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

by Ryan Schow

  “Okay, well tell Brayden we’re happy he’s going to come live with us,” her father says.

  “August, Dad.”

  “I know,” he says. “Same thing.”

  Now my eyes go wide, just as wide as August’s, and I’m like, “I love you, Dad. Too much for words right now.”

  “I know, sweetie.”

  “See you shortly, and thank you!”

  When we get home, there is no one there. I look at him and he looks at me and from there it’s on like Donkey Kong. I don’t want to bore you with the details of more mind blowing sex, but here’s a few: yummy, yummy, YUMMY!

  And that’s only the first time; the second time was better.

  As I lay there in bed, naked, breathing heavy and completely satiated, I say, “I have to tell you something and I think you’re going to like it, but you might not.”

  He rolls over, levels me with those eyes and says, “Yes?”

  “Before you,” I say, tip toeing up to the edge of this cliff, “there was someone else.”

  “There were a few by my understanding,” he says. “Same with me. But that doesn’t matter now.”

  “Well, it kinda does.”

  Now he looks worried. I don’t blame him. I’m a little worried myself!

  I put my hand to his cheek and say, “You never need to worry about me, babe. And I’ll always be honest.”

  “So who is he?”

  “Um…it isn’t a he.”

  Now the worry becomes a smile and he says, “If you’re going to tell me you’ve been with a girl, I think I’ll be ready for a third time.”

  “Really?” I ask, astounded. “Because I can give you the deets.”

  “So it’s true?”

  “You remember Chloe?”

  “Holy shit, Netty’s girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The nerdy hot one?”

  “She’s not a nerd anymore.”

  “So…”

  “I like her. Not like I like you. I love you. But she’s got this thing for me, and one of the things about me is that I can ride a wave of someone’s need almost like tweakers can ride a high.”

  “Let me understand,” he says now propping himself up on an elbow. “She wants you and you use that ‘want’ to get high?”

  “Sort of.”

  “But you like her, too.”

  “I do.”

  “And you want to know if it’s okay that you maybe see her one more time? Maybe two?”

  “Just one. But yeah, maybe two.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” he says, a cheesy grin all over his face. “Two times tops, but if it’s more than that, then I’m in the mix. Meaning you have to be okay with me being there, and she has to be okay with me sharing her with you.”

  “You’re just saying that because you know she’s a lesbian.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s had the D before.”

  “Okay,” he says, revising himself, “then one more time is fine, but if it’s two, then she has to take the D again and you have to be okay with me giving it to her.”

  Slowly I nod my head.

  He’s being fair.

  “And if it’s just one more time, and you don’t see her again, I get all the details whenever I want. Deal?”

  “You get the deets, yeah…deal.”

  This grin he has stretches halfway across his face and he says, “That’s so hot.”

  “I heard you were okay with it,” I say.

  “From who?” he asks.

  “Future me.”

  “So you cared enough to check in?”

  “If I knew you didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have been with her. I like her, but I love you. There is a world of difference for me.”

  “I love you, too, which is why I want the details now so I can go a third time.” That’s when I remove the blankets, and say, “She kissed me here, and here…”

  And then I point out all the ways she pleased me and in that moment, we each rode the other’s high and the third time was by far the best time.

  My parents and Rebecca come home that night and we all have dinner together like a big happy family. Orianna is looking around, so happy with all of us, and not because of the way we look, but because the table is literally overflowing with love between us.

  All this sappy shit isn’t something I’d normally talk about, but honest to God, there’s something to it. Besides, if Jesus himself tells you love can stop an army, then it’s best to do exactly what he says!

  There is still a few things for me to do, though, things I need to do alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The drive up to Auburn is not long because I’ve got some great music and my psychic radar is telling me there are no cops ahead. I don’t go over a hundred, but ninety is a given. The phone rings as I’m passing through Vacaville. I pick up and it’s Elizabeth.

  “Hey girl!” I say.

  “What’s up sister,” she says back.

  “You know we could have talked telepathically,” I say.

  “I’m a sucker for tradition,” she jokes with a bit of laughter, which warms me. “I just wanted to call and tell you, holy BALLS, we’re bad ass!”

  We both break into a giggle because she’s me and I’m her, but we’re now both doing different things. The other line rings over and it’s Raven.

  “Hang on,” I say.

  I three way us in and Raven is like, “Yeah, what she said!”

  “I mean, JC of all people?” Elizabeth says. “You know if anyone finds out we traveled back in time to hang with Jesus they’re going to be like, ‘Oh my God, you talked to Jesus?! That’s BLASPHEMOUS!’”

  We all laugh together because we know how offended people can get over every little thing these days.

  “I actually thought of that,” I say, “which is why we will tell NO ONE.”

  “It’s made us a better person though,” Raven says. “I already feel way more calm. Don’t you guys?”

  “Totally,” I say.

  “And it’s going to be even better for us when you’re done doing what you’re about to do,” Elizabeth says.

  “I hope so.”

  “We know so,” Raven says.

  “Chloe is about to call,” Elizabeth says. “Gosh damn she’s sexy!”

  “I know,” I tell her with a knowing grin.

  I can feel it.

  “We can all feel it,” Raven says, our minds synched perfectly. “That was so hot by the way.”

  “Right?!” I say.

  I get off the line with the girls as the phone beeps over. Clicking over, I say, “You must be reading my mind because I’ve been thinking about you all morning.”

  “Really?” she says. “It’s Chloe, by the way.”

  Not missing a beat, I say, “I know it’s you. That’s why I said it.”

  We talk for awhile before I finally get the nerve up to say what I’ve been wanting to say. By now I’m making the final climb up highway 80 into Auburn and getting close to my destination.

  “So I have something I want to tell you,” I say. “It’s what I’ve been thinking about. I told my boyfriend about you and I—”

  “You told him?” she all but spat out.

  “Yeah, last night.”

  Breathless, worried, she says, “And?”

  “He thought it was hot. He also said I could be with you again if I wanted. But only on one condition.”

  “And that is?” she says, reserved but sounding less scared.

  “I can be with you this next time one on one, but if we want more, you have to share, and I have to share. Meaning there’s going to be a triangle with me and August as the anchor.”

  “So I can play, but if anyone is out, it’s me.”

  “More or less.”

  “Send me a picture of your boo.”

  I pull over, send her a couple of pics of August, and wait for it. Then: “Holy shit, Savannah.”

  “So are you in?”

>   “Yeah. I’m in. If he’s in, I mean, then I’m totally in.”

  “If you fall in love,” I warn her, “I want you to understand—”

  “That I’m the third wheel,” she says. “I already said I can live with that.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “So when can I see you?” she asks.

  “Soon,” I tell her. “I’ll be in touch with you soon, okay?”

  “Don’t make me wait long,” she says, and there’s a pleading in her voice that honest to God, I simply adore.

  More love, right? Isn’t that what God said? I’m just trying to follow His word. It’s not debauchery; I like to think of it as me stalling entire armies…

  I meander into the Auburn cemetery just as darkness is falling. I feel completely alone here. Mine is the only car. Then I spot a ground’s keeper at work across the field. He sees me, then he sees my car and he looks on with appreciation.

  Can you really blame him?

  I climb out of the Audi, stroll over to Kaitlyn Whitaker’s grave—Damien’s once missing step-sister—drop my tethers into the earth, feel inside the coffin.

  I feel him: musty, dying, rotting and remaking and rotting again. Dr. Aribert Heim. This creep has the slightest spark of life still inside him, just as I knew he would.

  It’s not lost on me that this is beyond cruel. He is darkness incarnate, though. I mean, the man burned people from the inside out in Nazi Germany. He sort of deserves it.

  I use my mind to peel back the lawn over the grave. I roll it back, the roots of it tearing out of the soil. When that’s done, I feel a small wind starting up over the grave. The dirt starts to circle, faster and faster—yet contained—and then it begins to lift into the air.

  The soil over Heim’s casket slowly but assuredly starts to lift. It looks like a small dirt tornado stretching six, then seven, and then eight feet high. A part of me has my mind tethered to the ground’s keeper. He sees what’s going on from a distance, then scratches his head and blinks twice to make sure he’s seeing what he’s seeing. He is. He knows he is. The man hurries away, scared, which is fine by me.

  Sometimes a girl needs her privacy when she’s talking to the dead.

  When enough of the earth is swirling high above me, I use my mind to drag this coffin out of the hole before me. The fancy box hovers at eye level. I open the top half and see him. He’s a nasty skull with wispy hair and grey tinged skin that’s pulled so tight against his head he looks like something out of a horror film. The eyes squeeze shut against the sight of me, each one producing a single tear.

  “Don’t get too excited to see me f*ckface,” I say, “you’re staying in the box.”

  That’s when I feel the ground’s keeper. He’s scurrying forward like a rat, hiding behind trees and headstones, his eyes on me, completely transfixed. He’s got his cell phone camera out and he’s about to press the RECORD icon when my right hand shoots out and makes a fist. The phone crumbles in his hand, startling him.

  He sits there for a second, and then he turns and runs for his life.

  That’s when the stink hits me, and I mean, it REALLY hits me. Heim has been lying in his own waste this whole time, and even though he cannot die, he is all but dead, his bones weak, his organs trying desperately to fail. The rot of him is all wrong, but so is he.

  “You deserve this, you sorry shit stain,” I grumble.

  The smell of fecal decay and bad breath damn near buckles my knees. His eyes ease open and look at me.

  “There he is,” I say.

  A moan escapes his very thin, very chapped lips.

  “You’re looking a bit wan, Aribert.”

  His mouth starts to open, the skin splitting, his teeth looking like old Indian corn, but he can’t summon the energy to speak.

  “I brought you company,” I say.

  I place a hand to Heim’s leathery looking head while I drag The Operator up out of me. He knows what’s going on. What I’m doing. The Operator starts to throw an absolute fit as I prepare to evacuate his soul from me into Heim.

  Wrestling with him and wrangling him, I manage to pull him out of me and shove him kicking and screaming into Heim. When he’s there, I construct a box in the former Nazi’s feeble, broken mind and lock The Operator down. Where before I buried this menace deep inside me so he could not bother me, I now leave him front and center with Heim.

  These two malevolent turd burglars will now be cellmates forever. It will not be fun, they will not like each other, death will always be just in reach, yet never close enough to enjoy.

  But the darkness…it’s finally out of me!

  Slamming the coffin lid shut, I drive the box down into the earth where it sits cockeyed but far enough down. Standing back, I let the cyclone of dirt fall back into the hole. There is a slight mound when I’m done. I level it out, scraping the extra soil away with my mind, flinging it everywhere. Still in perfect control, I roll out the grass and press it in place.

  All this with perfect ease.

  Marvelous…

  As I’m walking back to the Audi, I honestly feel so much lighter. A smile creeps on my face as I think about everything I’ve been through. A warmth permeates this body, this mind, this soul, and then the presence of God suddenly feels near.

  “Are you here?” I ask.

  I feel a smile in the ethers and I know.

  “Thank you,” I say, and then the presence is gone, but never gone.

  You are not alone. You’ve never been alone, little one.

  But I’m not done yet.

  I head to Astor Academy, let myself into Holland’s office, take the elevator down to the lab, then study the nearly dozen canisters. Inside four of them are bodies: a boy and three young women.

  Closing my eyes, I slip into each of them, realize they are soulless. Four clones. At least Holland kept his word on that.

  Summoning the memories of the dojo, how The Operator tore open a hole into the ethers, into some sort of dark in-between, I try to do the same thing. It takes me some time and some focus, but I slowly rip open the fabric of this universe only to find a vast chasm of emptiness on the other side.

  Using the moment and my momentum, I psychically start shoving everything in the lab into that hole. Machines, trays, tools, blood samples, empty canisters and finally the four filled glass canisters flow into this hole, falling away into the nothingness.

  Everything that would be of use to Holland, everything that allows him to do what he would continue to do to corrupt the world, I disappear it.

  When I’m done, I have to say, I already feel worlds better.

  Pleased with my work, I sit down in the center of the lab, close my eyes and see Holland’s San Francisco lab. I feel time wanting to suck me into the portal I open. I’m suddenly pulled into the hole, shoved through, and dumped into the San Francisco lab. With my fatigue comes less ladylike arrivals. Even though I’m becoming mentally tested, I tear open another hole and force everything from the San Francisco lab into that similar cosmic emptiness.

  When I’m done, I teleport back to Astor, landing hard on my side.

  Laid out in the nearly bare space, I catch my breath, then close my eyes once more and reach my tethers out into the world. I find him quickly. Holland is down the hill in Roseville, an upscale city twenty miles east of Sacramento, which is about a ten minute drive from here. I see he’s with Sabrina, who looks exactly like Arabelle before she died.

  It’s just after nine o’clock and they’re nearly finished with dinner. I open a portal with my mind, envision myself moving into it, through it, and coming out in the restaurant, P.F. Chang’s. I enter the bathroom stall extra rough. The stall door blows open from a poor entry, scaring a girl at the sink checking her makeup. I have that look like I fell off the toilet. Shit, I actually did fall off the toilet!

  “Sorry,” I say, getting up and feeling sheepish. “The Ma Pa Tofu makes me nuclear.”

  After that, I swear, I don’t know what to say next.

>   She hurries out of the ladies room and I get off the toilet and check my hair in the mirror. Satisfied, I strut out into the front of the restaurant, smile at the hostesses, then walk past a gorgeous circular bar and find Holland and Sabrina at a quiet booth with a window view. They look like they’re really enjoying themselves.

  It’s almost refreshing.

  Holland sees me and that easy smile falls from his face. Not Sabrina’s though. I can tell she’s happy to see me. That’s a nice change from the cat fight we last had. Of course, I did kill her brother, Tavares.

  “Here you are,” he says, hands out and cupped, “the perpetual fly in my ointment.”

  “Can you not be a dick for like five minutes?” I ask.

  “Arabelle here will tell you that is entirely possible,” he says, turning to her, “won’t you my dear?”

  “You’re calling her Arabelle?” I ask, astounded.

  “I like it,” Sabrina says. Well, Sabrina who is now Arabelle. Arabelle 2.0…

  “Why are you here?” Holland asks.

  “To tell you that your labs are gone, both of them, and that your work in genetics is done.”

  There are still dozens of people eating, and half a dozen servers moving with expedience to take care of their patrons.

  I feel him starting to heat up, but I am getting good at keeping people dosed, which is what I call it. I drop his level ten rage to a level four.

  “I gave you Sabrina, now Arabelle, and that is enough. That’s more than enough.”

  “I know,” he says through gritted teeth.

  “Your mother was full of shit. Love is not poison. Go experience it, Josef. Go be in love. Love is good.”

  “I have multiple projects in play,” he says, his face and body fighting against my invisible restraints.

  “As the head of your oversight committee, I’m here to tell you that you don’t have anything working anymore.”

  “Ah, but I do,” he says with hostile eyes.

  “You have nothing in play. And if you don’t do what I ask, I’ll destroy all your cold samples, too. The ones you keep off site.”

  His backup DNA.

  “Just when I think you can’t get worse than you already are, you go and out do yourself.”