The Demi-Monde: Summer (23 page)

Ella laughed. ‘I can understand your surprise, Billy. It must come as a shock to hear your sister announce that she is the reincarnation of an eleven-thousand-year-old goddess …’

Right on the fucking money!

‘… but that is the reality.’

‘How?’

‘How did this happen?’ She gave a rather disconcerting little laugh. ‘By serendipity. My enemies were trying to destroy me here in the Demi-Monde but instead they woke Lilith from her slumbers, woke the power that was dormant within me. Serendipity, Billy, just as it is serendipity that Septimus Bole – the son of my greatest enemy – sent you to the Demi-Monde to try to control me, and by doing so has made my triumph inevitable.’

What the fuck was she talking about?

‘Yes, Lilith is risen again. I am returned to cleanse both the Demi-Monde and the Real World of the contaminants that are the Grigori.’

‘Grigori? Nigga, please; this is some ultra-weird science yo’ droppin’ on me.’

‘I’ll explain in a moment,’ Ella crooned. ‘But for you to truly understand the miracle that has occurred it is necessary that I first tell you about the
real
history of our world … of the Real World.’ Then as Billy stood there, his sister began to circle him, finally coming to stand out of sight behind him. It was really fucking disconcerting.

‘Try to imagine our world as it was eleven thousand years ago, a world held fast by an everlasting winter, tight in the frozen grip of the last Ice Age. Then it was a vast frozen wasteland, a land where the few beleaguered examples of
Homo sapiens
huddled in a haven beside what is now the Black Sea.’

Billy stood silent: Ella, by his reckoning, had flipped.

‘Then the Black Sea was a large freshwater lake, an oasis of fertility in a brutal world. And it was into this world that a woman was born, her coming marked by the impact of a meteor that bathed the land in a strange green radiation … a radiation that changed her … improved her. That woman’s name was Lilith and thanks to the meteor she came to possess an intellect exceeding any who had ever lived. Such was her genius that she alone realised that for HumanKind to survive there must be cooperation, that the selfishness and individuality of the hunter were traits that would lead to the destruction of the tribe and to the extinction of the race of
Homo sapiens
. But there was more to Lilith than simple genius: she was blessed with the miracle of Atavistic Thought Inheritance.’

‘What?’ As Billy stood there open-mouthed, he wondered if they sold weapons-grade psychotropics in the Demi-Monde. He had a sneaking feeling he was gonna need them. This bitch had issues.

‘Atavistic Thought Inheritance is an example of those occasional and arbitrary evolutionary leaps made by Nature. The
first Lilith was a mutation … a freak of Nature … the first person to be able to convey ancestral memory – instinctive
and
acquired knowledge – to her daughters. The whole of the knowledge and the experiences of that first Lilith was transmitted to her daughters
at birth
, and her daughters, in their turn, passed this knowledge – supplemented by the knowledge they themselves acquired in their lifetime – to their daughters.’ Ella sighed. ‘I am the last of the Lilithi, but because I possess Atavistic Thought Inheritance I am simultaneously the first Lilith incarnate. I am the Lilith who carries the accumulated wisdom of five hundred generations of the Lilithi, the descendants of Lilith.’

‘Ah, c’mon, Sis, yo’ blowing me smoke.’

Ella ignored him. ‘For the Lilithi the body is not the decaying prison of the soul that it is for Fragiles, those unfortunates who make up the majority of humankind. Our souls are not condemned to die with our bodies; they live on in our daughters. Atavistic Thought Inheritance makes the Lilithi immortal, so that a thousand years is as nothing to us. And the Lilithi used the knowledge they acquired to bring peace and prosperity to their tribe, and as the years went by, Lilith was elevated to the status of the Supreme Goddess, and as a Goddess her word became law and all bowed before her.’

Reluctantly Billy asked a question, almost afraid of what the answer might be. ‘Okay, whyn’t yo’ school me some more? What was the name of this tribe?’

‘The Adin, though you would better know them as Atlanteans. Lilith’s people were the ones who inhabited the lost world of Atlantis.’

Billy couldn’t stop himself: he started to laugh uproariously. ‘Kill that shit, Sis, you’ve got to be yanking my chain. First you lay the line on me that you’re eleven thousand years old, that you’re the reincarnation of a long-dead Goddess with a really
far-out ability to transmit knowledge through the generations, and now you start gassing that you’re a refugee from Atlantis.’ He shook his head. ‘Shit, Sis, when we get back to the Real World you don’t wanna waste your time becoming a geneticist … you wanna be a scriptwriter. James Cameron will just love you.’

Ella’s voice hardened. ‘You may mock, Billy, but what I have told you is the truth. And as they watched and studied the world around them, the Lilithi determined to manipulate the bloodlines of mankind. They determined to better Nature, to breed three new species of humankind. The first of these were the Lilithi,
Homo perfectus:
the priestesses who alone bore the gift of Atavistic Thought Inheritance.’

‘Hey, girl, yo’ gotta stop all this madness. Yo’ can’t be sayin’ that yo’ a different
species
to the rest of us cats?’

Ella came to stand in front of Billy and gestured to her body. ‘Of course. You have the evidence of your own eyes, Billy, you have seen me perform the Leaping. No one human could have done what I did and the explanation for this is simple: the Lilithi are
not
human. Just as Neanderthal man was inferior to
Homo sapiens
, so
Homo sapiens
are inferior to the Lilithi. We Lilithi were bred and refined over thousands of years to produce a species of woman that is physically and mentally superior to
Homo sapiens
. It was we who understood that the potential of
Homo sapiens
is circumscribed by their bodies, so by selective breeding we overcame these physical obstacles. The apotheosis of three thousand years of eugenical effort is seen in me.’

With a flourish she threw wide her arms, opening herself to examination, and despite his instinctive reluctance – she was his
sister
, after all – Billy found himself studying her. As he did so, he came to the worrying conclusion that perhaps – just perhaps – what she was saying wasn’t all froth and fiction … and that there should be a law against sisters looking that good.

‘The second of these new species created by the Lilithi were the Grigori,
Homo callous
, the race of warriors charged with protecting the people of Atlantis.’ Ella let out a long, dispirited sigh as though recalling the Grigori brought back sombre memories. ‘Young men, like you, Billy, are dangerous: males in every species known in Nature are at their most ferocious when they are in their physical prime and are searching for a mate. So, we bred the Grigori to achieve a paedomorphic aspect, to be a species that preserved these juvenile urges and angers … we bred them to prevent the onset of a more equitable and peaceable maturity. The Grigori were the troublesome and destructive juveniles who never grew up.’

For a moment she seemed lost in her reminiscences. ‘The Grigori were never many in number, but even though they were so few, their reputation for ferocity and skill in battle made them figures of myth and superstition. Even today their names resonate … Satan, Azazel, Semiazaz.’

‘So what happened to the Grigori?’

‘We Lilithi might have conquered evolution, Billy, but we could not control Nature. And in a day and a night Nature unleashed her fury and destroyed the civilisation of the Lilithi and smashed the cities of Atlantis. Nature sent the Deluge that drowned Atlantis and threw those of her people who survived, bemused and leaderless, out into the world.’

‘Whoa, slow the flow, Sis. Is this the same Flood they used to talk about in Bible class?’

‘It is. As the earth warmed after the last Ice Age, the enormous glaciers that covered the planet began to melt and the meltwater created vast lakes in the middle of North America and Russia, great lakes trapped behind shrinking glaciers and melting mountains of ice. One day, eight thousand years ago, these walls crumbled and the huge melt lakes released enormous quantities of water into the oceans, creating
gigantic tsunami. The land bridge between Atlantis and the Mediterranean – the Pillars of Hercules – was destroyed, and the freshwater lake that was the Black Sea, and the city of Atlantis that bordered it, were inundated.’

Ella was silent for a few moments as though overcome by the emotions rekindled by these memories. ‘The work of three thousand years destroyed in moments, drowned under a thousand feet of sea water. Only two thousand Atlanteans survived, less than one in a hundred. The few surviving Lilithi wandered the earth as a broken people; our gift of Atavistic Thought Inheritance meant that we not only shared all our knowledge, but also our experiences. We felt the pain of a sister’s death as vividly as if it were our own and the destruction of so many of our Lilithian sisters emotionally crippled us. Numbed by collective grief, we retreated from the world. We slept, until I was roused here in the Demi-Monde.’

A miserable tear coursed slowly down Ella’s cheek. ‘But the worst was that the Grigori also survived, becoming a pernicious diaspora, spread like seeds on the wind, deracinated and disgruntled. They fled north into Russia and Europe, and east to the Indus, infecting the race of Man as they went. For the first time they bred outside their species and so their penchant for violence and evil began to infect the rest of HumanKind. Like the Lilithi and the Kohanim – the third race created by Lilith – the Grigori were never meant to breed with those who were not of their kind … but the Grigori were wild animals who could not be tamed or domesticated.’

‘Wild animals?’ Billy prompted.

‘You must understand, Billy, that the Grigori are a different people – a different species – from Man. They are stronger, taller, quicker, free of the restraint imposed by conscience.’ She laughed. ‘The Grigori have
no
conscience. Oh, they have other weaknesses, but they are not fettered by moral scruples.’

She took a moment to calm herself. ‘And as the Grigori bred with Man so a hybrid species emerged … the Dark Charismatics … psychopaths … mongrel Fragiles infected with the Grigori’s evil. The Dark Charismatics are the bastard progeny of the Grigori … or as the rest of the world knows them, vampires.’

‘Shit, Sis, yo’ sayin’ these Grigori of yours are vampires?’ He could hardly keep the mocking tone out of his voice.

‘Yes. They had been bred to rule the night, when their enemies were at their weakest, and as the years passed so they began to fear daylight. More … we fed them blood to promote their growth and they became addicted to its taste. But though they shunned daylight, though they craved blood, still they were the greatest warriors the world has ever seen.’

‘Ah c’mon Sis, if these Grigori cats of yours were so amped, how come they didn’t conquer the whole known?’

Another laugh from Ella. ‘The Grigori were never the most fecund of species and, remember, it is difficult for two different species – no matter how close they are on the Tree of Life – to interbreed, so only very rarely was the union of Grigori and Fragile fruitful. That is why there are so few fully functional, fully aware Dark Charismatics loose in the world.’

‘Then how did the Grigori survive?’

‘They were – are – nurtured and sustained by their bastard children, the Dark Charismatics, and in return for this succour they infused the Dark Charismatics with their hatred of the Jews.’

Oh fuck
.

Billy tried to keep the disbelief out of his voice. ‘What the fuck have the Jews gotta do with all this?’

‘The Kohanim – the proto-Jews – were the third race created by the Lilithi. Before we discovered the secret of writing, we needed a class of administrators able to remember the genealogical history of every man and woman in Atlantis. Only in this
way could we, the Lilithi, ensure that the characteristics we bred for were evident in the mating pair and in their offspring, but to remember so much data required a mind of the most prodigious capacity. So we bred a special race, the Kohanim, with a talent for memorising copious amounts of information. The Kohanim were the ultimate eugenicists, controlling, as they did, the breeding of the people of Atlantis. It was the Kohanim who decided who should mate with whom, and which child should be allowed to live and which to die. Is it any wonder that the people of Atlantis came to hate them? None more so than the Grigori, whom the Kohanim were charged with controlling … and, when necessary, with culling. The Grigori loathed them with a passion.’

‘Okay, Sis, lay it on me: what happened to the Kohanim?’

‘Like all of the people of Atlantis, when the Deluge came, most were destroyed, but a handful survived and fled east into Mesopotamia splintering into sects and rival factions as they went, and interbreeding with the peoples they met on their travels. This miscegenation eventually spawned the Jews. The Jews are the by-blows of the Kohanim.’

This was all becoming too much for Billy. He looked around, spotted a bottle of cognac, poured himself a glassful and took a long, long swig. If he was to handle all this Lilithi, Grigori, Kohanim and Atlantis bullshit, he’d have to do it blasted. What he wouldn’t give for a couple of lines of Dizzi.

‘Look, Ella … Sis, I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but ain’t it a little far out that no one in the Real World has ever heard about Lilith and Atlantis? Yo’ telling me there ain’t no records … myths … that sort of shit telling us about what went down?’

‘Oh, there are memories of Lilith but they are distorted by time. I have been transformed from a goddess into a daemon. My symbols became the symbols of evil: the wise snake
became the devil incarnate; the Tree of Knowledge that gave us the fruit that made the mind soar and resonate in harmony with the Kosmos became the bearer of the bitter fruit of temptation; and the crescent horns that I wear as my crown, the symbol of the Lilithi’s hegemony over the night and of my role as the Queen of Heaven, became the horns of the devil.’