Babylon Dragon

By Lea Ryan

On the day her mortal life ends, Adrea awakens in Purgatory to discover that she is a hunter of unredeemable souls. Corrupt human souls aren't her only problem. A Daemon, strives to annihilate God's order by destroying the boundaries between the living and the dead. Adrea's mortal brother, Kyle, is somehow involved. Adrea will decide whether saving his soul is worth risk to divine order.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lea Ryan
• Release date: May 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458074690

Lea Ryan

Lea Ryan is an author of romance and paranormal fiction. She lives in Indiana with a husband and an equal ratio of cats to fish to human children. When she isn't writing, she can be found playing video games, drawing, or hiding in a quiet spot, dreaming of things improbable.

Book preview

Part One

Resurrection

1

1974 Cape Town, South Africa

Hell can exist anywhere, depending on who you’re with.

Allister knew that to the rest of the beachgoers, he and Catherine probably looked like any other couple walking hand in hand on a picturesque oceanfront, the idyllic honeymoon scene. Had one of those casual observers initiated a conversation with him, he would have offered them a much different perspective.

To Allister, this scene was anything but idyllic. No part of the setting, not the breathtakingly clear sky or the fresh air rolling in from the sea, were enough to quell his growing resentment for his new life.

Maybe on the surface and with some practice, they could have passed for a loving husband and wife. They would never make it to that point. Between the wedding ceremony a few days prior and her relatives and his relatives and the cost of the honeymoon she wanted that he ended up paying for with his savings, he had endured more than enough.

He turned his tongue over to suck the last of the bourbon from his mouth and wished that he had brought a drink along with him. Alcohol was usually good anesthetic for the incessant yammering. How anyone could be so talkative so early in the morning was beyond him. Catherine squawked on about getting a house.

And it has to have one of those bay windows in the kitchen, you know, one of those with the bench with the pillows. And Abby has the most awesome tiled countertops with the cabinets to match. I know we probably can’t afford the cabinets right away unless we put them on credit. Or maybe we can borrow the money from Daddy. He already said that he would help us if we needed it. Although, he did just give us the car so we should probably give his wallet a break.

I’d like to give her a break. Allister thought.

He admitted to himself that in reality, cockcrow boozing probably wasn’t the best way to deal with his fledgling marriage. If anything, drinking would drive him closer to that thin line between feigned patience and unadulterated rage. But the prospect of a future in service to Catherine’s moods was enough to send any man into liquor’s warm embrace.

How ironic that someone could look so angelic with dollish wavy hair, bright eyes and a warm smile and still destroy a man’s spirit the way she did. Catherine wasn’t charming like people outside their relationship tended to believe. She wasn’t bubbly or even civil.

In the privacy of their home, she was a wrecking ball. She dominated Allister, manipulated him endlessly. She battered his free will on a daily basis with guilt trips and childish tantrums. God forbid she didn’t get her way.

But he could still think for himself, and he could fantasize about what damage he would inflict on her in the coming years of marriage. He’d even recently begun to give in to urges to disrupt her life.

Allister took pride in his quiet scheming. When he acted out, it was so very subtle that no one suspected him of any wrongdoing. He would sabotage Catherine in the cleverest ways, like tainting her foundation with peanut oil to break her out just in time for their wedding portraits or ‘accidentally’ destroying the zipper to her dress right before an important dinner party. In some ways, sprinkling frustration into her life was easier than breaking off the relationship, more fun for him.

So quiet.

Allister smiled, ran fingers through his sandy brown hair, and stole a glance at his bride. The first thing he wanted to do when he got home was burn that hideous orange dress she was wearing. Heck, maybe a bonfire of her entire wardrobe was in order. He would show her exactly what kind of man she’d married, and then she would bend to his will. Ok, so his quiet was running out.

He wasn’t sure what stopped this strange run of thought. Looking back later, Allister decided it could have only been fate.

What’s that?

An object caught in a tangle of debris left behind by the sea’s last tide shot splinters of light into the air. Drawn to it, he turned loose the pig’s hand and plodded over.

Allister peeled away the meaty tendrils of the sea’s refuse. What lay beneath was an onyx colored, elliptical stone about eight inches long.

What are you doing? Catherine’s voice shrilled behind him. The harpy no doubt felt betrayed by the turn of his attention to something other than her.

Give me a second. He swatted her fingers away from his shirt collar.

Where the stone should have reflected him and the annoying woman over his shoulder, there was another image, another reflection from some heavenly alternate dimension. The face there was so divinely beautiful that it enchanted him.

Tiamat. He knew her name with such immediacy that he wondered if they’d met before, perhaps in a radiant dream.

The vision slept, seawater paling her skin in ripples and setting her long, black hair to writhe. Her face was long, her forehead high. She reminded him of long-dead Egyptian queens, only Tiamat’s features were more extreme. Impossibly long, graceful brows, cheekbones higher than any mortal would dare pray for, lips bloody vermillion. Loveliness so alien must surely be some sin. He recognized cruelty in her expression of tranquil satisfaction. For now she was as quiet as he was.

When her death dreams of murderous vengeance spilled into Allister’s mind, he let them come, the screams, the blood. They warmed him to her, and he yearned to shake her gently awake. She waited for him.

I’m taking it with us. Allister dug his fingers under the sides of the large stone and lifted it from the tangle. A shot of cold passed through the skin on his fingers, coursed up the rushing rivers and tributaries of his veins. It flowed through his heart, and seized his body.

Tiamat had him. In mere seconds, she reigned all parts of his mind, from mountainous ambition to the smallest grain of thought.

There is no way that we are taking that disgusting thing back with us.

He turned to Catherine drunkenly. She loomed over his shoulder, a glob of sunblock crusting just above the outer corner of one of her eyebrows. He looked back to Tiamat.

Perfection.

Allister had to think fast. After three years, he knew how to work Catherine. Insignificant as she had just become, Allister didn’t need her making a scene. Money happened to be the music to soothe that beast.

It looks like onyx. It might be worth something.

Her face, predictably enough, brightened at these words. She would’ve let him take home a duck turd if she thought it was worth something.

Catherine flapped her fingers at him.

Bring it then, but hurry before someone sees you digging.

Allister held the stone in the sunlight. He could have watched Tiamat sleep all day and through the blackest night, from here until the sea’s wind peeled the last flake of dried rot from his upright and mummified corpse.

Wrap it in this. The pig shoved a rolled bundle of hot-pink terrycloth into his arms. Allister swaddled his love in the towel.

He headed back up the beach to their suite without sparing one ounce of his attention for Catherine’s thousand whispered inquiries about their treasure. When she fell behind, he moved faster. With any luck, she’d forget the way.

2

An hour later, Allister brushed the last particles of sand from the stone with the big powder brush from Catherine’s travel kit. No matter how many times he dried the surface, beads of saltwater resurfaced. He speculated that they might be tears, miraculous tears through stone, wept for him by his goddess. He smoothed them away to see the stone weep again.

Catherine paced behind him, ranting and cursing about missing dinner and a pain in her side. Each time he caught a glimpse of her buzzing into his peripheral, he thought of the years he’d committed to spending with her: the screaming kids, the nine-to-five-dead-end with an hour commute because she preferred to live in the suburbs, the vacations that would never really be vacations. And the sex? Revulsion slithered up his throat. The sex was acceptable enough for now, but what about in a few years when pregnancy spread her and lumps of fat started to spill over waistbands?

Tiamat, on the other hand, would remain flawless to the end of eternity, the perfect woman. Existence was far more tolerable with Tiamat. He touched her face with a trembling finger. Allister swore she stirred just the slightest.

Catherine’s pacing stopped midstep and she flattened into black silhouette, which drew back into the green fleur de lis patterned chair. As Allister rose from the desk, the king-sized four poster bed darkened at the touch of Catherine silhouette and the green chair and they receded into the wall beneath a painting of an oceanic sunrise. The carpet disintegrated into shadow. The wall went black to fade all from view.

He turned and the desk at which he’d so delicately brushed the sand from his love had vanished. Peace washed over as seawater set in thick around him. Fields of nothing in ink blackness. He felt far from God’s eyes here, not out of His sight completely, but far. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t move. He didn’t want to. He wasn’t alone.

If Allister had a breath in his lungs, the being floating before him would have most certainly taken it away.

So close. She was sculpted perfection even Nefertiti could never have hoped to achieve. Her features glared with extraterrestrial intensity.

Though her closed eyelids barred him from viewing her soul, he could feel her watching him. The two of them floated there in darkness, drinking deeply of each other for a time. Then with no word spoken between them, Allister offered himself to her. He thrust his chest out and threw his head back.

Four great tentacles rose from behind her. They were segmented, encased in a chitinous exoskeleton. Each tentacle terminated in a two-fingered claw which clicked one tip against its partner in a hungry snatching motion. In a whisper of shadow on shadow, they embedded themselves in his ribcage. Allister groaned through the seawater as they burrowed through skin and muscle into the well of his organs.

The more human part of her remained as stoic as death as her appendages felt around inside him. Their destination was somewhere much deeper than the meat. They found what they were looking for and latched on.

Pain all but ceased in that instant. He expected to feel the blood drain from his veins or his organs dissolve. He expected to feel her rip him apart from the inside, but nothing like that happened. No part of his physical being suffered once she found what she needed.

Tiamat suckled at the energy of Allister’s soul. He felt pieces of his spiritual essence leave him in gentle drags that he knew would bring his newfound love closer to the surface. He reveled in the feeling that he was able to provide her sustenance.

The red silk gown she wore enveloped him to block out the endless night. It urged him closer to her breast. He prayed their bodies would touch. They didn’t. Instead, the beating of their hearts, or maybe the pulsing of their souls, synchronized and their shared tempo pumped waves into the water around them.

Where he expected nothing but the miracle that was her attention in return, the mysterious being bestowed upon him a gift. She gave him her truth. The abyss of Tiamat’s prison gave way to a deeper void - chaos.

In the beginning only God existed. There among the shadows of chaos, where light gained the momentum it needed to burst into life-giving splendor, Daemonic beings formed in dark matter. Clusters of energy, hopelessly blind, they drifted through the heavens with little more than an innate sense of loneliness. These byproducts were not His intended. They were not His chosen. And when God went to work orchestrating the Earth and life, the clusters of energy gravitated toward the warmth of Creation.

The yet unmolded Daemonic life forms plummeted through Earth’s atmosphere, into the oceans and onto its land. Allister plunged as Tiamat into the primordial sea where in those first suffocating moments of life, saltwater shaped her body. Currents swept her along to carve her features most cruelly, slamming her against jagged rocks and dragging her over coral that sliced deep into her skin. When she had arms and legs, she thrashed. When she found voice, she screamed in the agony of it.

When Allister thought the pain might kill them both, the current ejected her into a bay. She floated there, suspended at half the shallow bays depth. Her bloodied back warmed. She turned. Beads of golden light shimmered along the surface of the water, pairing, meshing together, and parting again.

Air. Allister thought to himself. We need to get to the air. He commanded her as if what he was seeing wasn’t actually the past but something he could control by will. Or was it her urge that had formed those words in his mind? The line between them had blurred.

As one, Allister and Tiamat rushed toward the dazzle of sunlight at the top of the water. Tiamat’s head broke through to open air. The beginning flashed brilliantly only to fade back to the dark prison she and Allister occupied. It felt even blacker than before.

She began to pull away; he begged her not to go. He wanted to be with her a few seconds more. Tiamat withdrew and Allister cried out, not for the physical pain, but for the piece of his soul that went with her. The waters receded. She was gone.

Emotion poured from him, even before his eyes opened. Tears streamed down both cheeks and onto the concrete beneath him.

Tiamat. He moaned in despair. The link belonged to him, his reward for her rescue. What right did she have to take it from him? Allister never thought a person could feel so empty. He opened his eyes. Through the blur of tears and wooden railing, waves lapped the beach down the embankment with a hollow tunnel sound.

Where am I? Softness brushed the soles of his feet with the same rhythm of the waves. Wind pushed through the grasses below. Tiamat. Allister lifted his body away from the concrete and rose slowly, looking out over the deserted beach. Ribbons of white twisted across a gray-blue sky. Reality slurred behind a film that seemed to detach him from time. The place looked like the view from the hotel room he’d rented with…what was her name?

Thump, thump, thump. Allister spun on his heels and stumbled through curtains and the open French doors. He crossed the lush white carpet, unlatched the chain on the door. He opened it a crack, just then realizing that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Mr. Lafner. A black man in a suit forced the door open a little farther with a firm hand. Allister’s last name rolled off the man’s tongue in a quick, very British ‘Lafnuh’. It was the hotel manager. Sir, we’ve been attempting to reach you for hours.

Tiamat. Where is she? Allister wrapped his fingers around the edge of the door to close it slightly and shot a nervous glance around the room. Jesus. Allister hadn’t even noticed on the way through the first time, but the room lay in a state of disrepair worthy of any hardcore rock star’s approval.

Where are you? His eyes ran over the broken glass, the television face-down on the floor, the oh-so-conspicuous blood stain just inside the open French doors and the footprints leading from it to where he stood.

Mr. Lafner. The manager pressed the door open a bit more. Checkout time was four hours ago.

Four hours? The words drifted from him. How long had he been out? Two, no…three days? His gaze fell upon the stone, Tiamat’s hardened flesh, nestled in the satin on the bed he’d planned to share with another. Relief washed over him and the film between him and reality melted away.

Thank God. He said as a smile lifted a bit of the weariness from his brow.

Mr. Lafner, I really must insist that you vacate the room as soon as possible. The manager spoke in neat, nervous little flutters. We have reservations to keep and the staff really must -

With the film gone, Allister quickly found his footing.

Another day.

Please sir, there is a couple downstairs waiting for this very room.

I’ll pay double then. Charge whatever you need. Allister closed the door and replaced the chain without giving the manager another chance to protest.

3

Over the course of the next year, Allister moved about the southern portion of the African continent, suffering through an existence teeming with the insignificant and the ignorant. People blurred around him like faceless specters. Some served as obstacles; some cooperated. Most of them ignored him. He didn’t care what they did so long as their actions didn’t interfere with his divine purpose. Tiamat’s resurrection was the only thing that mattered to him.

Marduk, the Daemonic assassin who took her life, had scattered her body to the four winds in pieces. Allister devoted every breath, thought and action to gathering those pieces to reassemble her.

The stone he’d found on the beach was one half of her flesh. Merely being in Tiamat’s presence elevated him above ordinary men. Working toward her life made him more than human. He could feel that fact deep within the core of his being. Faith that she would some day reward him with power greater than he could imagine pumped through his veins. It fed his heart when the world looked darkest. Because of her, he was able to conquer inferiority. He became a demigod evolving.

As part of this metamorphosis, Tiamat ushered him into that realm of knowing that no mortal had experienced for thousands of years. Allister saw the past through her eyes every night when she fed from his soul. He absorbed every detail she showed him with fervid diligence. He witnessed Daemonkind flourish. He watched their power grow steadily as they scattered throughout primitive Earth to find seats in false pantheons as gods or goddesses.

Through dreams she gave him, Allister saw each face, each event, felt each sensation she did so long ago with supernatural keenness. The color of blood ran a saturated crimson. A fire’s ability to sear greatly exceeded the boundaries of its flame. The shades of Tiamat’s bronze skin, the way it shone in the sun, its shimmer when drying in the moonlight, lent artful grace to the smallest movement.

Experiencing her power always left him ravenous for more. No matter what she gave him, there was always more to be had. He developed a need to live her life in its entirety. Without the conclusion, without all of her, he would never be whole. To complete his evolution to god, Allister needed to experience her death.

But he had to resurrect her before she would allow him that honor, and that meant spending time in the modern reality he had come to loathe.

His waking hours held no joy except for the times during the day that Tiamat sent signs. Sometimes it was a wisp of perfumed breeze, a line of form in shadow. These manifestations kept him going.

If those sweet signs weren’t enough, he had her voice inside of him. Tiamat whispered such pleasant things. The sound of her from the back of his mind rarely ceased. Like some persistent conscience, she pressed him ever toward her resurrection. She gave him the direction he needed to find her. On a sweltering afternoon, on a bus ride through Botswana, she directed him to the man who would fund their journey.

What’s in the bag? Despite the crowd, a Frenchman named Remi zeroed in on Allister and slid into the seat next to him.

Allister reluctantly glanced up from his ragged copy of ancient Babylon’s creation myth, the Enuma Elish.

The two of them could have passed for brothers with the same tanned skin and athletic build, the same tangle of curls only Remi’s were dark. He noted the man’s nice clothes, the well-worn but nonetheless gold watch around his wrist. Remi looked a kind of rugged expensive, like designer in desert safari.

Why do you ask? Are you planning to rob me of it? Delving into his beloved’s death, the part of her that she still denied him, had sent him into a venomous mood. You would do well to move on if that’s your purpose.

Remi’s friendly smile faded, but he pushed it back out.

He will help you. Her insistence resonated in Allister’s mind.

Well, that must be something. What are you into?

Allister considered the question and for the first time on the four-hour ride, looked out the window over an arid Kalahari landscape.

You know, friend, I’ve seen that look in the eyes of men before, such dedication.

What do you mean?

I’ve traveled this continent north to south, west to east. I’ve befriended all types from archaeologists to journalists to thieves and murderers. He leaned in toward Allister. You seek something you were never meant to have.

Allister folded one corner of the papers toward him slightly.

Never meant to have? The audacity! Fate created him for this purpose. There was none greater.

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

The Frenchman smiled wider.

And judging by that look of inner torment, I’d say there’s a good chance it isn’t godly. He cocked an eyebrow. Is it evil?

To answer was to let Remi in on the truth he shared with his beloved. Sharing the truth risked all progress he’d made.

His money. Tiamat persisted in a gentle voice that overlapped the sluggish echo of his own thoughts. As much as he hated the idea, his queen was so perfectly correct.

Allister wasn’t a rich man. He’d done well enough back home at the real estate company his father owned, but after a year of traveling, his accounts were depleted and his credit maxed. Since he didn’t eat much anymore, finding what little sustenance he needed wasn’t an issue. It was the funds for transportation he lacked.

Allister forced a smile of his own and handed his copy of the Enuma Elish to Remi.

4

1976, Dezful, Iran

Allister detested Remi.

There was something in the way the Frenchman romanticized Tiamat that trivialized her struggle. When he spoke of Allister’s queen, he suggested post-resurrection opportunities. Perhaps she could take visitors or become a spiritual advisor to people who still held regard for ancient religion. Books would be written, new books with her first-hand accounts. If she did have supernatural abilities, she could use them to better the world, avert wars with her influence, solve problems beyond the capacities of mere mortals. This talk was just talk and for that previous stage in time, it was harmless.

Allister came to suspect in the days leading up to her resurrection that something more sinister brewed beneath the man’s aloof façade. The more dangerous scenario was that Remi realized she was more than some child’s fairy-tale. Tiamat was the key to the world and Allister had a feeling Remi knew.

The Frenchman had invested a fortune bribing officials and obtaining the various pieces of her body. He’d made no complaints and asked few questions of Allister other than what was needed to determine where they should go next.

The biggest indication of the threat was the jealousy he saw in Remi’s eyes nearly every time Allister awoke from that other life. He would find Remi shaken, his shirt soaked with perspiration. The first time it happened, Allister thought maybe he had some unconscious episode while out of his body, maybe he’d attacked. He realized later how inaccurate this theory was. How Remi wanted her. Allister could practically smell the lust on him.

Some times, Allister feared Tiamat would change her mind and make Remi her king. Some times when digging into his own fly bite ridden skin wouldn’t calm him, daydreams of torturing the Frenchman did the trick. And some times, when Remi passed out drunk, Allister would stroke the unconscious man’s exposed skin with the flat of a blade he’d stolen from a bustling market in Zimbabwe. Tiamat promised Allister he could kill Remi in the end.

Two years from the day he found her and one year from when Remi found him, the end of the journey arrived. The onset of the day of her resurrection brought with it a sharp deepening of the fervor. There was no gradual transition from his unusually black sleep to wakefulness.

Allister woke suddenly, naked in a twist of sheets, the furious pump of his