it the breath, the very essence of himself, feeling the first stirrings of creation in his very core.
He pulled away. First, he had to continue the lesson. “Man is not becoming better simply by virtue of the passage of time,” he told them. “We have to do something about it. Man can make himself better if he so chooses.”
He traced the whip between a pair of exquisite breasts, quivering in anticipation. Beauty was the first requirement. Beauty begat physical strength begat super-intelligence begat…
The Overman. A race of Overmen.
Only he could have spirited his audience away. Only he had the intelligence, the ability to elude the mere mortals who lived below his mountain, trapped in mediocrity by their laws and their self-imposed limits. They lived a certain way, thought a certain way, ate their dinners a certain way, never knowing what they had the potential to be, if only they would open their eyes. He would teach them, one by one. Like the Overmen before him—Magellan, Machiavelli, Napoleon, Caesar…even Hitler, in his twisted way—he would remake the world anew, into a brilliant, shining thing.
He walked behind his audience, the tremors of a new evolution taking control of him. It was his responsibility. He was the Overman. He’d won his own moral code. He would cleanse them and make them whole.
“We should be dissatisfied with ourselves,” he said, his entire body shaking with the effort. “Without this dissatisfaction, there’s no self-overcoming. No higher evolution of Man.”
He brought the whip down, again and again, cleansing the blood of the new generation.
They scream, and they cry. Because God is dead.
Chapter Three
It’s been two weeks….
No new sign…no new sign….
Her head felt as if someone had filled it with cement, thick and ponderous and nearly impossible to lift. She struggled to open her eyes.
Rosie’s gone.
“Nooo.” Pushing down with one arm, Sabrina propelled herself onto her back. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she saw a cup of steaming tea on her pale teak nightstand, smelled the cinnamon and herbs. Then, because keeping them open took too much effort, she let her eyes close once more.
The likelihood of her surviving up there isn’t…I’m sorry….
Wake up. She had to wake up. Everything just felt so…weighted, as though she had anchors tied to her limbs that were pulling her down, down under an ocean of still, quiet, dark water. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears, the thum-thump beat of her heart.
Two weeks.
Reaching up, she slowly dragged the back of her hand across her face, concentrating intensely on the movement so she wouldn’t stop halfway and fall asleep again. So tired. With all of the effort it was taking to wake up fully, Sabrina considered just letting herself fall into unconsciousness again. Just for a little while.
Rosie’s gone.
“Tara.” The sharp memory of the missing girl suddenly gave Sabrina the strength to propel herself into a sitting position, the movement causing her head to spin ever so slightly.
“Whoa.” The familiar deep voice came from her right, where a small, overstuffed chair sat tucked in the corner of the room. “Holy Bride of Frankenstein, that was sudden.” She turned toward the voice and saw her brother Patricio sprawled in said chair.
“Rico, what the heck are you doing in my room?” The last vestiges of sleep abruptly disappeared from the surprise, and once her pulse went back to normal, Sabrina grinned, glad to see him despite her words. “How did you get in my house?”
His light brown eyes, the mirror image of her own—though he would have said his were the more masculine version—sparkled a bit as he relaxed back into the chair, looking rather smug and satisfied with himself. “I have my ways.”
She rolled her eyes, and thank goodness, the movement didn’t make her head throb anymore. “Okay, whatever.” She quickly finger-combed her long hair. It was stick straight, so that small amount of effort was enough to get it to fall into place. Then, scrambling her way out of a pile of sheets, quilts and one puffy flowered comforter, she catapulted off the mattress and wrapped her arms around her brother. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He stood, lifting her off her feet in the process with an exaggerated grunt. She pretended to smack him on the head, after which he put her down, his broad hands still on her arms. “Me, too.”
They’d found her less than a year ago, her three brothers. They’d all been separated when she was a baby, scattered by the California adoption system after the brutal murder of their parents. Thanks to a combination of bureaucratic red tape, a recordseating fire, and the machinations of their parents’ killer, it had taken the siblings over twenty years to reunite. But from the moment she’d first seen Joe, Daniel and Patricio, Sabrina had felt instantly connected to them. And that feeling had never gone away, even though they were still separated by geography, she in Port Renegade, Washington, her brothers in Los Angeles.
“So when you moving to L.A., Bree?” Patricio asked as they walked out of her room and into her three-bedroom bungalow’s sunny kitchen. Or, at least, it would have been sunny if it weren’t raining all of the time. Having lived most of her life in Port Renegade with her adoptive parents and sister Casey, Sabrina found the rain comforting. Her oldest brother Joe hated it, Patricio’s twin Daniel tolerated it and Patricio himself seemed neutral on the subject.
“Um, as soon as the Los Angeles Search and Rescue Team offers me a job. Because I’m sure my tracking skills would be in high demand in that concrete jungle, doofus.” Shooting him a smile to soften the sarcasm, she reached up into one of her cupboards and brought down two coffee mugs, one with a caricature of Jane Austen on it, the other emblazoned with the logo of a save-the-forests nonprofit. “Coffee?” She’d taken a few appreciative sips of the tea Patricio had made for her, but coffee was her one true love in the morning.
“Sure.” Patricio leaned his elbows on the breakfast bar in the middle of the room.
“What kind?”
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the silver-and-black espresso maker on her counter. “None of that stupid Seattle frou-frou stuff. Just coffee. Black.”
Sabrina pulled the machine toward her, twisting off the metal filter. She and Patricio went through this routine every time he visited—it was as predictable as an Abbott and Costello conversation about baseball. “You sure? No mochaccino? No double-tall, half-decaf, two-percent with a shot of caramel? I’ve got some nice mint-flavored cream I could use to make you a breve…”
“Coffee. Black.”
“Aw, come on. Just a little fluffy milk? I know how to make a heart on top with the foam.”
Patricio made a noise that sounded like a strangled “urrrgh.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh, filled the filter with ground Bolivian blend, and flipped the switch. A few seconds later, the save-the-trees mug was full, so she handed it to her brother. “There you go. Coffee. Black. You are so boring.”
He took it, then
