Diablo, p.1
Diablo, page 1
DIABLO
A KEHMET NOVEL
A NOVEL BY,
L.B. KEEN
©2018 Published by After Hours Publications, Inc. www.afterhourspublications.com
All rights reserved.
Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage without express permission by the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contains explicit language & adult themes suitable for ages 17+
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Kehmet World Language:
Kehmet: A warrio who came to the planet earth after their own world was destroyed a millennium ago.
Ancient: One who lived as a god, most ancients came on the original five ships. This will be gone into at a later time.
Amourite/ Amouri: A female/male who holds a higher than usual amount of life energy. This energy is often referred to as Manna or Mana.
Emorisa: Is what an Amouri becomes once she is bonded with a Kehmet, not all Amouri become Emorisas.
Kehmet, an ancient group of warriors who've lived on our planet for ions. Stricken with the effects of a virus that was unleashed on their people they escaped to our world and have lived among us, some even taking the name of our gods...
Prologue:
Three Years before Kehmet's awakening….
“What are you going to do?”
She had been dreading this question ever since she had shown up on her mother’s front porch, the moment her mother’s familiar, dark-brown eyes had met hers before trailing down her arm to her three-year-old.
Her house was in an area of Atlanta that was still considered a bit rural. The magnolia trees lined the driveway that led to a two-level house with vanilla colored paneling. The only brick that was part of the house was the porch and the lower front wall. The rest of the house was covered by a vine-like plant that gave the house the appearance of a witch’s house.
The steady passing of the wind shook the branches of the tall tree that knocked against the rain-gutters which created a clattering sound in the background.
Currently, she was seated at the dinner table beside the kitchen. With the smell of brewing berry tea in the air, her son was lying on the couch, knocked out from their drive from Louisiana. She wrapped her hands around the blue porcelain cup her mother had set before her.
Taking a seat across from her, her mother waited for her answer.
“I don’t know.” she finally admitted, taking a sip of the lightly sweetened brew. Setting her cup down, she faced her mother once more. “I just couldn’t stay with him anymore. I thought we’d get through it,” she bit her lips at the clear doubt in her mother’s eyes. “You taught me never to quit, and I didn’t want to quit my marriage mom.”
“I did raise you to not be a quitter. But I also raised you to not get yourself married to a man who likes knocking women around in the first place.” her mother said, not sugar coating her words. She wouldn’t have. Mrs. Rolanda Watson didn’t mince words. One didn’t become chief of police by being soft. She had yet to touch her own cup of tea. “I knew I should have stopped you from marrying that man, but... "
“I wouldn’t have listened,” Alexis stopped her. She shook her head and scratched lightly at her forehead. She was twenty-seven going on twenty-eight, and her mother had her feeling like she was a teen again. Suddenly, it was hard to swallow. Her hand that held her cup, started to tremble. “I really loved him.” Her voice grew thick, and before she realized it, she’d bent forward covering her face in shame. “Mom, what happened to the man I loved?”
She could hear how she sounded, lost and afraid. Alexis had never failed anything in her life. She'd been a winner from sports to academics. She always succeeded at her goals. When she met her husband, she knew he was perfect for her, and they fell in love right away. Sure, he could be a bit controlling and sometimes rough, but she thought he was being playful and hadn’t worried, because she knew she could physically take it. Now, she knew he had only been giving her a small glimpse of what he truly was on the inside.
She stiffened as she felt arms wrap around her and pull her close. The scent of Shea and honey surrounded her, and she turned and pressed her tear-streaked face to her mother’s chest, seeking comfort as if she was a three-year-old child. Her mother's delicate hand brushed through her dreads, detangling them in the gentle way that had always sent Alexis straight to sleep. “Shush now. It’s going to be alright,” her mother said gently, her southern twang becoming stronger as she sought to comfort her. “Everything’s going to be fine. Trust me.”
Wrapping her arms around her mother’s waist, Alexis let herself believe that her mother could do it, even though she knew she wouldn’t have an easy time of it. After all, her current husband, Chase Bell Jr., wasn’t an easy appointment.
No senator with dark ties could be.
Chapter One
Georgette Hamill was captured by the Kehmets. The missing cargo and its female proving to be a far more dangerous enemy than she'd first believed. In her current predicament, she knew only total defeat. There would be no rescue attempt from the organization. She had been abandoned, but her training from them was bone deep, and she wouldn't reveal anything to these abominations of nature.
Her eyes had been covered by a blindfold. Her arms were tied behind her back. The only thing keeping her stationed was the way the back of her steel chair felt. It was pressed uncomfortably against her back. Still, she wouldn’t reveal her discomfort to these people.
She inhaled a shuddering breath. The bruises along her arms where they had manhandled her were still aching. Her toes squeezed against the concrete floor.
The cold air that swirled around her, made her think they had taken her somewhere underground.
She felt something shift in the space before her. A long-forgotten human instinct was coming awake in the face of oncoming danger. Her skin pebbled. She stiffened. Her breathing was accelerating .
Suddenly, she was afraid. Something was coming, something dangerous.
“Hello?!” She yelled, turning her head right and left as if she could see through the [1]blindfold. No one responded. “Someone?! Please!” Her voice was growing stringent as her panic grew.
Sweat caused her forehead to glisten in the bright light. Dust particles floated down towards the ground, but right before they touched down, they stopped mid-air, and the black shadows rippled. Like a wisp of smoke, they peeled back. Giving view first to a bare leg, then to a bare arm covered in swirling markers. The walls bent inward and the glass[2][3] vibrated from the force of manna being manipulated.
Red hair moved without wind as the shadows brushed along the sun-tanned skin. Eyes of bright bronze looked upon Georgette with killing intent.
“HELP!” She screamed, knowing someone was there. She panicked trying to push herself back, only for her chair to fall backward. She hit the ground and twisted her body as if to flip onto her stomach and crawl away.
“Carson a tha thu a 'ruith?” (Why do you run?)
His voice came from the entire room. Each step caused Georgette to whimper. She worked feverishly, trying to pull at her bonds. Terror was calling for her to run, to escape the inevitable death that approached her.
“Chan eil teicheadh orm.” (There is no escape from me.)
He knelt and waved a hand over her blindfold. It disintegrated into nothing. She stopped moving abruptly. Holding her breath, she closed her eyes and prayed for the first time in her life.
He leaned in so that his lips were near her right ear. His eyes never met hers, even when she gained enough courage to face him.
“Seach nach eil teicheadh bho bhàs.” (As there is no escape from death.)
Her mouth opened in a silent scream of horror as he jerked his head towards her. Her vision filled with a bronze light and shadow. A searing pain caused her to release the scream that had been building in her chest. Her body jerked as he ripped through her mind, while absorbing all her manna. Grabbing her by the neck, he lifted her and turned, just as the door of the interrogation room burst open.
Soldiers in black battle rattle rushed in, all aiming their AK-47s at him. Red lights came to life all over his body, while a brunette entered with a grey-eyed male.
“Put her down!” The brunette's voice cracked like a whip with command. She held her weapon up, aimed steadily on his chest. “I’ve got fucking bullets with your name on them, if you don’t put her down!”
He ignored them. His eyes solely focused on the slowly dying woman. Georgette's eyes were turning red as blood spilled from them. Her body shook as if she were experiencing a seizure. The choking sounds she made caused some of the soldiers in the room to shift as her legs continued to kick fruitlessly against him.
“Ancient,” the room’s temperature dropped suddenly. “You cannot kill her. She is valuable to us.” The male moved forward. “Diablo, her death will bring you and I nothing.”
He didn’t care for the male’s tone, and finally, he looked at him. He sneered, not once weakening his grasp, “…Is this your way of dealing with our enemies,” he asked His voice rippled throughout the room, the vibration of power clashing with the cool aura of the male. “You coddle and bring th
Alton didn’t want to have to fight the dangerous male before him. Especially when they weren’t in the middle of nowhere, but in the basement of a secured building in the middle of Lexington. Even so, their one tie to learning about the group of people who were taking ancient Kehmet’s from their graves, was dying before his eyes.
His decision was made for him, when the Ancient Diablo released the woman’s body abruptly. She hit the ground and did not move.
“Weak,” was the word that he left behind before he disappeared amid the smoke of the shadows. His large form melted from sight.
Alton's expression didn’t change. Instead, he looked at the dead body in silence.
“You knew he would do this?” Connie's voice rang with accusation, forcing Alton to pull himself from his dark thoughts. She glared at him as she holstered her gun. “That’s why you told us to leave her down here alone. You knew he’d come down here and kill her.”
Alton didn’t deny or confirm. They had already dug into Georgette's mind and gathered the information needed. However, while the Organization [4]was an enemy that needed to be crushed, Diablo was a loose cannon. Killing and murdering anyone he remembered from the freight ship.
He needed to be stopped, and Hamill had needed to be punished.
So, instead of answering Connie’s question, he said, “It seems the hunt has begun.” He turned to leave, but Connie’s next question stopped him short.
“Don’t you feel any guilt for this? For using a human as bait?”
He didn’t look at her. Alton had flashes of guilt and moments of doubt. Yet for his people, he would kill all feelings and keep them safe, no matter the cost.
“No.”
With that, he left the lower basement, pulled his cell phone out, and dialed a number. “Grant…that Diablo followed the bait with such a distant jump, he surely will be weakened without a proper source of manna. Make sure you two find him before he does.”
Hanging up, he quickly made his exit.
~L.B.~
Her screams haunted him.
The smell of her burned flesh filled his nostrils.
There would be no relief until all his enemies were dead at his feet.
A part of him knew what he was doing was illogical. The face of the enemy was changing with the passing of time. First, he’d killed the holy man who burned her. Then, he killed the crowd of humans who watched. He had swallowed them in darkness and made them feel true damnation.
Later, it was the soldiers who’d been ordered to cut the wood for her pillar.
Still, as the wheel of time turned, the mountains of bodies grew. Kill! Kill! Kill!
Her demands for blood rode him now, as he searched for the others. The others who hadn’t freed him but left him in a crypt half-alive. Ever since Imhotep slammed the ornately decorated rhodium dagger into his heart, he’d been alive, yet dead, staring ahead and seeing all, hearing all but unable to move.
He felt his body rot and die. His skin was drying and pulling tight. His eyes were sinking and his jaw widening as he started to appear more and more like a corpse. He had felt death, but as the time passed, he’d grown almost at peace with his existence, until he heard the cracking of his shell.
The ground that had rested over him, had broken and minds had clambered against his conscience. He felt hope for freedom and the sweet, sweet release to see the sky once more.
Yet, the humans did not free him. They had grown fearful of the warning carved on the stone of his coffin. They’d tugged him out but left him within the confines of the stone.
They were his enemies now.
They deserve to die for the screams of pain his brothers and sisters had made while their heart, lungs, and intestines were ripped from them as if they were animals fresh from a hunt.
Death! Destruction! Kill! Kill!
The shrill voice demanded a blood price, and he would give it as much blood as it could gorge upon.
The black road before him was empty, and as he listened to sounds of nature, he could feel the odd sensation of eyes on his back. Turning around, he stared into the frightened gaze of a woman he remembered, but only for a moment, and in that moment, sanity returned.
Then, the eyes turned into lights, followed by the shape of a metal beast. His entire body jerked as the moving vehicle hit him. He felt himself lifted in the air, as his breath left his body. His body was weak, the manna he consumed burned quickly within him. The sound of a blaring horn and the screeching tires became background music as he hit the ground hard. His body rolled across the cement before it finally came to a halt.
He coughed. Blood was leaving his mouth as he felt his leg twist and turn as it tried to heal itself. The sensation of the Specter of Death lingered on the edges of his mind.
“OH, MY GOD!” A woman screamed, her figure was a blur as blood from his cut forehead dripped into his eyes.
She ran over to him, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Her heart pounded a frantic beat, thundering in his ears. He could smell her spike of fear and anxiety. She knelt by him, her hands hovering over him. Afraid to touch him, and then, she did. Her warm, soft hand pressed against his chest. He could feel something wet hitting his face. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” She kept repeating.
She pulled something from her pocket. Her breath caught when he lifted his hand, though with difficulty, and he lifted his chin. He was healing, but it was slow; he would need manna, and she would be a perfect source. Only when he met her worried and scared gaze, he found himself falling into a brown abyss. The depth of her energy was sucking him in. The last thing he remembered was her sweet scent of honeysuckle.
Chapter Two
Same Day...
Why[5] do Mondays always have to be so hard?
Alexis asked this mentally as she walked her wet, towel-wearing butt across the hallway to her youngest sister’s room.
“Did you take my soap again?!” Alexis angrily demanded as she pushed her sister’s door open without knocking. “Janet!” She shouted at her younger sister, who sat with her eyes focused on her tablet where she was sketching out a design of a brightly colored bird. Janet jumped at her shout. Turning around, she widened her eyes at the sight of her angry sister.
“Well?!”
She shook her head, frowning in thought. “I didn’t take it. Mom put it in my bathroom.” She set her tablet pencil aside and stood. Janet was tall, limber, and carried herself with the poise of many past years of doing gymnastics. Her smooth, dark skin appearing almost bruised under her eyes, as she was known for pulling all-nighters to finish art projects. “I wondered who it belonged to.”
Rolling her eyes at this, Alexis groaned and followed her younger sister into her bathroom. Her mother was the culprit. Did the woman not have soap herself? Alexis answered her own question easily. She managed to buy nice things, with better quality, and her mother saw no issue in borrowing them.
