by James Axler
BRIGID RAN.
Through the corridor with its fallen guards and its candles and its pock-marked wall where Hurbon’s shotgun had ruined it.
Past the elevator and the staircase, from where she and Kane and Grant had emerged to try to stop this madness.
Along another corridor, the walls painted with a red stripe to show the way in a color scheme that had been forgotten for two hundred years.
She ran and she ran and she ran, her mind racing faster and faster, trying to figure out what was going on and how she could possibly stop it.
There has to be a way, she told herself. There’s always a way to stop it—isn’t there?
* * *
IN THE DJÉVO ROOM, KANE dragged himself out of the tantalizing promise of unconsciousness. His side hurt, his right arm hurt, his head...he had hit the wall and lay there now, on the floor amid a scattering of fallen drapes and totems and jars, trying to make sense of where he was.
Behind Kane, something was stirring. Something large and reeking of amniotic fluid and newness. Something alien.
Kane turned, a stabbing pain rushing through his neck as strained muscles tried to function, his breath coming through his clenched teeth. An Annunaki stood behind him, large and saurian, larger than any that Kane had ever seen before. He had fought with Enlil and Marduk and others, gone toe-to-toe with Ullikummis, whose surgical enhancements made him a towering pillar among his own kind. But this, an Annunaki of gold and green, was something else—something huge and muscular, as though its power was barely restrained.
Kane gathered his thoughts, commanding the Sin Eater back into his hand from its hidden sheath. He squeezed the trigger as Anu turned, the light of recognition appearing in the monster’s bloodred eyes.
Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!
And in that moment, Kane knew just who he was looking at!
Chapter 29
Anu.
The name was carved in stone tablets that dated back to the earliest days of humankind.
Anu, who had walked Earth’s green hills and lush valleys back when the world was young, when humans had still cowered in the trees from saber-toothed tigers.
Anu, the Earth’s first monster, the first of the Annunaki to descend upon her and abuse her children, her bounty.
Anu, who made Earthfall millennia ago, had seen a place where the crippling ennui of his race might be staved off and had adopted the planet as his own private playground.
Anu, who in those earliest days—alone, unimpeded by the others of his race—had taken a single man under his wing, observing and testing him, making him run mazes and jump hoops like the lab rat he was. And in all that time, Anu had never felt affection for the man, the apekin. He had felt something else, though, a surprised admiration that the apekin man could survive such hardships, endure such depravities as Anu heaped upon him, and still walk tall, still push himself to do better. The man had been a survivor, head and shoulders above his fellow apekin. And Anu had named him—
* * *
“CAIN!” THE WORD barked from Anu’s mouth even as Kane’s bullets drilled against his scaly skin, bouncing from its armor with all the effectiveness of raindrops on stone.
“Anu!” Kane snarled, knowing the monster’s name without prompting. It was buried there, deep in his psyche, a name that his inner self had clung to for years without number, going back far beyond this life, or the one before that or the one before that. It went all the way back, through to the dawn of time and that first revelation when the golden god had arrived astride his dragon on the plains where Kane had been scrabbling for food. He had not been Kane then, of course—he had been simply “self,” an unnamed collection of drives and needs; a survivor.
Kane and Brigid had been described as anam-charas, soul friends whose bond stretched beyond the boundaries of time. So, too, had it been with Kane and Anu, as their bond had stretched outside of the confines of time and body, much like the Annunaki themselves. Kane and Anu were anam-naimhde, enemies of the soul, whose paths were destined to cross but twice in all of eternity, once at the beginning—their first meeting—and once at their end, when they were destined to cross paths again.
Anu stalked forward, swiping away bullets as Kane pumped the trigger of his Sin Eater. The room was small, confined with ceilings too low for a creature of Anu’s majesty. He was forced to hunch as he approached Kane, flying bullets scraping against his scaly hide with clangs like metal on metal.
The Annunaki remembered everything. Their memories were shared, transversing history and time, creating a racial memory that could be dipped into like a well and drawn from at any time. No matter how many births one of their number went through, he or she would always be able to remember the events leading to that moment, remember it from the point of view not only of himself but of the others of his race. Anu’s memory of Cain was fire bright, as if he had only trained and tested the apekin yesterday; as if yesterday could have meaning to a creature of the multidimensions. The memory was bright, searing, because Cain had been his and his alone. Anu had owned him, tested and mistreated him, observed and punished him...dismissed him.
When Anu told the other Annunaki about Earth, the planet he had named Ki after his sister-consort, he had neglected to mention Cain. He had spoken of the apekin and how they broke so easily and how they had a streak of compassion that made them love beyond themselves, love the things that could be cruel to them, like Anu. But Cain had been his: his perfect subject, his first. He had taught Cain about survival, not through kindness but in lessons shot through with pain and challenge. Cain had to learn new things or he would die. Cain had been a survivor from the first, but it had taken Anu to show him murder, and how it was the ultimate path to survival.
Cain the first murderer, Anu the hand that held his puppet’s strings.
Now, after all those millennia, Cain was here and he had turned on his master, his better, his anam-namhaid.
* * *
“HOW DO YOU defeat a foe who’s conquered death?” Brigid asked herself as she hurried away from the djévo room with its imperfectly mirrored design. Was she panicking? Was that why she was running?
She could still hear the sounds of battle, eighty feet and two corridors away from where the combatants clashed. The echo of gunshots resounded through the redoubt’s many warrens, the familiar note of Kane’s Sin Eater. Which meant Kane was alive.
“Did I run?” Brigid asked herself, clinging to the bland gray wall. “Did I leave my friends?”
Why had she done that? It was something inside her, something primal. She had recognized the Annunaki thing that had assumed Papa Hurbon’s place on the floor of the underground room, the gold scales with green edging like verdigris. She didn’t know its name, not from sight alone, but somehow, deep down inside her, Brigid knew this monster.
It was as though she had fought it before. As though she had been fighting it all of her adult life. The thing from her nightmares, the ones she never remembered even with her eidetic memory—the ones her bedside notepad had waited in vain to record—which only served to make them scarier still. This dead thing had visited Earth before.
“I have to stop it,” Brigid whispered, a plan forming in her mind. If Hurbon had conquered death to become this thing, then Brigid would have to find death’s weakness. Which first meant finding the dead thing that lurked elsewhere in the forgotten redoubt, the thing with the heart of black.
“Coeur Noir,” Brigid said in French as she turned back down the corridor toward a junction she had sprinted past moments before. Black heart.
* * *
ANU REACHED FOR CAIN/KANE, bullets butting against his impenetrable flesh as Kane held down the trigger of the Sin Eater where he stood by the wall. Anu’s golden clawed hand swung out, slapping the Sin Eater’s barrel and shoving Kane’s hand against the wall in its wake.
Kane struggled in the monster’s grip as he was lifted from the floor. His feet hung above the deck now, and it was all he could do to kick against the wall behind him as he scrambled for purchase. “See...” Kane muttered through his strained windpipe, “that’s...where...we...differ. I ain’t...never...found an...Annunaki...I...did anything...but hate.”
Anu thrust Kane against the wall, pushing him with such force that Kane’s head was shoved hard into the paneling behind the drapes, striking with a hollow thump. Kane’s vision blurred with the blow, and he could suddenly taste blood in his mouth.
“Admiration can still be present when there is hate, Cain,” Anu informed his foe. “You apekin have such simple minds, perhaps you are unable to appreciate that.”
Anu pushed again, stiffening his muscles and driving Kane against the wall with such force that it seemed as though Kane would go right through it. Kane felt himself being crushed, the bones of his spine grinding together as he was pushed harder and harder against that unrelenting barricade.
“Argh!” Kane screamed as the pain became interminable.
And then, incredibly, Anu screamed, too, screamed and let Kane drop as he lurched backward, his grip faltering on the man’s throat. Kane dropped to the floor, landing hard on his backside as all the force that had been used to hold him up suddenly relented.
Anu had almost fallen, lurching sideways like a man caught on slippery ice. Recovering, Anu turned his head, bent over as he was in that claustrophobic little room. Something had bitten him, something sharp and vicious, tearing straight into the tendon of his right ankle with such cruel force that it had snapped right through. The dark-skinned apekin—Grant—was lying there, blood smeared down the torn clothing along his flank, a hard grin on his lips. In his hand, Anu saw, a weapon glinted—a knife with a six-inch serrated blade and the dark stain of blood marring its silvery sheen. His blood, Anu’s, drawn from his leg when the apekin had cut his tendon.
“Domi says hello,” Grant said as he plunged the knife a second time into Anu’s flesh, its sharp point driving into the hard skin and biting deep into his left ankle.
Anu kicked out, whipping his leg up and out of the reach of the fallen Cerberus warrior, flipping Domi’s combat knife away in a lightning streak of silver in the candlelight.
Grant rolled with the movement, dragged a little as the knife left his grip. Then Anu’s foot was coming down again, stomping him in the face, once, twice, a third time. Grant was already down; he had barely mustered the energy to use the knife he had secreted when they had arrived at the redoubt. He could not hope to fight back against a larger and more powerful foe in the prime of physical fitness. So instead he sunk into the dream, the one where the pain was just a memory, where the story was already over.
* * *
KANE SAW HIS chance in that moment. He was wounded, light-headed, on the verge of collapse from exhaustion and the wounds he had taken. But he was a survivor, just as Anu had said, just as he had always been, and here and now this anam-namhaid—this soul enemy whose reappearance here spelled the arrival of an apocalypse unseen—was the only thing standing between himself and survival.
Kane leaped, forcing energy into his limbs, energy he didn’t know he had, drawing on reserves of adrenaline that had waited an eternity for this moment. He was on Anu’s back in an instant, clambering up the lumpy plates of the monster’s spine, reaching for its skull. Kane’s shadow suit had been ripped across his left pectoral, two inches of torn material flapping away from his body, threads puckered against the bloody wound in his chest. As he leaped he tore at that dangling strip, ripped it across his body in one almighty yank, unwrapping as much of the fantastically durable material as he possibly could, following the weave. Already weakened, it tore, turned from a two-inch rent to a long cord, an inch across and sixteen long, still connected to Kane’s chest at its end like a second skin.
Kane whipped the cord-like strip of the shadow suit over Anu’s head, dragging it down across the golden creature’s throat. Then, with the two of them connected by the superstrong weave of the material, Kane dragged back with all of his might, using all the strength in his muscles, applying all of his weight, in one last-ditch attempt to strangle this monster and be done with him.
“Die, you abomination,” Kane growled, his mouth close to Anu’s bat-wing-like ear. “Die!”
Anu lurched back, the pressure of the superstrong material palpable on his throat, as if his flesh were being cut with another blade. He stomped out again, foot crashing down on Grant’s shoulder as the Cerberus warrior lay helplessly before him.
Then Anu reached for the cord around his neck, trying to pull it free. His clawed fingers fidgeted and scrambled, trying to find a gap as Kane swung behind him from the cord. For his efforts, Kane just hung there, using his weight to keep the cord tight across the Annunaki’s throat, kicking out with legs and feet to try to swing away from the monster.
Anu was dragged backward—a step; another—his head pulled up and back so that the spiny protrusions across his crown scraped against the low ceiling of the room. His hands tore at the nanofiber of the shadow suit strip, thick claws unable to find their way between its snug curve. The pressure was pulling at him, making it hard to draw breath in the pokey, candlelit room.
“Die!” Kane barked again, pulling on the cord so hard that Anu was almost bent backward with the weight.
Anu lurched, giving up on trying to remove the cord from his neck. Instead he reached behind him with golden claws, jabbing blindly at his enemy. He felt a hardness press against the claw of his thumb, then the hardness became softness as it was pierced by that sharp talon. Anu thrust the razor-sharp claw deeper, swiping it to the side as he penetrated his foe’s flesh. Warm blood cascaded over his claw, running down his thumb, past the joint and onto his hand in a slick tongue of red.
“Not today,” Anu muttered cruelly as he felt his foe sag, the life going out of Kane’s body with the loss of blood.
Kane dropped then, crashing to the floor, the torn strip of his shadow suit still attached to Kane like an umbilical cord, fluttering from Anu’s throat. There was blood across Kane’s throat, blood down his chest and leaking across the floor of the mirrored room. Anu looked down at the apekin, watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest as it grew more shallow still.
They were anam-naimhde, these two—soul enemies through eternity. Two meetings was all they would ever have. Two meetings, one at the start and one that would be their last.
Anu stood over his fallen opponent, watching as Kane lay leaking blood and life over the floor of the djévo room. Beside him, Grant was curled up on himself, dark bruises coloring his already dark skin like shadows, blood trickling from his ear.
Anu turned, surveying the room and finding the door. He was alive, and there was a planet to conquer.
Chapter 30
Brigid Baptiste was hurrying down a bland-walled corridor of Redoubt Mike, on her way to where she remembered the cold-fusion generator was located, trying to figure out what she could possibly do. For a moment, she stopped, as she felt something pressing deep down inside her, like a pressure against her heart. Something had happened; something bad. She and Kane were tied together, anam-charas, soul friends through eternity. She had left him. The pain in her chest—was that sorrow? Or was it something else? It didn’t matter now; nothing mattered but finding a way to stop Hurbon before this got any more out of hand.
Papa Hurbon had somehow found a cheat, Brigid realized, a way to bypass death and keep going, the same way that the Annunaki had time and again. But he was human, not Annunaki—his body should not be able to ac
cept such forces. Only a hybrid could do that, which was why the barons had been bred for so many millennia to ensure there were suitable vessels ready when Tiamat unleashed the genetic download that saw nine members of the Annunaki pantheon reborn on Earth.
But Hurbon’s new form was something different, as was the other one that they had trapped in the freezer—Ki. Hurbon appeared to have tapped something more monstrous than any Annunaki that Brigid had ever seen before.
He had been behind it all, Brigid realized as she stepped into the room where the cold-fusion generator was located. The unit hummed to itself, a neon blue brightness emanating from its single, porthole window, its reinforced glass marred with a cobweb of lines where something had tried to get out. Tried—and failed.
Hurbon had spread the Annunaki genetics somehow, using them in the same way that his mistress had done two years before, after the Annunaki wombship had been destroyed. Then, Lilitu had been reborn thanks to another genetic download, creating a new body to house her mind. But something had gone wrong in the transfer, something had corrupted, and instead of one body she had been born in several, her psyche fractured across each in a sequence of broken fragments. It had been enough to drive Lilitu insane, and it had taken the intervention of Cerberus with Papa Hurbon’s assistance to force the multiple Lilitus together, trapping them in the cold-fusion generator where they would be entwined for eternity.
But there had been something else then, when Lilitu had been reborn—she had become a dead thing that moved and touched other dead things with her madness, who could bring the dead to life. Now Hurbon was tapping that same power, Brigid realized, his proximity to the cold-fusion generator here in the subbasement of the old redoubt ensured he was close enough to sidestep the finality of death itself—or perhaps go beyond it.
He must have used that bond, coupled with his own knowledge of mysticism—which was just science in another form—to bring the old data from Tiamat back to life, spreading it across the globe through the dragon’s teeth. Except it hadn’t worked. Ereshkigal, Charun, Vanth, Nergal, Ninurta—all of them had been made wrong, cast from faulty molds, brought only imperfectly to life, halfway houses between life and death. If they had movement, it had only been an illusion, the grave’s worms moving beneath the flesh. They had strayed too far from the life giver, the death cheater, the one who had been named Ezili Coeur Noir, who had once been Lilitu. Without her influence, they had all failed, all corrupted and imploded and died...as much as a thing that had never been alive can die.
