Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

“You’re agreeing with her?”
    “Yes I am.  And who are you?”
    “I’m Daniella, Daniella Colucci.  I’ve been best friends with Melissa and Alex for as long as I can remember.  But that’s not the point,” she said and shook her head.  “What you said before, that is.  So you do believe this Dr. Terzini guy was killed in the explosion?”
    “Correct,” Jack replied.
    “But I thought you just said that he was back,” Daniella said, her frustration becoming apparent.
    Gabriel could understand Daniella’s confusion and frustration.  She had only recently been told of their trip to California a few years earlier, and all the details that went along with it.  He and Melissa had told her of his origins, of his maker Dr. Franklin Terzini.  She had taken it about as well as Melissa had on the night he’d told her.  But eventually, she’d come around and realized he was the same person he’d always been, the same person she’d known and hung around with; the man her best friend loved and was going to marry.  He worried, however, that this new element, his fractured friend from what seemed like a former life resurfacing and speaking of war and Terzini returning from the grave, would push her beyond her threshold for acceptance.
    Jack’s large hand slapping down on his coffee table startled everyone, and Gabriel knew that what was coming was not going to be good.
    “It’s just a piece of paper,” he said and lowered his eyes to the sheet beneath his hand. 
    Gabriel moved toward the coffee table, toward the paper.
    “What’s this?” he asked Jack but was unsure of whether he wanted to hear the answer.
    “It’s that list we found, the one from the cop’s computer.”
    “And?” Gabriel probed and didn’t feel relieved in the least.
    “And there are sixty names on it.”
    “Yeah, and all of them are dead.”
    “Read the names, Gabriel,” Jack ordered.
    Gabriel did not know what Jack expected him to find.  The names were no longer relevant.  It was a list of fallen creations, nothing more.  Reluctantly, he allowed his eyes to scan the list.  He read name after name.  Not one of them carried any significan ce, until he neared the bottom.  At the end of the lengthy list, he saw it, a name that nearly jumped off the page: Franklin Terzini.  He felt his brow furrow and he sank back onto the couch, the urge to sit suddenly pressing.  It did not make sense.  He wondered why he hadn’t realized it before.  Why would Terzini’s name be on his own creation inventory? 
    “What do you think this means?” Gabriel said more to himself. 
    “What?  What is it Gabriel?’ Melissa asked.
    He looked up at her and saw that worry had gathered her brows together; and rightly so.
    “Terzini, Terzini’s name is on this list,” he said and hated to be the one to share potentially bad news with her.
    “What does that mean?” she said blinking back tears.
    “Well, if he is truly back, and has resumed his plans for humanity, it can only mean one thing,” he answered.
    Gabriel noticed that she held the kitchen counter so tightly her knuckles had whitened.  He did not want to put her through this again, did not want to subject her to more horror.  If the warning that whispered across his skin and r aised the fine hairs on his body like quills were right, if they would be up against what he suspected they’d be up against, than horror would likely be an insufficient descriptive of what lay ahead. 
    “Gabriel, w hat does his name on the list mean?” he heard her voice ask again.
    The room had frozen, as though each person in it held their breath and awaited his answer.
    “It means he recreated himself, that his deranged clone is out there, the same clone that killed my Dawn,” Jack answered for him.
    A stunned hush befell the room and hung in the air like fog.  Gabriel looked up and met Melissa’s gaze.  Her eyes searched his, as though asking him whether he shared Jack’s belief that