Xander looked around, searching for the madman that had shot him. Still, he found only black.
Sara reached down and held his face, bringing it around to look at her. “I will always love you, now.” She started to cry tears of blood, and they dripped down onto his shirt. Her voice became uneven. “Don’t forget,” she demanded, shaking her head defiantly at him.
“Let’s have us a taste, then?”
“No...”
“Promise me you won’t forget,” she whispered, leaning in again slowly.
“I promise,” he said softly, yet somehow each lover heard the other’s hushed words above Cathy’s screaming.
Sara leaned in and kissed him, and her features melted and tucked away to become Spider. The blood tears Sara had been shedding had been pressing onto each of Xander’s cheeks, and the Asian assassin broke off the kiss and looked at him. “Don’t forget. Pain is your power.”
He opened his eyes and could hear the struggle just outside the closet door. Heard Cathy’s body being thrust around as though it were a rag doll. He reached up to his cheeks and felt Sara’s blood was still there somehow. As his vision slowly adjusted to the low light and Cathy’s screams got louder, he looked upon himself and realized that he was covered in blood. Black blood that was oozing over his entire body from the duel gunshot wounds in his torso.
“Black Womb lives.”
CHAPTER EIGHT:
POWER
“Black Womb lives.”
All three men stopped what they were doing instantly, their hands frozen in mid-air on or around Cathy Kennessy’s body. Al had been clutching her by the shoulder and had began to shake so violently that pain shot in and out of the muscle from where she’d hurt it fighting off Phillips earlier. He hadn’t turned around yet and already she could feel goosebumps traveling over his body and into hers at merely the sound of that rough, scratchy voice. It didn’t even sound like speech that could come from human lips. The closest approximation he could think of was someone vomiting out words one syllable at a time, rather than simply speaking them.
Raine was the first to really regain his motor function and turn around, his hand dropping from where it had been next to Cathy’s head, clutching her dark hair and getting ready to yank as hard as he could. For the briefest of moments when he faced the closet, he lost all sensation in his body. It took a moment for even basic bodily functions to restore themselves and let him blink and draw a small gasp. In that short interim he had lost control of his urethra and hot yellow liquid now dribbled down his leg. He barely even noticed. He tried hard to swallow but found that he couldn’t get any saliva going no matter how hard he tried.
Phillips had barely even noticed. He stopped an instant or two after the other two, only because they had. He was still smiling so wide all his gums were visible and gripping the hot flesh of her left breast in his pale, thin fingers again. They felt cold against her flesh, like skeleton bones. He was about to bark something at them when something told him not too. There was a still in the air that hadn’t been there before. Shouldn’t have been there, really. With Julie and Greer there had been enough electricity in the air to light a city block, an excitement that had overwhelmed and enchanted him instantly. It was the carnal knowledge that his ancestors had known and he never could. Raising an eyebrow and keeping a wary eye on Cathy, he raised his head to follow the gaze of his two underlings.
It was black. Completely ink black, something Phillips knew was next to impossible in nature. It was so thin that its ribs almost stuck out of its scaly hide and every breath it took was accompanied by its chest heaving under huge muscles. Though its skin looked hard it also looked thin, as though its lungs and heart were just out of sight but their vibrations present as they rippled through its flesh with every beat. There was another spot creating shockwaves as well, in its lower right side. It beat out of sync with the others, as if its function wasn’t tied to the rest.
Dark navy veins popped out of its arms and legs, its biceps and triceps seeming to grow and expand with every throb of its heart. Even as they watched, its knee snapped itself forward of its own power, sending a spurt of ebony blood onto the carpet as it seemed to make itself double jointed.
Its hands hung open-palmed at its sides, dangling and ready to strike at any moment, like a cowboy in a western shootout movie. The fingers were distorted and angular. At the tip of each finger was a talon, each one a few inches long and the clear, pale yellow of enamel. They came to points so sharp they could barely be seen, with each middle finger claw slightly longer than the rest. The index of its left hand dripped a dark substance that looked like Jell-O mixed with printing ink. Only after it landed on the floor with a plop was it identifiable as a chunk of flesh.
Its head looked normal until it opened its mouth again, its bottom lip lowering almost to its collarbone when it did. A joint in the back of its mouth snapped just as its knee had, as if it had to make room for all the teeth in its head. Dual rows of serrated teeth lined sore and bloodied gums. Each one was at least an inch long with the same yellow tinge that the claws had had, only they were dotted with slithering tendrils of
