The Black Madonna (The Mystique Trilogy) (45 page)

‘Treasonous bitch!’ Ill spat at me, but the way he squirmed denoted his fear. ‘Your very presence makes me want to hurl. It wouldn’t surprise me if you were the mastermind behind this Dracon rebellion!’

I laughed, sincerely amused by his accusation. ‘I am flattered that you think me so resourceful and ingenious…but I don’t need an army to conquer you, my lord.’

Seduction oozed from my mouth, sweet as honey, and as I walked slowly towards his throne I assumed an Anu form using an auric simulator. (My Orme addiction prevented me from doing this through my own power.) Ill held no feelings for me, but if there was one thing I had learned from our intimate association it was that he still had a thing for his long-ascended queen, Ninlil. He often ordered me to assume her form before we mated.

Ill sat back, appearing unmoved. ‘Don’t think you can fuck with my heart, Kali. I don’t have one, because that
whore,’
he pointed to my Anu guise, ‘ripped it out when she chose the Kian way over me!’

‘I know you have gone out of your way to rebel ever since then—’

‘I just embraced the dark truth, baby. I was sent to this little hellhole in the universe to take charge and I did!’

‘You’ve halted evolution in all five harmonic universes!’ I pointed out sarcastically and Ill laughed, flattered.

‘Now that’s power! I am more powerful than the Sovereign Integral, so why should I settle for its extensively long
,
harsh,
insignificant
plan for me?’ He leered at me. ‘I used you,
sweet arse
, and now that you are of no further use to me, I’m going to leave you. I do hope you enjoy the final holocaust we have planned for you this afternoon. Not much point sending you a postcard from the Eye of Ra, but I assure you that I’ll destroy the capstone and send every evolution in this universe and the next spiralling into my devolution within the Kali rift.’

I managed to stop my jaw dropping as I learned of the Nefilim’s full aspirations. Whether or not they had the resources to back up Ill’s claims, it was still a very scary premise.

‘So this is goodbye, Kali—you always were a treacherous snake. And don’t worry—once I’ve defrosted my mother ship, I’ll finally dispose of your secret little science project. I’m hardly going to risk a repeat performance of today’s revolution in the future.’

‘I was under the impression you’d disposed of them already,’ I said. Ill had screwed with my brain so often I could no longer trust my own memory. Then I noticed the presence I was speaking with beginning to break up. ‘
Ill
, you coward!’ I yelled. This was the second time I had been tricked in this way.

The simulation laughed at how long it had taken me to realise that I was wasting my energy on a relay device. Killian’s form waved farewell as it broke down into a swarm of flying nanobots that quickly dispersed through a grate in the wall and were gone.

‘I have suffered long and hard for the privilege to uncreate this dark hole in the universe,
’
I said, under my breath at first, for I was so used to repressing my thoughts and feelings. But then I spoke up loud and proud. ‘I will rewrite history,’ I announced determinedly, ‘and Irkalla will fade into myth where it belongs!’

Overwhelmed by the task of finding the staff of Amenti and the means to return us all to the past, I fell to my knees and allowed myself to weep like I never had, never could. And for the first time in an age, I let myself recall the last few private hours I had spent with Mathu.
How I longed to know him again…how I longed to feel
anything
again. With a mighty howl, my desire to embrace the horror that was my life shattered the casing around my light-body and all my withheld feelings rushed through my light centres like a whirlwind. My entire body went into spasm as the high frequency of the violet flame forced out the dis-ease and purged me of the dark fluid.

The agony was unparalleled, and sparked in me memories of Kali’s experience of the same process during her first lifetime as one of the Anunnaki. There had been someone watching over her then, to ensure that she did not kill herself during the seizure—a loyal assistant. I recalled her words.

‘Great mistress, it is too dangerous to keep going.’

Kali had implored her to be brave. ‘I must do this, Jezabel, for all our sakes.’

I remembered how, in the midst of her delirium, Kali kept her focus on her assistant’s concerned face. Jezabel was not Nefilim, nor was she human; she was a rarity never before seen upon the Earth—a female Dracon. This top-secret project had been assigned to Kali by Ill himself, and had been long forgotten by all but a handful of the fallen still left on Earth. If the female Dracon were still in stasis on Ill’s mother ship as he claimed, and weren’t rescued before Amenti was opened, then these six souls would be left behind.

When my vomiting subsided and I could again draw a deep breath, I hauled myself upright and wiped my soiled face on my clothes. ‘This war ends yesterday,’ I vowed with renewed conviction.

M
IA
D
EVERE
—MERIDAN

The descent to the icy surface had been severe, as expected, but otherwise uneventful. Somehow the craft had held together and, having engaged the large drill head on the nose of our vessel, we were now ploughing our way through a thousand metres of ice under which Signet Station One was buried.

‘This isn’t so bad,’ Dexter yelled over the deafening sound of the drill head. ‘How many hours did they say it was going to…’

The drill shut off and all fell silent.

‘…take?’ He lowered his voice.

Ereshkigal entered, a stunned expression on her face. ‘We have a little surprise development,’ she said, opening the hatch door, whereby stairs dropped to ground level. The exterior lights of our craft illuminated a tunnel already drilled through the ice, using a drill head twice the size of our own.

‘Well that’s rather impressive!’ said Polaris, reflecting the sentiments of all. We climbed down and observed the freshly made passage. ‘Nefilim obviously.’ He looked to Ereshkigal for her opinion.

She nodded.

‘I thought the portholes were useless to them?’ Dexter was concerned for his station.

Ereshkigal shrugged. ‘They are.’

‘And why would the Nefilim be interested in this porthole, which can only lead back to Irkalla now?’ Dexter looked even more perplexed.

‘How shall we proceed?’ Ereshkigal asked. ‘There’s another porthole to Irkalla at Giza—we could try that one.’

Zalman spoke up. ‘If this is a trap, they’ll have laid another at Giza.’

‘Confront them now or confront them later, it’s all the same to me,’ Arcturus said.

The rest of the staff were of the same mind, so we seconded his suggestion and clambered back on board.

When we reached the much larger cavity in the ice where the Signet station was located, we found a super-sized model of our own vehicle parked there and abandoned. Beyond a field of frozen stalagmites, the Signet station lit up like a Christmas tree then faded into darkness again.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Dexter raced off into the station.

‘Wait, Dex!’ Polaris called out, but to no end, so he and Arcturus went after him.

As I was the only one among us with any psychic power, I felt compelled to join the charge.

‘Thank you, for everything,’ I said to Ereshkigal, and took her hand to convey how heartfelt my sentiments were. ‘I shall see you in the past.’

‘Take care of Killian,’ she instructed.

‘We all will,’ Talori assured her, and dragged me by the arm into the tunnel.

In the cavern before us an icy path led through the forest of frozen stalagmites to the entrance of Signet Station One. Our steps were more cautious now, and as we reached the control centre we spied a handful of Dracon. All bar one of the reptilian warriors stepped onto the defunct porthole. The remaining warrior held an ankh tool out before him and fired at it with one of Levi’s liquid-light guns. The small blast of liquid light was amplified and shot a stream of Blue Flame energy into the porthole—strong enough to light up the entire Signet station for a few moments and send his comrades into Irkalla.

‘They must be using the porthole to invade the city,’ Dexter whispered to us.

‘Exactly right,’ said the remaining Dracon, turning in our direction.

Dexter nearly had a heart attack. ‘Taejax!’ he cried, and went running to greet his old comrade. Polaris and Levi were close behind.

My first acquaintance with our primary Dracon ally had taken place way back when we opened the Hall of Records, before Tamar had even been born! Many of the staff had known and worked with Taejax for centuries longer. Last time we had all seen him, the reptilian warrior had been blown to pieces saving Tamar’s life.

‘What are you doing here?
How
are you here?’ Dexter had never expected to see the Dracon warrior, now turned Anu, back on Earth.

‘Waiting for you, of course,’ he retorted. ‘Been waiting a
long
time.’

‘When did you get back?’ Polaris gave the reptilian a large slap on the shoulder. ‘And why are you back in your Dracon guise?’

‘I came back after I heard about the aftershock of the RRT,’ he said. ‘I figured I owed it to you all to come help you finish up down here.’

Solarian gave the creature a huge hug. ‘Good show, old chum.’

‘As for my choice of exterior,’ Taejax went on, ‘since being cut off from all the higher dimensions, we Anu can no longer shape-shift and so I had to choose a form to inhabit for this mission. This one has served my purpose better than any.’

‘Where did you get that?’ Levi pointed to the liquid-light gun in the reptilian’s hand.

‘Off the
Klieo
,’ replied Taejax and Polaris almost jumped on him.

‘When?’

‘A few weeks back—’

Polaris gave a whoop of joy, then calmed himself to hear the details. ‘How is she?’

‘She appears fine, Captain,’ Taejax informed him with a grin. ‘She just got blown off her mooring. She must have drifted into the tornado region and got spat out south of the equator where she washed up on one of the outermost ice banks of the Antarctic. I picked her up on radar and, after much digging through ice, we found her, hooked her up to our vessel and towed her out of the ice.’

‘Where is she now?’ Polaris asked eagerly.

Taejax pointed straight up. ‘We towed her here to keep an eye on her.’

Polaris gave the reptilian a smacking kiss on the cheek. ‘You utter,
utter
legend!’ he said. ‘That’s our ticket out of here…if she’ll still start. Do the Nefilim know about her?’

‘Ah, no,’ Taejax was proud to say. ‘I’ve been keeping them a little occupied lately. A few weeks back the Dracon launched a rebellion, attacking Nefilim centres around the globe. I saved Irkalla for today, which is why our big, ugly friends were far too occupied to try and track down you lot when you materialised here in 2976, despite their full intention to seek and destroy.’

‘2976,’ Solarian repeated. ‘Why does that year ring a bell with me? Something significant happens then—I just can’t recall the exact details at present.’

‘It’s the year that Mathu predicted Ill would finally destroy surface Earth and all who live upon her,’ Taejax said. He’d been present at the same gathering that Solarian was beginning to remember.

‘That’s right,’ Polaris said; he had been present at the prediction too, and he looked at Vespera, who also remembered.

‘What is left to destroy?’ I asked in disbelief.

Taejax motioned around us, referring to the Antarctic region, then pointed up to the star ships frozen in the station’s icy ceiling. ‘Not even Ill wants to live here any more—he’s going to try to simulate the fireball disaster that nearly destroyed the planet, only this time he’s aiming at the Antarctic.’

‘Tell me they haven’t planned the attack for today?’ Levi just knew he was asking too much.

‘I cannot tell a lie, boss,’ Taejax said to his old friend. ‘They know you’re on Earth now, and even if they can’t murder you all personally, they’ll want to ensure you’re dead before they depart.’

‘Then we don’t have much time,’ I said, and stepped onto the inactive porthole.

Everyone else followed suit, except Polaris.

‘I’m no good to you down there,’ he said, and glanced back towards the entrance to the Signet station. ‘I should go take a look at the
Klieo
and ready her to depart.’

Levi stepped off the porthole to join him. ‘You might need some help with that.’

‘I can get Kali out of Irkalla on my own,’ Taejax assured us all. ‘The fewer of us we have to get to the
Klieo
at the last minute, the better.’

‘A good point.’ Denera stepped off the porthole, as did everyone else not integral to the mission, which left Taejax, Arcturus, Dexter and me.

Arcturus looked at me. ‘If they’re going to start the ship and test the systems, they’ll need power.’

But I wanted to rescue our daughter. ‘How will you get back topside without me?’ I said.

Taejax raised his light-gun. ‘I still have plenty of ammo.’ He passed me a small hand-held communications device. ‘We’ll keep in touch.’ Then he guided me back off the porthole and, before I could protest further, shot his ankh with a liquid-light bullet and activated the porthole once again.

‘Don’t worry,’ Arcturus said with a big smile, before he dropped down the funnel into spook world central.

T
AMAR
D
EVERE
—KALI

I’d led the world into a holocaust and betrayed friend and foe. Today was the day I’d find out if I was to be damned for my actions, or if the universe had understood and supported the method behind my madness.

What to do?
I thought as I raced to the main court chamber’s door. I feared the door would be electronically locked from the outside, but before I could test it, it slid aside and there was a Dracon in my path.

This was no ordinary Dracon, however, for beyond his brutal exterior I saw the splendid form of an Anu warrior. ‘Taejax?’ I gasped, recognising him from many of my lives on Earth. I was doubly taken aback to realise my psychic talents had returned. ‘I thought you were dead!’ I cried.