but the damned steel collar left her with only one position to look—straight up. Lyta had long since gotten used to the sound of boots crunching on the stalks of long grasses, the snap of twigs and the grinding of dirt as guards paced up and down the line, making certain that their cargo of the walking damned stayed in place.
Odd that the guards are not interested in taking a little ass while we’re lined up like this.
The Mashonan soldiers didn’t want to assert themselves over this queue of the doomed. They didn’t need to feel the kind of cruel control that rape provided. They had control. They had the power. There wasn’t a shred of weakness in the gunmen who lorded their might over this hungry, thirsty, battered mob. They didn’t feel like they needed to be violent, to crush them.
Maybe it’s the collars.
Lyta took a deep breath.
“We’re human sacrifices.” The man behind her spoke softly, a whisper that was so light, if it needed to travel another inch, it would have been swept away by the night breeze. “The old gods awaken. And they hunger.”
Lyta peered at the speaker out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t make out any physical details. None of the people shared names with each other, as they hadn’t been allowed to by their guards. The only details she could distinguish were the back of the man’s head in front of her, the breadth of his shoulders and the signs of scars woven across his flesh.
No one else had a face.
The man before her could have been Usain. He was of the right height, but those knives had taken the hair off everyone, and whips and swagger sticks had left wounds on shoulders and backs, changing the familiar terrain so that even Lyta couldn’t tell who he was.
And the yokes prevented speech easily even without the menace of the whip.
Lyta was alone. Everyone was alone in this line. There was no more sense of community. The chains and collars took away every chance of intimacy and communication.
And again, we return to the theme of communication. The guards discourage it, prevent it, grind it into the ground. They don’t need it, and they want no one else to have it.
“The gods want us to remember that we humans are alone.” The man’s whispers returned.
It sounded as if he were reading from an ancient book, occasionally stopping to paraphrase to his listener for clarity. Lyta strained to get a look at him. His voice was old, raspy, weathered.
But no, she couldn’t without turning her head.
Lyta ground her molars against her tongue and twisted her head just an inch. Just an inch, and she felt the collar cut into her neck like a hot knife, shredding the skin of her throat and upper chest as she forced herself to get a good look at the man she assumed was speaking.
It was a young boy, no older than fourteen. Too old to be taken to the rape camps for education as a child soldier, too young to have the experience and skills necessary to be put into forced labor.
And he was asleep. Beyond him, there was a woman, and another woman beyond that.
There was no one who matched the voice that had tickled her ear, threading legends from ancient times. Lyta straightened her gaze up to the sky.
The agony of just that slight movement, holding her head to see who was talking, had all been in vain. And it stole the last dregs of strength she had for the day.
She closed her eyes, wishing that her sleep would be eternal.
Now is not the time for any to sleep. Death will die, and the Queen awakens, stirring from her millennial slumber.
Lyta opened her eyes again.
And as she did, she looked up into a pair of catlike eyes, slitted in the middle, amber wreathing the narrow flames, and a flat face framed by a cobra-hood of muscle flexing in sheets from top of head to shoulders.
Before Lyta could open her mouth to scream, scaled fingers covered her lips, and a hiss issued from his.
Chapter 2
As always when the Cerberus warriors said goodbye to those whom they’d assisted, the parting moments were filled with a quiet sadness and embraces that seemed to last a moment too long. Of course, Brigid Baptiste might have had a biased view of those hugs, especially since she realized that she was an attractive and desirable woman. She’d noticed that among the other women they’d traveled with, too: Domi and Sinclair were offered extended and enthusiastic embraces by the Zambian soldiers. Meanwhile, Kane and Grant kept their farewells to hearty handshakes.
“Ah, dear Brigid, your presence here in our little outpost has been an experience,” Lomon said. “I wish it were all delightful...”
“I understand,” Brigid responded. “You and your men have been excellent hosts. We’ll miss you.”
Lomon nodded. His eyes glazed for a moment as he thought of the past couple of days and the losses incurred. They had come under the assault of a pair of groups; each had taken turns at controlling the strange clone hybrids called the Kongamato. The Kongamato, named after an African cryptid, were brutish, powerful winged creatures that were equal parts bat and gorilla. They had killed a great number of Zambian troops, first the outpost defenders at the power station attached to the redoubt, and then a company of soldiers who had been on their way to relieve the besieged trio of survivors.
“Don’t worry,” Brigid spoke up, breaking the elder Zambian soldier from his recollection of the horrors he’d endured. “We’ll find the ones responsible.”
Lomon rested a hand on her shoulder. “I wish I could send an army with you, girl.”
Brigid smiled, looking toward her companions, former Cobaltville Magistrates Kane and Grant. “We’ve taken care of armies before. I doubt that Durga has that much of a force left. The Millennium Consortium members were wiped out, and Gamal and the Panthers of Mashona turned out to be using him as a distraction.”
Brigid wanted to feel regret over the deaths of the members of the Millennium Consortium betrayed and murdered by Makoba, but there had been more than sufficient bad blood between the millennialists and Cerberus over the past couple of years that all she could manage was disappointment at the consortium’s vetting process for new members. Even then, she wasn’t too surprised at the millennialists picking the wrong person for the job. Austin Fargo and Erica van Sloan both boasted affiliations with the assembly of technocrats who sought to create their own new world order.
This time, the Millennium Consortium had thrown in their lot with Durga, the fallen prince of the Nagah, as both parties searched Africa for Annunaki wonders and ancient technology. In the process, the combined force had stumbled on a subterranean facility attached to the Victoria Falls redoubt that had a breed of mutants inside it to serve as their new shock troops.
Durga had maintained control of the monstrosities, but only for a brief period of time, until an African named Makoba had betrayed both the Nagah prince and the Millennium Consortium by stealing the control “crown.” Makoba was the brother of a local warlord, Gamal, who himself had already discovered the technology to control the Kongamato and had usurped control of them. With a major contingent of Panthers of Mashona soldiers and the means of growing an entire army of winged horrors, Gamal had been poised to conquer the continent
