Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3) (8 page)

Her breath stopped at site of the
object standing in the center. This totally had to be a dream. The
large stone disk stood taller than her with familiar glyphs in
concentric circles around a central red stone about a foot in
diameter. She'd seen it before but couldn't believe it stood in
front of her now.

The Atlantis monolith!

She turned around to the soldier with
the gun, questions piling in her brain and stumbling over her
tongue.

At the click and lumbering creak of a
door behind her, she whirled.

A trio of people stepped in with two
shadowy creatures bearing weapons.

"Welcome, young Inari." The man who
spoke with the accent stopped before her. He wore a business suit,
his dark hair cropped short to form a shadow upon his scalp in more
of a military style cut than any business fashion. He also stood
with a confidence reminding her of Pallin. She hated this man
already.

He strode towards the round stone
propped upright in the center of the chamber, his hand going out to
the metal lining the edge. "Magnificent. Isn't it? When I saw it, I
knew this was the key."

Yes, it was magnificent, but it wasn't
the most important consideration on her mind. "Key to what? Who are
you? Where's Elis?"

He stepped around the monolith and his
lips twitched into a smile. "I suppose it's only fair,
Raea."

Her heart froze and her mouth went
dry. He knew her name and he knew what she was.

"I am
Kan Rikku
Nakor Surik, commander of
the Nakor 3rd Fleet of Ch'tor."

What?

"I see confusion…I've learned to read
human expressions. Ah, but you're not human. You only pretend to
be."

Learned to read human expressions?
That phrase alone sent a cold shiver down her spine.

"Your kind is similar to humans, a
great advantage for hiding on this world. As you can see, we're
much the same that way—masters of camouflage." He motioned to the
shadowy figure behind him. It stepped into the light, a hideous
flat face with four vertical slits where a nose should have been
and a head on which lines of spikes tapered to a bulb near the
back.

In seconds, more spikes emerged from
the dark green skin and flattened together, changing color as they
transformed, until a woman in a body suit stood where the shadowy
shape had been. Angular features gave her a severe
appearance.

"Unfortunately, we were never able to
mimic Inari wings, or we might have infiltrated your world to steal
back what your so-called emissaries of peace took from us." He
stepped close, his eyes dropping to the crystal as he reached out,
but his hand stopped short of touching it. Too bad. She would have
liked to have seen him knocked out by the Starfire.

His hand dropped, his human lips
pressing together momentarily in an expression of contempt, while
the "skin" on his neck broke and shifted for a second—definitely
not human nor Shirukan. He straightened and took a breath and the
skin reformed from the spikes.

What kind of aliens were they? "What
are Nakor?"

He stood erect, his head
held high. "The ruling clan of the Risaal homeworld, or we were."
He hissed something under his breath and turned away. "We were
before you
thieves
stole the
D'Nuvar
."

Thieves? He was mistaken.
"I didn't steal anything. I don't even know what the
D'Nuvar
is."

Yikes! Talk about saying the wrong
thing. He whirled on her so fast her heart jumped into her throat.
His eyes blazed with contempt.

"You bear a shard like gaudy jewelry
but feign ignorance?"

Jewelry? The only shard she
wore as jewelry was…
The Starfire!
She looked down to the pendant. No, he was wrong.
"The Inari have had the Starfire for six thousand years. There's no
way…"

"Try twelve thousand." A dark menace
glimmered in his eyes as they slid over her, his lip curled in a
snarl. This commander was not a man to be trifled with.

Twelve thousand? Okay, now she was
officially lost. What the hell was he talking about?

She bit her tongue on the question and
waited, curious that he returned his attention to the
monolith.

A monolith bearing Inari writing,
which was about twelve thousand years old.

He watched her, those eyes burning
through her in growing anticipation. Damn! He studied her reaction,
a sly smile spreading upon his human face. God, she hated him
watching her like that.

"But it's in the past. You're
here…now. You will translate this for me."

"Me? I can't translate that." Elis had
just started teaching her two weeks ago, after she returned from
Inar'Ahben. In light of the last few weeks of cramming by teachers
to squeeze in what they could before the year was up, she had lost
time. Sure, the perfect memory helped with the tests and work, but
she still had to read and take the time to do her schoolwork. Inari
was far more complicated than she had expected and demanded a lot
of her time. She might have been able to speak it, but reading and
writing were completely new challenges, on top of learning to
create portals.

A sibilant hiss escaped him, the skin
on his neck breaking all the way up to his face, revealing the flat
features beneath. The others stepped back like they expected him to
explode or something.

In a blur, a clamp tightened around
her throat. Raea gasped and struggled to pry off the hand at her
throat, but the cuffs hindered her efforts and her nails had no
effect.

"You
will
translate the writing, Inari, or
I will squeeze the life out of you."

Spots danced in her vision and she
gasped for air. "I…can't…read it…all…I need…need Elis." She
couldn't swallow. She couldn't breathe—he crushed her windpipe. Oh,
God. He was going to kill her!

The hand loosened before she passed
out, but the moment he released her, her knees buckled and she
collapsed to the cold floor, gasping. Air. Even stale air never
felt so good filling her lungs. She gulped it as if starved, her
throat aching and her chest hurting.

"Bring the male."

A door clicked and scraped open and
feet tromped out.

"Perhaps seeing her mate suffer will
encourage cooperation."

What? No! They had Elis and would kill
him if she didn't cooperate; but she couldn't. Why wouldn't they
listen?

"I can't—" Raea coughed. "I can't read
Inari as well as him. I was born here, on Earth. I just started
learning to read Inari two weeks ago." All her other training had
taken priority, until her visit to the homeworld.

The irritation in her throat set off a
coughing fit lasting an eternity. It ended with her breathing hard
and her eyes blurred from tears she wiped away. These creatures
were strong, and their commander was quick to lose his
temper.

The commander squatted before her,
once more wearing his human appearance. "Thieves and
liars."

"I'm not lying!" Raea
coughed and pushed herself off the floor. Why wouldn't he listen?
It was like his mind was already made up. It
was
made up; he'd already condemned
her. She had to try to get through to him. "It's true. Elis came to
teach me about being Inari. I was raised on Earth to believe I was
human. I'm still learning. I can read some of the script but not
all of it. Elis was raised on the homeworld. He knows the language
better."

Too weird. The man's pupils weren't
round but something like a triangle now that she looked closer.
Raea shook the thought away, along with the intensity of his cold
stare. He was alien; enough said.

Kan Rikku
Nakor Surik—whatever kind of name that was—stood
up with a fluid grace not normal for a human but probably normal
for his kind. Man, this was too weird. She'd never imagined aliens
like this, but she'd never expected to
be
one herself.

"You and your mate will translate the
script for me."

What was so important to him if the
monolith was Inari? It intrigued her, but rightly so. She was
Inari. That monolith was a part of her species and its past
culture, a recording of events from before the Starfire came to
them and a confirmation that they had been on Earth long before
Heffin's Gate allowed them passage across the universe. It had
nothing to do with anyone else.

The Inari must have known about Earth
before Heffin's Gate was operational. That's why it was so easy to
find this world. It wasn't a new discovery at the time but likely
sought after.

The room blurred and faded behind the
sharpening of another scene. Good. The Starfire would answer the
questions jumbled in her mind. She focused on the scene for
whatever information the entities had to impart…

.

An explosion of light
faded into a clear scene. Several Inari stood in a room of green
marble panels and cushions upon the center of the floor around a
white column.

["That was merely a small
demonstration of the crystal's power, Lady Dieri."] A woman in a
plain brown flightsuit with lighter brown wings and short-cropped
hair stood nearby.

Another woman stepped
forward wearing black pants accented in silver and a matching
waistcoat open along her chest exposing a white blouse and an
intricately crafted silver choker at her neck. Exquisite in the
refinement of her features, the lady slightly opened her deep blue
wings matching her long hair. A delicate silver chain hung across
her forehead bearing a shimmering drop of a gem in the
center.

["You believe this power
can be harnessed and focused?"] Dieri asked.

["Yes, my Lady. This was
only a small model of what I had in mind."] The woman in brown
brightened with enthusiasm, her wings lifting slightly. ["We can
create a portal large enough for several ships to pass through.
With it, we can mine other worlds for the resources we need to
grow. We will no longer depend on the Ahben in the oceans below us
for materials or need to trade off world or rely on others for our
defense. We can depend upon ourselves for the first
time."]

Dieri stepped closer, her
blue eyes as brilliant as her hair, and fixed on the view as if
staring through it into her own thoughts. ["Might we finally find
the lost colony?"]

["It is my hope, my Lady,
that this will expedite those efforts also."]

Sadness overshadowed the
hope which had glimmered moments before from the lady's face. It
haunted her voice. ["Seven thousand years,
Matres
Heffin Sarees. Time means
nothing. We depended on the Miru; we still do. They took our
ancestors to another world we have not had the power to reach. They
claim to have found nothing upon returning and will search no more.
What happened to the colony? That is the only question
remaining."]

Dieri straightened, her
wings tightening to her back. ["I will sponsor your project, master
engineer. Organize your team, while I make arrangements with the
Ahben for the materials for this project. May it be the last time
we call upon them for such resources."]

The woman in brown dropped
an arm to her waist and bowed her head. ["Thank you, Lady Dieri.
You have given this world new hope."]

The lady's lip twitched
minutely but settled into a stolid confidence by the time the other
woman stood up. ["No. The Starfire has done that. I only hope we
find what we seek."]

.

"Raea!"

She blinked away the vision. Heffin's
Gate. She had seen the key decision to begin construction on the
machine created to harness the Starfire's energy into portals to
travel to other worlds. Was the lost colony the same mentioned on
the monolith? Is that what they wanted her to see—that they had
found Earth because they were looking?

"Raea."

Her heart nearly stopped at
the familiar voice.
Elis!
She wanted to run to him and lose herself in his
arms, but the weapons threatening them halted her feet. Her insides
ached for just a touch. "Elis."

Across the chamber, he stared at her
from above the muzzle of the gun at his chest.

"Now then, young Inari..." Surik's
arrogance made her want to spit in his face. He said something in
that strange language and the "woman" with the gun stepped away
from Elis. "You will both stay here until you translate the
script."

Good. Relief poured into her—they
would leave Elis alone.

Behind the black hair over his eyes,
Elis's brows pressed down with his frown. "Why? What
script?"

Surik motioned with his arm to the
monolith, which faced away from Elis.

Hesitant at first, Elis stepped around
and joined her. At her side, he halted and stared. Silence
overshadowed him for several seconds, until he looked at
her.

In answer to the question in his eyes,
she could only shrug.