Crucible (The New Breed Chronicles, #1)

All the episodes are finally collected here in The Complete Novel.
Ardia is not an ordinary young woman. She can do things other people simply can't. She is stronger and faster than anyone she has ever met, to the point that her friends view her as superhuman. Despite her powers, the world has not been kind to Ardia. Growing up in the care of one of Armenia's foremost criminal bosses, she and her powers have been used to further the needs of a criminal organization that draws wealth from drugs, arms dealing, and prostitution. To make matters worse, her mother has just been murdered. Not just murdered, but savagely and brutally attacked in a bizarre and seemingly random incident. Now, with the help of the criminal known as Razmik, Ardia is seeking to bring her mother's killer to justice. What she doesn't know is that this killer is even stranger than she is. Why was her mother killed so horribly? What is that blurry shape in the surveillance photograph? Can it really be something other than a human? And what is the reason for her own abilities, powers that no one has ever seen, let alone explained?
Meanwhile, half a world away, Homer is setting out on a similar quest. Raised in the jungle by a Catholic missionary with a brutal past, Homer is anything but normal himself. Also imbued with strange abilities and an even stranger appearance, Homer is about to step into the civilized world for the first time on his mission to find his father. What Homer doesn't know is that this mission will lead him to find out more about his own origins, his own primal instinct, and his own emotions than he ever wanted to discover. Who is his father? Where did he go twenty years ago after Homer was conceived? What is the real story behind his mother's death? And who really is Father O'Connor, the man who raised him and a man who seems to have the darkest past of all? Ardia and Homer have each set out on their paths, each for their reasons. Each of our heroes is spectacularly different from ordinary humans, but the challenges and discoveries they will meet will affect them just as deeply as they would any normal soul. This is the story of how their separate paths will come to cross.
"BREED" is a kind of prequel to "THE NEW BREED CHRONICLES," but it is also a standalone horror novel. If you have read "THE NEW BREED CHRONICLES" and want to see more of the story, then "BREED" will provide that. However, if you don't like horror, you can comfortably pass on this novel without being lost in the sequels. Similarly, if all you want is a nice (it's really really not nice) , straightforward horror story, then you can read "BREED" without having to continue with "THE NEW BREED CHRONICLES."