‘Jake, have some compassion. Can’t you see she’s terrified?’
‘We don’t know who she is or what she is.’
The sound of flapping wings grows louder, echoing like old-time machine-gun fire in the narrow ravine.
The female hears it too. Panicking, she jumps to her feet and races through the chasm.
Dominique glances at her son, then chases after the woman.
‘Mother, wait-’
Jacob starts after her, but is forced to stop, unable to run with the bulky sword dangling at his hip. He withdraws it from his belt, then sprints with it through the twisting canyon.
The ravine ends, Dominique’s footprints continuing on ahead. He hears the sound of a heavy surf. Remaining at the edge of the mountain, he wipes beads of gray moisture from his eyes, then searches for his mother.
The mountainous passage has opened to a swampy beach. Silver waves crash upon an unearthly shoreline, which is littered with seaweed-type residue and tall, dead, dust-infested palm trees.
His mother is up ahead, hiding in the crevice of a large rock formation. She points.
Lining the beachhead are tall wooden posts, as thick as telephone poles. Fastened to each pole by heavy steel chains shackled about their necks are dozens of transhuman females. Bloody purple claw marks scar their naked, bruised bodies.
The flapping sounds grow louder, approaching from somewhere above. The female prisoners cower behind their posts like frightened children.
And then Jacob sees him.
The dark figure of the Seraph-reincarnate circles like a hawk, soaring hundreds of feet above the beach. The being’s torso is heavily muscled, his bizarre, twenty-foot wings protruding from his genetically altered spine and latissimus dorsi.
Devlin…
Jacob and Dominique remain motionless and out of sight.
The winged Seraph detects movement coming from beneath a mound of seaweed. It is the escaped female.
Pulling his wings back, he dive-bombs after her like a pelican tracking a fish.
The female tosses aside her camouflage and races back toward the refuge of the cliffs.
Jacob signals to his mother to stay put, then grips the sword in both hands.
Leveling out over the swampy beach, the Seraph swoops in from behind the terrified woman and lands on her back, pinning her forcefully against the silicon sand.
Trapped beneath the heavier predator, the female tries desperately to crawl away on hands and knees.
Devlin is simply too big and strong. Like an enraged lion subduing a zebra, he claws at the girl’s back, tearing her clothing and skin with his razor-sharp talonlike fingernails until she stops struggling. Pinning her facedown with his left arm, he caresses her breasts with his free hand, then bites into her exposed buttocks with his fang-shaped incisors.
The female screams and hisses at the Seraph, who mounts her from behind to rape her – never noticing Jacob, whose steel sword slashes downward against his still-flapping wings.
The glancing blow slices the moving appendage as the ever-alert Devlin wheels around to face his enemy. An insane leer is pasted on his angelic face, his mouth dripping the girl’s bluish blood. The sociopath’s eyes blaze violet, his pupils, a scarlet red.
Welcome, Father. We’ve been expecting you.
The voice-telepathic. Very deep, almost hypnotic.
Father?
As the being leaps toward Jacob, the twin slips inside the nexus.
The crimson ceiling instantly brightens, the beating wings of the Seraph slowing to a crawl.
Pushing forward through waves of energy, the white-haired twin meets the attacking humanoid with his raised sword, this time aiming for the mutant’s exposed head – ignoring the female transhuman, who is suddenly racing at him at ungodly speed.
Lilith!
The Succubus embeds her fingernails into the flesh of his back, while her son claws at Jacob’s forearm, tearing tendons and muscle, forcing the twin to relinquish his weapon.
Jacob swoons, the toxin adhered to Lilith’s fingernails quickly attacking his bloodstream.
The paralyzed twin collapses in the ankle-deep mire.
Lilith scans the swampy shoreline, her predatory senses sweeping the area. ‘Where’s the other twin? Do you see him?’
‘No. And I did not sense him enter the nexus.’
‘Hmm. Perhaps he’s more cunning than his brother.’ She gazes at Jacob, then whispers in his ear, ‘I’ve missed you, soul mate.’
Devlin looks down the beach to the canyon walls. ‘We’re vulnerable here. Let’s return to the portal with this one. The other twin is sure to follow.’
He manipulates his injured wing, testing it. Satisfied, he allows his mother to wrap her arms around his neck, then he bends down and picks up Jacob, as if the twin were a small child.
Flapping his mighty wings, the Seraph rises away from the ground, heading north.
Dominique waits another five minutes before coming out from hiding. She is terrified and angry and suddenly all alone.
Just stay calm and think. She picks up Jacob’s sword, carrying the heavy weapon in both hands.
The shackled women cry out to her in animal-like grunts, motioning to their chains.
One of the females, a brown-skinned transhuman with claw-mark scars striping her breasts and back, opens her mouth, showing Dominique that she has no tongue.
Dominique points to the north. ‘Do you know where they took my son?’
The female nods, pointing inland. Looming in the distance is an ominous mountain, its craggy summit backlit by the subterranean world’s fiery scarlet roof.
‘If I free you, will you take me there?’
The abused female nods.
Dominique examines the steel shackle around her neck.
A moderate chop with the sword’s ultratech edge and the chain is broken.
It takes Dominique another ten minutes to free the remaining prisoners.
40
There are two colors in the subterranean world, both appearing in varying shades.
Gray is the color of death. It is the desolate plain Dominique and her transhuman companion have been walking on for hours, its solder gray, parched surface scarred with deep fissures and charcoal-tinged boulders. It is the brownish gray clouds rising from distant funeral pyres, smoldering like toxic smoke from a petroleum inferno. It is the muddied gray of the mountainside looming before them, its barren, clay-colored escarpments smooth and twisting, like cooled magma. It is the lead gray backs of the foot-long beetles that continuously scamper between their boots like restless vermin.
Red is the color of heat. It is the sliver of rose-colored horizon peeking between the mountain’s summit and the roof of the subterranean habitat. It is the orange-red glow of embers twinkling like stars upon the cloud- covered ceiling.
Red is not the color of blood. Blood bleeds blue in this godforsaken carbon-dioxide habitat, appearing violet in the pinkish hue of everlasting twilight.
Violet is the shade of red Dominique sees every time she squeezes her eyes shut. Violet is the dull, aching, maddening pain that presses against the back of her eyeballs. It is her feet, throbbing inside her boots. It is her
