The only way to save the future is to decode the past. The only way to decode the past is to save the future. Archaeologist Sheppard Smyth has staked his career and the honorable memory of his wife and partner on proving his widely panned Cleopatra, the last sovereign pharaoh of Egypt, was not a victim of suicide as history suggests, but of a well-concealed murder. When a statue of the doomed Queen is unearthed in a pre-Columbian excavation site in Mexico, Shep rushes to investigate and, hopefully, find the proof that has evaded him for so long. The find, however, is only the first clue suggesting a mysterious connection between Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, and possibly - beyond. Suddenly thrust into the heated rivalry between sexy and enigmatic antiquities thief Victoria Kent and the infamous Russian mafioso Dmitri Kronastia, Shep finds himself a common pawn played by forces working to see out a quest older than the pyramids and cloaked in the Mayan Doomsday prophecy of 12.21.12.

During the thirteen baktuns, Tlalli Muhaatum, aka Sekhmet, goddess of Egypt and sworn protector of the bloodline of Isis, served loyally as a guide to humanity. Both harboring the innocent and punishing the wicked, she was entrusted by the advanced alien race, the Altunai, to serve as the defender of Earth. During the five thousand plus years that she and the God of the Afterlife, Osiris, played their cat and mouse game, Tlalli recruited the help of only twelve humans to receive the sacred gift of Altunai: Bonding, an act which gave its recipient psychic powers and made them impervious to disease and serious injury. As proxies of the goddess, however, they also found themselves enemies of Osiris. "The Twelve" is told in four volumes, each a collection of short stories which give readers of Killian McRae's Altunai Anthology a peek at Tlalli's proxies over the centuries, as well as hints and previews of the continuing epic due out in late 2012 when the sequel to "12.21.12" releases. Assuming, of course, that humanity survives.

A god who can bleed, is a god who can die. The Ancient Egyptians proclaimed Osiris both the God of the Dead, and the Lord of the Resurrection. Life and death require balance - a truth he has always known but a reality he's heretofore been able to outrun. Following the events of 12.21.12, however, the stasis caused by his desire to protect his half-human lover, Victoria Kent, and to return home to save his own people proves his undoing. The guilt of his past failings casts shadows over what had begun to seem a bright future, as he, Victoria, and her pet humans attempt to decode a mysterious series of messages written in an alien tongue and invoking the names of his slain kin. Are they from Ra, prince of the Altunai who seeks vengeance against Osiris for killing his sister, Isis, and marooning him on Earth? Or is it possible that their new foe is the same ancient warrior who once nearly claimed the life of the God? Does he protect his own interests by abandoning humanity to the vices of his civilization, or destroy his own civilization to save it from itself? Can a man who isn't even human, embrace humanity, or will the consequences of his past and his own impossible inner conflicts destroy the world?