Shadow Born

Kane was getting tired of being in chains, even though he’d been here for what felt like only minutes. Then he realized that it wasn’t boredom but actual physical toil upon the body he was remembering. This empathy swept over him, causing him a transfer of nausea and exhaustion to strike him even harder.

And suddenly, he was fallen back, watching as a helpless observer as the caravan came upon a small stone structure in the jungle. The Puritan watched as the greedy slave master ordered his men to hack at the stone doors, calling for the treasure hidden within the crypt.

He recognized the tomb top, the alien writings carved into the jamb around the slablike doors. Kane could not read the glyphs, but their shape was unmistakable. They were the letters of the Annunaki, and each of them had an eerie glint reflecting in the moonlight. Kane realized that the blue-white tint was not the echo of a full moon, for the sky above was starless.

Something in those runes held their own unholy power.

Solomon Kane’s voice, sounding much like his own, barked a warning, telling the slaver to turn back, to flee this dark place.

The old Arab’s eyes were wide with horror, also realizing that the cuneiform scrawls portended far greater evil than he could comprehend. He turned toward the captive Puritan, fumbling with keys for his manacles, even as hammers bashed at the slab of granite covering the door.

“What are you doing, you old fool?” the African caravan leader asked. In moments, the Spanish steel sword was out, piercing the old man’s back, its point prickling the front of his tunic, turning white cloth dark as the poor bastard was run through.

“Kahani, take...” the old man sputtered before the slave master pulled the blade away, freeing himself to take a lunge at Solomon Kane.

With all-too-familiar reflexes, the Puritan brought up both hands, still holding a length of chain between them. The links blocked the downward sweep of the deadly blade, and with a twist of his arms and a half pivot, he suddenly wrenched the trapped sword out of his opponent’s grasp.

He then lunged, grabbing for Nehushtan, bringing up the staff to counter any other attack that the richly dressed African could launch.

Unfortunately, at that time, the tomb thundered, its stone lid cracking violently. Screams filled the air, horror sweeping all around them as some slave takers took to flight. Others shrieked out throat-tearing wails of agony as they were sucked through the open doors. In the distance, the slaves were trapped, unable to break and run through the forest as their captors could.

The slave trader whirled, pulling one of his own pistols at the cacophony of suffering and terror rising from the opened crypt.

“I warned you to leave it alone!” Kane heard himself growl.

The African fired a single pistol shot at a shimmering arm of pink. Long talons sank into the slaver’s chest, and he shrieked, still alive even as bloodred nails poked through the back of his silken shirt. Kane moved forward, the only weapon in his hands being the juju staff.

Was this memory or reality?

It didn’t matter because there was Neekra. She resembled an Annunaki, except she was larger, more brutish. Her features were unmistakable, even though they were twisted into a rictus of fury. In one hand, she still held the slaver, red nails hooked around his back. His arms and legs moved less and less of their own volition and only bounced and jostled as she shook him around. She must have been fourteen feet in height, and she was still confined in the mouth of the crypt, only able to reach out with one arm as she bellowed in earth-shaking rage.

The Puritan knew that he was the only thing keeping the pink-skinned horror from escaping, and the closest prey for Neekra would be the slaves, the same helpless humans he had been trying to liberate when he had been captured. He clutched Nehushtan tighter; long, lean arms filled with corded muscle, strength surging through those limbs as he advanced toward the thing rising from the darkness.

He felt the kinship with his predecessor, be it through their mutual contact with the staff, or perhaps because they were all part of the same entity, an ever-existing time worm, each life and death being brief but forming a single segment that would renew, reincarnate and extend through the centuries of human history. Kane had a brief mental glimpse of that “time worm,” a familiar image he had spotted some time ago, when Grant was lost in time and Kane had traveled between dimensions to seek him out.

It was an amazing, yet weird, sight. He could see his spirit’s history, the flex and pump extending backward to the dawn of time, and a shadowy rumor of an image stretching forward.

And then he was fading, spiraling back into his body, hearing Brigid’s voice summoning him home. His hands were around the haft of the artifact, and it had gone from the two-serpent-adorned healing staff to the cat-headed rod, full of odd and dark omens.

“Neekra...she was there,” Kane muttered, still feeling the bruises and the ache of the chains from his dip into history. “She attacked a slave caravan...”

“We know. You related the tale, just as if you were there in person,” Brigid replied.

“Oh,” Kane said, frowning. He looked down at the ground, trying to get a better mental image of the horrific beast that had stood before him. It was indeed similar to the avatar that Neekra had molded Gamal into, but it was larger. The Annunaki scales were thicker, rougher, cruder, scales that Kane hadn’t seen on the goddess’s first simulacrum. The glare of anger and hatred in her eyes was soul chilling, something he never wanted to see again.

Grant managed a chuckle, the sound breaking him from whatever lost trance Kane was falling into. “It sounded like you were having a wonderful time.”

Kane acknowledged his partner. He noticed that he had Nehushtan in his other hand. “Did it give us anything on the location of that tomb?”

Brigid had out a notebook in which she scribbled furiously. “I had a difficult time since your ancestor’s experience was on a cloudy, starless night.

“How long was I under?” Kane asked.

“How long did it feel like?” Grant countered.

“A full evening. After the caravan stopped its march, I was allowed to kneel next to the caravan’s leader,” Kane answered. “He viewed Solomon as a great prize as well as a potential slave for sale. He took my...his sword.”

“She was asking you...him...questions for the past hour and a half,” Grant returned. “He was reluctant to give exact locations, and he said that it was no place for a woman.”

Kane chuckled. “How did she take that?”

“My opinion of his chauvinism was noted and debated for a few seconds, and his chauvinism toward me was defrayed,” Brigid stated, continuing to run figures in her mind. “He found me far more formidable than others he had encountered in his era.”

Kane glanced toward Grant.

“I recorded it,” Grant answered. “It was fun. Especially your British accent.”

Kane grimaced. “British accent? And it’s already recorded?”

Grant nodded. “Back at Cerberus.”

Kane shook his head. “I think I’ll be staying with Sky Dog and the Lakota for a few weeks after we get back home.”

“You could always be eaten by Neekra,” Grant offered.

“Promises, promises,” Kane grumbled. He turned back to Brigid. “So, if the stars were behind clouds that night, how will you know where I went, Baptiste?”

“Solomon was a meticulous navigator. He was fairly good at estimating the distances he covered in a day, and he did have a track that he followed,” Brigid stated. “The only problem is that he came from coastal Africa, to the northeast, whereas we’re coming up from the south. Also, he was utilizing sixteenth-century maps, which were not analogous to current satellite tracking technology.”

“In other words, you’ve got a good start, but you’re going to be working courses for a while,” Kane returned.

Brigid glanced up from her calculations. “That was implied.”

“She’s figuring it out,” Kane surmised. “Otherwise, she’d devote brainpower to a smart-ass remark.”

Brigid waved the two men off, and Grant helped Kane to his feet.

“What’s our plan until she comes through with where we need to go?” Grant asked.

Kane shrugged. “Maybe we could hypnotize Thurpa?”

“Brigid’s busy on that front,” Grant returned. “I mean, I could try, but I don’t think I can put him into a trance.”

Kane looked down at the staff in his hands. “Maybe the stick could do something.”

“Or maybe we could ask Brigid to take a break and do her memory trick on Thurpa?” Grant asked. “Is it like she’ll lose her place?”

Kane rolled his eyes, then raised his voice. “Brigid? Can we interrupt you for a moment?”