her.

  Chapter twenty-one

  It had to be the same two dogs that had run away earlier, now standing on the edge of the trench looking down at her. But if the dogs were back, did that mean Olivia was nearby? If she was going to fight dingoes, she needed to rehydrate herself. Keeping her eyes on the canines, she dipped her hands in the water once again and drank, then repeated the process until she had drunk her fill. The dogs didn’t move, just stared as if waiting for some command.

  Then she heard a voice.

  “So, you managed to find some water I see.” She turned to find Olivia standing ten meters behind her, arms crossed, blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, looking like some playground bully. “That’s good. That will keep your guts nice and moist while I’m pulling them out of you.”

  The two dingoes began to snarl as Gabe slid a hand down to her Zombie War Sword.

  “Don’t make me kill the dogs, Olivia. I’d rather kill you, instead.”

  The woman lowered her arms and glared at her. “The day you can kill me is the day pigs fly out of my arse.”

  The two dingoes glanced up at Olivia in unison like they had received some kind of simultaneous thought command. Then, as if they had been trained since birth, they both turned and trotted off into the desert.

  “I have something more exciting in store for you, my little spy,” Olivia said in a voice tinged with venom and eyes the color of shark-infested tropical waters. Gabe didn’t like looking up at her opponent, and slowly crawled out of the water hole, keeping her focus on the woman. As she did, she noticed the wind starting to stir up the dust and sand, and turned her eyes skyward. Coal black clouds began to form from nothing, directly over them, like sentient beings suddenly coming to life, geometrically growing in size.

  She had seen this before, and it was not good.

  “You know, you should have just let me kill you earlier,” Olivia said. “It would have been far less painful. I could have popped your head off, or pulled your heart out of your chest. But now…now you’ve gone and pissed me off. Now I’m going to make a show of it, add a few fireworks.”

  Just as she finished speaking, a streak of lightning struck a nearby bush, turning it to ash. The bolt was so close it felt as if ants were crawling on her skin. The resulting thunderclap came a split second later, like a cannon going off right next to her, and Gabe slapped her hands over her ears. She glanced up and saw a mass of roiling black clouds with lights bouncing around inside them, like a dark star ready to go supernova. As if on cue, more bolts began to strike all around her, leaving black circles in the dirt with little curling wisps of smoke. The air reeked of ozone and the percussive wave caused by thunderclap after thunderclap was about to make her head explode. There was only one way to stop it. Gabe turned her gaze on Olivia, brow furrowed with deadly determination, and she sprinted toward the woman with knife blade in hand.

  But Olivia was fast. Like a blur, she sidestepped Gabe and snatched the knife from her, all in one motion. Gabe turned and looked at the woman, and then at her hand. There was a cut across her palm from where Olivia had grabbed the knife. How the hell could she move that fast? The bitch smiled at her with the look of a playful cat, holding up the blade like a prize won in a carnival game.

  “This yours? It’s very pretty. Here, you can have it back.” Olivia suddenly threw the knife like a lawn dart, sinking the blade at least two inches into the meaty flesh of Gabe’s thigh. She let out a strangled cry, but managed not to scream.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it? But not as much as having your fucking hand cut off, believe me,” Olivia said.

  Gabe stood her ground as she reached down and pulled the blade out of her thigh, wincing at the pain. The blood poured down her leg, but at least it hadn’t hit an artery. Still, she wasn’t going to last long bleeding like this. She needed first aid, and the first aid kit was in her backpack somewhere in the direction she had come.

  She pulled off her camo shirt, then took the knife and cut a strip off one of the sleeves and tied it around the wound to staunch the bleeding. That would have to do for now.

  Gabe knew this had to end. She had to find a way to put this bitch down. But how?

  Suddenly, she saw a lone figure streak across the landscape behind Olivia, a few meters away, then disappear around a hill. Whoever it was obviously didn’t know there was a raving psycho on the loose. She maintained her focus on Olivia and ignored whomever it was, hoping to keep them out of harm’s way.

  Then she raised the knife, and willing away the pain in her leg, readied herself to once again go on the attack.

  As she planned the attack in her mind, she suddenly narrowed her eyes at a horri
fying sight off in the distance. A couple of hundred meters away, a black wall of clouds had dropped down from the sky and a huge funnel began to slowly worm its way from beneath and toward the earth below.

  With a grin, Olivia said, “Now it’s time for some real fun.”

  Chapter twenty-two

  The twister touched down in a matter of seconds, chewing up the ground and spitting out clouds of debris fifty meters high. A dark cloud of dust surrounded the central column as tree limbs and rocks flew in every direction. The tornado was steadily growing in size and intensity. Olivia didn’t even bother to glance at it.

  “What do you think, Gabrielle? Do you like my little creation? Think you can outrun it? Go ahead and try. I tell you what, if you can run faster than my tornado, I’ll let you live. If not…well, I’ll leave it up to your imagination. What do you say?”

  Was she serious? Was she really going to let her run?

  “How do I know you won’t just move it no matter which direction I go and block my path?”

  “You have my word that I will not block you, but it will follow wherever you go. So don’t think you can just go around it. As I said, if you can outrun it, I will let you go. That’s my proposition. Take it or leave it.”

  Gabe stared at Olivia for a few seconds, trying to gage whether she was lying, and then glanced over at the approaching storm that loomed like a dark god in the distance. How fast did those things move? She had no idea, but she knew the wind could blow clouds at speeds faster than a human could run. She figured she could either stand here and fight with someone she knew she couldn’t beat, or try to outrun what now looked to be at least an EF3 tornado and growing larger and closer by the second.