“Enlil’s machinations,” Kane corrected. “This wasn’t Enlil.”
Balam looked at the nightmarish devastation that had consumed the cafeteria, feeling the emanations of death all around him. “Things changed when the Ontic Library was breached. Perhaps we have both been naive,” he concluded.
“So, you think Baptiste’s planning to employ Quav in her aspect as the goddess Ninlil?” Kane proposed.
Balam nodded. “That is distinctly possible. You said that Brigid disappeared during the attack on Cerberus, that she cannot be tracked in your usual manner.”
“That’s right,” Kane acknowledged. “Her transponder isn’t broadcasting. It’s like she’s disappeared off the face of the Earth.”
“The transponder could be blocked, of course,” Balam suggested through a mouthful of flatbread and beans.
“Theoretically,” Kane agreed.
“But Ninlil would be of no concern to Brigid Baptiste,” Balam resumed. “She was sent to take the child while my guard was down. Specifically, someone sent Brigid because I would trust her, even though I saw through the ruse swiftly. Another person—Enlil, say, or one of his Nephilim warriors—would be unable to perform the same feat, for I would have removed Little Quav to safety at the first sign of them. As was, Quav recognized Brigid and placed herself in jeopardy almost immediately on your colleague’s arrival.”
“So, she’s working with Ullikummis? How would that make sense?”
“Many are the ways of the Annunaki,” Balam told Kane. “Surely I don’t need to remind you of that.”
Using the flatbread to mop up the last of the bean juice, Kane reached unconsciously for his face, probing at his left cheek with his fingertips.
“How is your vision now?” Balam asked.
“The light in here isn’t good,” Kane replied sourly.
Balam watched as Kane chewed on the last of the flatbread, leaving nothing but an oily residue on his plastic tray where the beans had once sat, a torn hunk of the flatbread with mold patterning its edge. “Kane, there is a way around all of this,” he said slowly. “Little Quav is still a child, not yet three years old. She is not a goddess yet—to achieve that will require a full body download from the genetic hub of Tiamat.”
“Which we destroyed,” Kane growled.
“Without those codes, without that genetic key to trigger her metamorphosis, Quav will stay Quav,” Balam explained. “If we track her down, we would likely track Brigid down, and also Ullikummis.”
Kane looked impatient. “And how do you propose we do that? We’ve already established that Baptiste’s transponder is nixed.”
Balam smiled enigmatically. “You have your ways of tracing people, friend Kane, and I have mine.”
Kane shoved the tray away with irritation, causing it to clatter across the table. “You are not a soldier, Balam. You wouldn’t stand a chance against Ullikummis. And you know it.”
“Yes, I do,” Balam agreed. “But perhaps together…?”
“No.” Kane shook his head. “I faced this monster three times, and two of those times I got my ass handed to me. Look around you—all this destruction, that’s Ullikummis, that’s his legacy.”
Balam waited as Kane seethed with annoyance and frustration, watching the broad-shouldered man tensing with the menace of a caged tiger.
“What if I told you I could restore your sight?” Balam said.
“Cerberus is working on that,” Kane responded dourly.
With an abruptness that surprised Kane, Balam reached across the table and grasped Kane’s hand, placing his long fingers over Kane’s own. Before the startled Kane could respond, he saw something change in his vision, as though a light had been switched on in the room, the dimensions and depths once hidden by shadows clear once more, colors flooding and overwhelming his senses in a blur.
“Balam, what did you do?” Kane said, the words coming as a frantic shout. “What did you do to me?”
“Stay calm, friend Kane,” Balam replied. “You have nothing to fear here.”
Chapter 14
She had stepped into the water and she had died. Or at least, that’s how Domi thought of it as she fought to open her eyes.
While Rosalia and her dog were trying desperately to save Grant from an unimaginable fate at the hands of the sentient water pool, Domi had found herself partnered with Kudo out in the moonlit courtyard. Standing back-to-back with the modern-day samurai, Domi had walked around, footstep over footstep, as four of the watery beings washed toward them on all sides, like menacing, roiling waves crashing toward some eerie moonlit beach. Behind her, having already seen his partner disappear beneath the dark surface of one of the impossible pools, Kudo readied his
katana
sword, grim determination showing in every muscle of his tautened body.
Domi took another pace to her right, the weight of the Detonics Combat Master glinting as it caught the silvery moonlight. The transparent human forms cut from water flowed closer, ebbed back, flowed closer still. Then, suddenly, Domi moved, kicking off the cobblestone roadway and blasting a shot from the pistol as she hurled herself at the nearest of the sinister forms.
Whatever it was she had shouted, it was unintelligible, just a frustrated shrill of anger as the first of her bullets cut through the surface of the creature and continued on, through its body and out the other side without having an effect.
The thing swung one of its arms at Domi, like a whirlpool spinning through empty space at her head, and she ducked it, feeling the coolness of the water as it speckled her chalk-white skin and dampened her bone-white hair. Domi’s pistol blasted again, kicking in her hand as she drilled another bullet into the creature’s flank. It had no internal organs—heck, its whole substance seemed malleable, so what was she hoping to hit?
Fuck it!
With another savage scream, Domi kicked forward and drove herself at the swirling pillar of water shaped like a man. Head down, shoulders driving onward, she splashed into the creature as, somewhere behind her, Kudo tried to cut the arm of another of the creatures with his sword. Then, with a splash that seemed to echo through every bone of her body, Domi hit her foe.
It felt like hitting the surface of a freezing cold lake, cracking through a layer of ice so thin it barely registered. The water seemed to swirl around her, clinging to her as she drove through the creature’s liquid body, clasping her flesh. Domi felt her feet go out from under her, felt herself trip and drop, the water still holding her, clinging to her face like some terrible mask. She could feel it filling her mouth, nostrils and ears, pressing against her wide-open eyes with the pressure and coldness of the deep. She should have walked through it, shattered it, ruined it, but instead she was still inside the thing, trapped as she toppled toward the hard cobblestones of the path. Sound was different here, too; she felt her finger pull at the trigger of her gun but the spitting bullet sounded deeper and louder, as if the sound had been artificially slowed down.
Then Domi slammed against the cobbles, knees first, connecting with a brutal impact. And still the water swished around her face and body, clinging to her with the consistency of tar. She couldn’t breathe. It had been just two seconds, but she was desperately conscious of the fact that she could no longer breathe.
The world swam around Domi’s eyes as she rolled against the ground, feeling the coldness and the wetness of the slick cobblestones. Behind her, seen as if through a stained-glass window, Kudo was using his two-foot-long sword to keep the other water beings at bay, hacking left and right, carving splattering lines through transparent limbs that reconstituted in the blink of an eye.
Bubbles rushed past Domi’s eyes, her own breath passing her, hurtling for freedom from this terrible prison. Mindlessly, pointlessly, Domi squeezed the Combat Master’s trigger again, feeling the mighty handblaster buck in her hand.
Then her head struck against the cobblestones, cushioned by the water that had enveloped her, the impact still hard enough to shake thoughts from her skull. There was redness in the water now. Blood. Her own?
Redness and encroaching blackness, swirling in from the edges of her vision.
Red and black—cards on a table.
* * *
P
AINTED
SILVER
IN
THE
moonlight, the courtyard was eerily quiet now, just the faint sounds of dripping from somewhere off in the distance. Three figures stood in the empty courtyard—Grant, Kudo and Rosalia with her dog—the hound’s breathing and the occasional sound of their shoes scuffing against the cobblestones made artificially loud by the silence.
Grant looked all around him as he stood in the courtyard’s center, pacing a few steps back and forth in irritation. “Where is she? Where did Domi go?” he snapped.
“I didn’t see,” Kudo admitted, his head bowed in supplication. “After we lost Kishiro, things started to move awfully fast.”
“Lost Kishiro?” Grant mused. “Let’s start with what happened to him.”
“He was drowned in a pool of water, pulled under,” Kudo explained. “I saw him struggling, heard him screaming, but I couldn’t reach him in time.”
Grant took in the empty courtyard in a glance, searching the gaps between the cobblestones for signs of water. There was nothing; it was dry as a bone now. The color of bone, too, as it happened. “Where did the water go?”
Rosalia was crouching, running her fingers along the cobbles, the dog sniffing at the air over her shoulder. “There’s no drainage system,” Rosalia said. “Not even any gaps within the grouting that I can see. This may look like stone, Grant, but I don’t think it is. It’s something more than that.”
“Ullikummis?” Grant asked, the name a question. Ullikummis had demonstrated that he could control stone, and he had been the major thorn in Cerberus’s side these past few months. While it was dangerous to assume he was behind everything the warriors faced, it was also a reasonable proposition to consider.
Still running her index finger between the cobblestones, Rosalia looked perplexed. “Rocks, yes—but water? That doesn’t seem to be his style, Magistrate.”
Kudo led Grant over to the part of the open courtyard where Kishiro had been dragged under water. “My brother disappeared here,” he explained, toeing it with his boot in a wide circle.
Grant looked at the area, noticing straight away that it was flat, other than the natural protrusions that the cobbles created. Were they really cobbles? There was definitely no space for a pool deep enough to drag a man under. “It makes no sense,” he said softly, speaking his thoughts aloud.
Still tracing her fingers along the grouting between the cobbles, Rosalia spoke up once more. “There’s a slope,” she said. “It’s subtle but it’s there. Water can move fast, Grant—with another power behind it, it could run away from an area like this in the space of a few seconds, maybe less.”
“Doesn’t explain the pool,” Grant grumbled.
“They all disappeared together,” Rosalia reminded him. “There were five of these water creatures but when I hit your one with electricity they all went poof.”
“So they’re connected,” Grant agreed. “It’s not five creatures we’re facing, it’s one.”
“Like fingers on a hand,” Rosalia proposed.
“Or puppets,” Grant mused. “Mannequins. A skilled puppeteer can operate more than one puppet at the same time, bringing to it the illusion of life.”
“What, you think someone’s controlling these things? Giving them instructions?” Rosalia asked.
Grant nodded in reply. “They weren’t predators,” he said. “They came for us the way the old sec men would come in the villes, either driving strangers away or killing them.”
“Or a kidnapping,” Rosalia suggested.
Rosalia’s dog whined as she stood, and she tickled it behind the ears affectionately for a moment. “It’s okay,” she said to console it. “Danger’s passed for now.”
Grant looked around the courtyard again, peering up at the moon overhead and pondering just what to do next. “If they are guards,” he suggested, “then there’s a chance they took Domi and Kishiro in for questioning or whatever.”
Belying his usual air of tranquility, Kudo appeared to jump just slightly. “Do you really think so?”
Grant brought his hand up to hush the conversation as he engaged his Commtact. “Domi?” he called. “Come in, Domi. Do you read?”
Grant waited for Domi to respond. Their Commtacts were linked, making this the simplest manner in which to check on her. He waited briefly before trying her again, but the result was the same both times—no reply.
Across the courtyard, Rosalia plucked Kishiro’s discarded
katana
from the ground, taking care not to touch its razor-keen edge as she pushed it through her belt. While her competence with firearms was remarkable, Rosalia was far more at home with an edged weapon, knives and swords her specialities. Though she had several knives secreted throughout her clothing, she hadn’t brought a sword on this mission herself. Right now, however, this one would do just fine.
Grant spoke into his Commtact, keeping his voice low. The unit itself would boost his words, so there was no need to raise his voice and attract any unnecessary attention. “Cerberus, this is Grant. Do you read? Over.”
After a momentary pause Donald Bry’s familiar voice reported back over Grant’s Commtact, asking for an update.
“We had a little excitement,” Grant said with deliberate vagueness, “and I lost track of Domi in the process. Can you locate her from your end?”
“This sounds serious, Grant,” Bry replied thoughtfully. “What happened?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Grant explained. “Let’s not worry Lakesh unduly. He has more than enough on his plate there already right now.”
* * *
A
T
THE
TEMPORARY
C
ERBERUS
facility on the Pacific shore, Donald Bry peered up guiltily from his computer terminal to where Lakesh was talking with Mariah Falk and Reba DeFore about the medical implications of Edwards’s condition. He was speaking into a headset, so Lakesh couldn’t hear both sides of the discussion.
“Is that Grant?” Lakesh asked, noticing Bry speaking into the Commtact’s headset.
“Yes, sir, I’m just bringing up some data for him now,” Bry confirmed.
Lakesh held his hand up, keeping his voice low. “For now, Donald, let’s not tell Grant that Kane is out in the field. The two have been through a lot together, but I wouldn’t want to worry Grant unduly.”
Bry nodded, barely concealing the smile that threatened to burst to life on his features. It seemed that right now everyone wanted to protect everyone else from something.
After a moment Bry tracked down Domi’s transponder signal on his telemetry readout.
* * *
“G
RANT
?” B
RY
’
S
VOICE
came over the Commtact. “I’ve found her. She’s about four miles from your current location. You need to head into the city itself, toward the river. By my estimate, she seems to be close to the eastern side, near the center. I’ll patch through a beacon signal for you, which will register…like this.”
Standing in the courtyard, Grant heard a very low pulse in his ear, a single bleep so low as to be almost unconscious.
“When you get nearer, the clicks will become more frequent,” Bry explained. “Let me know if it becomes a distraction.”
“Thanks, Donald,” Grant acknowledged. “Will do.”
With that, Grant closed down the communication and began striding from the courtyard, his mismatched partners in tow. “Domi’s alive,” he told them shortly, “which bodes well for Kishiro. Even money they’re being held together, at least for now. The sooner we trace them, the less chance there is they’ll have been split up.”
Hurrying along at Grant’s heels, Kudo nodded once in gratitude. “Thank you, friend Grant,” he said. “We must hope that fate is with us.”
“Hoping sounds about right,” Grant grumbled. “We have a long march ahead of us—four miles across town—and I don’t want to get sloshed, so let’s avoid bumping into any more of the water babies if we can help it.”
Together, Grant, Kudo and Rosalia hurried urgently through the streets of the dragon city, with Rosalia’s dog scampering along behind her at a fast trot.
* * *
B
LACK
AND
RED
—playing cards on a table.
The two colors whirled in front of Domi’s eyes, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t seem to make sense of them, couldn’t remember how the game was played.
As swiftly as it had started, the whirling stopped and in its place was nothingness, a soft blackness that might have come from the two colors as they coalesced. Domi peered into that inky nothingness for a long while, trying to recall what had gone before.
She had been attacked, along with her teammates in the courtyard. Finally, she had turned on her attacker, its liquid form like a fractured mirror glistening in the silvery moonlight. And then…
Domi felt the bile surge up her esophagus in a violent rush, the aching clench in her belly, and suddenly her eyes were open and she was vomiting, a tasteless, watery gush blurting from her open mouth before she even had time to think. All she could see were the dark tiles, her face just inches from them as her watery expulsion surged out in front of her, pooling on the tiles, colorless but with a faint smell like brine. Domi shuddered and heaved again, another mouthful of the salty vomit bursting from her mouth, her belly clenched like a fist, forcing her to remain doubled over, lying on that cold floor. The watery vomit washed across the slick, black tiles, and Domi tasted the bitter tang of stomach acid as the last of the vomit drooled out of her, leaving her ribs aching, her stomach shaking, her throat burning.