All with their eyes carved out, but their features and frames were still distinct.
As if they were once living, breathing people before becoming something else.
Their limbs moved too fast, too wrong, as if joints bent the wrong way beneath their fine coats.
Sweet Mother Mary, what would they do to me?
Tear me apart?
Turn me into one of them?
No.
I hadn’t watched my parents drown, hadn’t survived years of abuse to end like this.
I lunged forward, twisting under the creature’s grip.
And ran—
Straight into another.
A wall of bone and decay, taller than me, stronger than anything human.
Icy fingers closed around my throat.
Claws, sharper than daggers, pierced my skin.
Something hot and wet trickled down my collarbone, soaking into the fabric of my dress.
The pain blurred my mind.
Then—a flash of dark radiance, of colors not from this world.
A beat of powerful wings.
The creature’s head rolled clean off.
A hiss of black smoke curled from the severed neck, rising toward the stars.
I collapsed, pressing my fingers to my throat, gasping for air.
Something landed before me—
Massive black wings unfolding like a storm.
An archangel of death.
No—
Not an angel.
Him.
My vision blurred from blood loss, but I recognized that tousled indigo hair.
That sharp jawline.
Those silvery eyes, glowing now with rage.
