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

  Yeah…I’m working on my soft landing. It’s getting easier. Coming in this timeline without it packing such a massive temporal punch…I’m not perfect. Not yet. Not bothering with a reply, I wander over to Sabrina’s tank, study the girl inside.

  “Pretty amazing, right?” Holland asks, still annoyed but trying not to be.

  “She looks exactly like Arabelle,” I say. To my surprise, tears boil behind my eyes. I look up at the ceiling, blink fast enough to dry them out. “I’ve really missed that cold block of ice,” I mutter, mostly to myself, but loud enough that Holland can hear, too.

  “As have I,” he says softly. I finally turn to face him. Our eyes meet. I lock in on him, feel him, make that soul-to-viscous-soul connection. If this sadistic cockroach actually had a heart, would he even know it? The way he looks at Sabrina/Arabelle 2.0, I know he does and this sort of surprises me as well.

  My eyes go to the other man in the tank, an older gentleman with his head down, his new body almost done.

  “Who is that?” I ask.

  “No one you’d know,” he says with the dismissive wave of a hand. “Why are you not glued to Brayden’s tank. Are you not concerned for the outcome? Are you not curious?”

  Taking a deep breath, thinking screw it, I say, “We’ve already met. In the future. I already know we’re together because in the future we were. Rather, we are.”

  He seems taken aback.

  “It’s not wise to tinker with the fabric of time,” he tells me.

  “It’s not wise to tinker with genetics either, but you did and look at me now. Look at Georgia. Look at all of your precious dolls and consider your own behavior before you lecture me on things like ethics or morality or whatever it is you want to call this.”

  “This is a warning. Not a lecture.”

  “Whatever.”

  My eyes return to Arabelle. I’m not sure what to make of this. Of her. It was sort of my idea to give Sabrina Arabelle’s DNA, make her into the only woman to ever emotionally affect the dark soul of the man once known as “The Angel of Death.” Like Arabelle, a girl who had the kind of past you barely ever see in the civilized world because it’s that bad, Sabrina was ten types of twisted. A real mental case. Not that I blame her.

  Still, for as much of a butthole as Holland is sometimes, he’s got this savior complex for hot Russian girls. Well, maybe just young girls in general. It’s a little creepy, but not pedophile creepy. Take Alice for example: he could have put that little creature out of our misery, but instead he used to let her babysit…until she…did what she did. Now Rebecca has one less kid. Wow, this is a terrible example.

  Moving on…

  Rebecca doesn’t remember having children. I felt that putting a mental block on her memories was the humane thing to do. In the future, Rebecca’s daughter Skye is an integral part of her life, a part of Professor Jake’s life. My Professor Jake. The man I gave my virginity to who is no longer. The man who refused me the same way everyone else refused me. A big part of me doesn’t want to see Skye, but now I feel like I have to. I feel Rebecca has to as well, but in due time.

  I turn these troubled eyes on Holland. “When can he come out?” I ask. I’m talking about August now. Trying not to take the pressures of my life out on him.

  “About two hours ago.”

  Hands on hips, the flame inside reaches my voice. “And you were going to tell me this when?”

  “I just did.”

  “You are a real piece of sh—”

  “Save your manufactured outrage,” he snaps, “nobody warms to it…ever.”

  “Get him out of there,” I bark. Holland crosses his arms, refuses to move. Blowing out a sigh, I decide to do it myself.

  He stops me, shoves me aside and says, “Let me.”

  While he’s preoccupied with August, I’m in back procuring my stashed syringe of the Fountain of Youth serum, the one I hid in the lab before leaving Alice and Alice, Jr. August is definitely going to need it if we’re going to survive the future holocaust together. Or if a bomb goes off in his head for whatever reason that such a bomb might go off in his head.

  Holland doesn’t know I’m doing this. He can’t know. Basically I have to inject August with the stolen serum and test it without Holland’s knowledge.

  Once I administer the serum, a simple stab wound will do; if he heals just fine, then the bomb is coming out. If not, I’ll take it out anyway. I can just heal him with my mind the way I healed Sensei Naygel after The Operator gave him the beating of his life.

  Either way, the last thing I need is August’s head exploding because Holland pitched a bitch fit and punched a button, or whatever. Basically, there’s no way that Nazi plague is going to put the brakes on my love life. Especially after Tavares. One dead lover is enough for me, spank you very much.

  Dutifully, and without hesitation, Holland works the control panel on August’s tank. I return to the tank. Holland is at the main computer executing a sequence of commands via the older keyboard. The tank turns from vertical to horizontal and starts to drain.

  Holland moves in and stands beside me; my attention is now fully on August.

  Once you see him, if you’re a girl, trust me when I tell you, you do not want to look away, he’s that good looking. Holland has him in special boy shorts so he doesn’t have to look at his junk all day (color me sad…yeah…I admit, I wanted to see it!), but other than that, what my eyes are feasting on is sheer and utter perfection.

  “You did good with him,” I tell Holland.

  “Good Christ,” he says, his contemptuous voice dripping with sarcasm, “is that a compliment I just heard?”

  The humorous yet hateful look in my eyes says everything.

  I’ve crammed a hundred years of life into two. At least, that’s what the other versions of me would say. They’re old AF. I’m not. Still, they can teach me things, if they want. I’d listen. Who knows if they’ll want to even speak to me again? What could I say that they wouldn’t have already thought of a thousand times over? We have each other though, and to me that’s better than being alone. Is it crazy I want them here right now?

  Deep breath, sigh, make that sad, sad face…

  Once upon a time, I thought there had to be more like me in existence. I thought that when I was trapped in Dulce. When I was released by The Doctor who turned out to be some sort of cave-dwelling reptilian hybrid, I was convinced there was someone like me going through the same things I’ve been going through. Now I know there is. But it’s not people like me that are existing, they are two exact versions of me and I can live with that. It’s better actually. I’m me, but I’m not alone. I have Raven if I need her, and Elizabeth.

  Me, but not me.

  They’re doing their own thing now. Separate from me. Making their lives here in this timeline, but in other cities with other people—former friends of mine, former lovers. Perhaps there are more of me here. Not three. Maybe ten, or fifty…maybe a hundred versions of me. This is what happens when you live long enough. When you are a traveler. Time seems to shrink because it’s no longer linear.

  Early on, it sort of melted my mind thinking like this, but I have to say, when you’ve done what I’ve done, time becomes irrelevant. The idea of “here” is no longer something you think of as constricting. Nowadays, with me, everything—and I mean everything—is possible.

  If only I can not screw it up. Alice Jr. says I did. Last week, she and her bigger, older self just looked at me like I walked my muddy feet over the future’s white carpet. Had it been anyone else telling me I ruined all of eternity, I would have brushed them off. That it was Alice and Alice Jr. concerned me greatly.

  The creepy duo wasn’t exactly known for their sense of humor, unless you consider melting people’s guts funny. Which I don’t. And there wasn’t a twinkle in their little homicidal eyes either. Which means I’m in the shit and that’s not good for anyone. But more on that later. This little tease has a boyfriend now.

  He’s ready.
OMG, he’s waking up. Eyes open, fingers and toes flexing, vision clearing.

  “Savannah?” he says.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. He remembers…

  “It’s me,” I say, fighting back the tears. I slide my hand into his and he squeezes, but lightly. I look to Holland and he’s got towels. I look back at August and everything sharp and hostile inside me melts. For a long moment, I even managed to forget about what I saw when I traveled, if such a thing were possible.

  “How do I look?” he asks, his eyes starting to settle shut again.

  “Like a God.”

  “Don’t stroke his ego this early,” Holland says. “I still have tests to do.”

  “He’ll pass them,” I say.

  He’s drifting off again. “I’ll pass…” he says, then he’s out again. Holland hands me the towels while he gets a large needle.

  “What’s that?”

  “Wake up juice. He went under harder than most.”

  “That’s because you were hurrying…”

  A few minutes later, he’s waking back up. I’m using my abilities to scan his body, zeroing in on the bomb at the base of his skull. I feel myself heating up. Looking at Holland I’m thinking if I turned him inside out and washed him down the drain, he’d have one hell of a time coming back to life.

  When he wakes up, Brayden comes to easier.

  No, August.

  We’re still holding hands. He comes to this time with considerably more strength. I help him sit up. Start to dry him off. Taking his hand I help him out of the tank, steady him as he stands on new legs. He doesn’t wobble.

  “I want to wash you off,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says. He looks down at his body and he smiles. “Yeah…okay.”

  “Try not to have babies in there,” Holland says, to which I look at him and say, “Really?”

  He shrugs his shoulders.

  “Your timing sucks, Holland,” I grumble. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  “It would make no difference if they did,” he replies.

  “On that,” I say, walking August into the bathroom, “we both agree.”

  Chapter Three

  The phone rang and he composed himself. He’d been waiting for this call all week, not that it softened the interruption. It didn’t. Aloysius was in the shower, holding the body. The woman was draped over his arm and he watched with disdain as she writhed half in pain and half in ecstasy. Disdain not for her, but for the disruption.

  Gently, he laid her on the tiled shower floor.

  Bent on one knee, leaning over her naked form, he drew in the scent of her. Inhaled deeply and exhaled with a sigh that quickly turned to irritation. The phone kept ringing. He turned, scowled at the noise.

  What dismal timing, he thought.

  He stood and shut off the shower, collected himself, then answered the call right before it went to voicemail.

  “Aloysius here,” he said, curt, his eyes locked on the girl. He was mesmerized by the throbbing of the carotid artery as it pumped all that blood through her body. God, she was exhilarating!

  “He’s ready,” Dr. Enzo Holland said into the phone. His father. Adolf.

  “I’ll be there shortly,” Aloysius replied.

  He was thinking if he didn’t get to this girl before attending to his father, she’d slip from his spell, and he couldn’t let her do that. Even if his father was ready. Her blue eyes had that sleepy, euphoric look to them, like she was drugged on love, like she was drenched with ecstasy. He’d put her under, undressed her, let her run her hands all over him, his name falling off her tongue, her eyes taking in everything dreamy about him. Soon that syrupy look would fade.

  Awareness would return.

  He didn’t know how long he stared at her, but she finally rolled to one side, her body curling into a ball, the draw of rapture becoming something of a sob.

  He only had moments.

  “Don’t come in just yet,” Holland replied, oblivious. “I have another client waking right now. I’ll be in the lab with him until two at the latest. If you come by later this afternoon, that would be best.”

  Aloysius hung up the phone, sunk to his knees on the shower floor and cradled the girl in his lap.

  “Hang on, sweetheart. It’s always most painful right before the pleasure.”

  He kissed her face, twice, lovingly brushed aside the wet hair smashed to her forehead, then he made a fist and focused a short, hard burst of energy into his top two knuckles and braced himself for the sting. Two pointed bone spurs shot through the flesh. Each was jagged yet sharpened to a point, neither longer than half an inch. Without hesitation or remorse, he punched the two spurs into the girl’s carotid artery. She gave a hearty jolt. Her tortured eyes flashed hard for a second, then returned to that sort of lost ecstasy. From the two puncture wounds, twin streams of blood trailed down her lovely neck.

  Using the same bone spurs, he opened his mouth, then sliced open the corners with two vicious swipes. They skin of his mouth tore back, allowing him to open his mouth impossibly wide and attach his face to half the girl’s neck, creating an incredible suction. The anticipation that had been growing quickly spiraled into need, into a feeding frenzy, into him draining her in near record time.

  When he was finally done with her, he sat back and gave a great, heaving sigh. Looking at the girl, her eyes struggled in their sockets. They jumped, then sunk low, then they climbed the walls, falling, then getting up again, working with every last effort against the darkness pulling so ardently against them. His nostrils flared as he gulped in the iron-rich ends of her.

  She tasted so beautiful.

  So young.

  Her mouth fell open, a thin line of red running from lip to chin to bare breast. The girl tried to speak, but what came out was a strained whisper, a plea, then some gibberish he couldn’t quite understand. Her eyes lost focus, rolled in failure into the bottoms of her sockets. He felt her body waning, her spirit giving up.

  The sides of his mouth, where he’d cut them open for better feeding, were healing at an impossible rate of speed. His eyes feasted like some post-coital nourishment over the puckering of her flesh. He lapped up some of the remaining blood as he waited for her to transition from the living to the dead. He watched a bit more blood roll out of her, mix with the beaded water, then drain in several streams down her body.

  Time was precious, yet he still felt ravenous. He wasn’t feeding enough, he knew this now. He’d need to remedy this.

  His extra long tongue rolled from his mouth, swiping across her chin, her breast, then back up to the last of the blood leaking from her torn open neck. Everything that made her beautiful and warm and invigorating was now out of her and into him. He fed off the last bits of her, ushering her into a dark, lifeless chasm.

  Her body suddenly weighed more, the limbs pulling earthward, the muscles becoming elongated, bloodless, heavy. When at last he felt her corpse start to cool and relax into death, he shoved her aside then bent on hands and knees and slurped up what was left of the dark red juices that had spilled from her.

  The tile was cold, as was her blood.

  It didn’t matter.

  There were still shimmers of life-force to be had, even if he was drinking from the shower floor like a slave.

  When he sat up, he exhaled loudly, satisfied. His belly was full and his face was smeared with the carnage of an uninterrupted meal. Now he was ready for the day. Ready to head to Holland’s lab and pick up his brand new father.

  Standing up, naked, he started the shower, washed himself down, then washed the body. Looking down at her, he thought about what he had to do. He didn’t exactly hate this part, but he didn’t love it either. This was a task of necessity.

  It was how he kept this secret of his…secret.

  He shut off the shower when he was done. Gathered a breath. With his exceptional strength, he dropped down, flipped the dead girl over so her chest was pressed to the shower floor, then began rolling up the bo
dy the way you’d roll up an old tube of toothpaste. He started with her toes, gripping them, curling them under. Dozens of bones cracked and broke, the metatarsals popping then splintering out of her skin, the shards sticking their needled points into his hands.

  All the cuts and lacerations he endured in this task didn’t much matter. His wounds healed quickly, so he kept at it, breaking a labored sweat as he rolled the tarsals up over the ankle bones. The tibias and fibulas broke in a dozen places as he continued on her legs, into her knee pits. When he got to the femur, he gave it his all and each side snapped in multiple parts.

  By the time he reached the girl’s hips, he was drenched in sweat, in dire need of another shower, perhaps another pint of blood. Leaning his two hundred and twenty-five pounds on her, he rocked and pressed until things cracked, compressed, shattered and became more…manageable. To get the spine to do what he wanted, he repositioned his body on top of hers, then broke her ribs from bottom to top, crushing the smaller bones into pieces.

  Fresh wounds in his hand opened—blood spattered everywhere, instantly, but short-lived as the wounds closed up and healed.

  He leaned on the body, manipulating her like a wrestler might, or how a jiu-jitsu practitioner might. He rolled her into herself inch by inch until he came to the head. Splattered red, sweat mixing with blood, he grabbed the rope that had been sitting in the corner of the large shower and tied her body up the way you’d tie a rolled sleeping bag, or a bale of hay.

  The rope held.

  The body strained against the binding; flesh pushed out to cradle the ropes; bones stuck out everywhere—all these little red and ivory spikes.

  And still the rope held.

  Standing up, stretching his back, Aloysius washed the compacted body clean once more, washed himself again, then he went downstairs to start the furnace.