Eye of the Oracle oof-1 Page 7

  Naamah felt a sudden shove. She toppled over and plummeted headfirst toward the sea, screaming. Just before she struck the waves, blackness snuffed her thoughts.

  Makaidos lifted his head. “Did you hear that?”

  Thigocia’s ears twitched. “A scream?”

  “That’s what I thought. But it was brief. . silenced.” Makaidos raised his body, his weak legs shaking beneath him. “I think it came from the window.” He aimed his eyebeams, casting twin rays toward the ark’s breezeway. The dim rays darted around the walls of the listing ark until they landed on the window. A gust of wind threw open the shutter. It banged against the hull, squeaked loudly as it drew back toward the window, then banged open again.

  “Just the shutter squeaking?” Thigocia asked.

  “No. It was different. . louder. A human voice.” Makaidos lumbered into the corridor, passing Ham’s quarters. Baby Canaan lay swaddled in the hay, alone. It was Ham’s turn to patrol the lower decks, so it made sense that he was gone, but Naamah only left her bed to eat and take care of personal hygiene, and she usually took Canaan with her. She had always been so possessive of her baby, even keeping him away from his other relatives, it seemed strange to see him lying there alone.

  Makaidos extended his neck and gently nudged the baby with his snout. Canaan squirmed and reached his pudgy arms over his wrappings, stretching his mouth into a yawning oval. The dragon nodded. The baby seemed fine. Perhaps Naamah had thought him old enough to sleep on his own. Maybe she decided to accompany Ham this time. They did not get along well, certainly not like Noah and Emzara, or his brothers and their wives. Spending time working together with the animals might be just what they needed. But why the scream? Could she have fallen down the ladder?

  Makaidos lumbered to the hole leading to the lower levels and peered down. Although his eyebeams were dimmer than usual, he could still see the deck below. A single lantern hung nearby, casting yellow flickering light on the gopher wood planks. He stretched as far as he could, but the light gave no hint of any awakened animals, except for a few birdcage tenants, including two owls that stared back at him, their eyes wide and curious.

  A strange shadow seemed to crawl along the floor, like fog creeping from one cage to the next. The lantern’s weak glow gave only a hint of the fog’s depth and color shallow and black as it drifted closer to the owls. The other birds seemed to take no notice, and the owls kept their gaze locked on the dragon’s beams, as though the fog were invisible to their probing eyes. One of the parrots, however, shifted back and forth, bobbing its head excitedly.

  A hint of danger crept over Makaidos’s body. After so many months of safety, the subtle tingling that buzzed through his scales seemed like a distant memory, yet alarming all the same. He blinked at the fog. Could that be the cause? It would have to be a powerful evil for his weakened senses to pick it up.

  A loud footstep clumped on the lower deck, and a pair of sandals came into view. As Ham reached for the lantern, his feet swept away the black mist. His glance landed on Makaidos, then quickly averted. “Strange fog,” he mumbled.

  Makaidos shut down his eyebeams. “Exactly my thoughts.”

  Ham waved his hand and kicked at the mist. “It’s nothing, really. It’s been showing up on the lower decks every morning for a week, but no harm has befallen either man or beast.”

  “So the animals are thriving?” Makaidos asked.

  Ham chuckled. “They don’t have much to do, so we’re seeing more births than we expected. In fact, the elephant is about to calve. I was coming up to get Shem or Japheth to help me.”

  “Oh. I thought maybe Naamah was down there helping you.”

  “Naamah?” Ham hesitated, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Yes, she’s down there, but she’s too small to help with the elephant.”

  “I see.” Makaidos pulled his head from the hole and aimed his eyebeams into Shem’s quarters. The faithful son of Noah slept soundly, nestled with his wife in their pile of straw. The soothing noises of human sleep drifted into the dragon’s ears, twin sounds of contented, rhythmic breathing.

  Ham climbed up the ladder and stood with his hands on his hips. “It’s a shame to wake them.”

  “Indeed.”

  Ham shuffled in and nudged Shem’s shoulder. “Elephant’s calving. Time to get up.”

  Makaidos slunk toward his stall, listening to the quiet voice of Shem’s wife behind him.

  “Of course I’m coming with you again. Pregnant or not, I can move straw around and clean up the blood.”

  “Okay,” Shem replied, “but be careful on the ladder rungs.”

  Noah stepped out of his quarters with his wife. “So,” he said, “young Madeline must have been with child, er, with elephant, before she came on board.”

  Emzara held out her hand. “Let’s go! I have never seen an elephant birth.”

  Stopping at the entry to his quarters, Makaidos looked back. Shem’s wife walked beside her husband, one hand on her belly and the other holding tightly to his hand. While Shem descended the ladder, she looked back at Makaidos. When their eyes met, she beamed. Such a smile! It would have melted the heart of the stoniest cynic. There was no doubt. Motherhood had dressed her with sheer joy.

  Noah kept a grip on his wife’s elbow as she maneuvered into position on the ladder. When she was safely on her way, Noah let go, straightened himself, and smiled at Makaidos. The old man nodded. “You seem perplexed, my dear dragon.”

  Makaidos sighed. “Watching humans has often perplexed me. They are so strange.”

  Noah stroked his chin and nodded again. “Is that so?” Carefully grasping the ladder, he started his descent, but before his head submerged below the deck, he stopped, and his bushy eyebrows knitted together. “Is love really so strange, Makaidos? Even at my age, after hundreds of years of being together, my wife and I are closer in oneness every day. My heart will always be with Emzara.” Noah then disappeared below deck.

  Makaidos slid into his quarters and gazed at Thigocia. With her eyes wide and her ears rotating, she looked more beautiful than ever.

  “Did you figure out who screamed?” she asked.

  “It could have been a parrot down below. It seemed pretty nervous.” Makaidos crawled to the middle of their stall and kept his gaze locked on Thigocia’s eyes. “There is a dark fog creeping about. That might have spooked the parrot. I felt danger when I saw the fog, but then Ham showed up. I think I might have felt him coming.”

  “I see.” Thigocia lay back down and scooted farther into her corner. “Are you going to sleep?”

  “No.” Makaidos lumbered back into the corridor. He lay on his belly but kept his head high as he turned to Thigocia. “I will wait here until Noah returns, and, if you are in agreement, I would like to attempt the covenant veil again.”

  A sharp chill snapped Naamah awake. She gasped for air, flailing her arms, ready to battle the pounding waves, but rather than the wetness she expected, cool dry air bathed her body. Jerking her head back and forth, she tried to sort out the blurry images. Everything seemed to bounce around, jumping and shaking, but as her senses adjusted, a view of sea waves and foam came into focus below her. Her arms continued to beat the air, each flap taking her farther away from the water.

  Glancing in the direction her hand should be, she caught a glimpse of a wing, a pinion of leather that ended in a wrinkled, sharp-nailed paw. It clutched something, but she couldn’t remember what might be in her grip. In fact, she couldn’t remember anything after Morgan shoved her out the window. Had she really died and turned into a wraith like her sister? But the body she inhabited wasn’t like a raven. Her wings were too leathery, and she had strange fingers instead of talons. What kind of animal had she become? A bat?

  Naamah screeched, but her voice spurted out in a series of high-pitched squeaks that hardly resembled words at all. Cursing to herself, she searched for the raven and found her circling near the window above. The bird looked bigger than before as it straightened in
flight and sailed to the other side of the ark.

  Naamah tried to follow. She beat her wings furiously but couldn’t figure out how to fly in a straight line. As she struggled to stay above the churning floodwaters, she continually corrected her awkward meanderings.

  After a wind-blown flight that seemed to take an hour, the raven landed on a mountaintop in a patch of tender grass between two boulders. Naamah, her wings faltering, swerved left and right and finally smacked into one of the boulders before tumbling into the grass. She lifted herself and sat, flapping her wings to keep upright, but with one paw wrapped tightly around her treasure, she kept tilting to the side. She tried to speak again, and this time her squeaks sounded like the voice of a tiny child. “What. . now. . Morgan?”

  “Patience, Naamah,” the raven squawked. “Restoration is at hand.”

  Morgan spread her wings and wrapped them around Naamah. As they perched together, black smoke arose on all sides, penetrating Naamah’s nostrils and bringing the foul stench of decaying carrion. As she closed her eyes to ward off the stinging fumes, her body stretched, her head expanded, her wings tapered, and her claws thickened into fingers. When she reopened her eyes, Morgan stood before her.

  Naamah patted her side with her free hand. Something was different. Her fingers seemed to pass through her waist, but not as through smoke. Her body felt more like thick gravy. She raised her hand and stared at her palm, flexing her fingers as they melded into each other. A feeling of horror erupted and spilled out in a loud wail. “What happened to me?”

  Morgan stroked Naamah’s hair. “What matters is that we’re alive.”

  “So I’m a wraith now?” She closed her hand into a fist, and it congealed into a fingerless club.

  “You are more spirit than substance, but you’ll learn to mold yourself into a variety of shapes. Still, neither of us can last long in this world without a regular visit to our lord’s domain. He must infuse us with power if the light of this world wears our bodies down.”

  “So I can’t go back to the ark?”

  “Once I explain my plan and teach you how to solidify yourself, you may return. Noah’s family cannot be allowed to know you’re missing.”

  Naamah breathed a long sigh. “That’s good.”

  Morgan crossed her arms and squinted at Naamah. “You’re not seriously worried about that baby are you?”

  “No. . it’s just that. .” Naamah’s voice trailed off.

  “Don’t worry. If my plan works, Canaan will be yours forever.” She nodded at Naamah’s hand. “Were you able to bring the grapes?”

  “Oh. .” Naamah opened her fist, revealing five wrinkled grapes. “I forgot about them.”

  Morgan surveyed the mountaintop, a dome that flattened out into about five acres of rocky soil. The floodwaters lapped against the shoreline about two hundred paces upwind, and, beyond that, across a mile or two of arching whitecaps, the ark listed against the pounding waves. She pointed toward a flat area midway between the shore and where they stood. “We’ll plant our vineyard there.”

  “How long will it take to turn five grapes into a vineyard?”

  “Let’s just say that they will grow at a wickedly fast rate, and when Noah plants his own vineyard, the same power will cause his to thrive in stunning fashion. Then, we will graft our vines onto his. The grapes from our grafted vines will be better than the rest, so he’ll be sure to make wine from them.”

  Naamah twirled her ghostly dress. “And that’s when the fun begins?”

  “Yes. The wine will put him into enough of a stupor for you and Ham to get something I want.”

  “That’s it? Get Noah drunk and steal something from him? Sounds too easy.”

  “Not as easy as you might think. For us to use the child, Noah must curse him and make him leave his family. I’ll tell you how to do it, but it will require perfect timing and your best acting performance.”

  “Beguiling men is my specialty,” Naamah said, grinning.

  “Patience, Sister. Bide your time as a loving mother and doting wife. First, the grapes must grow, then we will speed the fermentation process. When the harvest celebration begins, wait for Noah to drink, and then. .” Morgan smiled and raised an imaginary cup into the air as if proposing a toast.

  Naamah joined her with a cup of her own. “The wine will do the rest!”

  A dark mist filtered between the two uplifted arms. Naamah lowered her imaginary cup and searched for the source. A blanket of black fog hovered close to the shore just above the water. A stream of darkness extended from it, reaching out and trying to loop around their bodies.

  Morgan closed her eyes. “Do you hear that?”

  Naamah kept her head still, concentrating on the surrounding noise. “Just the waves. What do you hear?”

  Following the mist’s beckoning arm, Morgan padded her bare feet silently along the virgin grass. “Not waves. Voices. Pleading voices.”

  Naamah followed Morgan to the shoreline. As they stepped into the water, the black fog swirled around them, congealing into dozens of dark phantoms that pawed at their bodies like anxious dogs. Naamah couldn’t feel their swiping paws, but a sense of heaviness filled her mind. “Who are they?” she asked.

  Morgan smiled and cradled one of the ghostly shapes in her arms. “The spirits of the Nephilim.” She closed her eyes for several seconds as the ghost caressed her ear. When she opened her eyes again, she sighed. “This one tells me that the flood killed their bodies, but their spirits had no place to rest. The human dead went to the circles of seven, and the Watchers were banished to Tartarus, but these hybrid children were prevented from entering either domain. They searched for suitable bodies in the ark, but a strange spiritual force banned their entry into the humans, and the animals in the hold were stupid beasts, unable to open their minds to allow them in. So they wander here as sea fog, unable to walk or breathe, like lost souls in an eternal nightmare.”

  “Isn’t there some way we can restore them?” Naamah asked. “Maybe by using Samyaza’s seeds of power?”

  “I don’t know. Our little gardening plan is designed to grow new Nephilim, not restore their wandering spirits. Still, there might be a way to find bodies for them. If not from Canaan’s line, then perhaps from another source.”

  “Another source?” Naamah tilted her head. “The only animals left in the world were on the ark.”

  “Very true, yet there is one animal our lost children have not yet explored, a beast with brainpower rivaling that of many humans, perhaps even surpassing them.”

  Naamah tapped her chin. “They weren’t in the animal hold for these spirits to find.”

  “And they will be at their weakest when they finally exit the ark.” Morgan laid the phantom in Naamah’s arms. “It will be up to you to teach them a siren’s song.”

  “A song to tempt the heart, arrest the guardians of the mind, and open the gates of the soul.” Naamah smiled. “I can do that.”

  “I thought so. Who has ever been able to resist your charms?”

  A flutter of wings drew Naamah’s gaze skyward. She pointed at a white bird flying overhead. “Look! A dove!”

  Morgan followed its flight as it circled their island. “It seems that a certain raven never returned, so Noah has been sending doves out to search for land.” In a puff of smoke, she transformed back into a raven and took to the air. Seconds later, she returned with her claws embedded in the dove, blood dripping from its broken neck. As she fluttered to a landing, dropping the dead bird on the ground, she cackled, “I’ll let the next one live, Noah, after I plant my vineyard. Then it will be time for you to come out. And bring those lovely dragons with you.”

  Chapter 5

  The Spectral Promise

  Makaidos stretched out his body on the carpet of fledgling grass. The sun’s warm rays felt like the massage of strong, healing hands as each scale soaked up the delicious radiance, recharging every aspect of his dragon nature. Thigocia slept next to him, her long neck curled around
the base of his. The scales on his other side begged for sunlight, but he didn’t want to turn over and awaken his mate. As close to death as she had come during the months of darkness, she needed sleep as much as she needed the sun’s precious energy.

  A loud trumpet blast sounded from the water’s edge. Makaidos lifted his head toward the ark. Japheth and Shem were leading the elephants through Eve’s door, the new calf following close behind. The male trumpeted a second time, as if saluting the bright rainbow that painted the misty clouds to the west.

  Makaidos sighed. The rainbow promised a spectrum of joy, each color representing a different bliss in the new paradise. The sun poured down warmth from a clean, clear sky, baking virgin earth that yearned to sprout new offspring from her cleansed womb. The rich soil carried no trace of footprints from either man or demon. Every Watcher and Naphil had perished, and the world now held no memory of their corruption. The weary souls on the ark seemed refined by fire, rejoicing in each moment, bouncing with every step on the newly purged earth.

  Resting his head on Thigocia’s abdomen, Makaidos listened for signs of life within a gurgle, a click, a soft hum that played in Makaidos’s mind like a glorious hymn. He closed his eyes and smiled. Maybe this world would be a safe place for dragon younglings after all.

  As he tried to sleep, dozens of noises disturbed the quiet parrots squawking, cattle mooing, even the buzzing of a bee in his ear. Still, one odd sound rose above the others. He perked up his ears. A haunting voice blew by, like a ghost whispering a song in the breeze.

  The chill of danger swept across his scales. He raised his head again. A stream of dark mist flowed across both dragons. Curling around his snout like a translucent python, the mist wrapped his face and shrouded his eyes. Makaidos leaped to his feet and thumped his tail. “Thigocia!” he shouted. “Awake!”