Steve Alten - The Mayan Resurrection

The female screams and hisses at the Seraph, who mounts her from behind to rape her – never noticing Jacob, whose steel sword slashes downward against his still-flapping wings.

The glancing blow slices the moving appendage as the ever-alert Devlin wheels around to face his enemy. An insane leer is pasted on his angelic face, his mouth dripping the girl’s bluish blood. The sociopath’s eyes blaze violet, his pupils, a scarlet red.

Welcome, Father. We’ve been expecting you.

The voice-telepathic. Very deep, almost hypnotic.

Father?

As the being leaps toward Jacob, the twin slips inside the nexus.

The crimson ceiling instantly brightens, the beating wings of the Seraph slowing to a crawl.

Pushing forward through waves of energy, the white-haired twin meets the attacking humanoid with his raised sword, this time aiming for the mutant’s exposed head – ignoring the female transhuman, who is suddenly racing at him at ungodly speed.

Lilith!

The Succubus embeds her fingernails into the flesh of his back, while her son claws at Jacob’s forearm, tearing tendons and muscle, forcing the twin to relinquish his weapon.

Jacob swoons, the toxin adhered to Lilith’s fingernails quickly attacking his bloodstream.

The paralyzed twin collapses in the ankle-deep mire.

Lilith scans the swampy shoreline, her predatory senses sweeping the area. ‘Where’s the other twin? Do you see him?’

‘No. And I did not sense him enter the nexus.’

‘Hmm. Perhaps he’s more cunning than his brother.’ She gazes at Jacob, then whispers in his ear, ‘I’ve missed you, soul mate.’

Devlin looks down the beach to the canyon walls. ‘We’re vulnerable here. Let’s return to the portal with this one. The other twin is sure to follow.’

He manipulates his injured wing, testing it. Satisfied, he allows his mother to wrap her arms around his neck, then he bends down and picks up Jacob, as if the twin were a small child.

Flapping his mighty wings, the Seraph rises away from the ground, heading north.

Dominique waits another five minutes before coming out from hiding. She is terrified and angry and suddenly all alone.

Just stay calm and think. She picks up Jacob’s sword, carrying the heavy weapon in both hands.

The shackled women cry out to her in animal-like grunts, motioning to their chains.

One of the females, a brown-skinned transhuman with claw-mark scars striping her breasts and back, opens her mouth, showing Dominique that she has no tongue.

Dominique points to the north. ‘Do you know where they took my son?’

The female nods, pointing inland. Looming in the distance is an ominous mountain, its craggy summit backlit by the subterranean world’s fiery scarlet roof.

‘If I free you, will you take me there?’

The abused female nods.

Dominique examines the steel shackle around her neck.

A moderate chop with the sword’s ultratech edge and the chain is broken.

It takes Dominique another ten minutes to free the remaining prisoners.

There are two colors in the subterranean world, both appearing in varying shades.

Gray is the color of death. It is the desolate plain Dominique and her transhuman companion have been walking on for hours, its solder gray, parched surface scarred with deep fissures and charcoal-tinged boulders. It is the brownish gray clouds rising from distant funeral pyres, smoldering like toxic smoke from a petroleum inferno. It is the muddied gray of the mountainside looming before them, its barren, clay-colored escarpments smooth and twisting, like cooled magma. It is the lead gray backs of the foot-long beetles that continuously scamper between their boots like restless vermin.

Red is the color of heat. It is the sliver of rose-colored horizon peeking between the mountain’s summit and the roof of the subterranean habitat. It is the orange-red glow of embers twinkling like stars upon the cloud-covered ceiling.

Red is not the color of blood. Blood bleeds blue in this godforsaken carbon-dioxide habitat, appearing violet in the pinkish hue of everlasting twilight.

Violet is the shade of red Dominique sees every time she squeezes her eyes shut. Violet is the dull, aching, maddening pain that presses against the back of her eyeballs. It is her feet, throbbing inside her boots. It is her lower back, which still aches from a prolonged menstrual cycle. It is her overwrought nerves, which cringe at the perpetual squish-squish sound of recycled water being pumped by her leg muscles as she moves in her constricting environmental bodysuit.

But worse than the pain, worse than the colors of the Underworld, is the terror that gnaws at her brain, the anxiety of knowing her soul mate is close, but her son is in great danger.

They reach the base of the mountain. Dominique stares up at its twisting forty-degree incline and escarpments, seeing only violet.

The mute transhuman points.

‘Guess it’s not too bad,’ Dominique lies, straining to see the summit. ‘Almost looks like an extinct volcano.’

Dozens of beetles scamper across the tops of her boots. ‘Go away!’ She kicks at them, nearly losing her footing.

The transhuman starts up the slope.

Dominique follows, using the sword as a cane. Jake’s strong, he’ll be okay. If they wanted him dead, they would have killed him back on the beach.

Her thoughts turn to her other son.

At least Manny’s safe…

And then she stops, tears welling in her eyes as the reality of her situation finally hits home. Manny’s not safe, Manny’s dead! He died on this rotting hellhole millions of years ago, along with the rest of our godforsaken species.

Leaning against a boulder, she sobs uncontrollably, choking into her regulator.

Her transhuman companion stops. Climbs down to her and takes her hand, squeezing it.

Have… faith.

The message, delivered telepathically, is but a faint whisper in Dominique’s brain, but it speaks volumes.

Yes, she is marooned and desperate, but she is not alone. There is her other son, and maybe there is Mick.

And now-a friend.

If you have to die, go down fighting. Take that bitch Lilith with you!

Dominique stands.

The two women embrace, then continue climbing.

Hours pass.

The transhuman female reaches a plateau and stops climbing. Dominique joins her, the two humanoids staring at the challenge that lies before them.

Separating the plateau from the mountain’s summit is a great crevasse, its sheer thousand-foot drop disappearing into blackness. Even at its narrowest point, the gaping slice is still a good twenty feet across.

The face of the mountain on their side of the fissure curves around to the left, but the geology is a sheer wall, impossible to maneuver around without equipment.

‘Can’t go up, can’t go across, what the hell do we do now?’

The female points to a narrow ledge of rock, eight inches wide, which skirts the face of the mountainside as it curves around to their targeted destination.

‘That ledge? That’s way too narrow to walk on.’

The female motions with her hands, indicating that they are not going to walk on it, they are going to lower themselves over the edge and make their way along the rock face, hand over hand.

Dominique breaks out in a sweat, causing the thermostat of her bodysuit to kick in, dropping its internal temperature fifteen degrees. ‘It’s suicide. We’ll never… I know, I know… have faith.’

The transhuman leads her to the ledge. Points to her eyes, warning Dominique not to look down.

The long-skulled female lies down on her belly and rolls over the ledge, carefully lowering herself so that only her palms and the insides of her wrists are supporting the weight of her body.