Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3)
Read Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3) Online
Authors: Melanie Nilles
Tags: #angels, #love story, #aliens, #crystals, #starfire, #wings, #melanie nilles, #teen series
The Shirukan aren't the only threat to the
Starfire shard Raea bears...
An alien enemy has awakened to reclaim the
crystal that was theirs, and those last survivors of a war that
nearly destroyed Inar'Ahben aren't afraid to kill anyone who stands
in their way.
An ancient monument to a mythical civilization
on Earth may hold the key to unlocking the mystery, if it can be
deciphered. Raea is running out of time to solve the most puzzling
question of human history and resolve the conflict brought to
Earth. If she fails, she may lose more than the
Starfire…
CRYSTAL TOMB
Starfire Angels
Book 3
By
Melanie Nilles
Prairie Star Publishing * North
Dakota
Crystal Tomb
is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of
characters, names, places, or incidents to reality is pure
coincidence.
Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels Book
3)
Paperback Copyright © 2011 by Melanie
Nilles
E-book Copyright © 2011 by Melanie
Nilles
Cover Art
Copyright © 2011 by Melanie
Nilles
Published by Prairie Star Publishing;
Bismarck, North Dakota.
Smashwords edition.
All Rights Reserved.
For information, contact
Melanie Nilles at
mailto:[email protected]
or online at
www.melanienilles.com
.
Table of
Contents
___________________
A
ncient Mysteries
Talk about a major distraction from
practicing her valedictorian speech.
No way.
Raea stared at the computer screen, her breath frozen in her
lungs. Her eyes fixed on the image of a round stone monolith with
etched script in concentric circles around a central red stone. The
caption said the object was found in the shallow waters off the
coast of an islet west of Spain, in a location thought to be the
site of the fabled civilization of Atlantis. According to experts,
for more than twelve thousand years, it had rested on the ocean
floor. It had existed before human civilization.
The headline over the picture said the
monolith had disappeared three days ago from a tractor trailer
hauling it with the rest of the Atlantis exhibits making their way
to the next leg of the U.S. tour.
Scanning news headlines was
a great way to procrastinate on practicing her valedictorian
address and see if she should be worried about the Starfire, but
Raea hadn't expected
this
. The writing was Inari and it was
found on Earth dated long before the Starfire came to them. That
couldn't be right. The dating must have been wrong. The Starfire
didn't allow the Inari to visit Earth until six thousand years ago,
about six thousand Earth years too old. How was that
possible?
Sure, Inari were far more
advanced than humans, but twelve thousand years ago was a long
time. Why would they have been on Earth?
How
could they have reached
it?
Something inside her itched to know.
Maybe Elis knew.
Raea twisted in the desk chair to
where he sat on the bed behind her playing with a ball of Starfire
energy between his hands. "Elis."
An eye blink later, the lights dimmed
around her. The room faded and merged into another. But the lights
hadn't dimmed; her vision had. She stared at the same round stone,
but not through her eyes…
.
Padina's reflection gazed
back from the glass case. She studied the stone monolith on the
other side, her brown hair hanging around the source of the view
and the Starfire crystal hanging at her chest. Familiar script
formed concentric circles of text from the center to the outer edge
of the stone plate.
"No one knows what it
means. Some speculate that it's a clue to the location of
Atlantis," Scott said from somewhere out of the picture, which
shifted to reveal his youthful appearance and the glasses he had
always worn. "But it's supposed to be around twelve thousand years
old."
The image blurred from
movement and focused again on the round stone behind the glass, the
flowing script clarifying in their pattern.
"Fascinating. Isn't
it?"
Padina said nothing but
stared at the monolith.
"Paddy? What are you
doing?"
She waved him
away.
"You memorizing
it?"
The scene continued to
focus on the stone with no word from her.
"Maybe I'll just wander a
bit, until you're ready." Footsteps tapping on tile faded
away.
After some time, the image
shifted to reveal a larger room of display cases.
"Paddy." Scott stepped
into the image. "Finally done with that thing?"
Scott's eyes drifted past
her to the display and the scene shifted to the monolith once more.
"Atlantis is just a story, but ancient wonders are interesting,
especially when they seemed to know so much and lose it all. A
lesson for generations to come."
.
"Raea…Raea."
She blinked away the vision and
glanced down at the crystal hanging on her chest, the same Starfire
shard her mother had worn. They did it again. The entities had
shown her a vision from their memory of a day long ago. Her mother
had seen the same monolith in a museum display.
"I'm all right." She turned aside to
Elis, who knelt next to the desk chair, a look of concern from the
deep purple eyes behind the wild black locks. "Just another
Starfire vision."
"Because of that?" Elis stared at the
image on the screen.
Yes, that. This time.
The Starfire visions came whenever
they wanted her to understand something. Two months ago, it had
started with visions of her mother, both on Earth and on Inar'Ahben
before Padina fled to Earth to escape the Shirukan, the elite
soldiers of the Shirat Empire. At first, the pain of remembering
her mother in all the beautiful details had hurt, because her
mother and stepfather had been dead for thirteen years. But Raea
had grown to value the memories after accepting that she wasn't
human like her friends and that she bore a responsibility even her
mother had been reluctant to accept—protecting a shard of the
powerful Starfire crystal. The visions had continued since then,
usually when she least expected it.
"Mom saw it herself in a museum
display, probably when they lived in Minneapolis." No museum in
North Dakota, least of all the small town of McClarron, had the
capacity for a traveling display like that, much less the security
it must have required.
Apparently, security lacked since it
had been stolen. Who would want an Inari artifact? Rather, who
would steal to possess an artifact believed to be from Atlantis?
Unless they were one of the twenty-one other Keepers on Earth—and
Keepers wouldn't steal—they wouldn't know it was alien in
origin.
Okay, so maybe a few
hundred people with an obsession for rare antiquities
might
want to get their
hands on it.
Whatever the case, the real thing was
gone, but she had memories.
Elis rose to his feet but hunched over
to gaze at the screen. His hand gently slid hers off the mouse and
claimed it for himself. A click on the image saved it to the hard
drive. While she watched, he pulled it up as a slightly larger
image, but the writing wasn't as clear as the scene burned into her
memory from the Starfire's revelation.
"According to radiocarbon dating, it's
supposed to be over twelve thousand years old," she said as he
gazed intently at the image.
"Over fourteen thousand Inari
years."
Five Earth years to six Inari years,
based on the shorter days of Inar'Ahben and a shorter revolution
around the sun of their home system.
"What were they doing on
Earth?"
Elis said nothing, leaning over the
desk with an intensity in his eyes she hadn't seen in a while. He
studied the image as her mother had in the vision.
Silence filled the small bedroom
around them, his bedroom. Judging from the quiet, Evelyn Johnson
must have fallen asleep. The old widow had provided him a
home—including that room—on Earth for the last two years. Raea
imaged her in her favorite recliner near the front window of her
sitting room with her chin on her chest and her fingers twined at
her middle.
But she grew impatient with the
silence.
"Elis?"
Nothing. He stared at the
image.
"What's it say?"
Still no response. And she thought her
momentary visions were annoying.
Enough of this. She poked him in the
ribs and he flinched.
"What's it say?"
"Didn't you read it?"
"Not exactly. Someone's head is in my
way."
A cute grimace of guilt twisted his
mouth and he backed away. "Sorry."
And his eyes fixed on reading it
again. Raea threw her head back against the chair and rolled her
eyes. Typical.
"It talks about a war on the
homeworld, an invasion by some other species; I'm not sure about
some of the writing. It's old, even for us."
No kidding—fourteen thousand years.
He'd said it himself.
"It sounds like the Miru knew about a
compatible world far away and offered to take as many families as
they could. It was inhabited, but from their exploratory studies,
it was a perfect match."