Kirjahaku

Volume 1 in the Adventures of V series.When massive earthquakes ripple, simultaneously, all over the world, bringing chaos, scientists are puzzled - what is happening?V, the half-alien ancient vampire goddess, knows.Cardinal Xavier Ambrosiano, the leader of a secret satanic cult nested deep in the Vatican, has triggered a giant alien device buried deep in North Africa.The Crystal - and V is its custodian - is also known as the World-Destroyer. By twisting Earth's gravitational field, it can tear the planet apart. Since before the time of Augustus Caesar, V has protected the CrystalSince the time of Augustus Caesar, V has fought the satanic cult, and its ritual sacrifice of young women. Even now, monkish figures, disguised as Latin lovers, stalk the streets of Rome, hunting for ideal victims - young women to incarnate the goddess - who must be sacrificed in a black Mass, exorcising the feminine principle, casting women out of divinity, robbing them of their divine luster and power.To defeat the Cardinal, V needs allies. Father Patrick Michael O'Bryan, an Irish Jesuit and famous exorcist, dithers - V is a demon, obviously, but she is a flirtatious - and possibly good - demon. Should he cast her out, and kill her, or join her mission? Don U Pizzu, a dapper handsome Mafia Don and ruthless killer, is entranced. What to do? Gun the charming vampire down, or offer her roses and champagne?Kate Thornhill, a brilliant young scientist, is hypnotized by V's beauty - and her sleek silky warrior outfit - a temptation for a girl of Kate's martial temper. Time presses. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis sweep around the world.Tourists, caught in Rome, flee from dangerous buildings to the open spaces of the Roman Forum, which becomes the stage for a giant bacchanal, celebrating the end of the world. Vesuvius and Yellowstone erupt. Superstorms rage; cities collapse; chaos and terror spread. The end is nigh. At the last moment, just as Earth teeters on the edge of annihilation, just as Rome, the Eternal City, collapses into ruins, V faces off against Cardinal and the Intergalactic Evil Force he has welcomed into our universe. If V fails, humanity's great adventure comes to an end.If V fails, nothing will be left of Earth but a cold dead asteroid belt, circling around the sun. A mad Cardinal, scheming prelates, human sacrifice, Mafia plots, Vatican scandals, a dying Pope, a damsel in distress, theological debates, a persnickety Jesuit, a gorgeous vampire, a sleek warrior woman, a galaxy of characters, a dying Earth, and an impending Apocalypse, all add up - to a sexy whirlwind adventure, for fans of Dan Brown, of the Exorcist, of the Godfather movies, and of dystopian and apocalyptic fiction.

Volume 2 in the Adventure of V series. A beautiful half-mad billionaire, a mischievous half-alien vampire, a handsome disheveled scientist, a brainy stripper, a diabolical Russian oligarch, and a graceful wild-eyed Clone, take us on an epic journey across America and deep into the treacherous paradise of the South Seas. When naughty, mischievous, witty vampire V discovers that her ultra-dangerous, half-alien DNA has been used by billionaire scientist Sabrina Jacobs to create a clone, she realizes that the human race is in mortal danger.To nip the alien DNA contagion in the bud, she must kill Sabrina and the 14-year-old Clone. Having just escaped from Sabrina's bounty-hunters, stunned and half-naked, V staggers out of the desert onto a lonely endless strip of road.She flags down a handsome yummy scientist, Alex Wolf. Later, out hunting for human fodder, she picks up a beautiful stripper, Helen Guerrera. Together, the trio set off on a rollicking chaotic chase across the ruins of a dystopian America - searching for Sabrina and the Clone - and then, still in pursuit of Sabrina and the Clone, they sail deep into the South Pacific, searching the Sulu Sea and the Philippines.While V hunts Sabrina, Sabrina hunts V.Sabrina' dream is to lobotomize beautiful V, to enslave her, and to exploit her DNA to create a race of immortal superhumans. But, while V and Sabrina hunt each other, Sabrina's sadistic ex-lover, Russian billionaire, Dmitry Pavlov, stalks Sabrina.He plans to capture and sink Sabrina's marvelous research ship, Andromeda, to kidnap the Clone and transform gorgeous brilliant Sabrina into a grotesque freak - an animal to be kept in a cage. At the center of all this, is the Clone, a tragic, failed experiment, and Sabrina's greatest regret. Perpetually imprisoned by Sabrina in an armored glass cage, the exquisite but utterly insane 14-year-old Clone has never breathed the open air. Just as V closes in on Sabrina and the Clone, Dmitry springs his trap, and, at the same time, a huge tropical typhoon closes in, threatening everyone and everything. In the chaos of overlapping struggles, will V succeed in saving the world from the plague of her alien DNA, will she eliminate Sabrina and the Clone - or will she fail?

Volume 4 in the Adventures of V seriesA fearless sheriff, a pregnant art historian, a mad scientist, a shackled prisoner, a zombie reporter, an orphaned boy, a zombie film star, a gung-ho colonel, an ancient goddess, a reptilian secret service agent, a gorgeous Synthetic Individual, a stubborn ship's captain, an adoring zombie, are all caught up - with V - in a tsunami of chaos when the zombie virus overwhelms Miami, and spreads, like wildfire, through Florida and beyond. The great luxury liner, the Eden of the Seas, steered by zombies - directed by an invisible central mind, the Puppet Master - has crashed into the Miami seafront, unleashing the zombie pandemic which now rages out of control on the mainland, overwhelming Miami, Fort Lauderdale, much of Florida, and heading for New York City and Houston, Texas. Leaping from the Eden before it crashed, V had kidnapped the US president, Katherine du Bois Hughes, and had gotten her to safety on the research ship, Andromeda II. On Andromeda II, Andromeda Corp CEO Sabrina Jacobs and V arrange to get the president back to Washington so Katherine can reverse a coup d tat, carried out by the fundamentalist vice president, Joseph Humility Ebenezer Jackson, and seize back control of the government. While the president heads for Washington, V plunges deep into the Florida Everglades to rescue from lobotomy by a mad scientist a kidnapped young woman, Monica Fabritz, who, manacled down in a secret government installation, is about to give birth to a human-alien hybrid, perhaps the prophesized zombie anti-Christ.Just as V arrives, US Marines storm into the installation with instructions to kill everybody, a horde of zombies converges on the site, and Freddy, the lethal hybrid that kidnapped and raped Monica smashes his way into the building to kidnap his alien-hybrid son. Returning to Andromeda II with Monica and her baby, V, accompanied by a beautiful Marine sergeant and a handsome Navy captain, sets off to meet the Puppet Master. On the terrorist yacht, A Flight of Fancy, she travels through a shimmering space-time gateway into an alternative universe. There V and her fellow castaways - and their guide, a teenage goddess, Isis - find themselves on a lush, primitive, paradise-like island. Here, in this strange alternate world, the natives worship V as a long-absent goddess who has returned to them. V must perform endless ceremonies, accepting one human sacrifice after another, emptying her victims of their blood. Getting spoiled, the worshippers clamor for more spectacular performances.Finally, one day, V, helped by young Isis, travels deep underground, into the bowels of the earth, under a volcano, and confronts the source of the pandemic, the Puppet Master. He is none other than a grotesque reincarnation of the handsome sadistic Russian oligarch, Dmitry Pavlov, himself an emanation of the eternal Evil Force, V's constant foe and nemesis.Meanwhile, other refugees from the virus, Alex Wolf, chief scientist of Andromeda Corporation, Marie-Jos , the beautiful French SIN, the two Chinese acrobats, Fei and Fang, actress Virginia Lily - who has become a charming zombie - and Virginia's sidekick, 11-year-old Jake, struggle to survive, to contain the virus, and to discover an antidote and a vaccine, while holed up in a laboratory just outside Miami, besieged by rampaging zombies and by murderous anti-science militias inspired by the fundamentalist anti-science vice president.In the alternative universe, under the volcano, V faces the ultimate test, risking her soul - and her body - to save the world from eternal enslavement to the Puppet Master.

Volume 5 in the Adventures of V seriesIt is the year 2158. V, the outcast vampire, and queen of the alien-human hybrids, disguises herself as a Cosmos Centurion, and heads into the Great Central Desert - the desolate wasteland that was once the American Heartland - to discover if any of her fellow alien-human hybrids are still alive. All hybrids and Synthetic Individuals - or SINs - were disappeared in the Great Culling of 2144. Everywhere, the elite Cosmos - rich, militarized, highly cultured - the privileged 0.000001 % - rule the world. The Cosmos live in Domed Cities, protected from the wild torrid climate and its superstorms, and served by robots and the lower-class Subs. The Subs, an inferior social cast without rights, also live in the domed cities. Subs are used as servants, slaves, and for sexual entertainment. Dissidence, for a Cosmos, can lead to re-classification as a Sub, or as Non-Human, or to body and personality redesign, and permanent mental or physical erasure. Most of the world - continents, and oceans - is an arid, storm-wracked, desolate wasteland inhabited by Burbites, Mutants, and Outlanders.The Burbites, miserable uncultured barbaric incontinent suburban folk, cluster, outside the domes, around the domed cities.The Mutants, products of unregulated and criminal bioengineering, chemical pollution, and radiation accidents, and, live in underground desert colonies, in the central wasteland that was once the heart of America. The Cosmos hunt them down. Outlanders are rare human eccentrics and religious or ecological fanatics who wander the wilds. Synthetic Individuals (SINs) are super individuals, products of bioengineering; they are, potentially, immortal. Hybrids are alien-human hybrids who are very powerful, extremely intelligent, and, potentially, immortal; they are all products of V's alien-human DNA or descended from V. In a Human Species Purification campaign, the elite Cosmos eliminated the alien-human hybrids, V's tribe, and the Synthetic Individuals - SINs - in the Great Culling, directed by the President-Leader, fourteen years ago.V disguises herself as a Cosmos intelligence officer and joins a Cosmos Centurion military column into the Great Central Desert to discover if any of her fellow hybrids are alive.When the Cosmos column is destroyed in an extraordinary ambush, V continues her quest, with one survivor, Lieutenant Kat Jackson, a beautiful black Cosmos elite warrior, an implacable foe and hunter of hybrids. Farther out in the Central Desert, two elite Cosmos women, 14-year-old Miranda Hughes and her mother, Niki Hughes, survivors of a plane crash, have been captured by Mutants, and are about to be sacrificed, on a flaming cross. Aided by handsome young Caliban, Prince of the Mutants, Miranda escapes.But attacked by Zombie-Bats - followers of a fundamentalist prophet, the Boy, and caught in a sand blizzard, Miranda is separated from Caliban, she gets lost in the desert. She ends up with a family of cannibal ghouls. Caliban, searching for Miranda, finally finds her. She is naked and lecturing the ghouls on the mystical implications of cosmology. Suddenly, Caliban and Miranda, and Miranda's ghouls, are surrounded by a horde of Zombie Bats - grotesque creatures created out of his True Believers, by an evil fundamentalist religious prophet, the Boy, or el Ni o. While this battle rages, and while V and Kat speed through the desert, Miranda's mother, Nikki, is about to be crucified, burned alive on the Cross of the Mutant Goddess Dolly, the first cloned mammal.

V and Kat leave the Mutant Kingdom and race across the desert towards Camp Terminus, where V suspects hybrids are enslaved and human dissidents - and even children - are being held prisoner in horrendous conditions more than a mile underground. The camp is a decrepit ancient giant - a vast sweltering labyrinth, a sort of steampunk Escher drawing - a rare earths mine.It is policed by sadistic madmen, thugs, and petty tyrants. Far underground, enslaved alien-human hybrids, their minds paralyzed, and human dissidents - and two high-spirited kids, Jake and Gloria - are held in horrendous conditions. Just before V and Kat arrive, Camp Terminus is attacked by a deadly ghoul virus - it morphs people instantly into ghouls.And the Boy, the Prophet of Death, the Cosmic Force of Evil, and his winged zombie hordes promptly arrive to sow destruction. Explosions and fires, floods and avalanches, sweep through the abyssal labyrinth.V and Kat desperately struggle to rescue the enslaved hybrids and the human prisoners from an inferno of destruction. And V must face off in a preliminary duel with the glamorous Byronic Boy, a charismatic religious leader, an incarnation of the Evil Force V's nemesis, earlier embodied in Dmitry Pavlov and the Puppet Master. And if V does win her duel, and if she and Kat do save the prisoners, where can they take them in a desolate and dying world?

When massive earthquakes ripple, simultaneously, all over the world, bringing chaos, scientists are puzzled - what is happening? V, the half-alien ancient vampire goddess, knows. Cardinal Xavier Ambrosiano, the leader of a secret satanic cult nested deep in the Vatican, has triggered a giant alien device buried deep in North Africa. The Crystal - and V is its custodian - is also known as the World-Destroyer. By twisting Earth's gravitational field, it can tear the planet apart. Since before the time of Augustus Caesar, V has protected the Crystal. Since the time of Augustus Caesar, V has fought the satanic cult, and its ritual sacrifice of young women. Even now, monkish figures, disguised as Latin lovers, stalk the streets of Rome, hunting for ideal victims - young women to incarnate the goddess - who must be sacrificed in a black Mass, exorcising the feminine principle, casting women out of divinity, robbing them of their divine luster and power. To defeat the Cardinal, V needs allies. Father Patrick Michael O'Bryan, an Irish Jesuit and famous exorcist, dithers - V is a demon, obviously, but she is a flirtatious - and possibly good - demon. Should he cast her out, and kill her, or join her mission? Don U Pizzu, a dapper handsome Mafia Don and ruthless killer, is entranced. What to do? Gun the charming vampire down, or offer her roses and champagne? Kate Thornhill, a brilliant young scientist, is hypnotized by V's beauty - and her sleek silky warrior outfit - a temptation for a girl of Kate's martial temper. Time presses. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis sweep around the world. Tourists, caught in Rome, flee from dangerous buildings to the open spaces of the Roman Forum, which becomes the stage for a giant bacchanal, celebrating the end of the world. Vesuvius and Yellowstone erupt. Superstorms rage; cities collapse; chaos and terror spread. The end is nigh. At the last moment, just as Earth teeters on the edge of annihilation, just as Rome, the Eternal City, collapses into ruins, V faces off against Cardinal and the Intergalactic Evil Force he has welcomed into our universe. If V fails, humanity's great adventure comes to an end. If V fails, nothing will be left of Earth but a cold dead asteroid belt, circling around the sun. A mad Cardinal, scheming prelates, human sacrifice, Mafia plots, Vatican scandals, a dying Pope, a damsel in distress, theological debates, a persnickety Jesuit, a gorgeous vampire, a sleek warrior woman, a galaxy of characters, a dying Earth, and an impending Apocalypse, all add up - to a sexy whirlwind adventure, for fans of Dan Brown, of the Exorcist, of the Godfather movies, and of dystopian and apocalyptic fiction.

A beautiful half-mad billionaire, a mischievous half-alien vampire, a handsome disheveled scientist, a brainy stripper, a diabolical Russian oligarch, and a graceful wild-eyed Clone take us on an epic journey across America and deep into the treacherous paradise of the South Seas. When naughty, mischievous, witty vampire V discovers that her ultra-dangerous, half-alien DNA has been used by billionaire scientist Sabrina Jacobs to create a clone, she realizes that the human race is in mortal danger.To nip the alien DNA contagion in the bud, she must kill Sabrina and the 14-year-old Clone. Having just escaped from Sabrina's bounty-hunters, stunned and half-naked, V staggers out of the desert onto a lonely endless strip of road.She flags down a handsome yummy scientist, Alex Wolf. Later, out hunting for human fodder, she picks up a beautiful stripper, Helen Guerrera. Together, the trio set off on a rollicking chaotic chase across the ruins of a dystopian America - searching for Sabrina and the Clone - and then, still in pursuit of Sabrina and the Clone, they sail deep into the South Pacific, searching the Sulu Sea and the Philippines.While V hunts Sabrina, Sabrina hunts V.Sabrina' dream is to lobotomize beautiful V, to enslave her, and to exploit her DNA to create a race of immortal superhumans. But, while V and Sabrina hunt each other, Sabrina's sadistic ex-lover, Russian billionaire, Dmitry Pavlov, stalks Sabrina.He plans to capture and sink Sabrina's marvelous research ship, Andromeda, to kidnap the Clone and transform gorgeous brilliant Sabrina into a grotesque freak - an animal to be kept in a cage. At the center of all this, is the Clone, a tragic, failed experiment, and Sabrina's greatest regret. Perpetually imprisoned by Sabrina in an armored glass cage, the exquisite but utterly insane 14-year-old Clone has never breathed the open air. Just as V closes in on Sabrina and the Clone, Dmitry springs his trap, and, at the same time, a huge tropical typhoon closes in, threatening everyone and everything. In the chaos of overlapping struggles, will V succeed in saving the world from the plague of her alien DNA, will she eliminate Sabrina and the Clone - or will she fail?

Volume 3 in the Adventures of V. A chic vampire, a glamorous black US president, a loony Bible-thumping vice president, a diabolical terrorist, a randy lawyer, a handsome captain, a gorgeous assistant, a beautiful Synthetic Individual, a recklessly brave girl reporter, a grizzled cameraman, a Bollywood princess, a bitter TV producer, a pompous anchorman, a kidnapped heiress, a stunning actress, an orphaned boy, all are swept up in a desperate epic struggle for survival against a spreading zombie pandemic. The year is 2046. V is on the hunt for a mysterious renegade mass-murder hybrid, a steel-gray reptilian creature that has left a trail of blood from Texas to Vermont. V's attention is drawn to an even more pressing crisis - a probable terrorist attack against the president of the United States. It will be carried out on the world's latest greatest luxury liner, the Eden of the Seas. The president, a charismatic black TV star, Katherine du Bois Hughes, is scheduled to speak to the American Bar Association's annual meeting during the maiden voyage of the Eden. During her speech, Katherine announces special legislation to defend human species purity. She denounces alien-human hybrids, V's people. And she condemns, bioengineering creations, Synthetic Individuals, or SINs. She announces she will shortly propose laws to label, isolate, and eliminate them. Just after Katherine's speech, a deadly biological weapon is released - via colorful party balloons launched from a passing yacht, A Flight of Fancy. The balloons, caught up in Eden's ventilation system, burst, releasing a virus, which instantly turns 2000 lawyers and 4000 other passengers and crew into cannibalistic zombies or into vine-like, tentacular, voracious, semi-conscious plants. V and a few survivors - including several hybrids, twin teenage Chinese acrobats, Wang Fei and Wang Fang, and Marie-Jos Duval, a beautiful Parisian Synthetic Individual, or SIN - must save the president, and get her off the Eden before she too turns into a zombie. Then, V must spirit the president to a safe refuge from which Katherine can take back control of America, because, in Washington, there has been a coup d' tat.The US vice president - tall, handsome, eloquent, Bible-thumping Joseph Humility Ebenezer Jackson - who was behind the biological attack and who has staged the coup d' tat in Washington, intends to kill the president - she is "too soft on hybrids and SINs" - and destroy the Eden, and all those in it, using nuclear weapons if need be; he also plans to obliterate, with missiles, Sabrina Jacob's elegant research ship, Andromeda II, a symbol of the most advanced science - "diabolical Darwinian meddling with the Divine Order" - sailing near The Bahamas, and which, with its wealth of scientific expertise, has become the center of the anti-pandemic struggle. But ...The vice president is double-crossed by the creator of the zombie virus, a mysterious creature called the Puppet Master. Contrary to the vice president's plan, the zombie pandemic does not stay confined to the Eden - but the Eden - piloted by zombies controlled by the Puppet Master - crashes into Miami. The zombie virus spreads throughout Florida, and it sweeps up, in its deadly onslaught, Samantha Andrews, a feisty TV reporter for the Volpe News Network, her cameraman, a grizzled veteran of many wars, Charlie Parr, and Virginia Lily, a stunning star of B-movies, and Jake, an orphaned 11-year-old, and many others, all caught up in an onrushing turmoil of suffering and death.

Volume 4 in the Adventures of V. A fearless sheriff, a pregnant art historian, a mad scientist, a shackled prisoner, a zombie reporter, an orphaned boy, a zombie film star, a gung-ho colonel, an ancient goddess, a reptilian secret service agent, a gorgeous Synthetic Individual, a stubborn ship's captain, an adoring zombie, are all caught up - with V - in a tsunami of chaos when the zombie virus overwhelms Miami, and spreads, like wildfire, through Florida and beyond. The great luxury liner, the Eden of the Seas, steered by zombies - directed by an invisible central mind, the Puppet Master - has crashed into the Miami seafront, unleashing the zombie pandemic which now rages out of control on the mainland, overwhelming Miami, Fort Lauderdale, much of Florida, and heading for New York City and Houston, Texas. Leaping from the Eden before it crashed, V had kidnapped the American president, Katherine du Bois Hughes, and had gotten her to safety on the research ship, Andromeda II. On Andromeda II, Andromeda Corp CEO Sabrina Jacobs and V arrange to get the president back to Washington, so Katherine can reverse a coup d tat, carried out by the fundamentalist vice president, Joseph Humility Ebenezer Jackson, and seize back control of the government. While the president heads for Washington, V plunges deep into the Florida Everglades to rescue from lobotomy by a mad scientist a kidnapped young woman, Monica Fabritz, who, manacled down in a secret government installation, is about to give birth to a human-alien hybrid, perhaps the prophesized zombie anti-Christ. Just as V arrives, US Marines storm into the installation with instructions to kill everybody, a horde of zombies converges on the site, and Freddy, the lethal hybrid that kidnapped and raped Monica, smashes his way into the building to kidnap his alien-hybrid son. Returning to Andromeda II with Monica and her baby, V, accompanied by a beautiful Marine sergeant and a handsome Navy captain, sets off to meet the Puppet Master. On the terrorist yacht, A Flight of Fancy, she travels through a shimmering space-time gateway into an alternative universe. There V and her fellow castaways - and their guide, a teenage goddess, Isis - find themselves on a lush, primitive, paradise-like island. Here, in this strange alternate world, the natives worship V as a long-absent goddess who has returned to them. V must perform endless ceremonies, accepting one human sacrifice after another, emptying her victims of their blood. Getting spoiled, the worshippers clamor for more spectacular performances.Finally, one day, V, helped by young Isis, travels deep underground, into the bowels of the earth, under a volcano, and confronts the source of the pandemic, the Puppet Master. He is none other than a grotesque reincarnation of the handsome sadistic Russian oligarch, Dmitry Pavlov, himself an emanation of the eternal Evil Force, V's constant foe and nemesis.Meanwhile, other refugees from the virus, Alex Wolf, chief scientist of Andromeda Corporation, Marie-Jos , the beautiful French SIN, the two Chinese acrobats, Fei and Fang, actress Virginia Lily - who has become a charming zombie - and Virginia's sidekick, 11-year-old Jake, struggle to survive, to contain the virus, and to discover an antidote and a vaccine, while holed up in a laboratory just outside Miami, besieged by rampaging zombies and by murderous anti-science militias inspired by the fundamentalist anti-science vice president.In the alternative universe, under the volcano, V faces the ultimate test, risking her soul - and her body - to save the world from eternal enslavement to the Puppet Master.

It is the year 2158. V, the outcast vampire, and queen of the alien-human hybrids, sets off on a perilous voyage into the Great Central Desert - the desolate wasteland that was once the Heartland of America. She wants to discover if any of her fellow alien-human hybrids have survived the Culling of all non-pure humans by the Cosmos Government. Everywhere, the elite Cosmos - rich, militarized, highly cultured - the privileged 0.000001 % - rule the world. The Cosmos live in domed cities, protected from the torrid climate and its superstorms, and served by robots and the lower-class Subs. The rest of the world and the continents and oceans are an arid, storm-wracked, desolate wasteland inhabited by Burbites, Mutants, and Outlanders. As V heads into the desert, several hundred miles away, two elite Cosmos, 14-year-old Miranda, and her mother, Niki, survivors of a plane crash, have been captured by mutants - they are about to be sacrificed, burned alive, on a flaming cross, to the Mutant Goddess, Dolly.

V and Cosmos warrior Kat leave the Mutant Kingdom and race across the desert towards Camp Terminus, where V is convinced her fellow alien-human hybrids are enslaved and human dissidents - and even children - are being held prisoner in horrendous conditions more than a mile underground. Terminus is a giant ancient decrepit rare earth mine - a vast sweltering labyrinth, a sort of steampunk Dante's Inferno version of an Escher drawing. It is policed by sadistic madmen, thugs, and petty tyrants. In Terminus, underground, enslaved hybrids, their minds neutered, and human dissidents - including two high-spirited kids - are held in steamy, horrendous conditions. Just before V and Kat arrive, Terminus is attacked by a deadly ghoul virus - it morphs people instantly into slobbering, libidinous, murderous ghouls. Then, the Boy, the Prophet of Death, and his winged zombie hordes flood in, sowing fiery destruction. Explosions and fires, floods and avalanches, sweep through the abyssal labyrinth of Terminus as V and Kat fight to rescue the enslaved hybrids and humans from an inferno of destruction. While V faces off with the Boy, in a duel to decide the fate of the world. If V does win her battle, and if she and Kat do save the prisoners, where can they take them in a desolate, dying, and infernal world?

Determined to rescue the human race from annihilation and the Boy's Cult of Death, V races to save Elysium, the capital of the Cosmos Empire, the last bastion of humanity's earthly rule.As the zombie-bats and the Boy - the incarnation of Evil - and his True Believer zombie-bats sweep eastward towards Elysium City - a domed city built over the flooded ruins of Manhattan - V and her tiny crew race to defend the city from the Boy and his fanatical zombies. But ruin has already arrived. The Boy has seized control of the World Mind. The dome protecting the domed city begins to collapse. Electricity fails. All the machines go crazy. Human minds, linked to the World Mind, go mad, explode, or become zombies. Winged zombie-bats sweep into the city, followed by gigantic super tornadoes, hail storms, and dust storms. Murderous mutant ghouls rise from the sewers. In a parody of the Rapture, the dead rise from their graves, and go on a rampage, massacring the living. Out in the Burbs, an ecological crusader inadvertently releases a super-powerful lethal version of the Bubonic plague. It spreads from the Burbs into Cosmos Elysium. Panic is everywhere. The boy seizes control of the very fabric of reality, twisting it into a thousand horrifying scenarios. As everything collapses, even the mighty Cosmos are brought to their knees. V and her team engage in mortal combat, on multiple levels, above ground, and below ground, with the evil forces of the Boy. Humanity faces extinction. Only a few will survive. To save the human race and our universe, V must confront the Boy and vanquish him. Is it too late for humanity? Has the Apocalypse come, or the Rapture? Is this the end of the Anthropocene? Is this the end of the human race?

Lava and other stories anatomizes desire, death, and fracturing sexual identities. In the first section of the book, "La Dolce Vita," the title story "Lava" ushers us into a sultry night of sex, nihilism, and transcendence. It is the eve of a prestigious film festival in Taormina, an ancient Sicilian hilltop seaside town, a renowned sexual and gay paradise, once frequented by Nietzsche, Goethe, and D H. Lawrence. Etna erupts. The second section of the book, Shattered, tells of broken lives, emptied out human shells, the husks left behind. There are so many ways to fail at that continuous unending exam which is life - so many ways to fail to fully live - and many of them are cataloged in Lava and Other Stories.