The Black Madonna (The Mystique Trilogy) (3 page)

‘Tamar Devere.’ I held out my hand and Killian held it fast in his as he became fixated by my eyes.

‘I’ve never seen violet eyes before…’ His attention shifted downward. ‘Or legs that long.’

It was clear that Killian, like me, was used to inspiring awe in the opposite sex. Such an admiring gaze from the heir to a multi-billion-dollar fortune might have made some women feel uncomfortable and nervous, but I was confident.

‘And all in one neat package,’ I said flirtatiously.

‘Indeed.’ Killian raised my hand, intending to kiss it, but was interrupted by Emmett crushing his drink can and tossing it into the empty metal bin. Labontè closed his eyes briefly to suppress his annoyance, as Emmett got up and headed for the kitchenette, then resumed his friendly demeanour. ‘I was just on my way to get changed for a function. A friend of mine is opening a nightclub. Would you care to accompany me?’

‘Do you think I’ll pass for eighteen?’ I said. I had to let him know I was a minor.

‘As long as you’re with me, no one will ask any questions,’ he said arrogantly. ‘Unless, of course, you think your parents might object?’

‘Not at all.’ I smiled. ‘They encourage me to get out and meet others.’

‘It’s a date then.’ He slapped his hands together, pleased, then checked his watch. ‘Meet you back here in half an hour?’

I nodded. ‘That’ll give me time to change into something more inappropriate.’

Labontè looked discomfited for a second, then smiled. ‘I like you already.’ And with a wave he was gone.

‘Guess I’ll be reading about you in the social pages tomorrow,’ said Emmett when he returned from the kitchenette and saw me leaving.

I sensed a warning beneath the comment, which was rather sweet. ‘Why read the news when you can be the news,’ I replied flippantly.

Emmett shook his head, clearly taking me for a social climber, and I decided it was safer to perpetuate that illusion. As I headed back to my sleeping quarters to raid my luggage for a change of attire, I decided I rather liked Emmett Rich.

‘Are you insane?’ My mother was displeased by my decision to date her employer. ‘Your father and I have gone to great lengths to keep you hidden from undesirables, and you decide to date the guy who’s been hailed as the world’s most eligible bachelor for three years running! The press go ballistic every time he glances sideways at a woman. You’ll be world news by tomorrow morning!’

‘Exactly,’ I said, zipping up my pleated, checked mini-skirt. I reached for my little white shirt, pulled it on and tied it up around my midriff. ‘I don’t have time to chase up all the Nefilim. We need them to come to me. And they can only do that if they know where I am—not to mention Mathu.’

‘Everyone
will
know where you are, that’s the point!’ Mother frowned as she watched me pull my long white socks up over my knees. ‘You can’t go out dressed like that. You look like a schoolgirl.’ Nevertheless, she couldn’t help grinning at my blatant cheek.

‘I am a schoolgirl.’ I was quite prepared to promote that little fantasy among my prospective enemies and admirers. I pulled on my chunky black platform shoes, and my slim-fit black mohair cardigan. ‘The good news is that Killian isn’t one of my fallen kin.’

‘Yes, I realise that,’ Mother said. ‘So it would be best if we didn’t attract any of the Nefilim to this particular area of the world right now.’

A vehicle pulling into the site camp drew our attention to the window—it was a long gold limousine. A handsome young chauffeur opened the rear door and Morell Labontè and his wife, Sabine, stepped into view. They each had an aura of sparkling gold and a light-body devoid of light centres. Physically, their true stature could be seen looming over the smaller human bodies they sported; they were Nefilim masquerading as humans.

‘Too late.’ I returned to view myself in the mirror. ‘Should I put my hair in pigtails, do you think?’ I grabbed my long, silky dark hair and pulled it into high bunches on either side of my head, then turned to my mother for an opinion.

She was horrified. ‘Please don’t do this.’

‘I told you
not
to come here!’ It was Killian, yelling abuse at his parents, which sent Mother and me racing back to the window. ‘This business venture has nothing to do with you!’

‘You can only call an enterprise a business venture if you expect it to make money,’ Morell scoffed. ‘If you simply want to drill holes in the ground, I’ll give you an oil well.’

‘This has nothing to do with the money,’ Sabine cut in. ‘You’ll get yourself killed crawling around underground. Please forget this foolishness and come home.’ She moved to hug her son, but he backed away.

‘We wouldn’t want to damage this perfect specimen you’ve grown,’ Killian said harshly. ‘You’re not my parents.’

‘Your blood is thicker than that skull of yours, boy,’ Morell hissed before returning to the car. ‘You will assume your rightful place in society one way or another.’

‘Leave! Or I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.’ Killian stormed off, leaving his parents loitering or lingering around their luxury car.

‘Curious,’ I commented. ‘If the Nefilim know, or even suspect, there’s a Signet station buried beneath Montségur, then why would they want Killian to stop working here? Even if he’s not an ally, he’s still doing their dirty work for them. So either the Nefilim don’t know about the Signet station or, for reasons unknown, they don’t want Killian to find it.’

‘Do you think Killian’s adopted?’ My mother was wondering how Killian’s parents could be Nefilim when he clearly wasn’t.

‘The Nefilim ceased to wear their true physical forms aeons ago, as they grew too hideous from their addictions,’ I explained. ‘Instead, they murder and then assume the forms of human beings who have fallen by the wayside—those seduced by power, money, and who have a complete disregard for their fellow man. It’s easier for the emotionless Nefilim to assume the lives of such people.’

My mother recalled the practice from her readings of the journals of our foremother, Ashlee Granville-Devere. ‘Those of the blood can be vessels for angels or demons,’ she said.

‘They suck the life from the human vessel they desire, then don its identity like a brand-new suit of clothes. And guess who their next conquest is going to be?’

Mother looked shocked when she realised I was talking about her boss.

‘Although if Killian is indeed of the blood, he could just as easily be a vessel for Mathu as one of the Nefilim,’ I added, and my heart skipped a beat at the possibility. I took a deep breath to dispel the rush of joy and gathered my wits. ‘I should go.’

‘But what shall we do about them?’ My mother pointed out the window at the two impostors posing as Killian’s parents.

‘They must be left at liberty,’ I instructed. ‘They will lead us to others of their kind.’

‘You be careful,’ Mother said awkwardly—out of habit.

I reached into my luggage and pulled out a tiny handgun. ‘You know how cautious I am.’

‘Where did you get that?’ Mia was shocked and then enchanted by the tiny gun with its clear chamber filled with liquid light.

‘It’s something Levi has been developing,’ I replied.

Levi was the Council of Amenti’s key technologist, along with his partner, Thana.

‘Is it safe?’ Mother asked, concerned about me wielding experimental weaponry.

‘It’s completely harmless…to the uncorrupt.’

I tucked the tiny weapon into the top of my skirt at the back,
where it was covered by my cardigan. Mia looked as if she was in pain.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘Focus on
your
mission.’ I kissed her forehead and left.

Outside I ran into my father, and kissed him on the cheek too. ‘Later, Dad,’ I said, and strode off before he started a re-run of my mother’s protests.

‘You’re not letting her go out looking like that?’ I heard him protest to my mother.

I didn’t look back, just walked on to my date with notoriety.

As I passed the gold limousine, I saw that Morell Labontè had retired to the back seat and was absorbed in a video conference call. There was no sign of Sabine. I continued to the site office, where I’d arranged to meet my date, but it appeared empty. I sensed, however, that I wasn’t alone and so moved stealthily across the communal workspace towards the private offices on the other side of the room. The sound of whispering drew my attention to the kitchenette at the back of the common room. I turned away from the private offices and crept towards my target, but as I passed the doorway to Killian’s office I was grabbed around the waist and mouth and pulled inside. I broke free and turned to defend myself—my open-handed strike stopping only centimetres from Emmett Rich’s Adam’s apple.

He swallowed, bewildered by my strength and speed, then raised a finger to his lips to indicate the need for silence. He pointed to the wall in Killian’s office that backed onto the kitchenette. There was a rather large hole in it, and I moved at once to investigate.

Sabine Labontè was in the kitchenette, speaking very intimately with André.

‘Are you sure it’s authentic?’ she asked.

‘I retrieved it from the chasm myself,’ he replied. ‘Did you bring what I require in exchange?’

She pulled from between her breasts a vial filled with sparkling particles and I stifled a gasp.

‘What is it?’ Emmett whispered, put out by my taking over his investigation.

I shook my head and refused to give up my vantage point.

‘Molier is gone, but your addiction can live on…for quite some time,’ Sabine teased the Frenchman.

Christian Molier had been André’s employer on the Sinai excavation at Mount Serabit, where my parents had first got together. Molier was an abomination of nature due to his addiction to Star-Fire—the potions of the gods that gave its users immortality. Star-Fire had already damned the souls of all the Nefilim and it transformed Molier and his followers into creatures of the night, not unlike the vampires of myth.

André grabbed for the vial but Sabine kept it from him.

‘The stone,’ she said, and held out her hand.

André placed a velvet case in her palm. She opened the case to check the item. I couldn’t see the contents, but she smiled and handed André the vial of Star-Fire. André looked relieved to have the vial in his possession, so much so that he didn’t seem to mind that Sabine Labontè’s seductive manner ceased as soon as she had what she desired.

‘Have a lovely, long, young life,’ she said with a smile, knowing that André’s addiction to youth and all things material would damn his soul for all time. The more humans with Star-Fire addiction the better as far as the Nefilim were concerned.

I looked at Emmett as Sabine left the kitchenette and held a finger to my lips. We were both silent until she had departed the site office; then I went to speak with André, despite Emmett’s whispered protest. I had no time to waste on being discreet.

‘
Bonsoir
,’ I said, startling André, who instantly shoved the vial he was admiring into his pocket.

‘Tamar? Wow!’ His lustful eyes scanned my outfit. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

I walked straight up to him and gripped his head between my hands. ‘What did you give her?’ I stared into his eyes ablaze with desire which spiralled into fear as he was overpowered by me.

‘Who?’ he said, denying all knowledge of what I was talking about, but I could see into his thoughts and they showed me my father’s ringstone.

Although I called the ringstone my father’s, it never actually belonged to him. It was a stone that took the form of a ring due to the hole at its centre, and such a stone was essential for the casting of an ancient Wiccan spell. During the incantation Ashlee Granville-Devere had called upon the spirit of my father, who agreed to attach his soul mind to the stone so that he might counsel and aid Ashlee during the course of her investigations in the Near East. Many centuries later my mother found the ringstone, and it was through this old family heirloom that she first met my father and helped free him from his curse. The ringstone had been stolen by Molier and cast off a very high cliff in the Sinai, around the time I’d been conceived. Whether my father’s soul mind was still in any way connected to the ringstone was a mystery, and one I didn’t want unravelled by the Nefilim.

‘That was my mother’s!’ I said, and slapped André’s face for the betrayal. He seemed to enjoy it for he smiled. I grabbed the vial from inside his pocket and, as he desperately tried to retrieve it, I knocked him to the ground.

‘You idiot!’ I said, checking the substance to confirm my earlier assumption. It was Orme all right. ‘Time to rejoin the human race,
mon ami.
’

I pulled out my weapon and fired at him. I heard Emmett cry out in the next room as a liquid-light bullet embedded itself in André’s body.

‘Holy shit, Tamar!’ Emmett rushed into the kitchen to find André having a fit on the floor. ‘What the hell did you shoot him with?’

‘Pure love,’ I replied, concealing my weapon again, then racing past Emmett to the door. I hoped to prevent Sabine Labontè leaving with the ringstone. ‘He’s just finding it a little hard to process.’

The limousine was halfway up the valley road by the time I made it outside. I cursed and went back inside to see how André was faring. He was dry-retching and cursing in French, as black muck oozed from his mouth, nose and ears.

Emmett was speechless as he struggled to process what had just happened. He looked at me and backed up a few paces. ‘You’re some kind of alien, aren’t you?’

‘Aren’t all thirteen-year-old girls just like me?’ I batted my eyelashes at him.

‘Of course, I should have known by the stature.’ He observed my height with trepidation and awe. ‘You’re one of the Nefilim.’

‘I am Anunnaki,’ I barked. ‘Big difference.’

The intensity of André’s convulsions increased.

‘We should call an ambulance,’ Emmett said.

‘He’ll be fine.’

I moved to the sink and dampened a tea-towel. André was running out of fight; exhausted from his purge, he stopped struggling and relaxed as I crouched down beside him and wiped all the black muck from his face. He smiled at me. ‘
Un ange.
’