And that was when he got the first glimpse of his enemy, looming over him…
For just a moment he thought it was a monstrous crocodile-headed thing with strange hands ending in long pointed tentacles. It had gray skin, with massive orange eyes, and a long fluorescent yellow tongue that flicked out from its fang-filled mouth like a snake tasting at the air.
Then he blinked, and realized it wasn’t a monster at all; it was just a woman.
But not an ordinary woman.
She was enormous, taller than any woman he’d ever seen, maybe even taller than him.
She was of African descent, and she was naked.
Her skin was flawless and very dark, stretched over a lean, muscular frame, and her breasts were larger than most men’s heads, though they looked perfectly proportionate on her massive body. The mound of her sex was covered in luxurious pubic hair, and she had dark hairs sticking out from her armpits, and a lighter coating of downy hair all over her legs.
In one of her enormous hands, she held his revolver, and her fingers were so long they made it seem small enough to be a child’s toy. Which means her hands are bigger than mine, for sure.
Her whole body was dripping wet, forming a puddle on the ground that—he noticed with disgust—mingled with the sticky bits of blood and tissue there, forming a pinkish pasty substance.
Then he looked back up into her eyes, and found that they were unnaturally orange, the very same eyes he’d seen in his brief hallucination of the beast-thing.
“Pardon my nakedness,” she said. “I was in the shower, washing the blood off myself.” She glanced down at the pile of body parts beside her. “I haven’t made a mess like this in a very long time. It’s a shame, because they were competent enough at certain jobs, but they lost something very important today… I don’t know… I guess I just snapped. Lucky for you I got the anger out of my system before your arrival.”
He found that he still didn’t have enough breath to answer, so he just blinked and tried to think.
“Yes,” she continued, “If you’d walked in just a little while ago, it might be you here in little pieces instead of them. Of course, there’s a good chance I’ll kill you before it’s over with anyway, but at least you’ll have a chance to explain yourself first.”
He finally summoned enough breath to make his voice work and said, “I suppose that’s all a man can hope for.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ll let you have a little hope… For now. But in the meantime, I don’t think you’ll be needing this.” She raised his gun and bent the barrel backward as easily as if it were made of aluminum foil before tossing it casually into the pile with the bodies. “Now, let’s get down to business. My name’s Myra Calanealoo. What’s yours?”
Chapter 7 - The Great and The Terrible
Simone woke from red dreams, and found herself laying in the dark on a cold hard surface.
Momentary confusion. Where, what, how?
Then it all came back to her in a rush… A strange series of events, experiences beyond imagining, killing another man… And then the uncontrollable urge that forced her to hide here in the old gymnasium.
She didn’t care about any of that.
Despite the darkness she knew the exact shape of the room, and her exact position. There was not even the slightest sense of physical disorientation. Apparently the strange new sensing power she’d noticed when she first walked into the gym had become much stronger while she slept.
She sprang to her feet—one motion, effortless, no thought required, like Bruce Lee in one of those old Kung Fu movies. As she did so, her feet made a little slapping sound on the concrete, and she noticed that the sound made her new sense for the geometry of her surroundings even more vivid for a few seconds, like someone had momentarily flicked on a light switch.
This was intriguing, so she clapped her hands hard, and the loud popping sound echoed through the room, and again, her sense of everything around her became much clearer in her mind. She could actually feel the texture of the wood on the walls, feel old rusted nails sticking out of beams in the ceiling.
She smiled, and her teeth—shaped very differently now—pressed against her lips as she did so.
She moved towards the dressing room door with absolute confidence, no hesitation at all, and then hurried through the dark emptiness of the gym back to the window she’d broken when she entered. She stepped up onto the sill, ducked through the window, made a little hop, and landed outside in the high grass next to the building. It never occurred to her to worry that she would get cut on shards of glass, or lose her balance, or whether she’d be able to bend low enough to get easily through the window without holding onto something. She just did it, like a little kid would do something, like everything in life was easy and there was nothing to be afraid of; like every movement was a little blessing—easy, perfect.
Once in high school she’d broken a bone in her foot during a fall at cheerleading practice, and afterward she’d spent several weeks in a cast, trying to get around with crutches. When they finally took the cast off and she could walk normally again, it was like she’d never experienced walking before—suddenly life was so easy compared to the weeks with the cast. Every simple thing in her life became a euphoric experience, something to be savored.
This was just like that only much more intense.
And now that she was outside she realized there was more to it than just the way she could move. The scent of the night air was suddenly full of a new subtlety, rich and complex.
There were flower smells, animal smells, decay smells, chemical smells, and a hundred million other things for which she had no frame of reference… And all the smells were layered. She could separate them easily, focusing in on one or the other, and she didn’t have to think about doing this, she just did it, the same way she could focus her eyes on something close and then switch to something far away; just as instinctive, just as effortless.
And also… Had it ever been so easy to see in the dark?
No. Never.
Colors around her stood out vividly in the moonlight: the bright red bricks of the gym, the lush greenery of the surrounding forest, the white, and yellow, and red graffiti (Sam wuz Here, FUCK THE POLICE, Karen has a magical koochie).
She raised her hand to push a strand of hair out of her eyes, and noticed that her skin was mottled gray, like the color of a cloudy sky with a complex pattern of large brown diamonds all over it, snakelike.
She glanced down at the rest of her body, saw that she was naked, which confused her for a moment before she remembered that she had come here with nothing but a bloody wife-beater, and then tossed that.
She was covered all over with the same grayish, checkerboard skin, and her pubic hair was strange—shiny and silver.
Metallic…
She took a strand of hair from her head and held it in front of her eyes, and saw that it too was silvery, as were her fingernails.
In a very deep part of herself, a feeling of panic started to rise.
A monster. It’s actually happened. I’ve turned into a fucking monster.
She was like some crazy thing out of a horror movie.
It’s already done. It’s too late. I’m gone.
As she stood there trying to come to terms with her situation, she became aware of a sound—a buzzing noise, coming from somewhere out in the surrounding woods.
No, not buzzing…
It was like the wind had gained the ability to form words. She couldn’t understand the words, but there was an emotion in them, a yearning.
It’s for me, she thought. Calling for me.
She took a few steps in that direction, and then a few more. Each step brought her nearer to the sound, and the more she listened, the more seductive it became.
Suddenly, without thinking about it, she started to run, and when she did, her newly enhanced body extended itself, showing her what it could really do.
She moved with a bounding gate, each step sending her several feet throu
gh the air. She was moving so fast that the wind blew her hair back from her face and cooled her skin.
Her path took her in the direction of the playground equipment, and she leapt over the rusted merry-go-round without even thinking about it.
A moment later she slipped between the trees, and into the woods, dodging obstacles without a moment’s thought, like a gymnast. Despite having no shoes, her feet registered no major discomfort. She could feel rocks and sticks, and even felt herself step on thorns a time or two, but none of it was bothersome enough to make her want to slow down.
She traveled for nearly a mile, but the trip was effortless, and once she’d set her mind to the act of moving, everything happened as if by some kind of automatic process.
That strange ability to feel her surroundings was operating all the time, she realized, working behind her now enhanced vision, and it allowed her to avoid things she couldn’t even see, taking smarter paths through the undergrowth. She never tripped. She never faltered. She just kept moving with a surety that was totally unnatural considering the terrain.
she jumped over fallen branches before she knew they were there, avoided hidden holes with ease.
If she hadn’t been so afraid of all the changes going on she would have been thrilled.
I’m like a… superhero?
As she went deeper into the forest, the sound grew louder, but she had begun to think that it wasn’t a real sound. It seemed to be something she was hearing in her mind.
I’m honing in on something, she thought. Like radar…
And then, when the sound in her mind was almost overwhelming, she also started hearing another sound underneath it.
A real sound…
Was it rushing water?
Yes, it has to be. It must be the river!
She picked up her pace even more, and the dark forest around her blurred. She was running so fast she felt like she could’ve kept pace with a car. Maybe that wasn’t really true, but it sure felt that way.
She came to the precipice of a great hill, leading down to the river below. She could actually feel the moisture in the air.
The hill was perilously steep, but she didn’t even think about slipping. She just sprinted down, spending half the time of her descent in the air, grabbing trees here and there to steer herself, never missing a beat, never landing funny, never sliding except when she wanted to.
It was thrilling to move this way.
And then she came to the river. It was wide here, and deep.
The sound buzzing in her mind had become a roar so loud it would’ve literally caused the ground to shake if it were real.
Her heart raced as she approached the water.
10 feet deep here probably, she thought, and at least 100 feet wide, and it was running at a high level from all the rain in recent weeks, engorged.
Why am I here?
There was a reason. She was sure of it. Something had called her here, was still calling her.
Then an image popped into her head. She saw herself—her new self: silver haired with gray diamond patterned skin, naked and sleek, walking to the edge of the water, and wading in, and then swimming out to the center of it.
A little voice inside warned her not to, insisted that she stop, but the great ear-shattering telepathic whisper was begging her to come to the water, to enter, to submerge herself.
One step, two steps, three, then testing the water with a toe. It was cold but the feeling didn’t bother her.
She stepped on out, up to her ankles, then her calves, and her thighs, and then the water was up higher than her waist and she started to swim, long slow strokes. The current was weak here in this deep wide spot, and she kept moving free and easy, not affected by it too much.
As she neared the center, the water began to vibrate, and this was the first sign of Its coming.
Then there came the lightning, all around in the sky in the trees, little bolts of blue, some thinner than a hair, others massive like great banners strung out, all wriggling and twisting; not like normal electricity, like something organic.
Then, for just a moment, the water stopped being water and started being pure light. It was a light she could feel, a light that held her suspended. Dry and warm and almost solid, and bright enough to illuminate the surrounding forest like daytime.
Then suddenly it was gone, and she was left blinded, and the water was cold again.
And there was something in there with her.
It brushed against her as it swam past, slimy and colder than the water, enormous and curved, so long its body seemed to go on forever as it moved past her, curling round.
Then about a dozen feet away, she saw its head emerge from the water.
The mouth was the first feature that grabbed her attention—like a cross between a crocodile’s and a wild boar’s, full of glimmering metal teeth, longer than kitchen knives. There were no lips on that mouth, so that the teeth were visible even though the jaw was closed, like a permanent horrible grin.
Then she noticed the eyes, larger than dinner plates, orange with gigantic black pupils. They were staring, unblinking, unfeeling eyes.
The beast raised itself up and up and up, it’s head rising about 10 feet above the water on the end of a long wide neck that vaguely reminded her of drawings she’d seen of certain dinosaurs. The creature was impossibly huge.
And then the smell hit: a reek of lemons mixed with decay that was stifling.
The monster opened its mouth and sent its long tongue out towards Simone, The tongue was bright fluorescent yellow with a cylindrical shape, and as it extended from the mouth she saw that there were lines through it—like cracks—and then she realized it wasn’t a normal tongue at all as it split along those cracks, becoming a collection of tentacles, like a horrible flower opening up. Each tentacle dripped with a liquid that appeared to have the consistency of honey.
The tongue moved slowly towards her.
At the last moment she broke out of her frozen terror, and tried to swim away, but then the tongue shot out, quick, like a snake striking, grasping her up, tentacles wrapping around her.
They were cold and wet, like something dead found floating in a pond, and they held her firmly, probing her, tasting her body, invading every crevice and corner.
She struggled, but the thing had her—she was as helpless as a babe.
Then it raised her up out of the river and held her above its great head, fully 20 feet in the air.
She looked down into those terrible orange eyes, so empty, so dead, so wrong…
And as she did so, a single word came into her mind.
A name.
Apep…
He was the enemy of the sun. He was the father of darkness. He was the guardian of the night, the keeper of secrets.
The eater of children.
And she knew deep in her gut, whether she liked it or not, that she had finally met her real father.
TO BE CONTINUED…
I hope you enjoyed reading The DARK Trilogy, which collects the first three books of my Titan’s Song series. To continue the story, you can either go straight to my second omnibus: The LAND Trilogy, or you can grab the next individual episode: Land of Illusion.
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Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll stay tuned for the next book!
In the following pages I have included, as a special bonus in this edition, my horror novelette, In The Shade, which has subtle ties to the lore in my Titan’s Song books.
Thanks for reading!
BONUS MATERIAL
IN THE SHADE - A HORROR NOVELETTE
Chapter 1
Ben sat at the kitchen table with a gun in his
lap. It was a Baretta Pico. A small but reliable weapon, perfect for concealed carry. Or at least that’s what he’d heard from people who knew about such things. He’d only shot it a couple of times—at an indoor range once and out in the yard once. He understood the basics of how to operate it, but he wasn’t really a “gun” person.
The weight of the weapon in his lap made him feel strange and uncertain. It felt like he’d walked off the side of a cliff and fallen into some bizarro-land where everything was upside down.
He was having a lot of trouble trying to square himself with the fact that he felt the need to have a gun close to hand.
In fact, he’d come very close to leaving it in the closet. But that would’ve been stupid. Under the circumstances, he’d be a fool to confront Harold without it.
Not that he was physically afraid of his older brother. Harold, a nerdy bio-chemist, could be domineering in an intellectual way, but he was also physically unintimidating—a frail man with poor vision who couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag.
The main reason for the gun was in case Harold tried to run, or in case he refused to do the right thing and needed some additional persuasion.
Or in case Harold was carrying a gun himself.
Ben had never known his brother to pack heat, but it was starting to seem like maybe he didn’t know his brother at all. And if the worst happened, if bullets started flying, he wanted to make sure at least some of those bullets were his own.
Listen to yourself, he thought with a smirk. Trying to get psyched up for some kind of high-noon showdown? What kind of macho bullshit are you smoking, anyway?
He sat there alone, and embarrassed, but he was also shaking a little as he watched the clock slowly eat away at the minutes.
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The DARK Trilogy: Titan's Song Chronicles Volume 1 (Books 1 - 3) Page 24