I swallowed hard. “I... didn't know you were in here.” Her eyes were hard on me like I was misbehaving. I shook my head. “No. It doesn't hurt. Hurt like hell when it happened.”

  She shrugged and said softly, “Well, I'm glad you didn't die, Cam.” Then she turned away and pulled the blankets around herself again and snuggled in.

  I reached out hesitantly and placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “Me too. Love you.” She was such an awesome person.

  She yawned out a, “Love you too. You have to tell me one day.”

  I wasn't a monster to her, and that meant everything to me.

  I got dressed to meet Rin, then stiffened when I heard people yelling, and an ungodly screeching bellow. “What the fuck!?”

  I dashed outside as Ferret rolled out of her cubby. I looked toward the commotion and felt a chill run through me. There were two huge hunched men in cloaks, moving through our little shanty-ville, tossing flaming burn barrels and throwing people like rag dolls as they screeched out in hissing two-toned voices, “Where iss sshe?”

  They wore those collars and shackles that the shadow man had worn. I wondered if they performed a function other than tracking and restraint. Since I hadn't learned what Kyler had found out yet, I was only guessing.

  The most terrifying thing about the men was that their faces had malformed dog muzzles, one had a big malformed claw instead of a hand, and their eyes glowed coal red. It was as if they were half-formed creatures that looked like the Egyptian god, Anubis.

  Their canine nostrils were flaring as they scented the air and their heads snapped toward me, and they pointed and screeched. Were they tracking me by scent? Before they could move toward me, Lewis was there, landing a solid roundhouse kick to the side of one of the biggest one's muzzle. The creature stumbled back a step and shook its head and blocked three quick and powerful blows from the ex-military man.

  Then with a single sweep of its claw, Lewis went spinning through the air with bloody red gashes across his chest, and he hit a support girder solidly. To Lewis' credit, he pushed himself back up to his feet as the two-man things screeched in what sounded like a thousand voices and started charging toward me and slapping aside my screaming family who were trying to run in the process.

  I hissed out as I reached for my bat and stalked toward them, “Oh hell no! Not in my house!” I was scared shitless, but I was more pissed the hell off than frightened. These Lazarus rejects were here, messing with my family, I was done running.

  Again, a chill went through me as Lashon stepped in front of the approaching dog men, holding a gnarled hand up. “Stop! What are you doing here? There's no need for violence.”

  What was she doing? Just one blow and...

  I sprinted toward them in a panic as I called back to Eliza, “Get everyone to safety! Now!” She nodded, and I dove as a heavy fist came down toward Lashon. I stretched my bat. Dear lord, I wasn't going to make it. But with a clank, the fist was knocked away, and then another clank and the lead dog man fell onto its back.

  Relief flooded me when I saw that Matt was there, wielding one of the metal footrests from his wheelchair like a club. The other one dove at Matt but I was finally there, swinging with all my might. With a solid crack, I connected with the elongated jaw of the man.

  He spun back, screeching and grabbing his jaw with his claw. He whipped his face toward me, and his eyes flashed brighter red as his nostrils flared. Then his face took on a manic expression as he hissed out, “It iss you! You will come back to Lasssarus with uss. Sso they can fix uss!”

  He crouched like he was going to spring on me. I caught Ferret in my peripheral vision hustling Lashon away. Good girl.

  Before he could leap, I heard a shattering sound as a bottle of some sort of liquor broke on him, drenching him. We both turned to see Gomez standing there with rage on his face, cheeks puffed out, and a lighter in front of his face. He sneered then blew out alcohol he had in his mouth, over the flame and the Anubis man howled and screeched as his cloak went up in flames like a pyre.

  Gomez muttered at the beast, “Puta!” But a flaming claw shot out and caught him across his throat and down his chest and my eyes widened in horror as the man fell lifelessly to the ground. They had... killed him. Like he was nothing. This thing was no man, it was a monster, just like it appeared.

  I screamed and waded in with my bat as the beast tore off its flaming cloak. It was like hitting a brick wall, but I just kept swinging. If it had to keep blocking me, it couldn't attack, and I never tire. I smirked at that as I just kept swinging in rapid succession. I don't think I was doing much good, but it was giving our people time to evacuate.

  Matt was holding the other one off with his footrest in one hand and a huge military looking knife in the other. That was the one I had seen him tucking under his seat from time to time. The man never ceased to amaze me. He seemed to be holding his own against the creature with much greater strength, from his chair.

  My hopes sank when I noted the severe burns all over the man I fought seemed to heal before my very eyes. How could we fight something that apparently couldn't be hurt, at least for very long? It got some distance from me, and I stood sideways to it, my bat held out like a blade and growled at it, “Get the hell out of here, and tell Lazarus to leave my people and me the hell alone!”

  It gave a hissing, chuffing, chuckle as it tore off its shirt to show a malformed but massively muscular chest as it rolled its head around on its shoulders, cracking its neck. “You, little girl, are coming with uss. They ssay they can fix uss with you.”

  He started stepping toward me, and then a streak of darkness and shadow blurred down from above, and Rin was there! She was in her full Raven form, her legs wrapped around his neck, her momentum carried them to the ground as she somehow pivoted to bring him down, slamming to the asphalt.

  She rolled away before he could grab her, and she came up between us, hissing menacingly at the Anubis which hissed right back. Then she said in that odd two-tone voice of this form, “Bad dog.”

  She flicked her... claws, and a baton and some sort of segmented blade snicked out. She was small but looked massively dangerous just then. And I realized as I stared at the weapons, that when we had fought that first time, she probably could have taken me at any moment. I didn't have any clue she had any weapons beyond her claws.

  She looked at me and cocked a feathery eyebrow. “Still with the bat? It's badass and street as fuck, but really?”

  I rolled my eyes that she could quip while monsters had killed one of my family and were trying to take me away to some sort of Lazarus lab. But good lord was she sexy as hell looking like some sort of harbinger of death just then.

  I told her as the thing charged, “They can't be hurt, they heal almost immediately.”

  She stepped aside at the last moment, allowing it to get to me. My eyes widened in panic as I raised my bat to intercept its grasping hands. With a snick, it froze just as it grabbed my weapon. Then almost in slow motion, its head seemed to slide down. It was unnatural, and I realized it was more than just that as it kept sliding until it fell off its body and landed at my feet with a hollow thunk. And I was being bathed in black blood that sprayed from its neck as the body fell.

  I blinked and saw a smirking Rin standing there in her human form, her arm out straight behind her with that segmented blade back behind her in a martial arts stance, the gleaming steel black with blood. She winked at me. “You'd be amazed at how many things can't live without a head, no matter how fast they heal.”

  We turned to the other scuffle, to see Lewis and Matt barely holding their own against the other. That's when a police cruiser came barreling around the corner, lights strobing. Now they come! Where were they earlier, and where were they today when the black ops cars were chasing us?

  The cop slid out of his car and leveled his weapon at us, his eyes widening at the sight of the huge malformed dog man. “NYPD! E-everyone stay where you are!” His hand was shaking as he looked at the Anubis. Then he called in on his shoulder radio while keeping his weapon swinging between the creature and the one on the ground in front of Rin. “This is car Bravo Thirteen, I need backup at the...”

  Before he could finish, the Anubis was running at him. Its shoulders were knocked back first one way then the other, as the officer shot, again and again, every bullet hitting center mass, but the creature just kept running at him as it screeched in pain.

  Trinity cussed under her breath, “Shit!” Then she ran in a shadowy black blur, faster than any human could, toward the dog man. I winced, as fast as she was, she had been too far away, the Anubis slammed into the police cruiser's door with pile-driving force, trapping the cop between the door and doorframe with a sickening crunch and gurgle as we heard bones snapping as his chest was crushed.

  Rin leapt the last twenty-five feet, gliding as she shrieked, her blade slipping through the creature's neck just like the other as I shook my head in amazement over her lethality.

  The next moment I was screaming in pain like my body was on fire when a collar was snapped around my neck from behind, and I was yanked back into a vehicle.

  Chapter 10 – Lazarus

  My existence was pain for so long I didn't know how much time had passed, but I slowly started to get used to the pain, and for a moment I thought I was still in the train wreck with that pipe impaling me. In a moment of panic, I could feel I was suspended upright. My mind reasoned that it was by some sort of wrist restraints and not a pipe.

  And just like in the accident, the white-hot pain slowly turned into a thrumming background pain, like I was building up a tolerance to it. It must be something similar to my ability to never tire anymore. As my vision came back to me as I found it easier and easier to ignore the pain, a large Lazarus logo painted on a corrugated metal wall came into focus. I could hear voices around me stop as that annoying screaming woman finally stopped caterwauling, and was just gasping and whimpering instead. Just like me.

  Oh, umm, never mind. Heh.

  There were three men and a woman, all dressed in lab coats staring at me as I looked around to take in the heavily armed and armored Lazarus goons that were ringed around us, weapons leveled at me.

  I could see cages behind them with various deformed and monstrous looking people wearing collars. One woman with a deformed parody of a scaled snake's head, sat in her cage staring at me with reptilian eyes, a forked tongue snicking out between two very long fangs to taste the air. All of the captives but her wore those big black cloaks to hide their deformed bodies, she... wore the same armor that the soldiers around us did. Were they... were they running experiments on their own people?

  Snake girl saw my attention on her, and her lipless reptilian mouth smiled a cruel smile, or was it just that it was on her malformed serpent face? She opened her mouth a bit to show off her glistening fangs, dripping with what I could only assume was poison. Nope, no misinterpretation there, she was just an asshole. I rolled my eyes at her. Idiot was in a cage, she was no better off than me? And they were her own people, ha!

  One of the lab coats said nervously to the others, “The collar stopped working.”

  Another pointed a device at me and pressed a button, I glared at them, and another said, “Try cycling it.”

  The first man pointed the remote at me and turned the collar off, and my clenched jaw relaxed as the burning pain that was just a buzz in the background stopped. Then I clenched my teeth again as he turned it back on. My arms and legs straining against the shackles that seemed magnetized to the upright metal table I was stuck to like a butterfly on a pin.

  He was a nervous, panicky sort as he almost whined out, “It isn't working. How are we supposed to detain her until the Commander shows up?”

  The woman in the lab coat narrowed her eyes a bit as she studied my eyes. I was pushing all my hate through them as we stared at each other. Something about her unnerved me as she approached, slapping the man with the remote on the back of the head as he kept toggling the collar on and off. “Stop!” She got right in my face, her eyes staring into my soul. “No, I don't think that's it. I think she's used to it now.”

  Her gaze unnerved me until I caught a whiff of decomposing flesh. Then I knew why her eyes unnerved me, they were dead, I saw no spark of life in them. Was she... was she like me? I noted a little pouch around her neck that had odd markings on it like it were some sort of talisman.

  She just studied me closely, her face too close to mine and I could smell that decomposition on her breath, as one of the lab coats said, “We need to get her into a containment cage before she gets loose! We couldn't get any of the tissue samples the director wanted, any tissue removed just dissolved. She has no fluids to extract.”

  Tissue samples? I glanced down at myself, were they already treating me like a lab rat? I looked up to my arm and saw a series of small translucent areas by my wrist. Fuckers!

  The woman shook her head slowly. “No. If she possessed any superhuman abilities, she would have broken loose the moment she blocked out the pain collar's signal.”

  She looked pleased as she took a scalpel from a tray, and without any warning, she stabbed it deep into my leg. I bit back a scream as she smiled at the reaction. She turned her head toward the man and said, “See? New pain works. Whatever prevents her from bleeding out, must also afford her the ability to ignore constant pain stimuli. She's what the director has been looking for, immortality without deformation, now we just have to reverse engineer what makes...”

  She turned her head back toward me, and I cut her off by slamming my forehead forward to connect solidly with her nose. I felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage as I broke her nose. Oddly, she didn't bleed much as she screamed and raked my face with her fingernails. I winced as she peeled off skin. Oh god no. I couldn't hide that. How could I hide translucent gouges on my face? She was snarling, “You bitch!”

  Then another woman's voice snapped, “Alania!”

  My attacker's face went slack, and she just stood there, motionless like a department store mannequin, I saw black sludge instead of blood oozing from her broken nose, and it reeked of death.

  I looked up as the soldiers parted, to see who had stopped this macabre marionette. A gorgeous middle-aged black woman with silvering hair stepped up on the arm of a man in different body armor than the others. The man had Egyptian or Middle Eastern heritage, and looked very much in charge and very, very dangerous the way his eyes took in everything. This had to be Xerxes.

  I thought I caught a whiff of decomposition as this new woman reached up to tilt my head from side to side, looking at the new scratches on my face. She looked back to the man as she still held my chin and said in a decidedly creole accent, “This is not Vodun. She yet lives, you can feel the life in her and see it in her eyes.”

  I pulled back from her grasp then snapped at her hand, catching a finger and biting down, hard. It tasted rancid, like rotted meat as she screamed then punched me... hard... with her other hand. I was shocked by the force of the strike, and think I heard my neck snap as I released her finger. The bitch broke my neck! I wondered how that worked with my new reality. How many bones had I broken in the accident and since then? Were they translucent ectoplasm too?

  I looked back at her then rolled my head, cracking my neck as I gave her a defiant grin. But then I blanched when the man said in a soothing tone, “Dear, sweet Abigail, we mustn't break the merchandise. Just that display alone shows us that she is the answer we both seek. The key to immortality. Everlasting life.”

  Abigail? This was the Abigail Truit that Adelaide and Rin had been hunting? That meant... I spit, trying to get the taste of dead zombie flesh out of my mouth. Eww! Gross, gross, gross! That meant the meat puppet still just standing there was one of her zombie thralls. She must have some lab expertise for Truit to keep her around and give her the autonomy I saw before she was switched off like a broken toy.

  I muttered, “Zombie bitch.”

  She was instantly in my face, I could see rage, and more life than was in her puppet's reflected in her eyes. But I could also see a film of death in them. That alone erased the beautiful, upper-crust socialite appearance she had so meticulously crafted.

  She hissed. “You will take care of that pesky affliction for me. And when this is all over, maybe I'll make you into one of my toys for your insolence.”

  Ok, that scared the hell out of me and choked back any retort I was about to volley back at her. Instead, I swallowed, then tried to slam my forehead forward.

  I had barely started the motion when her hand blurred forward, a single finger on my forehead, stopping my attack. She was lightning fast and abnormally strong... like Rin. She studied me a moment and then looked back to Xerxes. “She's magnificent, Alexander.”

  He nodded and offered as he stepped up beside her, “And a surprisingly elusive pain in the ass.” He didn't even acknowledge me as he told her, “Be a dear and do the voodoo you do so well? We need to know exactly what occurred to make her this way. We know it wasn't the thread, it has warped five others beyond recognition in our attempts. We need every detail.”

  She nodded at him and growled as he took a couple steps away. “It isn't voodoo, Alex, it is Vodun.” I looked from him to her, just to get a face full of white dust she blew at me. I pulled back and hit the back of my head on the upright table I was pinned to.

  Then she said to me, “Miss Tourvell, will you be a dear and tell us the events of the night that you became... this?” She touched my cheek over the new scratches. “You can remember in excruciating detail as it plays in slow motion in your memory.”

  She snapped, and Alania came back to life, shooting a quick death glare at Abigail, then pulling out a recorder from her pocket. I leaned toward the recorder she held toward me, my eyes never leaving Truit as I said in a sweet tone, “You need to step back, the corpse smell is god awful.”

 

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