Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,15

she was never meant to be his…

At least there was one thing real he could claim:

The single tear that contained all of his love and anguish, all of the memories buried fathoms deep, that rolled from the corner of his shut eyes, down the line of his nose, to the lips that pressed against Sophia’s skin.

*** *** *** ***

The Creature was barely breathing, mostly dead.

He did “die” a couple of times during the last few days since she began the experiments in earnest. But she was able to revive him each time by injecting her own venom and blood, strengthened with electricity, into his veins.

Resuscitating the mangled mess of flesh, bones and skin like Frankenstein’s monster.

Ah, the miracles of modern science. She could never have done what needed to be done in the ancient world. Not as efficiently, in any case, though there had been other ways.

“Magic” was much stronger back then, when the particles and essence of the original gods, from the original creation, retained their power, diffused throughout the universe though they had been.

She opened the Creature’s “coffin” lid with ease, though the thick, heavy metal weighed a ton, quite literally. To a being with the strength of the Hydra, however, it was like opening a peanut butter jar.

Unconsciously, a full-bodied shiver strummed through the Creature’s limbs, making him quiver and shake before he settled like malleable putty once again. Countless tubes, thick and thin, criss-crossed through his lifeless body, with fluids of different colors flowing through them.

Some carried away his blood, while others infused her blood, venom…and other things…into him. Some pulsed with his semen, taking away his life force the moment he produced it and depositing it into awaiting tubes her machines collected. Some injected him with nutrients, to keep his physical shell from collapsing. Others took away his waste.

It was exceedingly difficult to strike the right balance. The intricacies and mysteries of the body, immortal or human, were unfathomable, no matter how modern medicine attempted to decipher them. If one looked at the humanoid body as a machine, only gods could have given it life; made a lump of putty animate, think and feel.

How many lives had been lost across the history of time in the name of research? When humans tried to comprehend and harness the spark of life?

But she knew the real secret.

It wasn’t merely the body that had to function. It wasn’t the body that lived. It was the soul within the body that made it real, made it feel, think and act. But the two had to work in perfect synchronization with each other. One could not “live” without the other.

In many ways, the ancients—gods, goddesses, and their monstrous, fantastical creations—were simpler. Their power and magic didn’t need forms. They were the earth, sky and sea. They were darkness and light, air and its absence. They had intellect, power and essence, but few emotions. Those only came later, as the earliest beings evolved.

When the Twin Goddesses learned to love.

Hate. Regret. Sadness. Envy. Joy.

With every new emotion, the soul grew. Like a seed that grew roots, then a stem, then leaves, then the fragile flower that bloomed, its petals unfurling to reveal a secret center. A center that contained more seeds, more facets of the soul, until countless such spirits joined with physical shells, making each and every one unique.

Making the universe and its inhabitants exponentially, infinitely complex. And there no longer existed black and white, right or wrong, only varying degrees of truth and lies in between.

That’s why the Creature almost died a couple of times while she fine-tuned her experiment to remake him with the human gene—the various ingredients within him had fallen out of balance. But he survived, with jumpstarts from her, to be sure, but mainly because of himself.

His soul was immeasurably strong. The strongest she’d ever encountered across the many millennia of her existence.

He could have died, and did die in some ways, many times in his violence-filled history. But he always survived.

He was…special.

In some ways, just like her.

He contained the spark of the Goddesses.

“Do you know my real name, Creature?” she murmured softly, though the sound of her voice still sliced through the heavy silence of the cave like a serrated knife.

“Līlītu,” she told him, as if he could hear her.

Given that his ears functioned, he probably could. But whether his muddled brain accounted for what he heard was a different question altogether.

It didn’t stop her from sharing. Now that Medusa was gone, she had no