Black Onyx Duology Read online

  “My Queen… Atlantis, is this really the best use of our time? We should be recruiting mercenaries for—”

  “A mercenary has no loyalty and fights only enough so as not to be accused of theft. They are useless to us.”

  “The United States military and the FBI are searching for us right now. They’ll find us eventually. We need to be prepared. I don’t know if excavating these sites for a handful of men at a time is the proper course.”

  “One of them is worth thousands of mercenaries. And they can wear the armor of the Cara. That is how we will defeat our enemies.”

  He disagreed and was frustrated but held his tongue. “As you wish.”

  Tyler sat on a bench at the mall and waited for Atlantis and his assistant to finish shopping for the men. Afterward, they piled into two stretch limos to go to the airport. Tyler sat in the back of one car with three of the men and two girls they’d managed to pick up without speaking a word of English.

  Tyler was about to ask the soldiers how they’d managed that when he noticed the girls’ glazed eyes. They had somehow been hypnotized and were just responding to whatever the men told them.

  The soldiers were unable to fly without suits, so they boarded the private plane with Tyler. They were heading back to California. Supposedly, another tomb existed beneath the Gulf of Mexico, and an underwater drilling team had been working its way down there for the past few days. Atlantis once again chose to fly herself.

  The plane lifted off, and the soldiers clenched the armrests. Considering that they had flown in suits six thousand years ago, Tyler wondered why they would be frightened of flying on an airplane. Unfortunately, their dialect was the vulgar, populace version of Atlantian, not what the aristocracy spoke, certainly not what the queen spoke, and not the dialect Tyler had spent four years learning. He could communicate, but only on a rudimentary level.

  Tyler sipped a martini with two olives. Outside the window, the square green and brown patterns of farmland came into view within an hour, and he wondered if that was the life he should have chosen—something simple and away from the mess of money and power. But money and power were the only things he had been interested in his entire life. And when he’d found a journal written by his grandfather—a man who had devoted his life to exploring the arctic—describing a lost city on the coast of Antarctica, a city rumored to contain vaults of gold and jewels, that lust for money and power had ripened.

  He had learned all he could about the continent and searched for the lost city, which some thought was the city of Atlantis that Plato had written about twenty-three hundred years ago. He’d found small trinkets, occasional bits of jewelry, and other things indicating that a civilization had once existed there, but nothing that pointed him in the right direction.

  Until the Black Onyx.

  When he saw the suit on the news, he knew. His grandfather’s journal depicted that exact suit. Someone had found the lost city. From there, it was only a matter of finding the men who had shown the Black Onyx where the city was. He’d found a tour guide who claimed he had been to the lost city. And sure enough, he had.

  His grandfather’s journals spoke of a queen who was in all the literature and religious writings of the period. His grandfather had learned the language from texts he had discovered and never revealed to anyone but his son. The queen, he had written in his journal, was immortal. And she held the secret to immortality that could be bestowed upon others, a secret having to do with a black substance that moved on its own.

  Tyler sighed. He had hoped he would be able to spend time with Atlantis. Instead, he was babysitting six-thousand-year-old Euro trash.

  Once the plane landed, he couldn’t get off soon enough. He ran across the tarmac, hopped into the waiting silver Mercedes, and told the driver to take him home. He needed a respite from the group, however slight.

  His home was one of the finest in Bel Air but also the least used. With several offices throughout the world that seemed to always be having problems, he spent little time there. When the driver parked at his house and got out to open the door, someone stuck the barrel of a rifle through Tyler’s open window.

  Tyler looked over slowly to see a man in full bulletproof gear with the letters FBI emblazoned across his chest. Several more identically dressed men surrounded the driver.

  “Got you,” the agent said.

  25

  Dillon arrived at Queen Maud Land late. The suit wasn’t responding anymore. Its power, wherever it came from, had been drained.

  Dillon slammed into the snowy ground and slid for at least fifty feet, creating a trail behind him. Lying facedown in the snow, his exposed skin bleeding from the scraping, he closed his eyes for a moment.

  Pushing himself off the ground, he saw the mountain made of smooth ice. He walked toward it.

  Much of the suit had been ripped away, and the cold slipped inside and didn’t leave. He lifted his hands, attempting to shoot energy into a rock and superheat it to use as warmth. But he didn’t have enough juice to do much more than melt the surrounding snow. So he wrapped his arms around his body and walked to the trail leading up to the entrance.

  The suit normally enhanced every sense. He could smell things he didn’t even know had a scent, like insects or the roots of trees. If he focused, he could see the scars on a man who was miles away. But without power, the suit was little more than decoration.

  His legs grew heavier with every step. The mountain trail wasn’t a steep climb, but at one point, it required crampons and ice axes. The suit’s boots and gloves would have to do.

  Dillon attempted one more time to fly and got up about ten feet before falling back into the snow. He lay there a minute before getting up and continuing the climb.

  Making his way to the halfway point, he could feel the icicles that had formed in his hair and on the suit. He had to consciously move his tongue away from his teeth because he couldn’t control their chattering. He circled around the mountain on the trail, his arms gripping his chest tightly, trying desperately to retain some body heat. A thin metal ladder lay on the ground ahead, the only bridge over the crevasse. He placed the ladder across the opening. Taking a deep breath, he took the first step.

  The ladder bent but didn’t break. He took another step and then another. Almost across, he felt the creaking in the metal and froze. Glancing down, he wondered if the crevasse fell all the way to the center of the earth, because he couldn’t see anything.

  Slowly, he lifted his leg, moved it over the last two rungs, and placed it on the icy surface of the trail. When he shifted his weight, the ladder groaned and began to give. He jumped, stretching out with both arms, his fingers digging into the snow and ice as he slid backward into the crevasse.

  Holding on with one hand, he looked down again and watched the ladder get swallowed by darkness. He didn’t hear it hit the bottom. Swinging up his other arm, he gripped the ice, but it wasn’t enough to give him leverage to pull his body to safety. Static, he held himself there, panting, each breath more difficult than the last. His lungs felt as if they were going to explode from the subzero air.

  Let go.

  The thought sent a shiver up his back.

  He wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t anybody’s champion. He was a kid who had grown up on the streets, bouncing from foster home to foster home and orphanage to orphanage. Already, he had lived longer than he had ever dreamed he would as a kid.

  James had made sure of that. And for his efforts, he had been killed.

  Maybe the blackness was where he belonged. His hands slipped, and he didn’t fight it.

  He closed his eyes, imagining the shattering pop of hitting the ice hundreds of feet below and then the quiet nothingness afterward.

  But another image came to mind—Jaime’s smiling face. She kissed him and smiled as she buttoned his shirt. He saw her so clearly that the image seemed to have been painted on the inside of his eyelids.

  Jaime.

  They were in a room somewhere. Sunl
ight cascaded through windows. Behind them was… a crib, where Dillon saw the smooth chubby face of a boy lying on his back. Dillon turned to the boy and kissed his cheek.

  My son. My son….

  He reached up, planting his hand on the ice to pull himself up.

  26

  The room was a dull gray, but its windows looked out over Los Angeles. The federal courthouse was across the street, and next to that were offices for various state prosecution agencies. People hustled in and out: lawyers with briefcases, law enforcement officers with badges and guns, members of the public in their best Sunday dress.

  Tyler watched it all from the gray room until two men opened the door behind him. They sat down at the table. They looked alike in their dark suits and crew cuts.

  “Please join us, Mr. Edgar,” Agent One said.

  Tyler turned and pulled out the chair. He sat quietly and waited for them to speak.

  Agent Two slid some color photos across the desk. “Who is she?”

  The pictures were of him standing nearby while Atlantis tore apart a city block in Beverly Hills. “I think the more appropriate question is, what is she?”

  Agent One leaned forward. “How did she take out a hundred National Guardsmen? What was the weapon she was using?”

  Tyler shook his head. “She didn’t have a weapon. She is the weapon. And you’ve made a horrible mistake.”

  “Really? And what is that?” Agent Two asked.

  “She’s coming for me. In fact, she’s almost here.”

  “Why would she come for you?”

  “She needs me. At least for now.”

  Before the men could speak again, a loud crash echoed from the street below. They looked at each other before Agent One got up and went to the window.

  “What is it?” Agent Two asked.

  Agent One pulled out his sidearm. “You better come with me.”

  They both ran out the door, shutting and locking it behind them. Tyler heard dozens of footfalls down the hall. He rose and went to the window.

  On the street, Atlantis’s soldiers had formed a line, like bouncers trying to keep someone out of their club. Police ducked behind cruisers as agents swarmed out of the building. He could hear more sirens farther away, probably the SWAT teams.

  Within a minute, a man in a business suit arrived with an air of authority. He went to the front of the officers as more police cruisers poured into the city block.

  The man with the suit took a megaphone and shouted, “Surrender now, and no harm will come to you.”

  One of Atlantis’s soldiers dashed forward in a blur of motion. He ran up a cruiser, took off the suited man’s head with one blow, and was back with his brothers before anyone could react.

  “Open fire!” one of the officers yelled.

  Bullets pinged off streetlamps, cars, the sides of buildings… everything but the soldiers. The rounds weren’t even coming close. They were bending away from them.

  Another soldier sprinted into a cruiser shoulder-first, sending it flying into the air. Two other soldiers bounded over it and, using their knees and elbows, crushed several policemen. Tyler saw one of them grab an officer and fling him by his legs so hard into a cruiser that the car turned onto its side.

  The soldiers were quick and had the ruthless efficiency that came with killing so often that it was routine. They ripped out hearts, tore away limbs, and gouged out throats, silencing the screams.

  People on the street soon realized there wasn’t going to be a showdown between police and a band of outlaws. It was going to be a slaughter. The civilians screamed and ran. Atlantis’s soldiers mostly ignored them. One woman did try to cross the street, and a soldier swiped at her, sending her flying through the window of an office building. SWAT vans pulled up, the military no doubt close behind.

  Tyler smiled when Atlantis slowly drifted into the street.

  27

  Dillon raised his other hand and gripped the ice. Using both hands, he pulled himself up onto the ledge with a groan and rolled over onto his back. He had a fever and felt the numbness of frostbite over his face and torso. He would be dead soon.

  Slowly climbing to his feet, he stumbled up the trail, holding his arms up against the fierce wind that seemed to take bits of skin with it. The trail became steep, and he had to crawl on his hands and knees. But as he turned a corner, the moonlight lit the mountain brilliantly, and he knew he was near the summit.

  He hadn’t planned on the thin oxygen of the higher altitude. But the mountain was only eleven thousand feet or so, not high enough to make him pass out but enough to make him miserable. His head pounding, he continued along the summit until he found the opening.

  No larger than a manhole, it led straight down into the dark. The dark. How was he going to see when he was down there? Then he realized that it didn’t matter. He had nowhere else to go.

  Without gear, he would have to take the fifty-foot fall. He crawled in feet first and hung on to the ledge.

  Jaime, if I don’t make it, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the life that should have been ours but wasn’t.

  He let go.

  Pulling at every fiber of muscle, his tendons crackling, he shot out a final burst of energy. It wasn’t enough to stop him, but it did slow him down just enough that he wouldn’t be killed by the fall.

  He slammed into the ice. He screamed, his voice echoing in the chamber. He was pretty certain he’d broken his shoulder.

  Then he noticed the warmth. He had forgotten the place was warm. He lay still for a moment, savoring the heat. Thoughts of Jaime got him moving again.

  He struggled to get to his feet, his arm limp by his side. The path out of the chamber was clear. As long as he followed the wall, he would be fine. He hobbled into the darkness.

  28

  Atlantis stood over the carnage as her soldiers decimated the SWAT teams. But they were child’s play. She was waiting for the military. And they didn’t disappoint.

  Several jet fighters flew past overhead. Humvees and jeeps dumped soldiers into the surrounding streets. That was what she wanted—to show them that their best wasn’t good enough.

  The jets made another pass. She vaulted into the air. One of the pilots panicked and twisted his jet away.

  Another fired. The missile detached from the vessel and sped toward her. She swiped it with her hand as if knocking away an insect. The device fell to the city below, destroying a building.

  Propelling herself forward, she extended her fists, aiming for the jet that had fired. It banked right, and she mimicked the move.

  She smashed a wing with one fist, sending the jet into a tailspin. The aircraft plummeted to the streets below. Feeling the burning energy building inside her, she released it. A beam of crimson fire tore another jet in half.

  Several more of the vessels flew toward her, and she grinned, waiting patiently for their arrival.

  29

  Dillon felt a draft against his skin. He was actually surprised he could feel anything. His arms, legs, toes, and fingers were mostly numb. His face and torso were completely dead. The only place he still had feeling was in his thighs since the suit hadn’t been damaged there.

  An airy warmth hit him, and he felt the draft stronger than before. He had made it to the bridge. Planting his feet firmly, or at least as firmly as he could without being able to feel them, he shuffled, taking one small step at a time. He felt the incline of the bridge toward the middle and then the descent onto the other side. He breathed a sigh of relief when he stepped back onto solid ground. Walking away from the precipice, he saw the outline of the city before him.

  No strength was left in him. If he sat down to rest, he knew he wouldn’t be getting back up, so he kept walking.

  Finally, he came to the tower, a spiral of smooth ice with symbols engraved across it. Dillon stood in front of it as he had more than a year ago. He closed his eyes and walked into it.

  Passing through the exterior as though it weren’t there, he found himself o
n the bottom floor with stairs leading to the top. In the ground was an opening he didn’t remember being there last time.

  He climbed down and found a well-lit chamber, though he didn’t know where the light came from. Onyx suits, both black and brown, sat frozen in the ice-like transparent material.

  30

  Atlantis destroyed the fighter jets and came back to the city streets where her soldiers were still killing with impunity. They were so fast that they seemed to disappear and reappear somewhere else. Fists and knees crushed steel and bone.

  Tanks were heading down the street. She flew over and stood in front of the first one. The tank stopped, holding up the line behind it. She could sense the debate as the men inside discussed what to do. And then the decision was made.

  The boom echoed off the buildings as a bulky piece of steel was hurled at her. She caught it between her palms and flung it back at the lead tank. The explosion ripped into its hull, setting fire to the occupants inside.

  She crouched and sprang. Ramming into the first tank, she sent it flying then did the same to the second and the third. The tanks lay on their backs like helpless turtles. She sprinted through them as though running through a field of wheat, bending and breaking the massive machines.

  At the last one, she paused. A man came out from the top with his hands up.

  “I give up!” he shouted. “You win. I give up.”

  She smiled. Grabbing the tank from the bottom, her fingers digging into the steel, she flung it into the sky. The machine twirled in the air, and the man fell out and smacked against the cement.