LITMIR.BIZ

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Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Chapter 26

       Chapter 27

       Chapter 28

       Chapter 29

       Chapter 30

       Chapter 31

       Chapter 32

       Chapter 33

       Epilogue

       Copyright

Prologue

      The Earth’s first monster was called Anu and he arrived from the heavens in a spaceship. Oh, there had been horrifying things before Anu—dinosaurs and giant things that lived in the ocean’s depths and saw in a range beyond the visible spectrum, creatures which one might describe as monstrous. But Anu was a monster inside, where it truly counts.

      Anu was a self-styled explorer from an immortal race called the Annunaki, who hailed from the distant planet of Nibiru, many light-years from the planet he dubbed Ki after his sister and consort, the planet which we now call the Earth. Anu was a strange kind of explorer, looking not for new lands or resources but rather for new experiences, ones that might stave off the crushing ennui that threatened to quiet his race forever when time itself had failed. The Annunaki were bored—of life, of experience, of pleasure.

      Anu first visited the Earth in a period when the apekin—or humans—were still cowering in the trees from saber-toothed tigers. He landed amid the wild greenery in a starship shaped like a dragon. The starship was called Tiamat, and she was a semisentient device as eternal as any of the Annunaki race. The journey across the gulfs of space had exhausted her, which was reason enough for Anu to step from her loving womb and onto the soil of this new planet; a planet that waited untouched and ignored on one of the pale, squid-like tentacles of a barred spiral galaxy that would one day be known as the Milky Way. Such was the impact that Tiamat’s arrival would make on the locals that, many years later, she would be erroneously considered responsible for the creation of the Milky Way itself.

      Anu strode from Tiamat’s bridge and inhaled his first breath of the Earth’s atmosphere, taking in the blue-skied vista spread before him. He was a tall creature, nine feet in height, with scales of gold laced with green like brass touched by verdigris, his thick tail circling behind him for balance as he stepped from the widening aperture on Tiamat’s shell and out onto the boarding ramp that extended from the ship’s nose. He wore an ornate cloak patterned after one of Nibiru’s most prominent flowers, its scarlet weave so dark that it was almost black, a perfect match to his red-black eyes. His neck was thick and corded, the ideal plinth for his long head, whose skull seemed to arch back and outward from a curved face with almost flat features, like a visage reflected on the back of a spoon. At the apex of his head, spiny protrusions emerged from his skull, thick, twisted bone struts running in a spiky array that jutted like the spokes of a wheel. In years to come, Anu would be remembered by the Earthlings for his crown, though it was not decorative but a part of his skeleton.

      Anu breathed the air as he stepped from the widening, circular aperture. He knew that it could do him no damage; Tiamat had already tested and confirmed as much before he had taken his first step from her protective shell. To Anu, the air tasted sweet in that way that water from a different source often tastes different.

      He took a moment, the grand explorer, the alien, to survey this world he had discovered like a gem amid the night sky of space. According to Tiamat’s sensors, it teemed with life, something that so few worlds did. There were other races, of course—Anu knew as much and had convened with them, as had others of his own race. But, for better or worse, such races were scattered vast distances from each other, as if a law within some grand, hidden design had stated that no two sentient races may coexist within one hundred light-years of one another. Perhaps there was a plan at that, one hidden from all but the most enlightened of the higher beings. Anu had considered this during his long journey to the planet Earth—or Ki, as he was already calling it—but reached no firm conclusions, only more questions.

      The Annunaki were eternal beings. And they were something else, too—multidimensional. But it was possible to see the Annunaki through humans’ eyes, and as Anu stepped from Tiamat’s boarding ramp and out onto the green carpeted plains that would one day become Kenya, he was seen by the first man who would ever have a name. The man cowered behind a deciduous bush, where he had been plucking perfectly round, purple berries that he planned to store for eating later, back at his dwelling—which was admittedly little more than an indentation in the ground, but served to keep the wind from touching him at night. The man had stopped plucking berries, his purple-stained fingers poised in midpluck, as the dragon ship landed and the figure emerged. The whole sequence had taken almost ten minutes, from when the man had first noticed Tiamat as she gracefully came to rest, barely making a sound beyond the displacement of the air left in her wake, to now, when the aperture had appeared on the dragon ship’s face and the golden figure of Anu had emerged to stride majestically down the tongue that rolled before him to touch the soil. In all that time, the man—we might call him Adam, although that is not the name which Anu gave him—remained in place, unmoving, perhaps unable to move, as he watched an occurrence play out that was so far beyond his comprehension that he could barely fathom it. It was like hearing something in a foreign language, so impossible was it for Adam to interpret.

      As Anu stepped onto the planet, Adam coughed, suddenly choking on his own breath, the taste of berries and stomach acid flooding his throat with a hot surge. He doubled over, taking great racking gasps of air as he tried to clear his throat, pressing his arms against his chest and sides, the berries crushed and forgotten. It was shock, seeing this creature from another world, this...god...?

      When Adam finally managed to draw a breath without coughing—still hunched over like the apes his kind still resembled—he stared at the ground between his feet and saw golden, clawed toes. He looked up, turning his head slowly, still feeling that twitch on his insides where the choking cough threatened to restart.

      The creature from the stars was standing beside him, legs widespread, cloak fluttering in the light, warm breeze, watching him with eyes as dark as newly spilled blood.

      Anu spoke in a voice the like of which had never been heard on this planet. The words were incomprehensible to the apekin, but the sound fascinated him. It was duotonal, like someone humming against a sheet of paper, split and yet conjoined, a sound that was two sounds at once. The voice, like everything else about the Annunaki, was multidimensional.

      Adam heard the sound and did the only thing that seemed natural: he fell to his knees, bowing down before Anu, peering up at those eyes like blood.

      Anu peered down at the apekin creature inquisitively, pleased with this new aspect of the thing’s nature. “You are not timid, then?” he said. He spoke the words in his own tongue; they left his mouth with a sound like wind through autumn leaves. He reached down then, touching one golden hand to the apekin’s head, pressing it gently against the top of the primitive creature’s skull. Anu placed just a little pressure there, and the apekin bowed his head, until he was staring at the ground between Anu’s feet.

      “Better,” Anu declared, a thin smile appearing on his wide mouth.

      The

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