Breeding Ground Part 19

"Come!" Fija ordered, grabbing Alex's hand. "The Xandi attack! We needs must hide you until we can strategize!"

But Alex was too busy gawking to hear her, let alone listen. She watched in horror as seven winged predators swooped down from the red-tinted skies and hunted.

"Oh my G.o.d," Alex murmured. "What are they?"

They were unlike any species she had ever before seen. The closest comparison she could come up with was a reptilian-like animal she's encountered in another galaxy. But that creature had been docile and friendly-these things were anything but.

At least ten-feet tall from head to talons, the winged invaders possessed the imposing musculature, sharp claws, and sleek bald heads of fabled gargoyles. Their black skin was tough and reptilian, their eyes a serpentine gold.

Alex stilled. Serpentine gold...

Her heartbeat raced. Perspiration broke out between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She'd know that gold gaze anywhere-it had haunted her enough in her dreams. One of the creatures might not be him, but they were definitely of his kind. Suddenly, the details that once were hazy became bone-chillingly clear...

He was a Xandi.

What the h.e.l.l is going on?

"Come!" Fija implored her. "We needs must go!"

Alex blinked. She shook off the cobwebs that had enveloped her. Just as she was about to obey Fija and run, the sound of a girl's screams reached her ears. It was Leaz-one of the students at the learning temple. Naked, she was shrieking and wailing and begging for mercy as one of the brutish Xandi plucked her up from the ground.

No-no! She's just a young girl!

Her pulse racing, Alex s.n.a.t.c.hed a poison-tipped knife from her boot and flung the weapon with deadly accuracy at her target. It struck him in the forehead. He released Leaz with a bellow before stumbling to the ground. The young girl shot up on two wobbly legs and scurried off as fast as she could.

The remaining six creatures seemed to still as they watched their comrade fall to the ground. Six sets of serpentine gold eyes turned to where the knife had been thrown from and honed in on Alex and Fija.

"Move!" Fija ordered. "Now!"

Alex needed no further prompting. Adrenaline surged through her as she realized the Xandi knew it was her that had thrown the poison-tipped knife. They studied her for a moment as though they'd never seen anything like her, then, simultaneously charged.

s.h.i.+t.

Alex and Fija ran like mad, but Fija was faster, much faster. She moved with the agility and speed of a panther, reminiscent of the bionic woman. Apparently not aware that humans from Alex's day couldn't move like she did, it wasn't until Alex has been s.n.a.t.c.hed up by two reptilian hands that Fija realized she was alone. Alex's screams gained her undivided attention.

"Noooooo!" Alex heard Fija cry out. "Ah G.o.ds-noooooo!"

Part III:

The Awakened

Chapter Eleven.

For a thousand years, he had slept. Just as the mage had predicted, a king had risen precisely one thousand years to the day of his first death.

Trapped in a state between the dream world and the conscious one, Malik had understood that he was the one. It wasn't until his mind had found hers that he knew the time of his evolution to be almost complete.

The link had been tentative at first, but grew clearer and stronger with every pa.s.sing eve. She was courageous and brave-a warrior, a leader to her people. She would never succ.u.mb to him willingly. She was...

Everything he had known she would be.

Everything the seers had predicted her to be.

But she-this human woman-was so much more than that. She was also the key to ending the war that had raged on for twenty thousand years between the Takuri and the Xandi. She was the prophesized queen of all mortals, the one the mages had warned their race of.

Do I kill her outright or do I send her back to the Takuri after mesmerizing her?

It was the very question that generation after generation of clerics from the Ziggurat had spent their every hour debating for thousands of years. When the time came upon them that the prophesized king arose and Alexandria the Great became his prisoner, should the sovereign kill her...or claim her and bring her to his side? Could he bring her to his side?

To the frustration of the Xandi, the ancient seers never spoke of which king would rise again, let alone which of the two paths to take. As a consequence, all kings were housed in the sanctuary upon their deaths, while generation after generation of servants attended to them. They watched over them for a thousand years, incinerating their preserved remains and naming a new king only after they failed to wake up.

Malik had been different. Malik had awoken. But the question remained, what was he, the now immortal king of the Xandi, to do with the mortal queen of the humans?

Killing off this so-called Alexandria the Great seemed the most logical decision Malik could make. But what if, the clerics had long argued, what if her capture and death only made her a bigger martyr to her people? What if the Takuri-up until now too terrified of the Xandi to venture into their realm-took the offensive and declared all out war?

Fortunately for Malik, there was time to figure out what had been, until this morn, a hypothetical question. The stronghold of the Xandi was unknown to the human resistance. It would take them time to locate the heart of their realm, if indeed they ever dared cross the black waters to find it at all.

And so what if they did find it? Unless the humans had developed superior weaponry during his hibernation and evolution, it wasn't as though they could defeat the predators. Biologically, they were too inferior. The Takuri were sometimes able to stave off the Xandi with their villages' protective s.h.i.+elds, but defeating the night-stalkers outright was an entirely different matter.

However, there was a lot to be said for numbers. The fact that the Takuri outnumbered the Xandi five to one could not be dismissed out of hand. The humans were like locusts in their ability to multiply.

Do I kill you, beautiful Alexandria, or do I bring you to my heel?

She was stunning in the dreamstate. He'd never gotten a good look at her face, just an overall impression of her scent and beauty.

He didn't want to kill her, that queen. He would do what he had to do, but in all truth he wasn't desirous of slaying her. Malik's jaw tightened as he ignored the servant girls bathing him and concentrated on the reality of the situation.

The process of evolution had been slow and hideously painful. He was an immortal now. Superior in his strength and more acute in his senses, but the price he had paid for being the chosen king of the G.o.ds had come at the cost of near insanity.

In his first life, Malik had endured more wars, battling, and bloodshed than even he could recall, but nothing could have prepared him for the mental anguish inherent in a thousand years of isolation. Being able to feel, but not to move. Being able to hear, think, and smell, but not to speak...

Madness had all but consumed him.

In the mercilessly long years spent between life and death, it had been her presence that had kept him sane-not another of his race, not one of the G.o.ds, but a human. In the beginning she had battled him, raged against all that he was and all that he would forever be.

Over time her stance toward him had changed.

Malik wondered, not for the first time since his awakening hours hence, how much, if any, of the communal dreamstate the human woman remembered. They had shared years together-hundreds of them.

Malik was no longer the same warrior he had been prior to hibernation. How could he be when madness had all but consumed him? Every hour made him more ferocious, every minute more merciless, every second a step closer to succ.u.mbing to the pain and torture the G.o.ds had forced him to endure. And then, just when he thought he could withstand no more, she, this human, had entered the dreamstate with him.

Alexandria the Great had redeemed him.

His nostrils flared. Redemption or no, King Malik Ahmose had to finish out the course the G.o.ds had set him on. It was his destiny to bring an end to the twenty-thousand-years-long war that had raged on between the Takuri and the Xandi. He had risen from the sarcophagus within the pyramid that had been erected to house him in his death. And now, once again, he ruled with an iron fist in the Ziggurat forevermore.

Will you rage against me in life as you did in the dreamstate?