The robed figure slid bonelessly to the ground, blood from the impact streaking the streetlight behind it and beginning to seep from the shattered body. The smell of burned rubber and screeching tires competed with car horns as motorists slammed on the breaks as the SUVs roared around the corner and down the access road that led from the airport towards downtown and the accompanying freeway ramps. People gaped at the sudden and shocking wreckage and many were on cellphones either calling 911 or filming the scene.

The robed figure paid them no mind. Vessels were of little importance. His own vessel still lived, though his shattered back would have made the short remainder of his life an agony. No matter, vessels suffered, it was what they were made for after all. It didn't matter, all that mattered was the Fathers plan, and nothing as insignificant as human life or human frailty could be allowed to interfere with that goal. Black filaments began to spread through the dying figure, burrowing through flesh and coiling around blood-slicked bone like parasitic fungi. The robe obscured the writhing contorted flesh beneath as the figure, as though drawn by an obscene puppet master, stood jerkily, its back twisted at an unnatural angle. The vessels mouth opened as if to scream but speech was not permitted to it.

With an ugly scuttling speed, the thing leaped over the chainlink fence that ringed the airport like a grotesque toad. Bones crunched and tendons popped, unnecessary now that its true nature had come fully awake. The thing, wearing the corpse of an emaciated man like the cast offs of a rag pickers barrel, blurred across the airstrip at astonishing speed, the flesh of its feet tearing off and leaving a bloody trail across the tarmac. The way the curve of the road bordered the airport allowed it to cut the cord of an arc with its prey, closing the gap faster than seemed possible. The back of its robes ripped apart as dozens of long filamentous appendages, each sharp as obsidian blades, erupted from the ruinous rent in the vessels back. The Father wanted the sister of the apostate, and his plan would not be balked by these interlopers.