Page 1 of Midnight Coven

CHAPTER1

THE BEAST

He liftedslick hands off the body below him.

He cocked his head, listening.

He’d heard something. He was certain of it. Some scream or cry in the night.

Something sinister. Perhaps even something supernatural.

But then, nothing about the world felt natural these days.

Nothing in his life.

He wasn’t natural.

Everything natural in him had been stripped from his flesh and bones. They’d given him youth, stripping thirty, forty years from his life. They’d given him strength. They’d given him speed and senses that could hear blood dripping beyond two doors, past a humming generator and artificial intelligence murmuring to itself inside the semi-organic walls.

What he could do… it wasn’t natural.

In return, they’d stripped him of his soul.

They’d put him into the shadow worlds.

They’d taken him from his home.

But he would return now. He would return to where he belonged.

Already, the old world called to him. Already, he dreamed of a different life, a different world, with green grass and blue skies, trees that grew higher than the buildings, water that rushed over rocks, forming waterfalls and rivers and lakes.

Here, all of that was gone.

All of it had been swept away.

Even this being below him wasn’t natural.

Artificially enhanced eyes. A new kidney grown in a lab.

Even before birth, he was designed, programmed, grafted, pruned. Traits picked from a designer menu and refined by a team of scientists during his unnatural mother’s pregnancy.

Taller. Smarter. More resistant to disease. More musical ability.

Good at sports.

Strangely, it didn’t change their faces so much as he would expect.

They still looked like him.

He still looked like them.

They still looked like family.

The thought was disconcerting. It was unbalancing.

The Stranger found it upsetting, especially in moments like these, the quieter moments, after the brief flash of violence and pain had ended.

The Stranger didn’t like to think of such things.

---