near-empty clip from her TP-9 and loaded a fresh one. âNo?â
âDonât ask me how,â Kane told her, âbut that thereâthatâs Lilitu, Annunaki dark goddess and royal pain in the ass.â
Brigidâs eyes widened as she stared at Kane, utterly dumbfounded.
Chapter 6
In her guise as dark goddess of the Annunaki pantheon, Lilitu had been manipulating humankind almost from the day that she had first emerged from the water and begun to walk on two legs.
Her story had been told in a hundred different ways across the different religions of mankind, where she had been Lilith, Lilu and even the Queen of Sheba who seduced wise King Solomon. The ancient Sumerian records cast Lilitu as a terrible harlot-goddess who reveled in the extremes of carnality. As Lilith, Lilitu was reputed to sexually take men by force as they slept, and in Talmudic lore she was believed to be the first wife of Adam.
While mythology was often mired in interpretation, it was clear that Lilitu was a shrewd and ruthless manipulator with a sadistic streak. Thousands of years ago, when the Annunaki had first walked the Earth, Lilituâs family holdings had become a sprawling empire near the Red Sea. Wishing to acquire the territory, Overlord Enlil had wed Lilitu in a pact that had resulted in betrayal and usurpation. Thus, Lilitu had embarked on a millennia-long war with the Annunaki Supreme Council, a sprawling game of chess with humanity as pawns. And so Lilitu was rightly renowned for her utter ruthlessness, the possessor of a callous streak that recognized no limitations.
Several years ago, Lilitu had emerged from her chrysalis state where she had hidden for ninety years in the guiseof Baroness Beausoleil, ruler of her own self-named ville in the Outlands. She had caused trouble for the Cerberus rebelsâboth as Baroness Beausoleil and in her true formâsince almost the day of their inception.
However, although she had assumed many forms in her near-immortal lifespan, the last time the Cerberus rebels had dealt with Lilitu she had been in her true body, a graceful humanoid goddess with a snakelike aspect to her crimson-scaled skin and black-vertical-slit yellow eyes, a magnificent crest atop her skull.
Less than a year ago, the Cerberus team had dealt what had appeared to be a final, decisive blow against the Annunakiâs mothership, Tiamat. During the scuffle, Lilitu had been shotâand apparently killedâby her brood sister Rhea, and her corpse had still been aboard Tiamat when the magnificent organic spacecraft had been destroyed in an almighty fireball. Kane, Brigid and Grant had seen that with their own eyes, and yet they knew that the Annunaki had a nasty habit of surviving even the most dire and absolute of circumstances.
Kane climbed back into the cab of the artillery truck as the elevator doors opened in front of them, and he shot Brigid an inquisitive look. âYou going to say anything, Baptiste?â he asked. âOr are you just going to let your jaw hang like that until the wind changes?â
Brigid Baptiste brushed a lock of her red-gold hair behind her ear as she finally spoke, now seated between Kane and Grant. âLilitu,â she said, as if quite unable to comprehend what Kane had said. âThat⦠thing â¦was Lilitu?â
Kane nodded. âI think so,â he said. âSheâs been through a few changes.â
âA few changes?â Grant repeated, amused. âShe looked awfully dead, my friend.â
Placing his hands on the steering wheel, Grant pushed down gently on the accelerator and the truck idled out of the elevator as the doors opened to their full extent, a long, ill-lit shaft yawning in front of before them. As the truck rumbled along a few feet, motion-sensitive lights popped on overhead, lighting a little more along the wide tunnel. In the flickering lighting, the three Cerberus teammates saw they were in a gray-walled corridor
Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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