‘We don’t know who she is or what she is.’

The sound of flapping wings grows louder, echoing like old-time machine-gun fire in the narrow ravine.

The female hears it too. Panicking, she jumps to her feet and races through the chasm.

Dominique glances at her son, then chases after the woman.

‘Mother, wait—’

Jacob starts after her, but is forced to stop, unable to run with the bulky sword dangling at his hip. He withdraws it from his belt, then sprints with it through the twisting canyon.

The ravine ends, Dominique’s footprints continuing on ahead. He hears the sound of a heavy surf. Remaining at the edge of the mountain, he wipes beads of gray moisture from his eyes, then searches for his mother.

The mountainous passage has opened to a swampy beach. Silver waves crash upon an unearthly shoreline, which is littered with seaweed-type residue and tall, dead, dust-infested palm trees.

His mother is up ahead, hiding in the crevice of a large rock formation. She points.

Lining the beachhead are tall wooden posts, as thick as telephone poles. Fastened to each pole by heavy steel chains shackled about their necks are dozens of transhuman females. Bloody purple claw marks scar their naked, bruised bodies.

The flapping sounds grow louder, approaching from somewhere above. The female prisoners cower behind their posts like frightened children.

And then Jacob sees him.

The dark figure of the Seraph-reincarnate circles like a hawk, soaring hundreds of feet above the beach. The being’s torso is heavily muscled, his bizarre, twenty-foot wings protruding from his genetically altered spine and latissimus dorsi.

Devlin …

Jacob and Dominique remain motionless and out of sight.

The winged Seraph detects movement coming from beneath a mound of seaweed. It is the escaped female.

Pulling his wings back, he dive-bombs after her like a pelican tracking a fish.

The female tosses aside her camouflage and races back toward the refuge of the cliffs.

Jacob signals to his mother to stay put, then grips the sword in both hands.

Leveling out over the swampy beach, the Seraph swoops in from behind the terrified woman and lands on her back, pinning her forcefully against the silicon sand.

Trapped beneath the heavier predator, the female tries desperately to crawl away on hands and knees.

Devlin is simply too big and strong. Like an enraged lion subduing a zebra, he claws at the girl’s back, tearing her clothing and skin with his razor-sharp talonlike fingernails until she stops struggling. Pinning her facedown with his left arm, he caresses her breasts with his free hand, then bites into her exposed buttocks with his fang-shaped incisors.

The female screams and hisses at the Seraph, who mounts her from behind to rape her—

—never noticing Jacob, whose steel sword slashes downward against his still-flapping wings.