James Axler - Shadow Born

The bruises were the only result of his assault on the slavers. Although his sword and pistols had accounted for some of the security force, it had not been enough, not this time. He could still feel the vibrations rolling up his forearms where he’d brought down the knurled butt of a pistol, breaking a shoulder or crushing a jaw. His other hand had swept and sliced, but an injured African slaver trapped the blade against the side of his body, wrenching it from Solomon Kane’s desperate fingers.

The weight of the slavers was too much for even the fanatic’s strength that drove the Puritan to protect and liberate his fellow man, no matter the skin color.

The leader of the caravan had demanded Solomon Kane be taken captive, alive. His reputation preceded him, and the African slave master knew that there were many who would pay exorbitant prices, either to slay him, or to take him as a captive. For now, Kane was trapped in the skin of a defeated warrior, about to be sold for a king’s ransom as enemies would undoubtedly assemble, seeking his hide, tattered or intact.

“Great place to wake up,” Kane muttered to himself.

“Kahani?” the old Arab asked.

Kane narrowed his eyes. Nehushtan had gone through yet another change. Now it was a cat-headed obscenity, almost as if the original face upon the top of the staff had been erased with chisel and sandpaper. No matter the new appearance; the “cat-head” was merely redesigned, but the blasphemy beneath still remained.

It was an unusual aspect, Kane noted, for a many-storied scepter wielded by prophets who were the chosen emissaries of God. Nehushtan, as far as Brigid related, was a holy relic. But in this form, the “juju stick” had an air of dark magic.

“You are to carry this juju staff with you, brother Kane,” came half-remembered words from a witch doctor.

N’Longa, the seer of his tribe, had fought alongside Kane’s Puritan ancestor, just as Nathan Longa, his descendant seven hundred years from now, battled shoulder to shoulder with him, against Neekra, against the Panthers of Mashona, against the inhuman Kongamato and vampire-like blobs and reanimated corpses. After their first battle, side by side, N’Longa handed over the cat-headed staff as a walking stick to guide the Puritan on his journeys for the rest of his days.

The staff returned to N’Longa and remained under his family’s protection since or at least long enough for Nathan to recall it being in his family’s possession for generations.

“Kahani?” the Arab asked, interrupting Kane’s thoughts.

“Why are you so concerned for me?” Kane asked him.

The old Arab looked back to Nehushtan. “This is an amazing piece of history. This stick came from the age of Atlantis. It was entrusted to you, Kahani.”

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...”