The DARK Trilogy: Titan's Song Chronicles Volume 1 (Books 1 - 3)

by Jacob Stanley

  Immediately the pain was gone.

  Her body—exhausted—went limp, and she opened her eyes.

  Bobby was standing over her, face smeared with blood and snot, eyes rimmed red, pants down around his knees.

  His ugly little cock, now soft, hung over the edge of her bed. It was wet with piss, and little droplets trickled off onto her mattress.

  His eyes were full of murder as he reached down, gripped her throat with both hands, and started to squeeze.

  His strength, driven by rage, was incredible. It felt like he was going to tear her head right off.

  Simone tried to kick. But he quickly adjusted his position so that he was closer to the head of the bed, which made the angle impossible—she just couldn’t do anything to him if he was standing there. Not with her hands tied.

  He smiled down at her. “This is it, cunt. You’re about to die. This is the end.”

  She tried to scream for help, but his grip was too strong—her airway was totally sealed off and all she could make was a pathetic gurgling sound.

  It’s almost funny, she thought as her vision started to blur around the edges. After all this crazy bullshit, after all the stuff that’s happened today, he’s just going to choke me to death. Such a fucking anticlimax..

  Then, in the last seconds, a glimmer of hope: The venom. If I’m angry, he’ll burn.

  It was all she had left, so she tried to be angry. But how?

  She was too fucking scared, and waaaay too tired to be angry. It was like trying to start a car without fuel.

  Besides, everything was sinking now. Everything seemed far away.

  With the last of her strength, almost without any conscious awareness, she tugged at the restraints.

  And tugged again.

  And then, just before she lost consciousness, her wrists simply passed through the leather, as if the restraints had suddenly turned to jello.

  As if they were no longer solid.

  She experienced a brief moment of surprise.

  Then she passed out, and something else woke up inside her body.

  Chapter 2 - Transgressions

  “What kind of mess?” asked Myra, as she sat down on the couch and muted the television so she could hear better—there was a lot of interference on the cell phone connection for some reason.

  “A big problem in Arizona,” said Tobias.

  Then he explained about the alarm system the security people had placed on the entrance to Santini’s underground lab, and how someone had breached it earlier today.

  “What did you do?”

  “At first,” he said. “I tried to call you, but you wouldn’t answer your phone.”

  “I was busy.”

  “With what?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You need to be able to handle simple things on your own.”

  “I can handle things well enough, sister. I just wanted your input. When I realized you weren’t answering, I called Vargas.”

  Vargas (they didn’t know his first name) was the man who supplied their muscle. He was a big time criminal with underground connections all over the United States.

  “That was the right thing to do.”

  “I know.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “Well, It took him about an hour, but he finally managed to call around and arrange for a kill team in Arizona…”

  “And?”

  Tobias sighed. “Unfortunately, they failed.”

  “Why? Were they too late?”

  “No, they simply weren’t up to the task. All but one of them was killed.”

  “By who?”

  “We don’t know. Apparently, the one man that survived was totally out of his mind when he called in, ranting about an evil black cloud chasing him through the woods, trying to make him swallow his own tongue. The people in Arizona sent another team, of course, but by the time they got there the man was no longer able to answer questions. He had a knife buried in his stomach—a self inflicted wound. Looks like he probably won’t survive. The rest of the men were scattered all over the property, dead. One hanged himself with a vine. Another fell and impaled himself on a tree limb. Others died from exploding ammunition in their guns… It’s all very bizarre.”

  “So you’re saying they ran into someone with power.”

  “Seems that way. Probably several someones, actually.”

  “What about Santini?”

  “Also dead. The men in the second team were pretty confused about his appearance—seems that his transformation was already well underway. It really upset them actually—with the lab equipment and everything, they started getting paranoid about bio-weapons and terrorism. Word got back to Vargas, and he asked me all kinds of questions about it.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I made up an excuse about a skin condition.”

  “Did he buy it?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “It probably doesn’t matter,” she said. “Vargas runs hired killers and does all sorts of other dodgy business. Keeping secrets is a mandatory part of his job.”

  “I hope you’re right—you know more about these things than me, but he seemed very upset. He accused me of holding out on him.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. If we have to, we can eliminate Vargas ourselves with very little trouble. I’m much more worried about the intruder—or intruders—in Arizona. There’s no telling what they found. We should’ve killed Santini as soon as we found out about his mistake, and burned every scrap in his possession that might lead back to us.”

  “He provided a sacred service to The Great Father. He earned the right to decide his own fate.”

  “He was incompetent or he wouldn’t have poisoned himself in the first place. He misled us when he tried to pass himself off as a genuine alchemist.”

  “Perhaps, but that doesn’t change the fact that he succeeded. The Pyramid works just as advertised.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Allowing him to continue living was a totally unnecessary risk. And, let’s get real for a moment—the Great Father doesn’t care about Santini or honor, or any of that dreck. He’s beyond such petty concepts. People are mostly just food to him. You know this as well as I do.”

  “We have traditions for a reason sister.”

  “You and mother are living in the damned middle ages, and it’s going to cause huge trouble for us eventually.”

  “Perhaps you need to stop questioning mother’s judgment. It’s not your place.”

  “I’ll remember you said that when all this comes back to bite us in the rear.”

  “It’s unlikely that Santini had anything that could be traced directly to us.”

  “I hope you’re right, but that’s not the point. This could’ve been avoided if you two had just acted logically. Santini was too weak to survive exposure to the venom. His fate was sealed already. We knew it, and he knew it. He was just too much of a coward to put a gun in his mouth. We should’ve handled that part for him.”

  “That’s not how things are done.”

  Obviously not, she thought, but it should be.

  She wondered how Tobias would react if he knew about her own recent transgressions. The way she was handling Simone right now was an even bigger violation of tradition than killing Santini would’ve been.

  Actually, she thought. I can probably make this Arizona thing work for me…

  Yes… When she finally got around to telling Tobias and mother about her actions with Simone, she could use this mistake with Santini as an example of the perils of unthinking devotion to tradition.

  She was almost tempted to spill the whole story about Simone right now. She didn’t like keeping secrets—it made her feel weak.

  But ultimately she decided to hold her tongue—it would be better to wait till the girl’s transition was over. There was a chance that Tobias might run his mouth to mother right away, and she might decide to interfere. Myra was fully prepared to face some sort of punishment for what she’
d done, but she didn’t want anyone sticking their nose in while the whole thing was still up in the air.

  Still, that didn’t mean she had to concede anything in the current debate. This thing with Santini was fully the fault of mother and Tobias. She had been advising against their approach to the problem from the beginning.

  She was in the middle of formulating her next argument, preparing to give him some hell for his stupidity, when she heard a long peal of strange childlike laughter coming from upstairs.

  Simone?

  The tone was right, but why would she be laughing?

  Almost immediately the laughter started to decrease in volume, like a song fading out, and then suddenly there was a blood-curdling scream—a male scream—that was even lower in volume than the laughter, like it was happening somewhere far away. Maybe outdoors.

  Abruptly the scream stopped, and then there was silence.

  Tobias started talking again, about rules and the right way of doing things.

  She interrupted him. “I have to go. I’ll call you back.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing important. Just someone I need to check on. I’ll explain it later.”

  Chapter 3 - Just Another Dead Guy

  Simone regained her awareness in stages. It was like waking up very slowly from the sort of nightmare that clings and doesn’t want to let you get away.

  Her normal self—the real Simone—was, at first, like the calm eye at the center of a hurricane—a blank slate, smooth and silky and insulated.

  There was no ability to process facts.

  She knew things, but she didn’t understand anything.

  For example, she could see that it was night, and that she was outdoors, and that there were two bright lights shining in front of her.

  Two dancing orange lights.

  But she didn’t understand what she was seeing, or why. There was no meaning. Just facts.

  There were other facts too…

  Like the fact that she could feel sharp stones under her feet.

  And that she could smell blood.

  And that there was meat cooking somewhere, very close.

  There was also a strong shit-smell in the air—dark and moist and fresh, like fumes rising up from an open sewer line.

  Her mouth was busy, working on something that tasted right. Something with a nice, chewy texture. Something juicy.

  And her hands were busy too, working very diligently on some task that seemed important at the moment.

  Something industrious.

  Rip. Rip. Rip.

  Then, all the sudden, understanding returned, like someone flicking on a light switch in her mind.

  The object in front of her was a person.

  It was the guard, Bobby; AKA Mister Strangler; a man who, apparently, wasn’t in the habit of turning down easy pussy.

  Maybe not so easy after all, eh? she thought.

  He was lying on his back, atop a bed of gravel (a parking lot?) and the dancing orange lights she saw were the hot flames coming out of his eye-sockets. She was in a low crouch, right next to him, trying to tear off one of his arms at the elbow. However, she wasn’t having a very easy time of it—pesky bits of tendon and gristle were doing a good job of frustrating her efforts. There was a lot of tissue missing around the elbow—apparently she had resorted to using her teeth at some point, gnawing away most of the flesh. A fairly practical way of helping the process along, she thought.

  It seemed likely that was where the raw meat in her mouth had originated.

  Knowing all this didn’t change her behavior in any way. Not at first. She kept right on working at her task. Like a reflex.

  Automatic pilot. Because, why not?

  It wasn’t until she actually pulled the arm free, and it made a sound exactly like tearing the leg off a cooked turkey, that she finally started to question her behavior.

  And even then, all she did was drop the arm and shrug to herself and stand up.

  She watched him burn for a few seconds, swallowing the last bits of meat left in her mouth.

  There were tears streaming down her cheeks—the only sign of some deep revulsion hidden away in a part of her psyche that she couldn’t fully access.

  And maybe it was better that way. Maybe it was better not to feel. At least for now.

  She thought about the shit smell, and where it might be coming from.

  Maybe he emptied his bowels when he died, or maybe I just scared him so bad he pooped himself.

  This amused her, and she smiled. Then she looked up at the moon.

  I’m naked, she thought.

  Well, not quite. She was wearing the flimsy little wife-beater, but it was soaked all the way through with sticky warm blood.

  She took it off and tossed it away, and wiped her arm across her mouth, because there was a lot of blood on her chin too, dripping off onto her chest.

  Then she finally took the trouble to turn in a circle and survey her surroundings.

  There was a building off to her left which she recognized immediately as the old Anvil Mountain elementary school—just a few miles away from her house. The place had been closed down since she was in fifth grade when the state built a larger, more modern facility nearer to the main township.

  In the ten or so years since the last time she’d been to the school, it had really gone to hell. The bricks were covered in graffiti, most of the windows were broken, and there were several places where the roof appeared to be caving in.

  The old playground still remained, and it was still furnished with a set of swings, a couple of big slides, a merry-go-round, and monkey bars.

  When she was a kid, during the first few years after the school closed down, nearby people would often bring their children to the playground on weekends, using it a bit like a public park.

  Now everything was rusted and dented, and there were even bullet holes here and there.

  She thought back, trying to recall how she got here. There were memories, but they were hard to decipher—confusing fragments of darkness and violence. A feeling of joyful exertion.

  I guess I just lost it. Must’ve went totally berserk or something.

  The last clear image in her mind was of Bobby’s face as he strangled her.

  Guess I really did teleport. And Bobby must’ve come with me somehow

  She wondered if he was already dead and she dragged him along (kinda like bringing a snack for later) or if he had followed her and she killed him here.

  I’ll probably never know.

  She looked at the school again, and decided that it was a pretty fitting location for her purposes; she’d been aiming for somewhere dark and private, after all, and this covered both those bases very well.

  Of course, this place would’ve spooked the hell out of her if she’d come here last night.

  It looked haunted as fuck.

  But right now, she liked the look of it just fine. Seemed like a good place (to make a happy little nest) with plenty of nice dark corners and private nooks where she could curl up for a while.

  She could just relax and be herself in a place like this.

  She wondered if there might be squatters living in the building. It seemed like the sort of place squatters might enjoy.

  For their sake, she hoped not.

  No telling what she might do if she ran into anybody right now.

  Because she felt very odd now. There were strange physical sensations. Her skin had begun to tingle and her gums felt weird: ticklish, as if the deepest roots of her teeth were coming to life, twisting and writhing like little worms, burrowing up into her face.

  Not exactly a comfortable feeling, but not really painful either.

  It’ll be alright, she thought. Everything’s just fine with me on this dark and dreadful night.

  She laughed out loud, a terrible, brittle sound that echoed into the dark, and while she was still going, a storm of pain suddenly hit, like acid had been poured over every inch of her flesh, and sh
e fell to her knees, moaning, cutting herself on the gravel.

  She sobbed and her teeth chattered as the agony washed over her, and when it finally ended, she fell down onto her side, drew herself up into the fetal position, and just rested for a bit.

  A little time passed, and when she felt okay again, she raised herself up and returned her attention to the old ruined building.

  The dark windows called to her.

  She stood and started walking in that direction, ignoring the shards of gravel stabbing into her bare feet.

  By the time she made it to the building, the need to get inside had become so strong that she didn’t feel like she was entirely in control of her own body.

  Without even thinking she started shattering a window barehanded, making a little screeching sound in her throat with each hit.

  When the opening was large enough, she climbed through, ignoring the jagged pieces glass around the edge of the frame.

  Inside, she found herself standing in a long dim corridor, cobwebs dripping so low from the ceiling that their waxy tendrils touched decades of dust and grime on the old wood floor. Even in its current condition, the hallway brought back nostalgic memories from her childhood.

  Now that she was in, the weird frenzy that had overtaken her abruptly subsided, and she realized there was pain in her hands.

  She looked down, and saw that they were etched with fresh cuts, blood still streaming from them. Some of the cuts had large, obvious, pieces of glass embedded in them.

  The injuries looked quite severe but they didn’t hurt very much. She calmly pulled one of the shards of glass out. Blood ran from the empty hole for a moment, and she impulsively licked the spot.

  It tasted of copper.

  And lemons.

  A flurry of pops and cracks sounded from her spine, and she felt her bones shifting subtly under her skin. Oddly enough, she found the sensation was somewhat enjoyable.

  It’s time, a small voice said inside her—a voice that knew things. It took her a moment to realize that the voice was—at least partially—her own.

  She looked around the ruined hallway.

  It was as good a place as any she could have hoped for: dark, quiet. An ideal place to (hide, hideout, den up) take shelter.