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him on a mission to destroy Teshub and gain the operational codes for Tiamat with which he might preside over the Annunaki. But the plan had backfired, and Ullikummis—along with his tutor, the disease-
ridden Upelluri—had been ambushed by Enlil’s brother, Enki. That brutal exchange had resulted in Ullikummis losing both feet at the keen edge of Enki’s sword and subsequently being disowned by his father, imprisoned in an asteroid and exiled into space. A by-blow child of rape, two contentions had driven Ullikummis to survive through the long period of his exile—that his father had orchestrated his downfall for his own insidious needs, and that his mother, Ninlil, was an innocent in need of rescue from this monster.
    Now Ninlil’s genetic code was contained within the child known as Little Quav, whom Brigid Haight had enticed from Balam’s protection in the buried city of Agartha just six days earlier. The child seemed remarkably human, inquisitive and often finding pleasure in her own thoughts. Raised by Balam in the abandoned city, it was only natural that she should find joy in her own company, and Brigid had watched her at play in the cold, cavernous corridors of Fort Bensalem. The child would make a plaything of whatever came to hand, giving stones and material personalities and little voices when she thought no one was looking, frequently making up songs that she would sing to herself, endless loops of rhyming noises that—as often as not—were not words at all.
    Although the child looked automatically to Brigid for compassion and comfort, she expressed no fear of Ullikummis, in spite of his monstrous appearance. Seeing the two of them together made for an incongruous sight: the girl not yet three feet in height with the tiny, birdlike build of the hybrids, while he was eight feet tall and as solid as living stone. Brigid had been surprised to see that, despite his appearance and eminent practicality, Ullikummis was capable of tenderness. He befriended the child by honoring her, the way a child will honor a parent, a man or a god.
    In the curtailed week that Quav had spent at the rock-walled fortress, Ullikummis had lavished long hours speaking with her, patiently explaining her role in the Annunaki royal family, her destiny and importance to his own plans. He had done this both as a teacher and a friend, never once berating the young child for her impatience or because her attention span did not equal his.
    Ullikummis was exceptionally patient, Brigid had observed as he conversed with the child, something she had not really credited before now. She had first met Ullikummis in her other life, when she had been a Cerberus warrior opposed to all things Annunaki. Ullikummis had returned to Earth in his space prison, landing in the wilds of Canada, and he had immediately set about building his own army within the structure he called Tenth City. While he was monstrous and harsh in his manner, looking back Brigid realized he had never been impatient. Even as he suffered an attack and seemingly ignoble defeat, Ullikummis himself had simply stepped back, hiding himself in the shadows and letting the Cerberus warriors see what they wanted to see, believing him killed in an incinerator explosion. At heart he was an assassin, his father’s one-time hand in darkness, and so his natural inclination was to step back, to merge with the shadows and let the world turn around him while things ran their course, secure in the knowledge he could strike when the time was right.
    Brigid’s second meeting with Ullikummis had come in the Ontic Library, an undersea storeroom that housed the blueprints to reality itself. Ullikummis had accessed the library to amass more knowledge about his father from its sentient datastream, but his brutal incursion had damaged the structures of the library itself. Brigid had joined her then-colleagues from Cerberus in expelling Ullikummis from the incredible library before the damage proved