The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Chapter 11: Dante's Descent

Lash wasn't sure how long he was out. He only knew that, when he came to, he was falling. And burning. He could feel the flames inside him, burning his organs, licking at his heart. Was it the gamma from the bracelet hyper-exciting his nervous system?

A look with blurred vision at his hand that had been cuffed to the human revealed his arm missing from the elbow down. But, even with his vision jumbled from yet another insult to his head from presumably the explosion that had robbed him of his arm, Lash could see no spider webbing of light beneath his skin to tell of his nervous system exploding and burning.

He then looked down along his body. And watched with a sickening realization as flames licked out of his body cavity, that real flames were burning inside him!

Then he was hitting hard, the force of impact with what should have been water, shattering bones and knocking him out for a second time. Deep into the darkness he went, sinking like a stone into the black, cold depths.

With the sun still hours from peeking over the eastern horizon, the human wore a heavy coat against the early morning chill as the northern Channel pounded the Normandy coast north of Dunkirk. Ahead of him, running along the surf, was his Belgian shepherd, the two going for a bit of a walk along the water's edge before the day got too busy.

Having walked this route almost every day since getting his dog five years ago, the man's mind was wandering as he took in the sound of the surf melodically rushing up the rocky beach towards him before just barely missing his booted feet and retreating. And so he almost missed the dark shape floating in the shallows. His dog, however, didn't.

Barking excitedly, the shepherd rushed into the water to take hold of the shape with his teeth and began to pull it to shore.

"Hey, hey, hey!" the man exclaimed, frowning as the dark's barking drew him from his reverie. "What are you doing there? That better not be garbage." His expression tightened. "Or a body!"

The news app on his smart phone had said a British Airlines flight from London to Brussels had been the target of a terrorist attack a few hours ago. A hole had been blown in the side of the plane and people got sucked out. All things considered, he knew there was a good possibility he was now looking at one of those bodies, what was left of a person pulled out by explosive decompression at thirty thousand feet.

Intent on pulling whatever it was to shore for his master to see, the shepherd wrestled the shape against the tug of the tide until it was mostly out of the water. That was then by the flashlight on his phone, the man saw it was indeed a body, missing an arm and the better part of a leg. It also shifted with each wave that washed over it, evidence that most of what was left inside had been turned to mush by the impact with the water. Which would've felt like slamming into concrete after a fall from that height.

So to say that the man was surprised when it groaned and twitched was the understatement of the century.

"112," the operator said into his earbuds. "What is your emergency?"

"Hey, hello," the man said breathlessly as he stared at the impossibly moving body. "My name is Pierce de Conte and I'm on Asnelles Beach, three kilometers from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer. I, I think I found one of the people that got sucked off that plane a few hours ago. And I think they're still alive!"

As amazed as the man on the beach was, that the body was still somehow still alive, it was orders of magnitude higher in terms of amazement and disbelief as, some thirty minutes later the ambulance pulled into Hospital Center de Bayeux, the nearest hospital, and the doctors in the emergency ward saw the body for the first time.

"Mon Deux!" the surgeon on call exclaimed at seeing what was little more than a charred corpse lying in a crumpled heap underneath a thin sheet on the stretcher. A charred corpse with a heartbeat and brain activity.