The Serpentine Fire

When Medical Examiner Angelica Hunter and Detective Eric Brannon team up it is to destroy a creature that has the capability to "smoke" people as we smoke cigarettes, their quest to destroy the monster takes them on a journey into the depths of hell itself and along the way they find love and respect for one another. A page from the book: Dr. Adib Katra aka Shakar poised the large, pointed scimitar over the two heads of the snake tattoo circling his abdomen. His hand held, awaiting the moment the beast within him moved into the exact right spot. He knew its movements from a lifetime of living with the damnable beast within. He had meditated and chanted and prepared himself for this moment, the overhead videotape recording it all—the instant when he must tear himself to shreds along the lines of the snake tattoo, to attempt to kill the powerful creature within him and to end the psychic thread being created between it and the equally powerful serpent god nestled within the body of his brother Hari. In a hundred different reflecting points around the room filled with stainless steel, a hundred images of Adib Shakar sent the scimitar down into his bowels. His prone body caught the blood-spray response as Shakar, screaming, sliced into the serpent deep within a second time, then a weak third as his blood mixed with the water spray he'd placed over himself. The scimitar's huge handle, still now over Adib’s corpse, formed a cross over the body where it had been plunged a final time, and an unusual, low keening welled up from the abdomen along with a strange gaseous cloud of acrid smoke and the odor of ozone wafted from the self-inflicted wounds where Dr. Katra lay on his own autopsy table while the video continued to record the moment.