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of his mouth as he tried to lift himself, but the section of catwalk was too heavy for one Annunaki to move.
    Yet there was no time for Enlil to turn this momentary respite to his advantage. Already more of the Igigi creatures were swarming toward him in their stolen bodies, encircling him and cutting off any possible chance of escape. Not one of them spoke; they just stared at him through the slit eyes of the Annunaki, their hate burning in those putrid yellow depths.
    Enlil pushed against the hard floor, struggling to stand. But he was too slow. Already another combatant, this one in a beautiful female Annunaki body covered in scales of cobalt blue, was lunging at him with deadly purpose. The Igigi drove both knees down into Enlil’s gut in a savage drop-blow before he could
clamber off the floor. Enlil slammed back to the tiles, his spine jarring with the bone-crunching impact. Without hesitation, Enlil’s arms snapped out and he grabbed his attacker by the throat, tightening his grip against the armorlike scale plate there.
    “Look at me,” Enlil insisted, biting the words through clenched teeth. “I am your master.”
    In response, the blue-scaled Annunaki hissed defiantly, spitting a glob of saliva into Enlil’s face. With a swift twist of his hands, Enlil snapped the creature’s neck, tossing her aside like so much worthless trash. They were not true Annunaki, Enlil sneered; killing them was easy. More than two hundred of the possessed bodies surrounded him, Enlil saw, and he struggled to his feet where a stream of water sparkled past him.
    “I gave life unto you,” Enlil insisted, his tattered cloak swirling about him as he turned to face each of the slave class, piercing them with his indomitable gaze. “ Tiamat is your mother, but I fathered you.”
    He searched the crowd, eyes meeting and passing the glaring eyes of more than two hundred creatures who had spent millennia waiting for payback. Overhead, another great chunk of the ceiling peeled away like skin and crashed down, electricity playing across it like witchfire as it slammed to the plate floor behind the Annunaki forms.
    “I am your master,” Enlil reminded them. “Without me, you are nothing, simply purposeless creatures.”
    As one, the Igigi stepped toward Enlil, their minds working in unison, bringing their final, brutal judgment on this monster who had once ruled them. They were in uni-thought, the shared horror of spending over three thousand years without bodies creating a kind of melded mind, frayed and blurred, no longer able to differentiate between individuals.
    Enlil’s shoulders shook as he struggled for breath, the exertions of this battle so soon after he had fought with Grant and his Cerberus colleagues draining his inner resources. Once again, lightning flashed overhead, lancing across the ceiling like a white-hot claw.
    “I am Enlil,” the overlord stated. “Enlil the destroyer. The one known as Dagon, as Kumbari, as the Imperator. A hundred names for a million peoples, and every one of those peoples obeyed me.”
    As one, the Igigi in their Annunaki shells took another menacing step toward Enlil, blocking him off on all sides, caging him in place.
    Enlil glared at them, the power of his will lancing through his eyes like the hypnotic stare of the cobra. “You will obey me,” he told them, his voice firm despite his panting breath.
    As one, the Igigi took another tentative step forward. And then, as one, they stopped.
    Enlil turned to survey them, his gaze falling upon each in turn as more than two hundred lesser beings stood all around him, awaiting his orders once more. They had turned on him for a moment, three thousand years of torment twisting their minds, making them believe perhaps that they were his betters. But he was the overlord.
    “Now,” Enlil breathed ominously, “we have work yet to do.”
    Above, a triple flash of lightning hurtled across the ceiling of Tiamat ’s birthing chamber, lancing down and