Banished To Earth Book Two, Souls Adrift (2)

shattered his sinus cavity, pulled all the fractured bone forward until it formed a snout and covered the whole awful mess in hairless grey skin.

   Surprisingly, his mouth still bore most of its human attributes, at least in size and shape. Though lipless, he was still able to strain intelligible words through a zigzag of chalk-white triangular teeth that were more suited to tearing live flesh than chewing cooked food.  

   Chalk white skin covered his thick heavy chest and densely muscled stomach.  Chiseled timber arms poised half curled by his chest ready to spring and slash at the slightest provocation.

   His mountainous form swayed over Silhouette on thick tree trunk legs that were far faster and much more flexible than they appeared.

   “I asked you a question,” the shark man roared, “the T-Rex,” his voice softened, “was it your first kill?”

    Silhouette nodded yes, as she struggled to find her voice.

 “The Cry’chee would have been my second,” he said, watching her squirm before his nightmarish visage. “I have a name.” The sudden bluntness of his statement was cold water in her face.

“Yeah, well so do I. Call me Silhouette.” She said feeling more like herself again.

 “Sounds made up,” he snapped. She could hear a sneer in his voice even though his lipless slit

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of a mouth could not quite muster one.  “What’s yours then, Albert, Frank, Murray?” She asked.

  “Grant Stayner.”

  “Chunky name for a chunky guy.” She quipped, making a point to call him a guy, “I could have died out here. One of them blind-sided me. If you hadn‘t found me some monster probably would have.”

  “You’re not blind, but you are a liar,” Grant accused, “A monster did find you.”

  Silhouette smiled, “Okay monster, kill me and eat me,” she said, slapping her hands on her hips and glaring up at him. He bowed over her like an approaching storm, but did nothing, “You’re not a monster Grant, you’re not a cannibal either.” She spoke each word with chess master care. “Grant you’re just as much Hunter as I am, so let’s hunt.”

   “Chase Gillette?” He asked leaning back, away from her.

  “Who else?” Silhouette replied.

 “And the Cry’chee, I want her scalp hanging from my waistband.” He said, closing his eyes as he turned toward the direction of Chase’s beach house. “He took a piece of my flesh to save her, and left the rest for the sharks. One of them ate my head.”

  “And,” she recoiled at what she was about to say, but said it anyway, “and became you.”   “As it is a part of me,” Grant said slyly, finally embracing the truth, “so I am a part of him. I feel him even now,” he said, as a great inner wheel began to turn, “somewhere out there, behind the trees, in a white house with an old friend. He thinks I‘m dead, good.”

“You see all that?” She asked, not bothering to hide her admiration.

  “See,” Grant sighed as if in a dream, his face still turned in the direction of Chases’ beach house, “ no, not see, not yet, but I feel him, know him, at least in part, and in time, with effort,  his body will become my glove, his eyes my windows and his wife, my toy.”     

  “Really,” Silhouette said weakly, through a thin brittle smile as she remembered and thought bitterly,   ‘been there, was that… .’. 

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 She had dreamed about this time her whole life. Things were supposed to be so simple now. She and those like her, those hand picked by the Transit Authority because of their genetic capacity for change, would receive from their unearthly benefactors a new life and a new reason for living.  The Authority would transform them into super beings, while using their advanced technology to render the world’s defense systems useless.

   Once changed they would be given the ability to Portal Shift (teleport), they would also be given a very simple mission; subdue or kill the Authority’s menagerie of misfit unwanted creatures, collected from every earth like planet in the galaxy and dumped on earth, to punish and destroy it’s backward civilizations for their innate inferiority and potential threat.  

   Afterwards, the surviving Hunters would fight amongst themselves for supremacy. Simple.

   However, as Silhouette studied her new ‘friend’ and thought about his plans for the Criechee she realized that nothing about this new world was simple. ‘I couldn’t kill my Daddy. I can’t kill my past. Things would be so simple if I could,’ she thought as Pry’s

compassionate eyes looked back at her from the night before. “I almost killed you Pri, but

I‘m not so sure why,” she wondered, just before she heard Grant mutter something nasty about the sun and his dry skin.

  “Goin’ back into the water,” he barked, lumbering back toward the churning foam, “stay

or go woman. I don’t care. I don’t need you anyway. If I find him, I’ll find him alone, out there, in the sea, plowing the current. The ocean is my sky. I can fly there; fly right out of this twisted thing and straight into his mind.

   It may take days or weeks maybe even months, but eventually I’ll take his flesh and free myself from this abomination. One thing woman, he is mine, do not kill him. This is my hunt, so stay away.”

    “If that means staying away from you, you crazy sardine head, that I will happily do,” she said, sneering as she spoke.

   He roared and ran at her. She swung her arm; neatly side stepped into a portal and ducked out of sight.

Chapter Two

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  There were no monsters in sight—only blue sky and bright sun. I wanted to believe what I saw, but I couldn’t. Upstairs, my little vampire slept beside my new family—my first real one—still shielded, for now, from the harsh reality that had trapped us all. That was what I was thinking as I rocked on Trudy’s porch, sipping coffee and scanning her lush meticulously maintained property.

    Tucker, of course, was out patrolling Trudy’s farm. I could feel him moving along the back property line. He was a good guy. From back there, I knew he could easily see the great