Lost Bloodlines Ch. 03

"Victoria!" I heard a booming cry ring out, and every muscle in my body locked up. Victoria turned around to look at me in confusion as suddenly I stopped in my tracks. My eyes however, were locked in terror onto the person who had called out and was making his way to us.

He was large, easily taller than Victoria and more heavily muscled, with olive skin and long, curling black hair. He wore the same tan clothes as everyone else, but he had ripped the sleeves and midriff off of his shirt, creating an impromptu crop-top that only showed off his excessive musculature. His most defining feature, however, were the massive wings that trailed behind him. Each pure-white feather held a stylized eye within it, and I jerked as I saw the hundreds of eyes shift in my direction as he got closer.

Belatedly I saw the softly glowing golden halo above his head, and knew that I was completely fucked.

Run. Hide. Fight. Fuck. Do something! Anything, before that monster sees us and smit...

"Oh my god, girlfriend, you are absolutely glowing! Did you get lucky or something?'

The terrifying figure from my darkest nightmares opened his mouth...and spoke out in the most stereotypically feminine voice I had ever heard. Victoria giggled, cast one last confused glance my way, and then rushed off to go hug the angelic figure. I was still rooted to my feet, and yet the pure incongruity of the terrifying figure of intimidating masculinity beginning to gush out his approval of how Victoria was looking today, and why she missed breakfast, and "holy crap who is that little treat you were dragging with you?"

And just like that my rational brain took back over, and I suddenly realized how ridiculous I was being. I shook my head to clear out the lingering fear that still pressed at my consciousness, telling me to run. Something about this aggressively flamboyant man had triggered a powerful fight or flight response, like my lizard brain had been hardwired to be afraid of halos...

Oh. Duh. Not lizard brain, demon brain. I chose not to examine the very troubling implications of this revelation, like when the fuck had demons and angels evolved alongside each other to warrant this kind of reaction? And why would this body recognize something like that if all these creatures just showed up days ago?

"This 'little treat' has a name, you know," I called as I hurried up to join Victoria and her unusual partner. I was a man, uh, woman, of reason, damnit! I can power through some silly primordial terror.

Victoria turned and beamed a happy smile my way, grabbing my arm and pulling me under hers as she introduced me to her many-eyed friend. "Lilith, meet Sam. Sam, meet Lilith, my girlfriend."

I quirked an eyebrow at Victoria's presumption, but hell, I figured she earned it after this morning's performance. Sam reached out a hand and a beatific smile my way.

"Pleasure to meet you, anyone that could seduce this big featherbrain is a friend in my book," Sam quipped with a head jerk towards a blushing Victoria. Perhaps I was imagining it, but I thought I saw a tightening in his eyes, the twitch of a forced smile as he offered his hand. Maybe he was having his own instinctual reaction to me, and was simply a much better actor.

I shook his hand and offered my own smirk in response to his words. "Sad to say that I'm pretty sure she seduced me. I used to be her teacher you know, can you imagine the scandal back home?"

Sam quirked his own eyebrow as we shook hands, and then let out a little giggle, before descending into full laughter. "You little minx!" he cried. "Your own teacher?!"

"Shut up," Victoria playfully growled, before yanking me past the laughing angel. "Ignore Sam, he can be a stupid slut sometimes." He only laughed harder at her words.

"Anyway," she loudly proclaimed as she pulled me the rest of the way to a table of awaiting monsters. "Here's the rest of the motley crew, idiot over there excepted. Everyone, this is Lilith."

Sitting around the table was a group of four other monsters, staring at our unorthodox entrance with expressions ranging from amusement to indifference. Sitting, or perhaps resting would be a better word, against the head of the table was a black-skinned cobra woman, complete with a long tail in place of legs that trailed around the side of the table and the frills of a reptilian hood around her neck. Her face was much older than the other figures around the table, and at a guess I would assume she was in her late 40s.

Sitting immediately to her right another reptile, though this one I couldn't immediately identify. He was green-scaled from head to toe, with spiraling horns and large wings folded behind his back. His face was expressionless, and I couldn't get a read on his emotions. I recalled the massive dragon resting against the gate when I had arrived the previous day, and my eyes widened as I realized the shade of their scales were the same. Shapeshifting dragon-man it is then.

Next to him was a familiar figure, the fish-scaled woman from the barracks last night that had ogled me as I walked in. Her scaled legs and aqua-blue hair were the only defining features of her supernatural origin. Sure enough, her gaze raked over my body with a hungry curiosity.

The singular figure across the table was something of an oddity. A large, hulking brute of a man sat alone and sullenly ignored our arrival, but I noticed the two pointed canine ears atop his head had swiveled in our direction. His hair was a shaggy mess of brown that had been pulled back into a pony-tail, and I saw matching dark stubble across his unsmiling face and the exposed arms that were clenched tightly over his stomach.

The snake woman swiveled around and brought her swaying torso close to mine. "Alana Kingsley," she declared in a posh British accent. "Lamia and...now apparently retired, diplomat from her Majesty's foreign service." She held out a hand as if she expected me in kiss it. Well, when in an internment camp, do as the crazies do. I gently took her hand in mine and pressed my lips against it.

"Enchanted, Lady Kingsley." I saw a hint of a blush on the looming face of the snake-woman. "And it's Nagini, by the way."

"What?"

"Your body," I explained. "Lamia are Greek snake women. You have a cobra's hood as well, so you're probably a Hindu Nagini. Small difference, but a continent apart."

She nodded faintly and pulled back her hand, returning to her previous position with a bemused smile.

"Draco," The dragon man rumbled, placidly looking my direction without any change in body language.

"Draco?" I responded in surprise. "Don't you think that's a little...literal?" Draco merely shrugged and went back to slowly eating from a tray of food piled high with meats.

"Draco's pretty quiet," the fish-woman chirped. "It seems dragons like to sleep a lot and aren't all that emotive." She jumped from her seat and bounced up to me. "I'm Aqua, cute stuff. The eggheads think I'm a siren. Do you want to hear me sing? I can drive a man to terrible lust with just my voice. I'm always happy to experiment." She leered again in my direction before Victoria stormed past me and pushed the protesting woman back to her seat.

"Back off, fish-breath, she's mine." Victoria was cute when she was possessive.

She turned back around and gestured to the final monster. "And grumpy over there is Cyrilla, the werewolf. I think you and her probably have a lot in common actually."

I looked back to the hulking werewolf, and suddenly his, or rather, her, odd appearance made sense. The shaved body, the hunched form as if she were trying to make herself small enough to disappear. She was just like me, trapped in a body opposite in sex to her human life. Well, partially opposite, in my case.

I felt a terrible empathy for the poor woman, and I walked around the table and sat next to her hulking form. She was massive, towering well over me even as she hunched into herself. Without thinking, I pressed my arms as far around her barrel chest as I could reach and squeezed, resting my head against a bulging bicep.

"I'm sorry this happened to you," I said. "I was a man, before. I woke up in this body and I felt like nothing made sense. Sometimes it still feels like nothing makes sense, and everything is confusing and wrong." I looked up at her, and finally she had lifted her eyes to look into mine in an appraising stare. "We'll both find a way to live in these new bodies. And hey, we all just magically transformed into mythological creatures a few days ago. Maybe we can find a way to turn you back."

Cyrilla looked down at me for a long moment, and nodded slightly as a little smile broke through her perpetual grimace. "I hope so, Lilith." She spoke in a gravelly rumble that she nevertheless tried to heighten with a feminine affectation. It didn't quite work.

"Alright, enough with the waterworks, girls," Sam's voice cried out from behind us. I had to suppress another shiver of fear. Damn that instinct was strong. "There will be time enough for that when the soldier boys finally come marching in with the tanks."

"Oh, and by the way," he added in my direction. "Since everyone else got to announce their majestic transformation, I'm an angel, if you couldn't tell. Biblical, I think."

I smirked up at him. "What, no flaming wheels and lion's head?"

"Oh, shit." I heard Cyrilla whisper next to me. Victoria was rapidly waving a hand next to her throat and had panicked look on her face. Alana simply groaned and put a face into her hand.

Sam, however, was grinning ear to ear. "Oh, ye of little faith," he declared, before he began to glow from within with a bright white light. It grew until I had to shield my eyes, and then I heard a deafening crack and a chorus of gasps and screams all around us. I peaked through my fingers and was struck dumb by what I saw.

Hovering above the central field were a massive series of rotating concentric rings, flanked on either side by six slowly beating wings that stretched across the field. Each metallic ring held hundreds of blinking eyes and flickered with ethereal blue flames. Where I had once hoped to master the instinctual terror, this was something else. I was locked into my seat in pure awe and fear of the being hovering above me, and I could see each of the other monsters in the clearing was stuck in the same limbo.

"BE NOT AFRAID," a voice thundered with the force of a tsunami. The ground rumbled in protest, and I saw more than one monster fall to the ground and clutch at their head. I felt a tremendous pressure pounding in on my skull, and I was certain I would join them. But then the feeling stopped, and Sam appeared back on the ground as the monstrosity vanished, grinning like a fool.

"Alright, you proved your point, you bastard. You could have just said you could transform." I groaned out through clenched teeth. Note to self, do not piss off the angel.

"Pointless dick-waving aside," Alana said, sparing Sam a withering look, "many of us have non-human forms. I can do a monstrous snake, and Miss Cyrilla can pull off a rather fearsome wolf. You probably saw Draco lounging about when you got here."

I quirked an eyebrow at Victoria.

"Nope," she shrugged. "Far as I can tell, winged human is all I get. Not that the scientists haven't been prodding for more."

I heard pounding feet, and a squad of soldiers appeared next to our table, looking distinctly uncomfortable to be there. The unlucky lead man stepped forward and cleared his throat, notably keeping his eyes lowered before Sam's figure.

"Uh, I'm sorry to disturb you, your holiness, but HQ told us to ask you to please stop transforming into your divine and majestic form. It's setting off seismographs, and uh, we're trying to keep a low profile here. Unless its any sort of inconvenience, in which case, we'll, uh, figure something else out." The man stammered out reverently.

Sam smiled beatifically at the stricken man. "Worry not, my child, all will be well. I merely had to display my form to these unrepentant sinners before me to show them the power of Christ. I will not need to do so again."

The lead soldier bowed low and blurted out a quick thank you, before scampering away. The rest of his squad followed him, casting alternatively reverent and fearful looks behind them.

As soon as they were out of sight, Sam snickered. "God damn, what a bunch of superstitious idiots." He glanced at me. "Sorry, honey, but you got the short end of the biblical stick there. These god-fearing Southern boys will do anything I tell them until their bosses show up to straighten them out."

He watched the retreating backsides of the soldiers and whistled. "Wonder if they'd believe me if I said God mandated that all warriors be clothed only in Speedos. Ah, a man can dream."

I stared flabbergasted at the causal blasphemy of the angel before me, before bursting out laughing. He glanced back at me in mirrored amusement. Yeah, he and I were going to get along just fine.

He settled down at the table and Victoria joined me on my end, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. The monsters began to causally bicker and trade jokes with one another like they were old friends, even if they couldn't have known each other for more than a few days. Even Draco chimed in with a dry comment that sent the rest of the table into stitches, and I saw Cyrilla's foul mood gradually lighten as the werewolf joined in on the well-meaning ribbing.

It was strange, to be among these fantastic creatures as they chatted, and I simply leaned into Victoria's warmth as she argued with Sam about the merits of keeping the tan uniforms versus simply stripping naked around camp in rebellion to government authority. Aqua asserted that she would only strip if I did so as well, earning an eye-roll from me and a growl from Victoria. Even in the midst of incarceration and the breakdown of everything these people had ever known, they found friends and humor in the darkness. I could learn something from them.

-00000-

Only hours later, I was having a much harder time learning from their example than I had hoped.

"The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you! Begone, foul demon!"

A balding priest, complete with dark cassock and hanging rosaries, continued to chant at me, thrusting out a bejeweled crucifix and holding a bible aloft. He circled me like a vulture, his voice rising and falling with the holy fervor of his "exorcism".

I merely stood in the middle of his impeccably constructed 'banishment circle' of candles and chalk and crossed my arms over my chest. I looked askance at the expectant figures equipped with lab coasts and clipboards that watched from the sidelines, each taking studious notes. When it had come time for me to join the groups of monsters being brough in for "testing", I had tried to take a positive approach. Maybe they could give me answers about what I was or what I could do, just like they had for some of my newfound friends.

And yet the first thing they did was sic this jabbering lunatic on me.

"Alright, that's enough of that." I finally declared as the priest restarted his chant for the third time. I calmly stepped outside of his circle and walked up to the lead researcher, a man by the name of Dr. Campbell.

"Where the hell did you find this guy?" I pointed back to the sputtering priest.

Dr. Campbell, an elderly man that nevertheless moved with the youth of a man half his age, quickly retorted, "Father Maxwell just arrived this morning and offered his services. He's a licensed exorcist with the Vatican." At my skeptical look he raised his hands in defense. "Mr. Finch, you're the spitting image of a demon from hell. We figured trying more...unorthodox approaches might be warranted."

"I go by Lilith now," I commented offhandedly before turning back to priest. "Have you ever actually seen or dealt with something like me before?"

The man turned red and puffed up like a peacock. "I have personally overseen over two dozen exorcisms of demons and vengeful spirits. The Vatican holds my services in very high regards."

"Okay, but how many of those exorcisms worked on something like me, and not just a woman who's been crying too much and her husband decided she must be possessed?" Maxwell's brow furrowed and I sighed. "Your little chant wasn't doing anything other than giving me a headache. If we could move on to actual professionals, I would greatly appreciate it."

Maxwell's face twisted in affronted rage, and he reached into his frock as I casually dismissed him and turned away.

"Whore of Babylon! I cast you down in the name of the Lord!" he cried from behind me, and then splashed something at me from a stoppered vial. It landed on my arm and I immediately felt pinpricks of fire all over my skin. It was like I was being stabbed repeatedly with tiny needles, and I winced and tried to rub the burning liquid off of my arm.

"Ow, shit, that actually hurt! What the fuck, Maxwell, you carry acid on your person at all times or something?" As I finally managed to wipe the last of the last of the clear substance off of my arm onto my pants leg, I looked up into the smug smile of the priest.

"See there!" he cried, pointed at the skin of my armed that had blacked from its normally crimson hue. "The abomination cannot abide the blessed water of Christ!"

Holy water? The fucker had burned me with holy water? The scientists were all scribbling down notes like mad, and one came up to examine my arm closely. I only relented to her probing when she promised to grab a bandage afterwards.

"Alright, so holy water burns like a bitch." I said to Dr. Campbell as he finished conferring with his colleagues.

"The implications of this are enormous," he replied, rubbing his hands together in a way that wasn't at all reminiscent of a mad scientist. "We need to set up dosing regimens of holy water, compare the dead skin on your arm for any trace chemicals that could have synthesized from the contact with your mutated body, not to mention examine everything we know about the composition of the water itself! We must...!"

"I'm going to stop you right there, Doctor." I held up a hand. The one not covered in flaking black skin. "I'm doing these tests voluntarily. You're not going to hook me up to a saline drip of the equivalent of fucking acid to me."

Dr. Campbell's face visibly fell. "But...think of the science! The discovery!"

I sighed, my tail lashing behind me in unconscious frustration. "Look, Doctor, if you want to run other tests, that's fine with me. But please no more acid." I spared a baleful glance to the vindicated priest in the corner. "And none more with him present."

Campbell examined my face in mute appraisal, as if he was gauging how much coercion and/or bribery it would take to get his way. Eventually he shrugged, and flicked a hand in the direction of Father Maxwell, and several of the guards lurking in the corners of the room escorted the good father out, despite his sputtering and demands that I be "exercised for good".

I admit to not always being the best at reading people, especially before this rather dramatic transformation, but I got the feeling that Dr. Campbell wasn't truly the malicious type. Driven and curious in the ruthlessly scientific way, but not cruel or sadistic. Until the CDC and Homeland Security decided our cooperation was no longer required, I was going to milk that for all its worth.

He began to pace, his underlings watching on in patient anticipation for the next order. "We've already established that this form is very strong, Miss, uh, Lilith. Your performance at the resistance machines proved that very well. Only a few other species that we have studied so far managed to hit the 1,000kg limit as you did."