Distortion Offensive. James Axler

to recover from the woman’s deadly attack, Rosalia and the dog exited the street and disappeared into the night.

      Life in Hope could be hard. Only the strongest would survive.

      Chapter 3

      The Cerberus trio had spent the night in the spare rooms of the church warden, an aging man whose name was Vernor, but they awoke early and made their way out to the beach at Brigid’s insistence.

      “We spend half our lives cooped up inside a mountain,” Brigid had insisted, referring to the hidden Cerberus redoubt in Montana where the team was based, “and the other half fighting for our lives. Let’s go take a look at the ocean and remind ourselves what it is we’re fighting for.”

      Grant agreed and, albeit with a reluctant grunt, Kane ultimately agreed, too. He’d much sooner spend another hour in bed, catching up on some much-needed rest, but he knew there was no reasoning with the red-haired archivist when she got like this.

      When the three of them reached the beachfront, Brigid rushed off toward the rolling waves while Grant hung back to talk with Kane.

      “Everything okay?” Grant asked, his voice a low rumble like distant thunder.

      “What, with me?” Kane replied. “Sure. Why do you ask?”

      “You just seem—” Grant shrugged “—I dunno, like you’d sooner be somewhere else.”

      Kane looked at Grant, fixing his trusty partner in his steely stare. “No, this is… Well, it’s nice,” Kane said, sweeping his hands before him to take in the vista of the sandy beach and the churning turquoise waves of the Pacific as a quintet of seagulls swooped across its surface, squawking to one another. “Just makes a weird change from the usual.”

      “Beating the crap out of Annunaki stone gods and their screwed-up minions, you mean?” Grant asked lightly, the humor clear from his tone.

      Kane laughed. “Yeah, something like that.” With that, he and Grant joined Brigid at the ocean’s edge, where she had removed her boots to wade in the spume-dappled water.

      Though meant in jest, Kane knew that Grant’s statement had an air of truth to it. Just ten days before, Kane and Grant had found themselves battling with a stone-like being called Ullikummis, who had returned from the stars after almost five thousand years in exile from his Annunaki brethren. The Annunaki had been a constant thorn in the side of the Cerberus warriors since their earliest days as a team. Once mistaken for space gods, the Annunaki were lizardlike, alien visitors who assumed different aspects in their ultimate quest to subjugate and subvert humankind, denying it from reaching its full potential. Primary among those so-called gods was the ruthless Enlil, whose subtle planning and mastery of deception made him a formidable foe.

      Ullikummis was, in fact, Enlil’s son, his lizardlike body genetically altered to serve a specific purpose—to be his father’s personal assassin. But approximately five thousand years ago, something had gone wrong in Ullikummis’s assassination attempt on a god called Teshub, and Enlil had disowned his scion, exiling him to space, imprisoned within an asteroid.

      Less than a month ago, Ullikummis reappeared when his rock prison crash-landed in the Canadian heartland, and the stone-clad Annunaki prince had soon indoctrinated a small group of loyal followers from the local populace. Three Cerberus operatives had been among those would-be followers, including Brigid Baptiste herself, who had found the stone lord’s Svengali-like instruction almost impossible to resist. Accompanied by their colleague Domi, Kane and Grant had led an assault on Ullikummis’s stone base, freeing Brigid and the others and destroying the eerie headquarters that Ullikummis had created from the rocks and named Tenth City. Ullikummis himself had been pushed into a superhot oven by Kane, where his rock body had been blasted with jets of fire until it was reduced to ash.

      “Come on, guys,” Brigid called, her cheery voice intruding on Kane’s somber thoughts.

      Kane looked up and saw Brigid wading in the shallow waves of the ocean, her pant legs rolled up to just below her knees.

      “It’s lovely and cool,” Brigid told them.

      Grant had located a large, flat rock, which he used as a seat while he removed his own boots and carefully folded his trench coat. “My feet have been in boots so long I think they’re getting engaged,” Grant rumbled as he wiggled his dark-skinned toes.

      Kane snorted at his partner’s remark, wondering for a moment how long it had been since he had last been dressed for anything other than action. His gaze swept out across the rolling ocean, watching the early-morning sunlight play on its ever-changing surface as it rushed to meet with the shore. Even this early, Kane could see several small fishing boats making their way out into open ocean. Then he turned, taking in the beach and the little fishing ville that had been built along its edge, the clutch of little two-and three-story buildings that sat as a solid reminder of man’s tenacity to survive. Down there, a little way along the beach, a few struts of rotting wood marked where the fishing pier had once stood, jutting into the ocean. Kane had been on that pier when it had collapsed, battling with a beautiful, sword-wielding dancing girl called Rosalia. As Kane smiled, recalling the antagonistic nature of the dancing girl, his eyes focused on two figures crouching in the shadows of the broken pier. Definitely human, neither figure was moving.

      While Grant and Brigid kicked at the water with their bare feet, Kane padded silently across the sand, taking to a light jog as he made his way toward the pier and the figures underneath. Kane noticed the remnants of a little camp fire as he approached the pier, a clutch of broken shells—two dozen in all—littered all around it. He could see now that the figures at the pier were quite young, still teenagers, a boy and a girl.

      “You okay?” Kane called as he slowed his pace to a trot.

      Neither teen acknowledged him; neither even looked up at the sound of his voice. They were sitting on the sand, very still, the girl’s legs stretched before her while the boy had pulled his knees up and had his arms wrapped around them as though to stave off the cold.

      “Hey?” Kane tried again. “You guys need some help?”

      An alarm was going off in the back of Kane’s mind, an old instinct from his days as a Magistrate, recognizing danger before he had consciously acknowledged it. There was something wrong with the teenagers, something eerie and out of place. They were just sitting there unmoving, like statues.

      When he reached the wrecked underside of the pier, Kane crouched beneath the low-hanging crossbeams and made his way to the two figures waiting there. They were too still, and Kane unconsciously checked for the weight of the Sin Eater handgun that was strapped to his right arm, its wrist holster hidden beneath the sleeve of his denim jacket.

      “You kids all right?” Kane prompted again, slowing and looking around the shadow-thick area of the pier as he warily approached the young couple.

      The girl had dirty-blond hair that almost matched the wet sand of the beach, and she was dressed in a T-shirt and cutoffs that showed off her girlish figure. The boy had dyed his short hair the color of plum, and wore a ring through one nostril that glinted in the early-morning sunlight over the fluffy beginnings of an adolescent’s beard. Like the girl, he was dressed in cutoffs, though his shirt was long-sleeved where hers stopped just past her bony shoulders.

      For a moment Kane took them to be dead, but then he saw the slight rise and fall of the girl’s chest. She was still breathing at least, and Kane scrambled over to her, grasping her by her shoulders and shaking her.

      “Wake up,” Kane urged. “Come on, now.” In his days as a Cobaltville Magistrate, Kane had seen people in various states of semiconsciousness and delirium, and he knew the first thing he had to do was try to rouse the suspect. He slapped lightly at the boy’s face to try to pull him out of whatever trance he had fallen into. “Hey, hey—snap out of it.”

      Brigid and Grant had left the sea and traipsed over the beach to join Kane at the little shelter beneath the ruined pier.

      “What’s going on?”