hilt. Two matching hooks had been drilled into the opposite wall and they held what appeared to be a human shinbone of roughly the same length as the sword, polished so that it shone in the flickering light of the candle flames. Two foot-high clay pots filled with the dried stalks of dead flowers sat at opposing corners of the room, placed at diagonals to each other.
A curious-looking chair waited in the center of the room. The chair appeared to be carved of some kind of plant root, and it had a seat and a back but apparently had no legs. Instead, the seat itself had been ignominiously placed atop a stack of house bricks, like some stripped-down automobile.
“Here she be,” Papa Hurbon rumbled, indicating the odd-looking chair.
Ohio appraised the strange chair for almost half a minute, pacing slowly around it to view it from all angles before she finally spoke in her soft drawl. “Where did it come from?” she asked, sapphire eye still peering at the chair.
Hurbon pointed to the ceiling. “Tumbled out of the sky,” he said, “just like my people told you. Gift from Ezili Coeur Noir. Instructed me to take care of it, tend to its needs. It gives visions in the head, makes you see beyond the Barriè.”
Blue looked quizzically at Hurbon for a moment until, finally, he elaborated.
“The Barriè, the spirit world,” he said. “So, you want?”
“How does it work?” Blue asked.
“Just sit down,” Hurbon encouraged, “and let the visions flow through you. Simple as that. Chair of the gods, you see?”
Ohio Blue looked dubious as she considered the man’s strange boast. Finally, she turned to her two bodyguards. “One of my people will test it,” she decided, “to verify your claim. If that is satisfactory to you.”
Hurbon shrugged. “The gods deserted me. What do I care?”
Ohio turned to her waiting bodyguards, who had assumed positions at either side of the entry door, their expressions grim. “Brigid? Kane?” she asked, addressing each in turn. “If one of you would be so kind…?”
Kane smiled sourly. A muscular man with steel-gray eyes and short, dark hair, Kane resembled a wolf, for his limbs were long and rangy and his body seemed furiously powerful, a coiled spring waiting to release. He was like a wolf in other ways, too, naturally adopting the role of pack leader and equally comfortable striking out on his own. Despite current circumstances, Kane was not a bodyguard, and nor was he an employee of the blond-haired trader, Ohio Blue. An ex-Magistrate, Kane was one of the Cerberus exiles. The Cerberus redoubt was hidden in Montana, and its residents were dedicated to the protection of humanity, tasked with freeing it from the hidden shackles that the alien Annunaki race had placed upon it. Kane’s role had taken him across the globe and beyond in his quest to eliminate the Annunaki’s nefarious meddling in the affairs of humankind, and his appearance here, as Ohio Blue’s bodyguard, was yet another instance of that ongoing struggle for freedom. He wore a ragged denim jacket and pants over the figure-hugging black weave of his shadow suit, which offered protection from radiation, contamination and could even withstand minor blunt-force trauma.
Ohio Blue was playing her own role admirably, Kane thought. An independent trader, Blue had a solid reputation in the Tennessee/Louisiana area and boasted a whole network of contacts through whom she could locate items of value and interest. As such, she had one important asset that the Cerberus team lacked—credibility among the minor players who occasionally ended up with something the Cerberus exiles might need. A recent meeting with Blue had resulted in Kane saving the woman’s life, and she had vowed to return the favor should he call on her to do so.
This operation, however, had not come at his urging but at hers. Aware of Kane’s interest in alien artifacts, Ohio Blue had contacted him with information regarding a possible sighting out here in Louisiana. In this case, Papa Hurbon, a houngan priest in a small voodoo sect hidden in the swampland, had come into possession of what was rumored to be a section of the Annunaki mother ship, Tiamat. It seemed that this odd-looking chair was that item, although Kane couldn’t be certain. He had been inside Tiamat during that final, frenetic battle that had resulted in the destruction of that incredible Annunaki starship, but he was hard-pressed to remember all of the details of the furniture that he had seen there. Kane nodded dourly toward the other bodyguard, indicating that she was better qualified to examine the chair.
The other bodyguard was a striking woman with an athletic body and vibrant long hair the red-gold color of sunrise. Her name was Brigid Baptiste and she had partnered with Kane ever since the pair had joined the then-embryonic Cerberus operation several years before. Brigid’s dazzling green eyes and high forehead suggested intelligence, while her full lips hinted at a more passionate aspect; in truth she was both of these things and more. An ex-archivist, Brigid Baptiste possessed an eidetic memory—more commonly known as a photographic one—with total recall for any item or text that she had seen for more than a few seconds. Dressed entirely in black, including a thin cotton shirt over her figure-hugging shadow suit and a snap-brim hat holding her hair out of her eyes, Brigid stepped forward and reached tentatively for the chair.
As the others watched, the beautiful redhead sat down on the barklike surface of the seat, settling herself until her back rested against the back of the chair itself.
Papa Hurbon leaned close to Brigid’s face, his broad smile forming once more on his lips. “Just make yourself comfortable there, little cherry,” he instructed. As the large man spoke, Brigid smelled something sickly sweet on his breath. “Let yourself go an’ the visions, they will flow through you.”
Sitting there, Brigid eyed the chair, confirming that it was of the same design as one she had seen when she had been aboard Tiamat with Kane just prior to the great starship’s destruction. Up close she recognized it, despite the damp, swamp-ring stain that had bleached away its original color. It was a seat from the bridge, a piece of salvage somehow fallen to Earth after the mighty spaceship had been destroyed. It was incomplete; the base was missing and Brigid was certain that its back part was missing a headrest. But, just as Hurbon himself had said, it was a chair of the space gods, fallen from the heavens, a gift to him from his lizard-skinned goddess.
Brigid slowed her breathing, closed her eyes and let the mysterious power of the Annunaki chair wash over her, waiting for the promised visions to begin. If what Papa Hurbon had said was true, then the visions from the spirit world might in fact be valuable reconnaissance information about their alien enemy. And if that was the case, then the chair itself could prove to be an invaluable asset to Cerberus.
Behind her eyelids, Brigid saw the familiar light-embracing darkness that was always there, a shadow playing across it as one of the people in the room moved across her field of vision. And for a moment there was nothing else. No great revelation, no fantastic visions of another world. She opened her eyes, fixing Hurbon with her emerald gaze. She was about to ask how long before the visions would begin, but he spoke first.
“Give it time, sweet cherry apple,” Hurbon said, the conviction in his voice clear. “I seen things there the likes o’ which man hain’t never seen before.”
Brigid smiled indulgently. “Time,” she agreed. She realized now what the sweet smell was that wafted off the man’s breath—he was high on narcotics, most likely painkillers for his missing leg. This voodoo priest didn’t need to sit in an alien chair to get visions—he was probably tripping most of his waking life, and who knew what his dreams were like.
Kane’s eyes met with Brigid’s momentarily, and he recognized the bubbling disappointment there. But even as he looked, he saw something change in Brigid’s appearance.
For just a second, Brigid saw something projected over the candlelit room, pinpricks of light hovering in place. “Do you see that?” she asked, her voice quiet, awestruck.
Hurbon chuckled. “The Barriè. Amazing, is it not?”
Brigid looked at the corpulent man as the pinpricks of light swirled across her vision. Stars. She was looking at the stars. It was a map, a star chart that could only be seen by the person occupying the chair. It was incredible.
Papa