Page 11 of The Gathering
His blood was too hot.
His brain sizzled in the wrong kind of fire.
And his heart was fucking coming apart.
Bishop eyed the figure waiting for him at the edge of the woods. He did this. He was the maker of the monster in his skin. The demon chewing at his sanity. Now he had to touch the abomination. Learn everything he didn’t want to know without killing him. Not until he knew every dirty detail. Then he’d have that civil chat. With his fucking DNA.
Sinrik turned and Bishop wondered if the connection he’d cemented in his blood went both ways. If he hadn’t brought her home, he’d have gone and gotten her. Every step toward the man turned the battle in his mind bloodier. Soon, bloodlust threw down with duty and illogical obsession threw down with fatherhood.The hellish bat-tie promised something or somebody would break beyond repair. And he couldn’t let it be him.
He stopped five feet from Sinrik, their gazes locked under the swamp’s half-moon. Bishop breathed through the power in his veins as his blood's nano-teeth prepared to latch and learn. Latch and lynch. His incisors throbbed too. Neither were bothered with the risks he was about to take. But Bishop sure the fuck was. He wasn’t sure how his upgrades would manifest. How powerful were they and how wild would they be? Who would they serve? The Bishop or The Bat. The dark or the light?
Sinrik stood unmoving with his hands in his coat pockets. Either he didn’t sense what sort of death sentence stood before him or wasn’t bothered about it. “What’s the plan, Marsh Leader,” he muttered with a tilt of his head. “You killing me or keeping me.” His gaze shifted past Bishop. “We got company.”
Bishop turned to see one of the Sisters walking briskly toward them.
“Is that a nun?” Sinrik wondered, perplexed.
“Good evening, Gentlemen,” she chirped. “My name is Beatrice and I’m here to assist.”
Assist. “With what?” Bishop demanded, his patience chewing on his ass.
“I am to referee,” she said with a curt nod of her head.
“Says who?” Bishop ordered, ready to rectify.
Better not fucking say God.
“Our Belle Eveque,” she answered with a perfect nod.
Worse than God. Fucking Dieu.
“You arenotto hurt our guest,” she kindly informed, acting all angelic.
Sure.Nobodywas perfect. Especially tonight.
Sinrik locked gazes with him again.
“Nobody ishurting anybodytonight.” He told the lie perfectly to her face and it was a fuckingbalmin his burning soul. “Just wanted to shake his hand,” he added. “For bringing mywifeback to me.”
“Perfect!” the tiny nun approved, clasping her hands together in prayer formation.
The seconds ticked and Bishop saw therevelationhappen in Sinrik’s digging stare. This fight wasnotbeing postponed. Just moved indoors.
A quiet curiosity edged into his dark gaze and Bishop saw him wondering what he had up his sleeve. Sinrik bravely stretched out his hand.
Bishop slammed his palm into his, the Quantum Architecture power finding the continuous feedback loop that permitted movement. Then he inverted it.
Bishop watched the shock detonate in his gaze as his biological constructs turned against him, locking him in an invisible prison. “As I said… thank you for bringing my wife back to me.” Bishop’s energy raced through him and immediately hit calcium lattice reinforcement running through bone along with load bearing modifications at every joint.Intentional design.
He went into his vascular next and found it too tidy. Natural blood fluctuated, this didn’t. And the composition — Bishop had felt it through Beth. Through his son. Whatever it was, it carried something his baby hadn’t rejected. And yet, it was nothing he recognized or could name.
Apprehension followed him into the neural layers next. He encountered morewhat the fucksin afracturedblueprint. Clean-edged absences sat where episodic memory gathered for indexed experience.
He searched for damage next—atrophy, anything natural.
Again, nothing. It had been cleared. And whoever did it knew the architecture well enough to remove without destroying. They took the index and left the library. Sinrik wouldn't know what was gone because nothing in him would remember having it.
Bishop continued, tiptoeing through the scattered fragments of what was beginning to feel like a crime scene.
