Coyle and Fang: Curse of Shadows (Coyle and Fang Adventure Series Book 1) by Robert III (great books for teens .txt) 📗

What better meeting place than a hidden network of tunnels? Her eyes were playing with her and she swore there was a shape—a shadow—there. In the corner. Watching her. Coyle’s heart thrummed in her ears. Her fingers grasped her dress. She should say something, but then Fang would be discovered. What was she to do? She took a step closer when something creaked and she turned away and snapped her head back around to the corner. She took the few steps and reached out into the darkened corner.

Nothing was there.

The lights flickered again, and she hurried to the workshop. With nerves on edge, she walked into the room and grabbed a handful of papers, but before leaving, her eyes spotted a small wooden box with a curious brass piece on top. She set the papers aside and placed the wooden device on the table. There, a word stamped across the top: “Kinetoscope.” A small red button sat next to a raised, brass peephole. Edison had been recently showing off this invention: moving pictures in a box. She pushed the button and heard a series of clicks and whirs that made the wood vibrate as she looked into the lighted eyepiece. There was no audio, only a soft mechanical whirring and the sound of her steady breathing.

The pictures were choppy and distorted before they cleared. Rooms full of young men and women, no older than fifteen, all wearing the same dark gray clothes. Men walked around them in lab coats. She stopped.

“Humans are too quickly diminished through the extended regimen.”

She wanted to leave. And she wanted to stay, but not out of morbid curiosity. Out of duty. She clenched her jaw and pressed the button.

The children, seemingly selected from all walks of life, appeared normal. And then abnormalities were shown. Thick patches of coarse hair, and long nails that resembled eagle’s claws. Others stood in pools, displaying webbed hands and feet, their faces sallow and thin, their genitalia missing. Still others had long, distorted arms and legs. Men in lab coats assisted them to stand and walk across the room in front of the camera.

A girl was brought into view or what Coyle assumed from the shape of her body. But the girl’s face was smooth, without features. She had only slits for eyes, nostrils and a lipless mouth. Her skin shifted, and her appearance changed to that of an older lady, complete with shaggy, white hair and thin, wrinkled skin. She changed again to a beautiful young woman with lush lips, full cheeks and thin, arching eyebrows. She sat in the lap of a man in a lab coat and smiled. The man looked at the camera—there was something familiar about his eyes. But, her focus returned to the girl.

Coyle remembered the roto-display in Treece’s workshop. The assassin’s features had changed in the light, shifting into someone else. This had to be the same person, the one who had disguised herself as Fang. She looked into the box.

An operating table appeared with the body of a woman on it. Coyle winced and looked away as someone pulled a scalpel down the center of her body, dissecting her. Coyle grabbed her own chest, took a breath and looked again. The photographer focused on the woman’s mouth. A rod was placed under her upper teeth, displaying long, sharp fangs. Her skin was covered in horrible welts and burns.

The following pictures showed rows of operating tables, all filled with bodies, all of them with their chest cavities opened, organs set aside, men digging through their flesh. Coyle’s gut squirmed.

The pictures changed to a girl no older than thirteen, with short dark hair and eyes, pacing in a small, padded room, screaming, crying. Madness and confusion etched her face as she pleaded with the camera operator.

Fang.

Coyle gasped. Fang was tied to a bed, and a robed priest sprinkled holy water over her nude body before displaying a large silver cross and pressing it into her skin. But nothing happened. Her haunted eyes stared into the camera, and Coyle’s heart ached.

The pictures changed, and the camera peered into a padded room. Fang was a disheveled form, dressed in torn rags. She paced the room, glanced at the camera and looked away, her fingers picking at her skin. And then she rocked back and forth on her knees, talking and laughing to herself. In another set of pictures, she leaned down, hands on her knees, whispering to the air in front of her before hugging herself. Men in lab coats shook their heads and made notes, arguing with each other.

The pictures changed; they were outside. Men escorted Fang into bright sunlight with the tall, white lighthouse of Fort Alcatraz just behind them. A scientist displayed one of her arms and smiled. Her pale skin appeared untouched by the rays of the sun.

Then she was inside a concrete jail cell, pacing. Wild, wet eyes shifted back and forth at the men outside, and she shook her head and mumbled. Men held rifles. Someone in a lab coat gave them directions before he stepped away. The riflemen raised their weapons at her. Fang froze and backed against the wall, raising her thin, trembling hands. Her lips quivered and moved soundlessly. But Coyle could read lips.

“Not again.”

They opened fire. Coyle gasped. The girl screamed, covering her face and body, but the monsters kept firing. Blood sprayed out, staining her gown dark, her skin tearing apart. She curled into a ball, seemingly about to die. But no! Fang glared at them with fire in her eyes. With broken fists clenched, she burst into a dark-purple vapor and slipped between the bars. Shock washed over the riflemen’s faces. The cameraman backed away.

Violence ensued.

Rifles were snapped, limbs were torn off, blood gushed from necks, and within seconds, four of the men were corpses. Others rushed into view and struck her with rods with glowing orange tips. She fell down and writhed and screamed. Bile crept into Coyle’s throat.

The pictures changed, scratched and