Book 3 Chapter 25-4

Cyrus spit in the other man’s face. It was the only recourse he could think would get his position across.

The other man slapped him across the face. He drew back from Cyrus and raised his hand to his face. As he wiped away the spittle, Cyrus watched the hand shrink. The nails elongated. In a second it was clearly a female’s hand, even as the transformation started to work over his—or her—arm.

The man looked up at it, stared as his own body changed before him. He smiled as his form seemed to betray him. If what he said was true, he already embraced his own death, subsumed into some new existence with the other personalities Cyrus met. He prayed to his father that Marilyn would not be lost inside them. He wasn’t sure he could bare her loss after everything he’d been through in the months before.

The transformation continued. The thing before him was half man, half woman. All three forms he saw in the last few minutes all mixed into one. The body moved unnaturally, the shifting bone structure causing arms, legs and neck to spasm in ways not quite human.

Then she came.

It was only for the briefest moment. The figure’s hair turned blonde and suddenly Marilyn’s face stared at him. He pulled forward, strained against his chains as they locked eyes.

“Help me. Stop them, Cyrus. Stop them.”

A second later, she was gone as Solomon’s face mixed with that of the two other women. Cyrus’s rage boiled inside him. It was the rage of his father and uncle, the unrelenting rage only a god could feel. He felt his power surge inside him.

He opened his mouth and that rage washed out from him. It struck the shifting body in front of him. The body that was once Marilyn seemed to explode as the wall of sound struck it. Suddenly liquid it flew back and slammed into the far wall. It stuck like slime in large chunks, several oozing pools slowly making their way back to the floor.

The room shook with it. Stones fell from the walls. Bits of ceiling flaked away. The power shook everything. Cyrus’s chains caused him to reverberate with it.

Then all was silent again but for his deep hard breaths. He was alone again, but Cyrus knew this misery was far from over.