Crucified: The Rise of an Urban Legend (Swann Series Book 9) Read online

  Crucified

  Ryan Schow

  River City Publishing

  Copyright

  The eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy so that you may read it with a clear conscience and not one day end up in hell over a shitty technicality. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  CRUCIFIED

  Copyright © 2018 Ryan Schow. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, cloned, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this eBook via the Internet or via any other means without the express written permission of the author or publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents—and their usage for storytelling purposes—are crafted for the singular purpose of fictional entertainment and no absolute truths shall be derived from the information contained within. Locales, businesses, events, government institutions and private institutions are used for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes only. Furthermore, any resemblance or reference to an actual living person is used solely for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover Design by Milo at Deranged Doctor Design

  Visit the Author’s Website:

  www.RyanSchow.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Also by Ryan Schow

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Afterword

  Also by Ryan Schow

  THE COMPLETE SWANN SERIES:

  SWANN

  MONARCH

  CLONE

  MASOCHIST

  WEAPON

  RAVEN

  ABOMINATION

  ENIGMA

  CRUCIFIED

  THE COMPLETE LAST WAR SERIES:

  THE LAST WAR

  THE ZERO HOUR

  THE OPHIDIAN HORDE

  THE INFERNAL REGIONS

  THE KILLING FIELDS

  THE BARBAROUS ROAD

  THE TERMINAL RUN

  Chapter One

  No one’s high school years should ever suck as much as mine, but they did, and I survived. Barely. At this point, however, I’m convinced most kids feel this way about school. If not, if high school was your thing, I’m truly delighted for you. Perhaps even a tad jealous. Nevertheless, I got what I needed from those years, so lamenting the past just feels like an exercise in futility to the new and improved me.

  Besides, why brood over the past when the present holds so much promise? Why brood when everything I ever hoped for I now have?

  I mean, think about it…

  My mother loves me. I love her. I love my father too, who always loved us both the way we were, even if we were both certifiable. And Rebecca? Ah, my heart leaps at the thought of her! I now have a sister! And boys? Oh, yeah. Got that worked out, too. This genetically modified badass with tits now has the best boyfriend ever, which makes me feel like I’m grabbing blue ribbons on every front.

  Not to be one of those annoying little shits who gets the world handed to her on a golden platter then squeals with delight and pretends to be surprised (ugh…vomiting right now!), but my family and I have been blessed to start life anew. We’re all the freshly unwrapped packages of our wildest dreams. Our better selves incarnate. And despite the dark days looming, if I obsess about just this moment, I swear to Jesus I’m paralyzed by the wonderment of it all. For all its conquests, all its sorrows and all its future promises, I find myself eager to dive headlong into this unconventional life of mine.

  You know what they say—in for a penny, in for a pound.

  So yeah, I’m all in.

  That doesn’t mean I don’t consider my life on a more existential level. Some people spend half their waking hours trying to decide who they are, where they have value in the world, how they will define themselves in their social circles, their community, the entire species. Honestly, I get it. We all ask those questions. But my hand to God, most of us never get a reasonable answer. Our existence is burdened by complication. Clashing beliefs and ideologies. Floundering morals. When every single day with these politics, this media, this swiftly unraveling social climate feel like the drip-torture of gaslighting, the idea of searching for higher meaning has a way of giving you emotional constipation.

  Now that I’m through all that (thank God!), I know who I am. In fact, I’m perfectly clear on it. I’m a justice junkie who thrives on delivering payback. I’m a girl who wants to stop others from hurting those of us who just want to live in a free and happy society. I’m someone who loves but struggles to be loved. Beyond all that, though, I’d say I’m now just a freak of nature searching for a normalcy I might never find.

  Jeez…normalcy.

  What in God’s name does normalcy even mean? Is it having best friends? Doing Saturday night sleepovers? Staying up late into the night on the phone gabbing about boys and clothes and who’s doing what (and whom) at school?

  Yeah.

  All of that.

  Plus—and I know this sounds silly, maybe even a bit naïve for someone like me—there’s this part of me that wants to go shopping at the mall, sip overpriced coffee in outdoor cafes, lay out by the pool in a bikini and not worry about peeping neighbors or the cockroach paparazzi.

  Is that so wrong? Am I being unrealistic here?

  Maybe. But maybe not.

  I suppose that’s why I’m obsessed with the lives of superheroes. Random, right? I’m no superhero. I would have to be a self-centered troglodyte to even think such a thing! Which is why I don’t. What I’m thinking about, what’s confounding me on a God-sized level, is the conflicting personas. Specifically how someone like me balances them. Spiderman has this problem. So does Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman. And just like them, my life is ass backwards and upside down, as in there is no owner’s manual to me. The point of all this egocentric pontification is me taking stock of my life and thinking what I want most these days is not more for me, but more for others. My inner philanthropist is shoving my whiny teenager aside and now my needs feel less pedestrian, less self-centered.

  Can someone please dust off the “Humanitarian of the Year” award? Yep. It’s not all about me anymore.
My focus is about everyone else, how I want more for this world of ours than what we’re getting.

  If you can imagine, I have Alice Jr. to thank for this. The demonic five or six or seven year old, not the level headed traveler. Ever since I first laid eyes on the future that young Alice all but forced me to see, I’ve had to readjust my views to consider the ramifications of cause and effect. Knowing what lie ahead for us as a species is what has nurtured in me this intense desire to care for more than just myself. The need is so absolute it has become a monumental encumbrance, but not in a bad way. It’s in this powerful, singular reality that I realize my life now has purpose.

  I have purpose.

  I’ve seen the future. There’s a lot of death at the hands (and jaws) of mutated things that people like you and me with our limited imaginations could never fathom. What I saw when I traveled to the time and the coordinates Alice Jr. gave me, I can’t unsee. Which tells me I’ve got bigger problems than making time to do my hair, my nails and spend time with my besties.

  What sweet little Alice—the fire breathing imp—showed me was how not killing a certain horrible scumbag from decades past (his name rhymes with Shitler) does something unforgivable to our world years into the future. This is worse than nukes. Worse than catastrophic loss of life or scorched earth. What Alice Jr. showed me was infinitely worse. Like something you’d drag out of the ghettos of hell.

  The hard part of all of this is that Alice Jr. was right: this is my fault. So yeah, the future is my fault and I need to fix it. I’m on it, I swear.

  I guess what I’m trying to say is, before I become this righteous, exalted woman on the path to a Zen lifestyle and an angel of world peace and all that syrupy crap, I’ve got to kill some people, behead a dictator (like I should’ve done in the first place) and pretty much save the future from itself. Maybe then I’ll be that girl with all those friends. Falling in love with that boy. Living that storied life of the heroine who saves the motherfreaking world.

  Chapter Two

  I’m standing in the lab looking at a guy whom I know for a fact is now mine. Yep. August. He’s hot AF and he’s mine, all mine. Right now my heart is actually shaking at the thought of him. How beautiful he is. What we’re going to have together. The life we’re going to live.

  Looking at him in that tank, unconscious, my heart slows a bit, beats out of rhythm for that split second, then almost returns to normal.

  Almost.

  August has a bomb inside his head. August, my one and only, he has this death sentence looming over him should either of us get out of line with Holland. My eyes find the immortal doctor. He’s looking at me and I’m looking at him and the thoughts I’m having are damn near homicidal.

  What the hell would posses someone to plant a bomb like that in a boy’s head? The doctor…he’s not Holland, not Gerhard, he’s not even Mengele. No, this man before me is repugnance incarnate. He’s a deeply scarred psychosis. A broken, broken brain. I want to hate him, make him suffer for who he is and what he’s done, but I can’t.

  If I pull back from my own hatred long enough to logically assess the situation, my more rational side would say he’s just a man following his dark dreams, clinging to a life I could take at any minute.

  It’s true, the things he’s done are unforgivable, beyond atrocious. He’s a hundreds-of-years-old creature who got bored of a normal life and this is what he does to pass the time. I hate him, but one day I may become him. Raven took that path. Well, sort of. Will I? Ugh. The way trust fund babies sometimes get everything they want in life only to turn to coke and whoredome and end up killing themselves—that’s how Holland is. Except for him, it’s genetics and mass slaughter instead of drugs, and sadly, he’ll probably never kill himself. On a long enough timeline, what will I turn in to? Who will I become because of him?

  “I’m not sure I like that look you’re giving me,” Holland says.

  “You’d like the things I’m thinking far less,” I reply, my voice both emotionless and cruel at the same time, if such a contradiction were possible.

  Just when I think Holland and I can be on the level with each other, he goes and gives me another reason to despise him. Another reason to remind me of who he was, what he is, how this tiger will never change his stripes. If only he was anyone other than himself, I could deal. But this? What he did to August? Booby-trapping the boy I love and sending him under before I could arrive to see him off? Un-freaking-acceptable.

  “You saw what you did,” Alice Jr. says, startling me. So consumed was I with animosity I never even sensed her coming. That’s like missing the foul energy of Satan. Not good. Turning, seeing her standing in the doorway with future Alice, I try to process. Future Alice is kind of normal on the outside, but Alice Jr.? Monster.

  “I saw what you needed me to see,” I tell the little she-beast.

  “Then you know what must be done,” she continues. Her body is so small, but from her little being are waves of soul-sucking darkness, a pulsing sort of doom that would nauseate you in the pit of your stomach if you could feel the things I feel.

  “I don’t need a lecture from you,” I snap. “You showed me what you needed to show me, I saw it, and now I’ll do something about it.”

  She just looks at me, her eyes neither dark nor restless, her skin white but not translucent the way it looks right before she tries to roast you. Still, her aura feels…depleting.

  “Why don’t you kick rocks already,” I retort. “I don’t need you staring at me like some kind of munchkin mass murderer.”

  I look up at future Alice who says, “What’s wrong with you?”

  “God I wish you could read minds,” I say. “Please, just go. And take baby Charles Manson with you.” My eyes are intense, but my mind is fighting to be elsewhere. It’s needing to figure out what to do with my booby-trapped boyfriend and the creature who made him.

  The girls leave and already I feel better.

  “There is something about you that’s not quite right,” Holland says. “I remember when my balance was off, how I felt a little crazy—”

  “You killed five girls, chopped them to bits. I’m not like that. I’m just looking at the group of people surrounding me and wondering what I did so bad to deserve this.”

  “You’re a product of your environment.”

  “Save it, Mengele.”

  He shakes his head, goes back to cleaning up the mess I made of his lab. I feel bad for being so mean, but these people…my God, they truly are insane.

  Whatever these eyes of mine now see, I’ve seen worse. Endured worse. It’s no longer fear that moves me, it’s my distinct lack of patience. Lately, with everything that’s happened, I’m seriously on edge, which makes me a bit intolerable at times.

  Thinking of my trip to the future, how August lays in his tank changing, I have to look back and reflect on one thing: at least I chose my return date well.

  I could have come back from the future the week prior, when Brayden was going under, but I didn’t. There was no way I could wait out his transformation. Someone would have lost their life. Holland probably. I mean, seriously, those seven days of waiting would surely feel like seven years the way I’ve been ready to crack. Rather than watch over his every change on pins and needles, I simply came back from the future a week later and man it was the right decision!

  That doesn’t change the fact that I wanted to relax into life and now this is being thrust upon me. But whatever. I’m not going to tantrum out on you. Not just yet…

  Holland is sweeping up broken glass, righting a turned over table. Some things broke in my return, but not the most precious things. When I returned to this timeline, I returned to an empty lab. It was the middle of the night, which was perfect because it allowed me uninterrupted time with August. For the most part.

  Besides, I needed to think.

  The way Brayden was behaving just before going under, good Lord, the kid was wrestling with some demons! Before Holland put him in the tank, befor
e I went into the future to see what Alice Jr. needed me to see, I slipped into his mind long enough to see what he’d done at the FBI. How he piggybacked a nasty computer virus using it as leverage to get an early release from the FBI. It was brilliant. Illegal and ballsy AF, but that’s my Brayden…the male version of me.

  And Sabrina. God, what a mess! No way to un-fuck that fairy princess’s life.

  Still, I’d needed my conversation with her. She had to know the truth about Tavares, about me killing him. And she had to hear it from me. She pitched her fit, beat me until she could beat me no more, but in the end, what she did—giving up her mother to that twisted sect of the Hollywood elite—that was far worse than me being used by psychopaths to kill her brother. She made her bed, she had to lie in it, and she damn well knew it. That’s why she was perfect for Holland. With a pack of Satan worshiping blue bloods on her heels, she knew there was no escape. We both did. She had to erase herself. Arabelle was forced to do the same thing after escaping Ukraine and the sex trade she’d fallen in with.

  So now here we are: me waiting for August, Holland cleaning up the mess made by my returning temporal outburst, the future written in blood but not set in stone.

  The sound of broken beaker glass being dumped onto other shards of glass in the garbage can unnerved me. My face frowned so hard, Holland looked up. “Next time try not to break so much shit on the way in, then maybe it won’t be so loud when I clean it up.”