by Schow, Ryan
Right now, he’s saying, “No, no, nonononono.” It’s like the chant of the twisted and delusional.
“Stop it, Jake. You’re making this out to be something it’s not.”
The hands drop, his eyes go wild and he flashes on me hard. “You come here and read my mind and you make love to me, and then you tell me this?” Ripping the sheets away, covering his nudity as I sit here fully exposed, he says, “Whatever you are, get the hell out!”
As tough as I am, as unkillable as I have become, my heart is still a tender, fragile thing. I gather my stolen clothes, the tears flooding this monster’s eyes. Jake storms out of the room, leaves me broken and spurned. When I go, I know it will be for good. I chose him.
Selfishly, I chose wrong.
Or perhaps this was for my own good. Perhaps this was how it was always meant to be.
When I go into the tank tonight, or tomorrow, I will pull this rejection into my heart and let it kill the old me. I will let my unrequited love, my total and complete rejection, suck away the last vestiges of Savannah Van Duyn and Abigail Swann. I will let my animosity, this defeat, this sadness and desolation chew away at my memories, at the past, at everything that made me who I am today, and then I’ll flush myself down the pink canister’s stainless steel drain until I am nothing but biological waste.
This me, she was never meant to live.
She was…wrong.
6
At the lab, I hand the car keys back to Holland, a stark contrast to the way he gave them to me. “I hate you,” I tell him.
“The feeling’s mutual, you horrible pestilence.”
I give him a hug, and reluctantly, he hugs me back, pulling me in tight. I hate that I’ve resigned myself to accepting this kind of nurturing from a war criminal, but this girl’s only got so many options.
“Put me under, change me or kill me, I don’t care.” My head is resting on his shoulder, and half my mouth is mumbling into his shirt. The defeat in my voice tears me apart. I’m desperate to go, but I can’t go just yet. “Do me one favor first,” I say. “Please?”
“If I can,” he says, his tone different, tamed.
“Wake up Rebecca, take her to my father.” Normally I would look him in the eyes for such an important request, but in his heart, he is completely still. I already know his answer.
“Okay,” he finally says.
In that moment, I can think of nothing but the end of my life, how this is the way I’m going out: slayed by rejection. Not loved, not missed, not of value to anyone but an immortal ex-Nazi death camp doctor. The agony boils inside me, consumes me, smooths out every hard layer in me until I’m nothing but failure. He doesn’t let me go. He just stays with me while I sob on his shoulder.
Then, when the emotions inside me begin to dull once more, he says, “Should I decide not to kill you, who do you want to become?”
“I already told you, surprise me.” If I’ve learned one thing on this incredible, torturous journey, it’s that I am not my looks, that beauty is something inside you that you work on more than your hair or your makeup or your waistline. And love? I’ve learned love is more important than anything. That it’s the most fragile thing of all. It’s what I got from my father, what I needed from my mother, and what I wanted so desperately from Jake.
“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” he says.
I take a step back, dry my eyes, and look up at him. “Everything’s going to change. Forever.”
With a nod of his head, he presses the button and my canister begins to fill with the nutrient rich pink liquid.
I’m ready.
Epilogue: Ugly Little Teeth
1
Holland puts her under, then sets the timer. Alone in the room, he says, “I want to be brought out the same time as she is brought out. It’s not safe—her out in the world without someone to tame her—to protect her from herself.”
Quentin realized Holland knew he was there, so he stepped fully into the room and said, “And you can be that person?”
Holland didn’t bother turning around. He was still fiddling with knobs and serums.
“I hope so.”
After a moment of silence, Quentin said, “How did you know I was here?”
“I know everything about this lab. This place is my life.”
“You sure this will work?” he asked.
Turning around, facing him, Holland says, “No.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because my discipline is wearing thin, Quentin. Because as long as I am this erratic, this up and down, I will be problematic to you, to her, to my own self-preservation. Besides, I need a bigger body to handle this overproduction of testosterone.”
As if testosterone was his only problem…
“Why not dial back the testosterone? Why do you need to be…bigger?”
A charge of darkness ripped through him. The same feeling he had when he was Josef Mengele. He wanted to amputate limbs, torture, or gas a shower full of women and children. “Because I like this feeling. And I love having so much rage on tap. It’s what’s going to give me an edge over Abby if she snaps. I have to be this beast to control her, whatever she becomes.”
“And the teeth?” he asked, glancing down at Holland’s mouth.
“Gone,” Holland hissed. “These ugly little things, I’m all done with them.”
Quentin tempered his voice to compensate for Holland’s escalating anger. “Is your body able to handle the growth you’ve planned for it?”
“I don’t know, probably not. But you know what to do. You know the process. Just follow my notes. They’re extensive.”
“And if things go wrong?”
The lab seemed chilly to him. Too cold. Like he was leaving it behind, even though he wasn’t. Holland thought for a moment, then said, “Shotgun blast to the head, then take what’s left of me directly to the incinerator.”
“Let’s hope things don’t go wrong,” Quentin said with a nervous laugh.
“Mr. Russell, we’re on the precipice of something new and turbulent and celestial. The two of us in here, myself and Abby, we are the next evolution in humankind. We are self-made, super-biological beings. Gods to people like you. Invariably, things will go wrong. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when and by how much. In that, Mr. Russell, I trust you to use your discretion.”
“So kill you if something goes really wrong. That’s what you want?”
“No, Quentin,” he snapped. “Aren’t you listening? If something goes wrong with me, kill both of us. Me and the girl. Plus Alice and Georgia. In fact, kill everything and everyone in this lab.”
Quentin nodded, somber.
Now he got it.
2
It was in the first few days that Dr. Quentin Russell saw signs of trouble with Dr. Holland and his new body. By day six, he knew he would have to kill him. And Abby.
No, he would have to kill all of them.
On day seven, he fired up the incinerator, loaded round after round into the shotgun, and then he started Abby’s awakening/draining sequence.
With what he knew about her, it would be best if she went first. Standing over her now empty glass container, he racked a load, pointed the shotgun at her head and waited for her to open her eyes.
END OF BOOK V
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Book 6 of the Swann Series Novels:
RAVEN
Dreams. That’s what Raven is having. Dreams of love and a salacious tryst. Dreams that feel hot and downright yummy, but may herald something more haunting and alarming than she suspected.
When the sexy as hell Tavares Baldridge arrives at Astor Academy, every girl with two eyes and a heartbeat gets moist at the sight of him. But Raven doesn’t have time for games because being no one, having no future, no resources and no place to live is a problem far more arduous than whatever senseless boy-crush she’s developing. While planning her future, to set herself up right, Raven relies once again on her newfound talents and the darker implements of her schooling: blackmail, scheming, extortion and the significance of a well-placed threat. What Raven doesn’t know is the boy-crush she is determined to ignore rests at the very center of who she is and what she is slated to become.
Raven thinks she knows herself, but the question she can’t stop asking is, can I live with what I’m about to do? Where before she learned to be strong, to fight, to survive, now she must learn to temper her impulses, quell the violence and find humility in her actions. But the dreams unnerve her, as does Jake and the secrets he will kill to protect. Then there is the vanishing blonde who seems to know Raven, who won’t stop appearing and disappearing. What does she want? And how does Raven’s life and future sit in the hands of the blonde, Jake and Tavares? Unless Raven can connect the dots and warm up to some dangerous truths about the future, she will never understand the storm headed straight for her, or how the sudden appearance of a mutilated body in the middle of the desert holds the key to saving humanity itself.
Just when you think you know where this series is headed, RAVEN comes along to up the ante. In this ever expanding universe, RAVEN crosses new thresholds in love, the art of handling bullies, the development of personal power and the intricacies of familial relationships. In this new, pulse-pounding chapter of the Swann Series novels, RAVEN boldly defies expectations while continuing to set an unapologetic, yet pivotal tone for the future of these characters and their ongoing saga.
Don’t wait, download your copy of RAVEN now!
