Page 29 of Defying the Relic Hunter

Ethan took the hose from me. “You are now a member of the Coletti family, and we take care of our own. Never doubt that.”

“You forgot to mention the swell fangs and a DNA do-over.”

Ethan shrugged and turned the hose on me. “Once you become Coletti you’ll be stronger, harder to kill. You can teleport out of any dangerous situation. Any injuries you do receive will heal faster. You might even live to be a thousand.”

I rubbed the goo off my face as the water poured down. “With my luck, I doubt I’ll make it to Sunday.”

“I’m taking you to the Jones clan compound. You’ll be safe there,” Ethan said, scrubbing at the slime coating my hair.

“One whiff of me and they’ll kick me out.”

“Shrek has some of Detja’s special soap. Once you bathe with it, the smell will be gone,” Zarek said.

I raised my eyes heavenward. “Praise the Lord.”

His gaze focused on Adan, Zarek asked, “Where did you find Adan?”

“Didn’t Granny Annabel tell you where I was?”

“She couldn’t maintain her form and we only got bits and pieces of what she was trying to tell us,” Ethan answered.

“That happens when she overuses her powers. The Tomb Raiders’ transporter beam dropped me in a cavern beneath the Superstition Mountains. Adan was locked inside this funky glass cage.”

Adan ate the fence along with several laser cannons and rolled toward us.

“Keep that crazy shapeshifter away from me or so help me God, I’ll find a way to kill him.”

“A feeble human could never harm me,”Adan scoffed.

I gave him the one finger salute“Try me. You’re one ungrateful bastard. Isaved your ass and you almost got me killed.”

“You did not save me. I saved you,”Adan countered.

“I wasn’t the one locked in a cage. Now was I?”

“It was a temporary setback.”

I threw my hands up in disgust.“You were dying.”

“I should have eaten you.”

“If you had tried, Granny would have turned you into a gigantic popsicle.”

“No one has that kind of power,”Adan countered.

“My grandmother does. Wanna find out?”

Zarek barked,“Enough children.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Who captured you Adan?”

A head suddenly bulged out from Adan’s hide its mouth frozen in an endless scream.“Bjarke warriors. One still lives. Do you wish to interrogate him?”

“I do.”

Adan’s tentacles twisted wildly as his body heaved and pulsed.

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