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PROLOGUE

Father approached the great, smoldering hole in the wall of the prison, his electric blue eyes taking in every detail with the intense curiosity of a scholar studying an unfamiliar environ. Whatever accelerant had caused the explosion that opened this massive iron edifice, it had long since burned out. No smoke rose from the gap. Its rent edges were charred to black, and the ground was strewn with jagged shards of iron, but Father's great Lepid feet padded across them without so much as a glance at them.

With each step, metal tore into the pads of his feet, leaving great red imprints in the sand and dirt. Father noticed the wounds no more than he noticed the shards themselves. He was too busy studying the shape of the massive ovular tear in the forty-foot wall as he passed through it, as if seeking meaning in the shape of the scorched edges. When he found none, he turned away from it and immediately forgot its existence once he stepped through. The hole was past; the future was all that mattered.

A trio of Scrofa sat in a miserable semicircle near a long stone building that might have been a barracks. One was missing a leg, the wound cinched off with strips of cloth long stained a dark brown from old blood. All three Scrofa were naked and emaciated, withered as if they had not had water in some time. Piles of armor and weapons rested near them, unused.

The legless Scrofus stared morosely into a silent gray firepit between them, but immediately looked up and cried out when he saw Father. The other two scrambled to grab weapons, but Father was already on them. He swept the leg of the nearest Scrofus, dropping him to the sand. He pulled one of the bloody shards of metal from his foot and jammed it in the guard's neck before he could stand back up, tearing viciously across the surface of his flesh and opening his jugular. The second Scrofus had halberd in hand and jabbed mercilessly at Father, but he simply twisted left, right, left, then on the third jab he grabbed the haft just under the blade and yanked. The Scrofus stumbled forward, right into Father's knee, which cracked two ribs as it made contact with his barrel chest. Father twisted the halberd from his grip easily, then planted the metal shard into his eye socket and left it there. The Scrofus screamed and collapsed, twitching violently as his nervous system sent broken signals to his damaged brain.

He easily caught up to the final Scrofus, who couldn't even up to run, thanks to his leg--he just scrambled on panicked hands and knee in any direction other than the madman who had just murdered his friends. Father reached one long, bony arm down toward him, wrapped in filthy strips of cloth, long hooded cloak billowing in the desert wind, electric eyes burrowing into the wounded boar. "Reginald Weeblerock," Father croaked, his voice ragged and dry from weeks in the desert. His purpose would not let him die from such paltry gods as thirst or hunger, but they still ravaged his body.

The Scrofus shook his head vigorously, terror freezing his vocal chords. Yet Father cocked his head at him as if he'd spoken aloud, then nodded and moved past him toward the massive iron double doors on the other side of the empty, quiet chasm before him. Father crouched, then leaped, and sailed through the air as if on wings, to land over one hundred feet away on the other side of the great gap in the earth, the last conscious Scrofus already forgotten with his dying compatriots.

* * *

Father twisted his wrist, and the guard's arm bent at an impossible angle. Something popped out of place with a sickening gunshot noise, and the guard fell to the floor clutching his elbow and screaming bloody murder. Father returned his gaze to the Minoan woman cowering at the back of the lab, gripping a blood-stained halberd she'd lifted off one of the dead guards. "Get back!" she screamed. "I'll fuckin' kill you!"

He locked his electric blue eyes on her, and the fight started to drain from her limbs. "Oh... Oh, Minos. You got their eyes..."

Father gazed at her curiously as he strode forward. "The twins."

Her terrified gaze went slack. "You're their daddy."

The withered, gaunt Lepid neither confirmed nor denied her statement. He strode up to her, took the halberd from her slack fingers, and said, "Where is Reginald Weeblerock?"

Before the Minoan could even hope to gather a response, Father whipped the halberd in a horizontal arc and removed her head from her shoulders. The stump of her neck released three great arterial bursts before the body's heart received the message that they were dead and ceased pumping. The headless corpse fell to the floor. "Thank you," Father said. There was no malice in his voice, nor genuine gratitude. No anything. His affect was as flat and dead as the Minoan woman in front of him.

He dropped the halberd. He would not need it. He knew this. The future was as plain to him as the details his eyes collected before him and immediately forgot. Despite having never been here before in his life, Father strode directly to the elevator and rode it up to the eighth floor. As he approached his destination, a few things became clear: there were five remaining Scrofa, and Reginald Weeblerock had no idea where the twins were. Disappointing, but not terribly surprising. He did, however, have knowledge that would help.

Father threw open the doors to the Warden's office and strode forward. To their credit, the elite guards of this place were formidable. However, no enemy could kill Father, no matter how formidable. He countered each of their halberd strikes as if he knew where the blades would be before they got there. The Scrofa surrounded him, dropping their halberds in favor of hand-to-hand combat. One by one, they fell with broken legs, arms, or necks. One Scrofus dropped to his knees, clutching where his jaw used to be, his tongue dangling grotesquely out of the gaping hole under his mouth, before collapsing into shock.

Father dropped the wet piece of meat and bone and forgot the Scrofa existed, eyes narrowed upon Warden Reginald. The huge Lupus had bandages over the top of his head, wrapping around one eye, where the cloth was stained dark with old blood. He cowered under his desk, and screamed when Father stepped into view. "Fuck! Fuck! Please! Fuck! Don't kill me! Oh, gods, don't kill me!"

Father cocked his head to the side, staring curiously at the Warden. "You have information. It will take more than an hour to extract it from you. That means you're not quite so cowardly as you seem. You have some iron left in you yet, General."

Reggie stopped wailing and slowly stood up from his hiding spot, dwarfing the Lepid by a good foot and a half. He scowled down at him. "How'd you know about my time in the War? Those files are classified."

Father moved like a feral snake, whipping one hand out to strike the solar plexus of his much larger opponent with the ball of his palm. Reggie had no time to react, and the wind drifted out of him in a sad little rush before he fell to his knees. Father grasped the wolf's muzzle gently in both hands, but there was nothing loving in his gaze. There was nothing cruel, either.

There was nothing.

"You will tell me where to find Adrianna Geist," he said.

Reggie swallowed, gagged, and moaned, "Fuck you."

Father pried open Reggie's muzzle and gripped one of his fangs, then yanked with all his might. The big tooth came out into his hand, and Reggie wheezed madly, desperate to scream but with no air in his lungs to do so. Father paused, studied, considered, then nodded. "Now you will tell me."

Reggie's eyes widened, "I won't tell you shi--"

"The hour is already up," Father said. "You have already told me."

"What? When did I--?"

"In the future," Father said, and snapped Warden Reginald Weeblerock's neck.