Outlanders 13 Shadow Scourge by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

In the privacy of her own quarters, Brigid had no problem admitting to herself that the prospect of embarking on a mat-trans journey without Kane made her extremely nervous. She had made jumps without him in the past, but never had she experienced this degree of trepidation. She wondered if her relationship hadn't turned into one of codependence. That possibility only increased her anxiety and awakened anger—not so much at him, but at herself. In the living room, she took a seat at the comp- equipped desk against one wall. She had been forced to leave behind her few personal items when she escaped Cobaltville, but she'd found some big reference books in a storage room to take up space on the shelves. Once known as "coffee table" books, they were full of photographs of predark cities, and she enjoyed leafing through them. Their pictures allowed her a tantalizing, poignant glimpse into a world that had ended nearly two centuries before her birth. She switched the comp on, trying to force her mind away from speculation about Kane's present situation. He had proved time and again his almost supernatural resourcefulness, his ability to turn the tables on death and snatch not just survival but victory from the Grim Reaper's skeletal, strangling fingers. Once the comp had warmed up, she accessed the linguistics bank and input the word "Ocajnik." Within seconds a definition appeared on the screen. It was not a proper name at all, but an old Serbian word that originally meant "he who walks in darkness" and later came to mean "undead." Derivations included Orlok and Nygotha and Rakshasha. A footnote on the entry allowed her to open a link to the folklore database. A line of consternation appeared on her forehead as she read: In the apocrypha of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Hindu epic The Mahabharata, and the eighth-century Arabic treatise Kitab al-Azif, the Orlok is an old one, a race of immensely powerful entities who dwelt on Earth in the distant past, long before the rise of mankind. Orlok lusted after something in man and other normal life. According to legend, the Nygotha was a loathsome creature with a scorpion-like stinger in its mouth with which it enslaved the human soul. The Nygotha reportedly lived in the most lonely, inhospitable spots in the world. The Nygotha was later incorporated into classical Greek mythology as a chimera. Brigid felt gooseflesh pimpling her arms, and her shoulders quaked with an involuntary shudder. She knew the chimera of myth were monsters that combined aspects of different creatures. She made a mental note to ask Lakesh if he knew anything about the Rakshasha. The entry ended with a quote from the Kitab al-Azif: The old ones were, the old ones are and the old ones shall be. From the dark stars they came `ere Man was born, unseen and loathsome they descended to primal Earth. And the spawn of the old ones covered the Earth and their children endureth throughout the ages.

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