KINGDOM OF HELL
The damnation and deception that enslaved humanity was exposed after the earth was razed by a nuclear holocaust. As immortal god kings continue to lay claim to the planet, the epic struggle to repossess Earth rages on. The Cerberus rebels fight for mankindâs free will and enlightened purpose wherever the battle for freedom takes them. But nothing can prepare them for the bloodred shadows of a new, special hell.â¦
CITY OF BLOOD
After blasting open the gates of the underworld, the Cerberus warriors face a fresh evil. Deep beneath the African continent, a hidden city teems with bloodthirsty creatures ruled by a vicious queen. As her shape-shifting minions swarm to outmaneuver Kane and his allies, the rebels race to contain the unfurling horror. With the undead descending upon Africa, the warriors must escape a destiny far worse than they could ever imagineâas tortured ambassadors for the vampire kingdom.
Lyta could see six figures staggering toward them in the darkness
Kane edged closer to her until they were back to back, surrounded.
âAny plans?â she whispered.
âMake it costly for them,â Kane growled.
Lyta ground her molars, eyes flitting from one creature to the next.
The rifle she carried wasnât fully automatic, but at this range, against normal human opponents, it unleashed some serious damage.
Against normal human opponents.
She fired as fast as she could pull the trigger and watched as her target staggered in a dance of hammer blows.
When the thing finally toppled, she realized that Kane was no longer at her back. She heard the thud and crunch of fists on flesh, and turned toward a second creature. She tore another salvo of bullets into its face and upper chest, grimacing as this one struggled upstream of her gunfire even as chunks of its head were blasted away.
The Road to Outlandsâ
From Secret Government Files to the Future
Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermathâforever known as skydarkâreshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.
Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlandsâpoisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.
What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.
Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authorÂity, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.
In the villes, rigid laws were enforcedâto atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the baronsâ public credo and their right-to-rule.
Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technologyâ¦a question to a keeper of the archivesâ¦a vague clue about alien mastersâand their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.
But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?
Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigidâs only link with her family was her motherâs red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grantâs clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.
Parents, friends, communityâthe very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the cruxâwhen Kane began to wonder if there was a future.
For Kane, it wouldnât do. So the only way was outâway, way out.
After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltvilleâs head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.
With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.