Akhnaton grinned, exposing blood-filmed teeth. “Not the way I’ll torture you. Hear my words and believe what I say—Krysty will be my queen. I’ll just have to persuade her a little less subtly than I intended. In two days, the capstone of my pyramid will be placed. Then there will be a ceremony, culminating in our marriage.”
Ryan didn’t stir, didn’t change expression.
“And she’ll agree to it,” Akhnaton continued. “By the time the ceremony is over, the only thing she’ll care about is how soon and how many royal heirs I can plant in her belly. I’ll enjoy the seeding, Cawdor. And so will she. I’ll make sure of it.”
Ryan struggled to keep his homicidal fury leashed. His mind seethed.
“Get back to your barracks, Cawdor,” Akhnaton commanded. “You’ll be hurting tomorrow, but consider yourself the most fortunate dung beetle who ever lived. You went toe-to-toe with a god and lived to regret it.”
Chapter Nineteen
Krysty saw the whole world spread out below her, like a tapestry of horror. She passed like a phantom wind over gloomy wastes, gazing down on the legacy of the nukecaust.
Where there had once been lush and fertile fields, the desert swept in, a sea of sand lapping at the spires of half-buried skyscrapers. Instead of cities and towns, only vast, ugly craters pockmarked the ground, seething with poison.
Ungainly caricatures of human beings lurched across the wastelands, forlorn monstrosities birthed and molded by outraged nature. She tried to cringe, praying they wouldn’t see her.
She soared over toxic swamps, percolating with a foul and fetid soup, and she watched people desperately trying to snatch the most meager of existences from their half-dead surroundings.
She saw babies dragged cold and lifeless from rad-damaged wombs and she wanted to weep, but phantoms couldn’t shed tears.
Flying up and arcing down again over bitter seas, she plunged through a maelstrom of buffeting memory, reliving in a heartbeat all of her own suffering at the hands and bestial imaginations of the depraved men who sought to rule Deathlands.
She didn’t hate them now. She pitied them so deeply it was almost a despair. Deathlands had made them, turned their ambitions into ugly cravings to control the chaos by any means necessary.
She was flung headlong on the swirling gales, the clean, fresh wind of hope filling her lungs with an intoxicating purity. She raced upward toward the sun, exulting in its life-giving heat, its eternal power.
The brilliant, fiery surface greeted her joyfully, miles-long tongues of flame lapping toward her in a burning yet arousing embrace.
She knew the sun would change the world, transform its horror into beauty, saturate it with sekhem and return it to health. She thought, Neither from nor toward…at the still point, the dance of life began anew.
But the sun wanted—needed—her help. It couldn’t do it alone.
The sun caressed her, showered her with hot, fierce kisses. Love and desire swelled within her, building, rising, cresting.
The sun whispered, “You belong to me. You have always belonged to me. Long have I awaited you. You are the mother of a dynasty that will last ten thousand years.”
She spread herself wide, inviting the sun to enter her, to fill her—
Krysty awoke with the echoes of her own cry ringing in her ears. She sat up, shuddering, feeling her hair knotting and twisting in wild convulsions. Her body was damp with sweat, damp with more than sweat. She whispered hoarsely, “Your dew is in all my limbs.”
She flung aside the sheet and swung her legs out of bed, her knees weak and wobbling. In the dim light of the brass lamp suspended from the ceiling, she saw her sleeping gown was in disarray and saw the flush rising from her breasts up to her throat. Her heart beat fast and frantic, then slowed to steady rhythm.
She groaned, not with pleasure, but with shame and fear. Squeezing her eyes shut, she said aloud, “What’s happening to me? Gaia, give me the strength.”
AKHNATON OPENED HIS EYES, drawing in a shuddery breath. He murmured, “My dew is in all your limbs.” He lay back on the couch in his private chamber, waiting for his wild pulse beat to steady and the throbbing in his temples to abate.