James Axler - Shadow Born

A rock, hurled by an explosive release of steam?

Then Kane noticed the motion of a wing on one side of the truck.

His eyes widened even further as he heard what Brigid said next.

“Good...they did catch us! Just as I’d hoped!”

The Cerberus expedition was now held in the talons of the Kongamato mutants, and they were rising farther and farther above the volcanic plain below.

One slip, and even their shadow suits wouldn’t protect them from the impact with the ground.

Chapter 6

Hours before Brigid Baptiste even contemplated the course across the surging lava field, Neekra opened her eyes for the first time.

Neekra felt drunk, unsteady and the very effort of lifting her own eyelids required consummate concentration and will. Her body felt as if it were only half alive. Then she realized the utter silence, the complete darkness of a world she had been in touch with for two thousand years, was a smothering curtain over her. She fought to part her lips, but they were sticky against each other, the very act of breathing draining strength from what little spark of life she retained within herself.

The “dark” world, that horrible void of silence and nothingness, only seemed to make the small sliver of her senses that still worked seem so much brighter. She could make out the dull vibrations, seemingly gibberish at first, but then she began to associate each grunt and spit with language. And it was not the high tongue of the Annunaki. The sun was just rising in what she presumed was the east, and though the vulgar splash of all colors would seem bright to human eyes, Neekra wept for those frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum no longer open to her.

“Why are you crying?” came the guttural tongue of humans and other apes. She swiveled her eyes and gazed upon Durga, who crouched beside her.

“What...did...you do?” she managed to croak out in that mutt language. “Why...”

Durga tilted his head. She thought of him as human despite the cobra hood, a sheet of scaled muscle from the sides of his head to his shoulders, and despite the snake scales that armored his fit, trim body. He was one of “Uncle” Enki’s silly spawn, the Nagah, long surpassed in favor of the hairless apes from which Enki spawned the cobra men.

Enlil had at least told his children, Neekra among them, that Enki had forsaken the cobra men, leaving them as freaks in a world no longer their own. The Nagah were hidden underground for the very reason that they were inhuman. People outside of India feared cobras, rather than respected them as on the subcontinent. Imprisoned in their own tomb beneath the surface of the Earth, they maintained their exile from humanity, even past the collapse of mankind’s civilization.

Although that wasn’t quite true.

Durga’s people had increased in population as others entered the stability of the underground empire. Many chose to remain human; others opted to evolve themselves in the legendary “cobra baths.”

Their corner of India, up until Durga’s attempted coup, had become a relative paradise. Unfortunately, a war between the Millennium Consortium, Cerberus redoubt, Enlil and Durga’s personal guard had left the city of Garuda heavily damaged and thousands dead. It was still recovering.

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