God War (22 page)

Already beaten down by his father’s blows, Ullikummis lay against the doors for several seconds, gathering his strength to continue the fight. Enlil had nurtured him to be the greatest assassin of the ancient world, a Godkiller. But this battle had taxed him to his limits.

His face smoldering with dark smoke, Ullikummis turned slowly to face Grant. Grant pounded the new magazine home, flinching his wrist tendons to bring the Sin Eater securely back to the palm of his hand. As if mocking him, Ullikummis mirrored the gesture, flicking his own hand forward as Grant depressed the trigger. A flurry of 9 mm bullets shot across the room from the Sin Eater, cutting through the air toward the stone monstrosity while, at the very same instant, a line of sharp rock columns pierced the floor, emerging from Ullikummis’s position across the deck and marching toward Grant like a porcupine’s spines.

Grant leaped aside, his legs working overtime as he scampered away from the spiny rocks. He didn’t notice Enlil step from behind one of the bone arches, reaching out with one swift, bloody hand to block Grant’s path, striking the ex-Mag high in the chest. Enlil’s movement was eyeblink-swift and Grant struck his arm and flipped, his legs kicking forward as his head careened downward to the deck. He hit with a mighty thud, sprawling, his vision blurring for a long blink.

When Grant looked up he saw both Enlil and Ullikummis stalking toward him.

“Kane, wherever you are you’d better pull something out of your sleeve,” he muttered.

* * *

H
AND
OVER
HAND
, Kane climbed the tree in the middle of the darkness, working faster and faster to reach its topmost branch. The blossoms waited there, great multicolored circles swirling like glass baubles of mist. Still he could not see his foes. Had he lost them?

Kane clambered higher, reaching out for the lone blossom that waited at the tree’s highest point, its sweet scent cloying his senses. As he reached it, his hand pressing against that multicolored ball, Kane felt the worlds shift around him, multidimensional planes renegotiating the way in which they bonded. The sky opened, the color of a hymn, and Kane smiled as a warmth washed over his skin. He knew that warmth, though he had felt it but very rarely in his thirty-odd years—it was the warmth of compassion.

And then the storm began, bloody reds and putrid greens assaulting his eyes, accompanied by the loud crack of thunder.

* * *

L
YING
ON
THE
FLOOR
of the hexagonal chamber in
Tiamat
’s core, Grant saw Enlil and Ullikummis come charging at him, one on either side. They were so different, it was hard to believe they were from the same species. Where Enlil had sleek lines, Ullikummis was hard and brutal, an assault on the eyes.

They were coming to kill him, Grant knew, and there was nothing he could do about it. He tried to make himself move, to roll aside from the attackers, but they were too close and he was backed up in a corner, with nowhere left to run. So instead Grant did the only thing left to him. He whipped the Sin Eater around and depressed the trigger, spraying the room with bullets.

“Eat it, you evil fuckers!”

The room erupted with sparks as bullets struck, pinging off the towering arches and the walls beyond. And Enlil—savage, brutal, sadistic Enlil—reached out not for Grant but for his own son, turning his blow at the last minute so that he dropped to the floor, tripping Ullikummis as he ran at the Cerberus rebel. Grant watched as the two figures slid past him across the decking, the jagged spikes of Ullikummis’s right shoulder missing Grant by barely six inches. Grant’s bullets danced across Ullikummis’s rock frame, carving tiny splinters from his awesome body as he hurtled by.

Grant had been granted a reprieve, albeit one that might only last a couple of seconds. He didn’t intend to waste it.

* * *

N
EARBY
,
IN
THE
ante-nursery, Brigid Haight threw the empty TP-9 pistol at Rosalia as the dark-haired swordswoman charged toward her, her feet splashing through the spilled contents of the nutrient pool. Rosalia ducked, and the pistol hurtled past her, crashing against a distant scythelike column. But the movement cost her, and as she straightened her body, Brigid was upon her, kicking out with one long leg.

Rosalia reared back as Brigid’s foot came at her, getting her head out of its path and instead taking a glancing blow across her upper chest. Before Rosalia could respond, Brigid followed through her attack by bringing her other leg up in a perfect snap kick to her face. The pointed toe of Brigid’s boot clipped Rosalia across her chin, and the dark-haired fighter went sailing backward in a stumble, struggling to retain her footing. Around them, the panel displays of the room went through their birthing sequences, checking and rechecking the consistency of the birth pool in a whir of pulsing green and blue and golden lights.

Brigid was relentless, following one attack with another, granting Rosalia not so much as a second’s respite. Rosalia’s mind whirred even as she struggled to stay clear of the path of that brutal assault, kicks and punches powering toward her again and again.

Brigid Haight was a formidable fighter, with hand-to-hand combat skills second to none, Rosalia noted. But still there was a flaw in her technique. So overcome with furious purpose, the woman was following an unconscious pattern, striking from different sides but in the same rhythms—one-two-three, two-two-three—like a dancer at a grand ball. The attacks were swift and fierce, but there were pauses between each, momentary and brief, but pauses all the same. Rosalia began to time these in her head, using the blackened sword in her hand to bat the most savage of these attacks away, keeping barely a step in front of her fearsome opponent.

Brigid herself saw only the threat of the intruder, recalling nothing of Rosalia’s background nor the outcomes of their previous meetings. All she knew was that the woman was armed and had entered the sacred presence of Ninlil, the great mother, as her egg was fertilized with the genetic download and fed with the nutrients of the birthing pool.

Brigid drove another cross punch at the dark-haired woman’s head, angling it just subtly so that it overshot intentionally and struck instead against the woman’s shoulder blade. Rosalia grunted at the assault, but already Haight was bringing up her knee in a savage blow to the woman’s pelvis, driving it between the woman’s legs with such power it forced her dark-haired opponent upward off her feet.

Rosalia staggered back, the soles of her feet brushing against the floor as she struggled to gain purchase. “Come on,” she urged herself as her feet slid. Then she halted, and in an instant sprang from the deck, the sword flashing through the air.

Brigid drove her next kick forward as Rosalia leaped over her, and her foot passed through empty air before sweeping down to the floor once more. Overhead,
Rosalia brought the flat of her sword around, striking the red-haired warrior woman across her back as she hurtled past like a launched cannonball.

Rosalia landed, forward rolling to dissipate her momentum before bringing herself up in a wary crouch. Standing by the pit, Brigid Haight was rubbing at her shoulders where the sword had struck. In a moment, the redhead had unbuckled her fur cloak, and it dropped to the floor in a graceful swish.

Rosalia held the sword poised before her, and as she twisted it in her hands, the blackened blade caught the data lights of the room, flashing blue, gold and green. Brigid seemed to pause for a moment, transfixed by the blade as the lights played across its surface. And then she ran, charging toward the dark-haired mercenary, murder on her mind. Rosalia used the sword to bat the woman away, slicing a line across her leather suit. Brigid stepped back, bouncing on the balls of her feet as a bloody line of red appeared across her chest where the suit had been split by the blade.

Rosalia glanced to her side, checking on the location of the stone egg. Brigid was protecting it, just as Kane had suggested, but it seemed to be just one piece, the whole thing sealed as a single unit. Before Rosalia could think further, Brigid charged her again, and she was forced to defend herself.

The two women fought, struggling to gain the upper hand, the sword cutting through the air in a defensive pattern to stave off Brigid’s most fearsome attacks. They were evenly matched, and if either did have an advantage, it was Brigid for she held no compulsion that her enemy should be allowed to live. She was a tool of hate, as her name stated, willing nothing less than ignoble death on any who failed to pledge allegiance to her dread master.

“This is a battle you cannot win,” Brigid spit. “Even if I die, a million more will step up to replace me, the priests of the new world.”

“Go tell it to the mountain man,” Rosalia replied.

And then the two women were charging toward each other once more, Rosalia’s charred sword flashing with the lights of the room, the nutrient pool bubbling like soup on the stove, its contents nothing less than the building blocks of life.

* * *

G
RANT
ROLLED
OVER
and over, hurrying out of the path of the two Annunaki combatants. Enlil was atop Ullikummis where he lay sprawled on the floor, driving the bloodied knuckles of his fist into the rock lord’s face. Enlil reached back with his other hand, sweeping it through the air over his head, and suddenly the serpent lightning reappeared with a crackle of electricity like a thunderclap.

Krak-a-boom!

The serpent lightning jostled in Enlil’s hand, its lashing head dancing in midair as Enlil brought it down to strike the smoldering body of his son. The weapon struck with a shower of sparks, and Grant watched as lightning played across Ullikummis’s powerful frame and the bone deck beneath him. Then, with a loud crack, the floor beneath the two opponents began to break apart, cracking in a long, jagged line.

Grant could only watch as Enlil lashed at Ullikummis again with the lightning weapon, whipping it against his son’s body again and again in an unrelenting attack. Ullikummis’s body smoldered, smoke pouring from the ridges and valleys that ran along his rocky flesh. Grant trained his Sin Eater on the two Annunaki combatants, waiting for an opening—any opening. To do what, he didn’t know.

Crouched astride the beaten body of his son, Enlil drew back the serpent lightning again, its fierce glow like a scar on the air as it whipped back in a crackle of sparks. “You have disappointed me for the last time, loin fruit,” Enlil hissed, his cruel eyes fixed on the molten orbs of his progeny. And then he swept the lightning down again, lashing it against his son’s writhing body.

But to Enlil’s surprise, Ullikummis jabbed out his right arm as the lightning struck again, shaping his hand like a blade.

“No,” Ullikummis shouted, driving the hand toward his father’s leg. “I am the Godkiller. And you will remember that always.”

Then, with a brutal slash of his stone-clad hand, Ullikummis drove his pointed fingers into the flesh of his father’s leg, piercing the armorlike scales and burrowing deeper into the limb just above the knee. Enlil shrieked in sheer agony, keeling over but still connected to Ullikummis by the bloody wound that the latter was inflicting. The serpent lightning continued on its own path, lashing now not against Ullikummis but striking Enlil instead, connecting with his hip and sending a potent jolt of electricity through his agonized form.

Ullikummis’s hand clawed deeper into his father’s limb, splaying his rock-hard fingers as he tore through the flesh.

Enlil crashed to the deck, the lightning playing across his body as Ullikummis wrenched his bloody hand free, bringing with it thick gobs of muscle and skin like a butcher’s display. The serpent lightning slunk against the floor, sparking and jolting in a shock of whiteness.

Grant narrowed his eyes to slits, using his hand as a shield to see past the sparking lightning so he could make out what had happened to the pair of them. Enlil’s left leg lay at an unnatural angle, a pool of blood forming around the traumatic wound that had been inflicted. Ullikummis had slumped onto his back, dark wisps of smoke still emanating from his face and torso, his right hand and arm covered in his father’s blood.

Ullikummis did not appear to be breathing, Grant noticed automatically, the old Magistrate instincts kicking in. Has he ever needed to breathe? Grant queried, second-guessing himself.

* * *

F
ROM
HIS
VANTAGE
point atop the tree, Kane had seen the whole battle as a thunderstorm, with streaks of lightning in ruby reds and emerald greens lashing across the sky, some nightmarish vision of the aurora borealis. He was connected to Ullikummis by the stone implant, and he felt the Annunaki prince’s rage as it raced across the black heavens, lashing at his father like a stormy sea.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over, the storm abating, the sky turning pale.

“Was that it?” Kane asked, clinging to the tree’s highest branches.

* * *

G
RANT
STEPPED
WARILY
closer, eyeing the two forms of the Annunaki as they lay against the deck. Enlil’s weapon spewed lightning against the floor, shuddering and snapping as it painted its savage patterns on the bone and cartilage that made up
Tiamat
’s interior.

Neither figure was moving, Grant saw. They just lay there, bloody and exhausted, possibly dead.

As Grant took another step toward the bodies, the serpent lightning flexed again, lashing a burst of white fire against the deck where the cracks had begun to appear. Then, as Grant watched, the whole floor started to split apart, the cracks widening in a rapidly expanding pattern of broken lines, tearing across the hexagonal room in a matter of seconds.

Grant ran for the doorway, but it was already too late—the floor was giving way.

With a loud crack like an avalanche, the floor collapsed, and Ullikummis, Enlil and Grant found themselves falling to the next level of the great dragon ship.