Of The Dark and The Deep_The Cryptid Council Series Book 1 Read online

  The final revenge of the Mother and the Father.

  In that space, their retribution breathed out, and in that breath was fire.

  Satisfying and faultless.

  3

  She was the last of the Øgdöåd. The dark göddess created not in the image of The Dark or The Deep but in that of her brother. They were both gröötslâng. The only two of their kind. But she wasn’t like him. She hadn’t been Gærüt’s gröötslâng in millennia.

  She had been created to fight for no other reason than to feel the taste of fight on her brother’s tongue. To answer some primordial rage trapped in the DNA of all things.

  Together they would rage and conquer and subjuGâte their brothers. For millennia that was their way. Together they had learned to unlimit time and unseal life.

  She would now go see Gærüt and reclaim what was hers. She was his reckoning. His eternal daughter of war. She loved him beyond control and hated him with the same rapacity and in that bluff he had killed her.

  *****************************************************

  Nänå Lång drank in large hasty gulps the icy brown liquid the redhead pink skinned man had called a star-buck co-of-fee while she ate his mind, draining him of his memories and learning of this new age. She had stood there in that alleyway, peeling back his psyche layer by layer, laying bear the history of the world as he knew it. She used her waning mågÿck to search his memory and his dreams and the minds of those attached to him to borrow from them enough knowledge to do what had to be done. It had been over 4000 years since she had last known the world. Eons since she had last spoken to any child of man.

  Child of man. Ha! She chided.

  All of you belong to me! I am Ûlghänå Ÿêmøjá!

  Ûlghänå is what the first tribe of men had first called her after she had wrapped them in flesh and blown existence into them. Ûlghänå. Göddess of the marsh and bringer of life. No Adam. No Eve. No Biblical Yahweh. She was their scripture, her will their gospel.

  Nänå had made her first man child tall and slim, his skin a russet, reddish brown. And so to, for all her other children, the first to rise and walk the world, she had colored them as any obedient mother would. She made them the color of tilled earth and tawny beige sunsets. Dark. Deep. Rich and cool. There was such beauty in the gradations of skin, she marveled. The imprecision of language prevented her from knowing words like umber, sepia, acorn, hazel, mahogany and chestnut, walnut, taupe, onyx, obsidian and sard, khaki and fawn, but there they all were before her. Her human palette, skin in infinite brown concert. She smiled at her Men and Women of the flowing steppe with skin screaming in rich warm bronze like the mellow-brown light that bathed their forest. Humans were her creation but she had always envied their design. So much so that she folded her Sihiosian mågÿck and wrapped it in the newly designed flesh of her human children. She became their pale amber göddess, the ochre of her skin richened to a carnelian blessing. Her new human body now like the fire-gold glow of dawn, she lifted her gaze, and with smooth tawny fingers drew her children unto her.

  For millennia upon, they walked together in power and beauty. She lived among her children and knew them as they came to know her.

  In the fullness of time the isizulu and isixhosa people of kwazulu natal began to worship her as Ûlghänå Ÿêmøjá, divine mother of mankind and she who would ever last and not burn. She taught them to call their home mbokazi unkulele, place of first winds. She was the göddess of the Traansvaal steppe.

  A place of astonishing beauty and beatific promise.

  It was there, under the gaze of rolling hills and sun drenched savannah, that her beloved brother-father, her Gærüt, had betrayed his promise to her. Betrayed their ethos.

  Now standing in an At-Lan-Ta alleyway, the taste of coffee and memory on her tongue, surrounded by the noise and brilliance of this strange new vista, she knew their reunion was long overdue.

  In life she had been his anchor. In death she had been recast.

  She would burn him in the flames of Sihiosia and devour his mågÿck skin-first.

  After all, she laughed, disintegrating the battered body of the redheaded man with a telepathic flick of mågÿck, and absorbing his essence,

  Anyone who’s ever eaten chicken knows the skin is the best part.

  5

  4475 Peachtree Boulevard. The Sallie Douglas Building. Penthouse.

  The entire block shook when the 2 gröötslâng slammed into one another.

  Lines of angry kaleidoscopic mågÿck cracked the world around it, creating a pressure inside that council chamber like a starving black hole. Joint fury made ballistic, Gærüt and Nänå attacked one another. Fangs and tusks and unleashed telekinetic rage ripping a path through their brothers, all standing apoplectic, watching the only two beings in the universe that could destroy them all ripping and slicing into one another. Angry Sihiosian tendrils of mystical energies arced out cracking walls and splintering millions of dollars of murderous artwork. That crackling whirlwind of powers hurled the 3 Swarovski chandeliers that hung over the conference table into the left row bank of windows, barely missing Åpsät’s feathered head.

  Brother stop! Åpsät yelled, putting himself between his Brother and his mågÿckal onslaught. Gærüt struck him with a göd bolt of radiant amaranthine energy that severed his arm and snapped his left wing, tendons and bone popping with a wet audible snap, slamming him into the floor with so much force he burst through and landed in a charred heap in the reception area vestibule 2 floors below.

  Nänå scoffed as hex and alchemy flowed up from her palms. On either hand she had conjured sturdy enchanted gauntlets. Each made from mystically bound diamond and quasar matter.

  “Sawbona bhuti. Ngiphinde futhi ngadlula ezinzulwini zobusuku ukuzonambitha igazi ezindebeni zakho”, Nänå snarled at Gærüt, mind and dialect reverting to the ancient tongue of the göddess, “Hello Brother! I have once again crossed the long night to taste our blood on your lips.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and slowly brought her tail behind her back. She put her weight on it and brought an open palm up, catching Gærüt off guard and sending him to the mat with that roundhouse.

  That got his attention. Gærüt sneered at Nänå and with a quick angry flick of his hand, as if to say. “Come on bitch”, the fight was on.

  Nänå rushed at Gærüt. He dipped and weaved right as she was about to reach him and slashed downwards with his claws. Nänå parried with one of her gauntlets and his claws clashed against metal with a shriek that sent sparks flying into the air. The göddess gröötslâng was quick and uppercut slashed at the hand to hand warrior, attempting to catch Gærüt and open the golden hide of her deity brother from stem to stern.

  Quickly, before Gærüt could respond with a follow through, Nänå swiftly punched him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of the göd gröötslâng, and stunning him for the second time with its fury and precision.

  The fight had taken Gærüt and Nänå dangerously close to the edge of the antechamber and Nänå had her back almost to the wall, despite her counter offensive.

  Gærüt’s quick blows had opened Nänå up for another volley and he obliged her, putting a simple sidekick into his sisters stomach, doubling her over.

  Taking the opening and using the environment to her advantage, Nänå telepsychically changed density, instantly going from bewitched lead to leaf, backflipping onto the ceiling and pushing off towards Gærüt. The maneuver sent her front flipping towards her brother and just before they collided, Gærüt flattened his body out, tail first, opting to wrap his bulging arms and bloody torso around Nänå’s neck instead.

  The dodge caught her off guard and as she was recovering her wits, she directed a manic pulse of energy out at Gærüt, putting the weight of that telekinetic jig into a powerful throw.

  Gærüt was pulled off his feet violently and thrown across the floor. He skidded and tumbled along the expensive hardwood, uncontrolled. He was stopped by the oth
er end of the council chamber partition, five feet from the wall at the back of the room and his favorite Alexander the Great frescoe. A groan escaped his lips as the pain from the attack started setting in.

  It was time to bring this dance to an end he sighed. With a shimmer he reverted to his human form and raised his hand, conjuring runic ghosts to appear around him, circling ever faster and creating a mounting bridge of power between he and his angry sister.

  Nänå looked up and her eyes stretched wide in horror and unsheathed fear. She knew what he was trying to do. Again.

  “This is going to hurt you, just as much...no... it’s just going to hurt you.” Gærüt promised Nänå with a forewarned wince.

  Ferocity facing off on the wooden floor of that council chamber, face contorted in blind rage, Nänå’s claws made a hissing whisper as she battled Gærüt’s gathering mågÿckal aggression, using mågÿck and tooth to tear long bloody welts across that wall of pure energy. She moved with preternatural speed, wrapping her tail around his throat and constricting. She sank her teeth into his shoulder, venom tearing away his mågÿckal shield. Gærüt screamed, eyes turning raven black, flecks of something cimmerian and fatal swimming within, as his beast form rallied and the star inside him answered his distress.

  He summoned his Sihiosian core and slammed Nänå against the wall in a crushing wave of energy rolling off him like a malignant sea breaking against her shore. He held her in cruelty and bale as she screamed in homicidal frustration, mind and mågÿck pushing back against her brother. Futile in the knowledge that Gærüt was infinitely and eternally more powerful, still she raged.

  Gærüt looked up at his assassin sister and a look of brief sadness flashed across his face.

  Nänå's body hung vertical for the briefest moment, suspended in an ephemeral moment in time, then she collapsed, tusks still firmly stuck into the ground. The rest of her hit the council room floor in an uncomfortable, almost cadaver like position.

  Before Gærüt’s power had come in for the kill and completely overwhelmed her, she teleported away. Back to her mountain home deep in the Transvaal. But not before she had seen what she had come to see. There it was. The Amulet of Sihiosia. Her Amulet. Hanging right there around his neck when he shifted forms. When she had awakened a world away she had reached out with her mind and couldn’t feel it’s power. She realized in shock and fear that she couldn’t remember how to summon it. The incantation The Mother and Father whispered to her in that last light to draw it to her. Why couldn’t she remember? No! Gærüt had found a way to block her connection to it. He had somehow stolen her memories that day so long ago when he murdered her. Sheathed in a blanket of mågÿck, She screamed and raged anew, lashing out in pain and hate so old it would not run.

  *****************************************************

  Gærüt stood there in the ruin of his office. She had returned and there was nothing in the universe that could stop her. But him. And what he had hidden away 4000 years ago in that realm with no name. He wanted to scream and never stop. He looked down at his hands and noticed one of his fingertips bleeding. "Dammit! I broke a nail!" He exclaimed in frustration.

  Sometimes, he lamented to no one in particular, It was a fucked up hateful truth to need the dog, but have to bark yourself.

  6

  As the cryptid cleaning crew went about removing the debris of broken chairs and fractured office equipment, setting right the canvas of göd carnage, he stood there silently as the sun rose slowly over the city. Gærüt rubbed his goatee and watched them scurrying back and forth, mind a million miles away from the shit that had just gone down. His assistant had said the human police of this city had called and would be sending a detective sometime later this morning to speak with him. He stood there in his gray $60,000 Kiton K50 tailored suit looking out the window at the Atlanta downtown skyline. He loved the nature and allure of the exclusivity inherent in such extravagances. If the suit hadn’t been enough to satisfy his luxury sweet tooth, his shoes would most definitely do it. Specially commissioned Jason of Beverly Hills Łöåfers. At $2 million, his shoes had arrived with over 14,000 full cut round white diamonds each handset in white gold. They had required an impressive two-thousand man hours to craft. Paired with the 340 carats, they came with soles made by none other than that iconic human, Tom Ford. An icon indeed. Some humans, at the very edge of “least”, weren’t a complete waste. At the present moment they held the record for the most expensive men’s shoes in the world.

  “Was it his vanity that rubbed so many the wrong way?’’, Gærüt chuckled to his reflection, reveling at the image staring back, “Fuck them. They can all eat it!”

  Taking a long slow sip from his cup of iced honey cinnamon latte from that Little Five Points midtown joint on Spring Street, Revelation or Revelator Coffee Company or something, he turned back to his computer monitor, and psychically typed a few buttons , opening up a Wechat videochat window with his nephew in China.

  -上海的那些生意过得怎么样？好了吗？肖于跟我说你上周出困难了对吧？龙人都是傻逼！(How are things with our Shanghai distributors? Fine I hope. Xiao Yu tells me there was a snafu last week. Bödhisåttvå Dragons can be slippery little shits.)

  -对呀，加了特叔叔。不过全部好了现在。父亲太过分了。我们饕餮都知道怎么处理任何我们龙人或貔貅表弟。(Yes, Uncle Gærüt, but things are regulated now. My dad over exaggerates. We Tåôtié can handle our Dragon and Qiôngqi cousins.)

  好了好了。知道了侄子。(Of that I suffer no doubt nephew.)

  嗯。那么昨天你们那儿都发生了啥屁事儿？全部怪物人世界都在八卦八卦。听人家说有了个zombie婊子打死你了！又打了啊批萨特叔叔！我操！(So what the hell went on over there yesterday Uncle? The entire cryptid gossip mill is working overtime. Did some zombie chick come back from the dead and kick your ass? Man I heard she fucked up Uncle Åpsät too!)

  侄子，你他妈说啥呀？你们年轻怪物人都笨蛋死！都不知道啥时候该他妈闭嘴。不是每个屁事你都要重复！白痴！（Boy, what the fuck are you talking about? You younger cryptids are too stupid to know which bones to bury and which to gnaw. Good bye nephew.)

  With that he clicked off the monitor and with a mind pulse hurled the computer against the wall.

  Something else for these motherfuckers to clean up and then gossip about.

  The carousel of employees and workers and assistants running in and out peering around corners and was starting to annoy him. Just then in walked Xiao Yu, the two guardian lion goons from earlier, Åpsät and Bæbälúayé, expressions fixed and deadly like thunder and menace rolling over a low hill.

  Xiao Yu immediately fell to his knees planting his left fist on his open upraised right palm in subjugation.

  -Brother I am so sorry. She invaded our day dreams and made us see great and terrible things. That’s why Åpsät and I were fighting one another when you got there. She made me sic tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber over there on you before any of us knew what was happening. I’m sorry Brother. DUI BU QI. Sorry!!

  Before Gærüt could answer his 4th brother’s guilt and supplication, Åpsät Õsòòsi shot a fire bolt at the sofa in front of him and spat,

  -Gærüt, You motherfucker! You lied to us! And worse, You almost killed me!

  -You exaggerate brother. Here have some of this delicious cinnamon latte, and let us all talk.

  -Latte? LATTE? Can you believe this asshole, Baba?

  -Calm down Õsòòsi, Bæbälúayé said in that calm soothing reassuring tone meant to de escalate, I healed you and now both your arm and wing are fine brother. Take it easy.

  Sometimes the tone wins. Other times. Well,

  -Fine? You’re missing the göd damned point! He...tried...to...kill...me! He almost ended my life! Do you understand what I’m saying to you!

  -Yes we understand Åpsät. Because You’re saying it very loud and very often.

  -You know what,
fuck you Gærüt! It’s a good thing self importance isn’t fatal. Swanning around like your cosmic shit doesn’t stink.

  -It doesn’t, Brother. I don’t shit cosmically. Neither do you. Down the porcelain tunnel like everyone else.

  -You know what I’m talking about asshole! You make it so easy for us all to want to hate you Ôlörûn.

  -Brother you only call me by my göd name when you brood. Stop it. Seriously, taste this cinnamon coffee goodness. I swear they must use a special bean or something.

  -Go right ahead Ôlörûn. Crack your jokes. Make your funny flippant little hahas. You know, I don’t in fact know who’s worse. You or Her. She at least had a reason to...

  -Shut your mouth Åpsät. You’ve said your piece. One more word in the wrong direction and things will get...regrettable.

  A slow rumble of energy beginning to sizzle the fibers of his $60,000 suit, Gærüt stood and walked around his desk. In an almost stalk, Gærüt’s invisible lines of elemental energies pushed aside the chairs in his path, closing the distance between him and his youngest brother.

  -You know what Åpsät, since we’re being honest...I’m tired of your bullshit woe is me drama. Maybe if I had been there for you a second sooner back in Hiklorim or stayed a second later, you wouldn’t be here to bitch about all the things I’ve done to you. Or to her. Yes. I allowed you all to believe a horrible fiction. I did it for you all. You and this world. And none of you have ever understood. I love you Åpsät. I do. Why won’t you see that?