The Dragon Queens (The Mystique Trilogy)

  ‘Rest!’ Lady Susan looked amused. ‘Who could rest after such an experience? I may never sleep again!’ She stood and strolled around the room to stretch out her stiff limbs.

  ‘Lady Susan, I—’

  ‘No, Charlotte, I haven’t lost my mind,’ she interrupted. ‘I saw myself on the Amenti Council of Tara,’ she went on, her voice filling with heartfelt amazement. ‘The perception stirred memories in me clearer than those I perceive of this life. My true name is Talori,’ she announced. ‘Your true name is Kali.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And his,’ Lady Susan pointed to Albray, ‘is Arcturus.’

  ‘It is?’ The knight looked stunned.

  ‘I have been aware of you for days,’ the countess informed him, smiling. ‘I believe we may have met before, in the Sinai?’

  Albray nodded that she was quite correct.

  ‘I recognise your energy,’ she said in a thrilled tone. I knew Lady Susan had always wished for a little of my mother’s psychic talent, and I could see by her aura that she had undergone a major spiritual awakening in the past few days.

  ‘Be that as it may, my lady, I believe you should rest and eat now.’ Albray was the calming voice of reason.

  ‘But I wish to read all that Charlotte has penned of the tale,’ she objected.

  Albray was firm. ‘The account is not going anywhere.’

  ‘I will make sure it is all in order for you when you awake,’ I promised, and Lady Susan finally submitted to our joint persuasion and left to get some rest.

  ‘So what has become of your mother?’ Albray said the moment the countess had exited the room. After days of waiting, he was just as curious as I to read this final piece of the puzzle. But first I needed to record Lady Susan’s reaction to completing her quest, while it was still fresh in my mind.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF TAMAR DEVERE

  A gentle knock on my door distracted me from my reading. This time Mum waited for my invitation to enter before opening the door.

  ‘This list you gave me of your symptoms,’ she said, ‘hyper-sensitivity to sound and light, hot and cold flushes, breathing difficulties, intestinal problems, a swelling at the base of the skull, and the sensation of your skin crawling—according to an article I’ve been reading, these are some of the side effects associated with rapid DNA activation.’

  ‘Really?’ I tried to sound surprised.

  ‘But there are some other symptoms listed too and I wanted to see if you had experienced any of those?’ Mum looked at me over the top of her reading glasses.

  ‘Shoot,’ I said.

  ‘Have you noticed a change in your sleeping patterns?’

  You could say that, I thought. ‘Reading this journal has been keeping me up late, and I’ve been having more vivid dreams when I do sleep,’ I offered.

  She moved down her list. ‘How about periods of extreme joy or rapture?’

  Like when I saw my body this morning?

  I shook my head.

  ‘Mental confusion?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Difficulty concentrating?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Enhanced telepathic ability?’

  ‘No such luck.’ But I was interested in the possibility that I might develop this talent, and I had been a little more intuitive when it came to what other people were thinking.

  ‘Seeing auras?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, surprised. It hadn’t occurred to me to write that down as a physical symptom.

  ‘Really!’ Mum smiled, proud of me. As far as she knew, this was the first sign of psychic ability I’d ever exhibited. After my nightly adventures with Kali, I knew better. ‘That was the first psychic talent I acquired too. Then astral projection.’

  ‘I haven’t had that experience yet,’ I told her, although I suspected I’d been doing a fair bit of walking about in my sleep.

  ‘So what does my light-body look like?’ She tested my new power of perception.

  ‘It’s mostly blue and sparkly, but you have dark patches over your heart and third-eye light centres…are you worried about someone you love?’ I said, before realising that someone was probably me. I wanted to tell her about Kali, but then I worried that if she knew about the forthcoming merger, she’d probably try to stop it. ‘I’m sorry to make you worry, but I truly feel there’s no need to,’ I told her. ‘What’s happening to me might be strange, but it’s not horrible or painful in any way.’

  Mum came to sit beside me on the bed and gave me a hug, clearly relieved to hear that. ‘It’s my pleasure to worry about you,’ she assured me.

  ‘What do you think Dad’s going to say when he sees me?’ I asked, a little concerned about his reaction to my rapid development.

  ‘I believe he’ll think you look stunning,’ Mum said, and smiled. ‘Just like every other male who set eyes on you today.’

  We both had a little chuckle.

  ‘No more ugly duckling,’ I commented.

  ‘Oh,’ groaned Mum, ‘you never were an ugly duckling. Everyone goes through an awkward stage at your age—you’ve just grown out of it faster than most.’ She sniffed back her emotion and pulled away.

  ‘There’s something I want to give you, now that it won’t fall off.’ She pretended to pull something off her finger and placed whatever it was in my hand.

  ‘Mum!’ I said, feeling annoyed at being treated like a child again. But as I dropped my hand I felt something slide off it. ‘Hey, there really is something there!’

  ‘Don’t lose it,’ Mum said. She helped me find the lost item on the floor, and this time slid it on my finger.

  ‘Holy shit!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s an invisible ring! That is totally sick!’

  My mother looked confused.

  ‘That means cool, Mum,’ I explained. ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘It was a gift to me from a prince, who didn’t tell me where he got it,’ she said mysteriously.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  Mum shrugged, as if she had never thought about it. ‘I really don’t know. I guess it looks however you imagine it to look.’

  ‘But what’s the point of making a ring no one can see, besides the novelty value?’ I wondered out loud.

  ‘Well, invisibility would be an asset if you didn’t want anyone to know of the ring’s existence,’ Mum said, which only added to the mystery.

  I gave her a huge hug and kiss. ‘I’ll cherish it always,’ I said.

  Mum kissed me back. ‘Well, I’ll let you get back to your reading,’ she said.

  I nodded. ‘I’m nearly done.’

  Mum closed the door after her and I picked up the journal again. Where was I? Ah yes, Charlotte recording Lady Susan’s reaction to Ashlee’s final adventures. But then I noticed the script that followed wasn’t Charlotte’s hand at all, and that it seemed to have been written in a different ink from the previous entries…

  REVELATION 24

  THE DARK HALF

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY ASHLEE GRANVILLE-DEVERE—AN EPILOGUE BY LADY SUSAN DEVERE

  A year has passed since I aided Charlotte Devere to pen the tale of my dear friend’s journey through the Halls of Amenti. It has taken me this long to add the Amenti section to this, Ashlee’s final journal. I also found entries in Charlotte Devere’s private journals that I felt needed to be incorporated into the Amenti account, to explain what unfolded at the Deveres’ home in Suffolk once Ashlee’s tale had been committed to paper.

  On that day when Ashlee’s journey was complete and my connection with her via the ring ceased, I was eager to read of the other events of her adventure, those that Charlotte had chronicled. However, Charlotte and Albray urged me to eat and rest first, so I returned the ring to Charlotte and retired to my room.

  I was aware that I had undergone a deep spiritual awakening during the course of my journalising these past few days, but I had no idea how extensive that awakening had been when I lay down to sleep off my exhaustion in my room at the Suffolk hou
se. What I did know was that something inside me had been turned on, and I was inspired, excited, liberated! I was one of the Dragon Queens and an Amenti staff member, and so was my husband, James! The thought of my sensible, upstanding husband, who in this lifetime abhorred all things esoteric, being one of the Amenti Council was very amusing to me; but I knew I need not push the issue with him in this life, for indeed he had many lifetimes to learn of his true self, and his moment of realisation would come at the right time for him. The only thing that mattered to me was that, in the end, we would be together.

  This welling sense of expectation of my higher calling made it very difficult to get to sleep, yet when I did finally succumb I slept like the dead. And then I began to dream.

  I am back in the library, yet when I glance down, I do not have a physical form. I hear a cry and see that Charlotte is pinned to the desk by a strange fair-haired man. He stands between her spread legs, mauling her neck with kisses. I am surprised that she is not struggling to be free of him, for the stench emanating from him is overbearing. Then I realise she must know him, for she addresses him by name.

  ‘Mathu, are you not afraid of hurting me?’ she asks.

  ‘I can be sensitive,’ he says, grabbing her thighs and grinding himself against her.

  ‘No.’ She tries to push him away but he is too strong for her.

  ‘Oh, come on, don’t be a tease,’ he says, pulling her close again. ‘I have to know what it’s like to fuck a queen, just once.’ He wriggles his tongue in her face then sticks it down her throat.

  I gag at the same time Charlotte does and suddenly I feel her emotions as strongly as if they are my own. I want to be sick! I can tell that she wants to repel him, but she has not developed her mother’s psychokinetic expertise. She tries summoning fire elementals to her aid, willing them to heat his body until he relents.

  ‘Ha!’ Mathu laughs in her face. ‘No elemental on this Earth scheme would dare oppose me.’

  She is at his mercy. I realise that it is her very love for him that has invited this attack. ‘Mathu, please—’ she says.

  ‘Thank you kindly, I don’t mind if I do.’ He rips her frock open and she screams at the top of her lungs as she struggles against him.

  Lady Susan!

  Lady Susan!

  My eyes sprang open and instantly I recalled the dream. I wanted to be sick, but the sight of Albray at my bedside distracted me and I realised it was his voice that had wakened me.

  Quickly, the ghostly knight urged. I need your body.

  ‘By all means,’ I said and clambered from beneath the bedclothes. ‘Although my body is not what it used to be.’ I glanced down at myself and realised I was wearing my sheer underdress and nothing else.

  You look just fine to me, Albray said. Now, grab swords. He pointed outside my room to where a display of weapons was mounted on the corridor wall.

  ‘No time to be modest,’ I sighed, and ripped two swords from their mounts and raced behind Albray in the direction of the library and, I assumed, to Charlotte’s rescue.

  The swords were heavy in my hands, but the instant Albray joined with me they became as much a part of me as my arms and legs. My entire body moved with greater ease as the ghostly knight assumed full physical control.

  I slipped into the library as silent as a draught. The huge fair man was ravishing Charlotte on the desk, slapping her face to prevent her passing out. With a shock, I recalled the name from my chronicling of Ashlee’s journey through the Halls of Amenti: Mathu was Kali’s prince, which meant he was also Charlotte’s great love.

  ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it, princess?’ he jeered. ‘And I’m going to make sure you don’t miss a—’

  From behind, Albray thrust both swords into Mathu’s body. He shouted out in pain and staggered backwards as Albray withdrew the weapons just as rapidly.

  ‘I thought your physical body didn’t feel anything?’ Charlotte cried.

  Both Albray and I were surprised by her reaction, and even more startled when green slime began to ooze from the wounds in Mathu’s body.

  Charlotte burst into tears. She rolled off the table and backed away from her attacker. ‘You are not Mathu,’ she accused, appearing relieved.

  ‘Sure I am.’ His voice became gravelly and his body began to stretch out of shape, ripping apart to reveal a huge albino reptilian, about nine foot tall, with wings that unfurled as we watched. I recognised it from Ashlee’s travels as a Dracon, except he had more skin than scales and long fingernails instead of claws. ‘Didn’t fairy boy tell you about me? I’m his dark half.’ He let out a growl and the force of his anger sent Charlotte and myself rocketing backwards to hit the bookshelves that lined the library walls.

  The first rays of dawn shone through the library windows and Mathu manifested in the room.

  Charlotte was most relieved to see him. ‘Mathu, where have you been?’

  ‘In the last century,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry—’

  ‘He’s been making deals to save his own skin,’ Pintar interjected.

  ‘Poseidonis! I thought you perished with Atlantis!’ Mathu’s calm demeanour was diminishing rapidly.

  ‘I go by the name of Pintar these days,’ the winged demon grinned. ‘Did you really think you could kill your own shadow?’

  The beast held out a hand and willed Charlotte to him. Mathu counteracted the command and Charlotte hung suspended in the air between the two adversaries, her dress gaping open to expose her bruised body.

  ‘Let her go!’ Mathu entreated the beast.

  ‘I claimed her, so I get to keep her,’ Pintar taunted. ‘Foreplay doesn’t count.’

  Charlotte cried out under the duress of her body being torn between two equally opposing forces. Out of mercy, Mathu let her go and Charlotte flew into Pintar’s clutches. A metal spike extended from the inside of the demon’s wrist—Pintar had a soul-shattering module embedded in him.

  ‘No!’ Mathu was horrified and moved to intervene.

  Pintar held the spike against the back of Charlotte’s neck, which stopped Mathu in his tracks.

  ‘How did you find us?’ Mathu asked.

  This scene was so familiar to me: it was like watching Lilitu’s death all over again. Then I found myself remembering an event I had never seen, and realised it was Albray’s memory of witnessing Taejax give Ashlee and Charlotte the rings. Something Ashlee had said at the time was playing on his mind: How do I know these rings aren’t a trick that will disclose my every movement beyond this plane to the Dracon?

  Taejax betrayed us, I say to Albray, noting the ring on Charlotte’s finger.

  If the reptilians were able to intercept the rings’ transmission, that would explain how they had tracked down Lilitu du Lac. It might also explain how the Dracon—the Nagas, as the Ha-mazons called them—had attacked the warrior tribe in Ashlee’s recollection of events, for if they were monitoring Ashlee’s perception of that lifetime they would have discovered that the Ha-mazon were vulnerable to attack. Perhaps it also explained how Poseidonis had escaped death during the destruction of Atlantis.

  I looked at Pintar’s long gnarly fingers wrapped around Charlotte’s throat; staring me right in the face was the answer to many of the conundrums in Ashlee’s tale—Pintar had his own ring.

  ‘The rings’ transmission has been intercepted,’ I told Mathu, trying to answer his question without referring to Taejax directly.

  Mathu was bewildered; he didn’t understand how Taejax could keep up the illusion of evolving without truly doing so. ‘That cannot be…’

  The library door flew open and Lord Devere entered, accompanied by Taejax. Then I realised it was not Devere at all, but Captain Sinclair. Both he and the Dracon seemed startled by the scene that met them.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Mathu asked, clearly unconvinced by the timing. If Taejax was not guilty, then his use as a double agent was at an end.

  ‘Obviously, I am a prisoner,’ Captain Sinclair said, motioning to Taeja
x.

  The reptilian had been holding his firearm at ease, but at Sinclair’s words he raised it and aimed at the captain’s head. ‘I spied him creeping around outside,’ Taejax informed Pintar, pushing his supposed captive into the room.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ Pintar demanded. ‘I sense your disloyalty…your mind and will used to belong to me!’

  Suddenly it was clear that Taejax had not knowingly betrayed us.

  ‘My orders were to keep an eye on the house,’ Taejax snarled. ‘I didn’t know you were here. I came to retrieve the ring.’

  Sinclair put his hand up. ‘That is also why I am here. However…’ he fixed his eyes on the beast that held Charlotte captive and, seeing the state of the girl, became irate ‘…it seems I have bigger fish to fry.’ He pulled a sleek handgun from his weapons belt and aimed it at Pintar, in the same instant drawing another handgun to aim at Taejax.

  Pintar laughed off the threat. ‘You cannot hope to kill me with a gun.’

  ‘That is probably so,’ Captain Sinclair agreed, ‘but liquid nitrogen darts will destroy that hideous body you are wearing.’

  ‘Will you bet one of the souls you need to get home to Tara that you will not miss?’ Pintar challenged, pulling Charlotte around in front of him as a shield.

  ‘I am a patient man,’ said the captain, raising the gun to take a better aim at Pintar. I could tell that he wasn’t covering Taejax properly, which reinforced my suspicion that he knew the reptilian was not a threat. ‘I will find a clear shot and I will not miss.’

  Suddenly Taejax flung himself at Sinclair, overpowering him. Both guns went flying out of his hands. The captain appeared surprised by the move, as were Albray and myself. Who was bluffing whom here? Only Taejax knew.

  Pintar was pleased to have the situation back under his control. ‘Now this event can end one of two ways,’ he said to Mathu. ‘You can allow me to take my impregnated whore home, where I will nurture her and our pending child with a healthy ORME addiction so they may enjoy eternity at my side whilst I enslave the human race and reassume control of surface Earth—’