Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4)

by David G. McDaniel

Lorenzo beckoned the group join him at the table.

  “The beast is with her,” the intercom voice added.

  This gave everyone pause.

  They knew the demon. The whole world did; knew what it was capable of, how it—Kang—had ravaged entire swaths of land and taken the city of Madrid; how the Kel sent a massive starship to confront him. Cee had reportedly been on that ship. Supposedly she’d gone to meet with him alone. Rumor was the beast was back with her now.

  Kang.

  Hansel shuddered.

  Lorenzo spoke to the new expressions of concern around the room: “The beast is her pet, nothing more. We do what she asks and we play our part until the moment is right.”

  They gathered at the table and sat. As the assholes found their chairs Hansel took his place off to the side, having no pre-designated spot and so simply chose a position that felt right. In sight of the proceedings, but not part of them.

  Soon the elevator dinged, the wide penthouse doors opened and in walked the queen of the Kel, along with the demon, Kang. Such an imposing pair, thought Hansel, both for the forces they commanded and, in the case of Kang, the force he possessed. It was unreal for a moment that they would be stepping off an elevator in such calm, ordinary fashion, just the two of them. The Bok should’ve been called before Cee. Or at least she should’ve been ferried directly to the top floor by starship, escorted by a cordon of warriors. Kang could’ve leapt easily through a window or something, smashing in like the Hulk.

  Instead they walked quietly across the floor toward the table, just the two of them, the elevator doors sliding closed smoothly behind them.

  “Welcome,” Lorenzo stood and the others followed, bodies facing the table, heads turned to watch the two strange yet imposing figures make their way over. As Hansel waited with all the rest, no further words spoken, he wondered what the queen had told the monster in Madrid to bring him to heel. What she promised. Prior to her confrontation with Kang, prior to her bringing him back into the fold, the beast had declared himself emperor of the world. Which of course flew right in the face of the Bok’s official appointment by the Kel. Would Cee rescind their titles? Remove the Bok and make Kang head of all? Bad as the Bok were, the idea of that …

  The Kel queen stepped up to the dais, followed by Kang. Cee wore her stylized armor and fur wrap; tall, exquisite, beautifully alien. Kang was Kang, a beast, and wore a black Kel uniform fitted specially for his odd, protruding shape. If he hadn’t been so fearsome it would’ve looked ridiculous. But Hansel knew better. Kang was unstoppable. Even the Bok, who could wield amazing, near magical forces, weren’t in the same league. Not even close. The Bok couldn’t stop bullets. They couldn’t deflect one of the Kel’s ray guns. They certainly couldn’t survive a blast from a starship, and Hansel was sure they could do nothing to stop the monster standing among them.

  Kang put his hands behind his back, looked at the assembled Bok and sneered. And for an instant, just a fraction of an instant, Hansel felt the same disdain for the Bok coming from Kang that he himself harbored. A tangible disgust. And for that briefest of moments experienced a fleeting sense of camaraderie. As if here was one tiny, insignificant point on which both he and Kang could agree. As if he and the monster could share a joke. These guys are real douche bags, the conversation might go.

  I know, right?

  Theatrically Cee held up a translation wand and began speaking in her imperial, too-smooth Kel voice.

  “We will gain access to your archives at once.” The mechanical yet natural voice paced her delivery, its English clean and crisp.

  “Of course.” Lorenzo nodded. “We await your command.”

  “You have it.”

  Again he nodded.

  Cee paused. Then: “You know where to find the herald?” she tried to appear disinterested. Hansel could see it. He also knew she could not, in truth, be any more interested. The queen wanted this knowledge. Badly.

  Some of Lorenzo’s confidence faltered.

  “We believe that information lies in those very archives.”

  “You believe?”

  “I cannot be sure of it,” Lorenzo was cautious, perhaps sensing the edge in the room. “However I myself have visited the world where she went, using a device left to us long ago. She stole that same device. Our archives hold information on it. Most of what we hold is Kel. Old relics we know little about. Until now we’ve had no complete translation. Your scientists will be able to decipher them easily. They will point the way.”

  Rather than grow angry at the uncertainty of this, however, Cee relaxed her authoritarian stance. The possibility of what Lorenzo promised was, for her, enough.

  “And you believe these records point to other worlds as well?”

  “I do.”

  “Kang’s world?”

  Lorenzo flicked his attention to Kang but put it quickly back on Cee. “I can’t know that for sure, but if Kang is from one of the Old Worlds, his ancestors would’ve been part of your empire. Our archives will hold record of it.”

  Cee paused, then said: “Voltan will see to the rest of your transition to power. You and whomever else you need will show us to the source of your information.” She seemed to include Kang in this statement, meaning she and the beast as the stated “us”, and for a moment Hansel thought he saw something pass between them. Like something else was going on besides the expected master and pet roles. Almost like Kang occupied a more co-equal position. As if ... and this nagged at Hansel … as if there were a bond beyond that. Whether real or imagined the thought of it made his stomach turn, adding to the sickening nerves holding him in their vice. The idea of the regal, inhumanly beautiful Kel queen locked in some grotesquely passionate embrace with the brute was obscene.

  “As you wish, my queen,” Lorenzo bowed his head.

  Cee listened as the translator finished re-speaking his words. Hansel glanced at Kang, who understood English, the beast following the conversation with that same expression of disdain he had when he entered. Questions continued to flit across Hansel’s mind; how Kang came to be in the first place, where the Kel found him, how he spoke English at all and a hundred others. Being with the monster in person was overwhelming.

  But Cee’s mind was onto the real focus of her desire. Hansel could see clearly, alien features or no, she was being very careful about it. Hiding the absolute eagerness of her true ambition.

  “And the Codex?”

  Lorenzo took a deep breath. “The Witch hid the Amkradus,” he assured her. “We were her legacy. She left us before she could reveal it, but I am confident she left clues as to its whereabouts. The herald, per the Prophecy, will be on its trail.”

  At this the Kel queen smiled. A dead giveaway for the thing she worked so hard to conceal, but by then could quite clearly no longer contain. Hansel knew little of where any of these things would lead, but for now, at least, all else would remain the same. Kang would not be made ruler. The Bok transition would continue. And as Hansel realized that, he had the simultaneous understanding that Cee had much more grand, much more devious things in mind.

  **

  Erius had to hold himself back. Dawn approached as the trio of horses raced toward the rising sun, faster, harder, horizon ablaze with first light. Jess coaxed the giant to maintain an abbreviated pace, making sure he didn’t completely outstrip the horses of Galfar and Haz. It wasn’t easy. Her own terror, her own rush to clear the scene, to get as far from the castle as possible—as quickly as she could—compelled her. It was difficult not to pass that urge to Erius, especially when he sensed it so clearly. That and Erius was, quite simply, born to run. His legs, though thick, were long, powerful, and he yearned to stretch them, to expand his stride to its fullest and here was an opportunity he hadn’t had in a long, long time and he was ready to charge down the winding road with everything he had, to get her away from there with haste beyond haste.

  Adrenaline as supercharged as her own.

  “Bear right!” Galfar shouted from
behind. He’d been calling direction as Jessica led, Haz bringing up the rear.

  She angled Erius toward a bend in the path as directed, down a gentle slope that became a short plunge, a few leaps and a shot of vertigo and on around another corner, up through the trees and blazing on, into the lightening sky. The trail was surrounded on either side by towering firs, a fairytale forest dark in the early morning night, shouldering in all around, concealment for their swift flight, cover for their trespass.

  Galfar had, remarkably, overcome his frailty when pressed, using his own power to blow open a gate and drop a doorway—she hadn’t yet seen him wield such a degree of the telekinetic force—skirting obstacles and a few slowly waking guards, reaching the stables and breaking in. There they mounted their horses and fled into the night.

  As yet they’d had no time to discuss what Galfar planned or what came next, or even what role the “key”—the sword—would play in all this. Everything after the room with the armor was a blur of action and nerves. The castle slept and it was only those last, slowly rousing guards that presented any real threat. Jess feared a battle with the hordes of strong Fist warriors, but that encounter never came.

  Pursuit couldn’t be far behind.

  They charged up a hill, hooves beating in rapid staccato, echoing up and down the trail as they absolutely flew past the scenery. They had to be going forty miles an hour. Wind roared in her ears, her hair whipped furiously about her head, most of the braids the girls did for the festival that day with Cheops flapping free. Galfar, remarkably, was pounding right along, somehow continuing to rise to the challenge.

  Consciously she felt the armor against her skin. As armor went it was incredibly light. It felt as strong as steel. She tried not to think of the fact it had been worn by someone who might’ve died in it. Someone possibly connected to her in ways she could not yet fathom.

  Aesha predicted I would come.

  Yes, but did she ever expect I would wear her armor?

  And this, most assuredly, was Aesha’s armor.

  “Left!” came Galfar’s shout. She headed that way at the bend, sword slapping against her back, butt hovering just above Eriuses’ shoulders as she pinched her legs hard against his flanks, both hands wound tight into his mane, guiding him.

  The road began sloping up. Soon they were skirting a tall hill, forest dropping away further and further to the right until the tops of the tallest trees on that side came just above the road, affording a spectacular view of an expansive valley beyond, shrouded in early morning mist. The mother world spanned the sky in that direction, the blue giant lending an eerie, alien presence to the fantasy world though which they raced.

  “Up left!” Galfar shouted at the next curve. Jess flexed and guided Erius toward a wider path and up a steeper rise toward the top of the hill. He hardly needed physical direction by then. They were in perfect tune.

  Soon Galfar was shouting more instruction and they were cresting a peak, rushing out into a clearing, no trees, hundreds of feet above the plains with an unimpeded view that went on for miles and all at once Jess was pulling back in rising fear of what had burst into view. Growing numb she came to slower gallop, one that fell quickly to a trot then a walk, then a complete stop near the far edge of the fresh clearing. Erius snorted, panting hard and ready. At the edge the clearing sloped off and down to a plain that stretched to the horizon. Galfar raced up behind and circled once, then came to a stop beside her as Haz galloped up last, pulling short to a dusty halt. The horses continued to snort, paired with the occasional impatient neigh. Jess saw their movements only vaguely in her peripheral vision; heard them, high atop Erius, attention dominated by what lay in the distance across the wide open plain.

  The Necrops.

  Far away, out there in the middle of what amounted to a wasteland, a ruined shell of what had to have been a city in the ancient past, the sun creeping up just at the edge of the world, off to the left, casting a fiery light on the distant, apocalyptic scene.

  “The Blasted Lands,” Galfar looked across the gnarled vista, breathing heavy. They were all breathing heavy, horses and people alike. Erius gave a loud snort. Haz’s horse shook its head and whinnied.

  “There are others like it,” said Galfar, looking far ahead to the ruined city and the wasteland on which it sat. “Other places where the ancient Wars ravaged the world. No one goes to them. Many lands have their own Necrops at the center, cancers on the land. Relics from the Wars, cursed and harboring death and disease. The Fist protects the world from them. No one is allowed to enter.”

  Whatever Galfar or anyone else thought the Necrops was—wicked construct of Hell, unholy hive of the damned—it was a city. Jess saw that now. Plain and simple. An ancient city, left in ruins. Jessica, denizen of the future, saw it. Vast piles of rubble with a few structures standing, still so far away details could scarcely be seen, yet so big as to make it clear; overgrowth covering every inch of it, making the whole thing look like mound after mound of giant, mechanical hills. Fires burned within, isolated bonfires, big bonfires, black smoke curling lazily into the sky, a freeze-frame of motion at that extreme range. The Necrops had been decaying a long, long time. A thousand years, if the legends were true. An ancient, modern city, it was, from the parts that were exposed, and Jess was certain of that now. In its prime it was likely as advanced as any 21st century New York, Chicago or Tokyo.

  Destroyed. In the Wars, no doubt, as Galfar said, abandoned and left to collapse, later to become the source of nightmares, now completely cursed, condemned, avoided and shunned. From the point of view of the people of this world, the survivors of a holocaust that nearly destroyed everything ... it made sense. The Blasted Lands might even have been radioactive at one time, leading to stories of poison and mysterious deaths, making the area all the more taboo. Maybe these Blasted Lands were still poisonous. There was no way to know. Radioactive poisoning, however, was not her biggest concern right then.

  “This is too much,” she said. The outskirts of the ruins were far away, across an open and very uninviting landscape, and the city itself—what was left of it—was miles wide.

  Miles and miles wide. Enormous. A warren of streets and alleys and ruins and …

  It would be absolutely impossible to search.

  “How am I supposed to find anything in there?” She didn’t know how much more of this rollercoaster of emotions she could take. First feeling charged with potential, then feeling absent of all courage; cycling back and forth, from confidence to stark, raving terror; wanting to run home, wanting to hide in her mother’s embrace, all the way to the highs of feeling she could rise to any challenge, could continue as she was into the world, deeper into the world, taking on all obstacles and accomplishing some great thing she as yet had no real idea of, and yet felt she was destined to do.

  I’ve made my own fate.

  But when she hit those highs, even then … the absence of real understanding was overwhelming. How much longer could she carry on? How much longer could—should—she press forward simply “because it was written”? Prophecies were vague. Which presented the real problem, even deeper than scale: She had no idea what she was supposed to find.

  She felt Erius grow agitated beneath her and reached a hand to soothe him. Deliberately she exhaled across her teeth, working to steady herself.

  Beyond the city one section of sky had not grown lighter with the coming daylight. Thunderheads gathered; another monster storm, its black weight hanging directly over the derelict metropolis. As if singling out the blight on the land in an effort to block it from the sun.

  She did not want to ride down there. That was the absolute truth of it. Not with Galfar, not with Haz, not with an army, certainly not alone.

  Galfar sank back on his horse to a more pensive posture.

  “Arclyss and his minions have been the bane of our existence,” he said. “Whatever their genesis the Brotherhood of the Fist has made it their purpose to guard us against them. To protect the Way
, that the Prophecy might be fulfilled. As we have seen, that is an empty purpose. Arclyss and his Scourge are as convenient now as they once were cursed.

  “The Fist want no part of ushering in a new age.”

  For a long moment he gazed at the city. Sporadic lightning had begun to race through the dark clouds. One bolt connected with the ground, a jagged arc that seared the air. The rest of the sky was clear and bright in the morning sun, making the storm look like an isolated menace. Like the city itself.

  Thunder from the strike reached them; a faraway rumble.

  “Perhaps Arclyss is not the demon he’s made out to be.” Galfar spoke as if he wanted her to consider that possibility. “It seems to me the very thing we fear may be our best hope.

  “I tell you this only to say, I do not believe you will be in the danger you suspect.”

  “Why can’t you come?” Jess was scared all over again. She didn’t want to be, had thought those feelings were behind her, but there it was. Seizing her tight. For the billionth time she was too afraid to go on. The expectations being placed upon her were hedging in. She didn’t know how Galfar or Haz could help in that sprawling death trap but the idea of going it alone …

  “We must delay the Fist,” Galfar was shaking his head. “They will follow us here. If I tell them we chased you to the Necrops and you went within, they will not go after. Not at once. Otherwise they might surely pursue us. That would not end well.”

  Jess shook her head.

  Madness.

  She looked to Haz. Expecting him to be smirking, or in some way finding satisfaction at her plight. He wasn’t. He looked concerned, actually, and she was reminded that, no matter how childish he acted he would, in the end, never want to see her hurt. In a way it looked like he wanted to say something to his dad; to insist they do as she suggested; that they go with her.

  “I have given this much thought,” Galfar brought her attention back to him. “My suggestion is that you appeal to Arclyss directly.”

  Her head was spinning. There was no plan. None. The sword was a key yet Galfar had no idea a key to what. Was it an actual key? A figurative one? Was there a door in there she had to use it on?