Hell's Maw. James Axler

took a minute or two of backtracking before Grant reached the service door to the hotel, the same one he had rushed through in pursuit of the strange trio he had spotted close to the scene. His breathing was coming heavier now, the night air cold on his skin as the initial surge of adrenaline passed.

      Grant trotted down the corridor, reciting a mantra in his head, praying that Shizuka was still alive.

      The twin doors to the ballroom were closed, so Grant switched the sharpened disc to his left hand before reaching for the handle with his right. By now, the feather protruding from his pocket had become bloodred; not wet, but its whole color had changed.

      Grant pulled at the door and stepped through, coming face-to-face with a handsome, dark-haired man in a loose-fitting suit. Before Grant could say a word, the man produced a compact blaster and jabbed it toward Grant’s surprised face.

      “¡Congelar!” the man hollered.

      Grant’s Commtact translated the bellowed word automatically: “Freeze!”

       Chapter 3

      One side effect of the fall of the baronies was that obtaining food had become a source of dispute once more, Kane reflected. Kane was a powerfully built man with broad shoulders and rangy limbs that lent something of the wolf to his appearance. His hair was dark and his steely blue-gray eyes seemed to emotionlessly observe everything with meticulous precision. There was something of the wolf to Kane’s demeanor, too—he was a loner at heart, and a natural pack leader when the situation called for it.

      Like Grant, Kane had once been a Magistrate for the Cobaltville barony in the west, where he had enforced the law of the ville. But he had stumbled upon the conspiracy behind the ville—that is, the intended subjugation of mankind—and had turned against the regime and found himself exiled along with his partner and fellow rebels. From that day on, Kane had become an active member of the Cerberus organization, dedicated to the protection of humankind, freeing humans from the shadowy shackles that had been used to oppress them and stunt their potential for hundreds of years.

      Right now, Kane was sitting in the rear of a six-wheeler beside three dozen sacks of grain as it trundled along a dirt road in the province of Samariumville. The road was narrow and straight, flanked by the scarred earth of fields that had been abandoned and left fallow as legacy of the radioactive fallout from the nukecaust. Radiation levels fell year on year, but it remained an unwanted gift from the past that just kept on giving, spawning mutant crops and poisonous fruit that was of no use for consumption. Therein lay part of the problem that Kane and his team were tackling with their guarding of these transports—so much of the land was still too damaged to sustain life, even two centuries on, from the nuclear exchange that had slowed down Western civilization.

      One of three, Kane’s vehicle featured an open bed, the sacks secured with rope, leaving it easy-pickings for the scavengers and cutthroats who roamed the barony. The cloudy sky was dark and ominous, and only the occasional bird caw could be heard over the growl of wag engines.

      It hadn’t always been like this, Kane lamented as he eyed the overcast sky and its sheets of silver-gray ripples. Barely three years earlier, the baronies had been intact, their high walls and firm laws ensuring safety for their occupants and loaning a degree of safety to the provinces beyond. Local Magistrates had patrolled problem areas outside the ville walls, stemming the threat of outlanders and muties who might destabilize the local area or foster an uprising against the ruling baron. All of that had changed when the barons had received something Kane understood as a “genetic download,” a kind of evolutionary trigger that drew their hidden DNA to the fore, revealing the ethereal hybrid barons to be merely chrysalis states for their true forms—the reptilian Annunaki. The Annunaki were an alien race from the distant planet Nibiru, who had once been worshipped on Earth as gods during the Mesopotamian era, over six thousand years ago. Hungry for power, the Annunaki had ultimately squabbled themselves into mutual self-destruction.

      However, the power vacuum left by the disappearance of the barons had resulted in the villes having to find new ways to survive and remain stable. Some had installed new barons, imitating the old system as closely as they could. Others, such as Cobaltville, had covered up their baron’s disappearance, relying instead on Magistrate rule to ensure their populace remained under strict control. Kane had even found a new experimental barony where the population had been reprogrammed to adhere to subliminal commands, losing all independent thought.

      Kane didn’t know how Samariumville was running its show, nor did he much care, just as long as its people were safe. What did matter, however, was that the local territory had become more treacherous as rival gangs vied to carve up the land beyond the ville walls for their own usage. Those gangs included slave traders, gunrunners and other lowlifes who were only too happy to exploit and abuse anyone, human or mutie, who fell into their clutches. And all those crooks and ne’er-do-wells needed feeding, which was how Kane and his partners found themselves guarding this three-wag convoy as it crossed the unpopulated terrain to the west of Boontown, close to what had once been the Louisiana/Mississippi border.

      Kane was here, along with two of his partners from the Cerberus organization, at the behest of a local businesswoman called Ohio Blue. Blue was an independent trader who dealt in everything from purified water supplies to esoteric objets d’art. She was very much under the radar so far as the authorities went, meaning she was unable to turn to the local Magistrates while running missions like this one—mercy missions she called them, although Kane knew the woman well enough to take that with a pinch of salt. Ohio Blue was a rogue, what Kane would call a bottom-feeder, but she was well connected and, along with her wide-reaching organization, had provided support and safety for Cerberus during their direst hour. Kane considered that he owed her for that. So when she spoke to Cerberus about running into some transport problems on this route, he had volunteered to ride shotgun and help make sure she didn’t lose any more men. Cerberus had access to resources that even the well-connected Ohio didn’t, including footage from surveillance satellites and operational air support.

      Kane had dressed in muted colors, a faded gray denim jacket and combat pants, along with his favored Magistrate boots, which had a little protective armor in their construction. Beneath his clothes, Kane wore something even more durable—a skintight shadow suit, made from a superstrong weave that could dull a blade attack and offer some protection from small-arms fire. The miraculous shadow suit had other qualities, too—it was a wholly independent environment, which regulated the wearer’s body temperature, ensuring that they could survive in extremes of heat and cold and could also protect against radiation. In short, the shadow suit provided an almost undetectable layer of protection that was comparable to much more bulky forms of armor, only without compromising maneuverability.

      Kane was not alone. One member of the Cerberus crew had been assigned to each of the three transport wags after a spate of attacks along this, the only route running from farms in the west to a litter of smaller, desperate communities in the south. What Ohio was getting out of the deal, Kane could only speculate, but he knew her well enough to know that the op would not be run from the goodness of her heart. Cold hard cash was in the equation somewhere, and if that didn’t sit well with Kane’s more philanthropic instincts, then he could console himself that the food was going to hungry people who needed it. Traders like Ohio Blue profited out of misery, but they served a need that otherwise went unfulfilled.

      Kane’s partners were located in the two other wags, while Kane took the foremost, wary of a frontal assault. The middle wag contained Brigid Baptiste, an ex-archivist from Cobaltville who, like Kane, had stumbled onto the conspiracy at the top of the ville and been swiftly exiled from its walls. Brigid and Kane had worked together for a long time, ever since that exile into the so-called hell beyond the ville walls. During that time, they had learned that they shared a mystic bond that traversed time and space. That bond named them anam-charas, or soul friends, and it put them closer than siblings or lovers, a deeper bond than mere flesh or chronological time could contain.

      Guarding the rearmost wag was Domi. Domi was another exile