Begging was not beneath her. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”
From the monster’s mouth, a milky white pair of razor sharp teeth grew long and menacing.
Two long fangs just like hers.
It could not be…
It couldn’t.
Things like her did not exist. She was sick, that was all. She was sick and needed the absolution of God to save her from her deformity and perverse hungers.
Instinct would disagree with her. One look at those fangs and Pearl hissed, began to fight in earnest, and was punished horribly.
The smiling man jammed his fingers into her mouth. Gagging when he hooked her fang, she tried to bite. It took several hard jerks, but with a final twisting wrench, he ripped her tooth straight from her skull.
Gums torn, the socket open and spurting blood, Pearl wailed.
No pain she’d ever known compared to this.
Her second fang was gouged out, her cheek ripped fully apart from corner to ear when the man laughing in her face caught his sharpened nail on the flesh.
The angel had no interest in her words, the question in her eyes, or her gurgled prayers... only her agony.
Chapter Three
Feet dragging over pavement, a stream of blood poured from her mouth to mark the path. In the time it took to bring her to this place, she had counted them. Three men with angelic faces and evil hearts had hauled her the distance, and not a single soul had seen.
Dangling between them, the best she could do was press a hand to her maimed face, swallow the constant flow of blood collecting in her mouth, and weep. Her attacker had taken more than her fangs, he had taken her misguided hope that there might be answers to her life—that there might be more for her than year upon year of isolation and loneliness.
There were others like her.
How could she have never known?
Even as they’d beat her, Pearl had tried to ask them what they were. But these men, these glowing angels, were so much stronger and possessed no pity for what they’d deemed an apostate.
She was going to die, be ravaged. If what he’d done to her face was any example, it would be a painful and brutal end.
Sticky crimson ran down her chin, over her neck, staining her clothes. Trying to keep her jaw together despite torn tendons and shredded skin, she failed at speech. Useless lolling tongue only smeared gore from ear to ear, mixed it with her tears.
Tearing the fabric, her coat was yanked down skinny arms, the girl left in only the supper club’s flashy uniform and torn stockings. And that was how they made her walk down the dark, littered alley where she expected they would murder her and leave her to rot.
It was not a good place to die.
Hair in the grip of the one who’d torn out her teeth, head bent back, she saw one last view of the stars.
The man began to chant.
Groaning in protest of the unnatural bend of her spine engorged a bubble of blood on her cheek. It popped, her bones cracked in symphony with her captor’s guttural pronunciations, and the world lurched.
Vision distorted, walls leaning toward her as if ready to crumble and crush her to dust, Pearl watched the awful world twist in upon her and turn her inside out.
This must be death.
A moment later, it was over.
The grim reaper had not come. Her heart still banged against her chest, her blood still poured from her ruined mouth, and pain only grew.
They were no longer standing in the snow, hidden between tight row houses. Now, uneven, time-worn masonry was under her feet, her scream echoing off an arched stone roof, with not a speck of sky to be seen.
The cry died, and all around them the sound of softly traded conversation, the noise of footfalls echoing as if they stood in a great cathedral replaced it.
A church?
But there were no crosses or priests, only a congregation of strangers watching as she was dragged deeper into the sanctum.
Maybe she had died and this was how she was to be judged, bleeding and broken before heaven’s shining hosts.
As she was dragged forward, she caught a glimpse of the quiet crowd watching her advance. She found the gazes of curious strangers.
She disgusted them. Some even sniffed her way, sneering.
A sharp kick hit the back of her legs; knees knocked into stone so hard her teeth snapped and the pain in her jaw doubled. Hunched over, Pearl clutched her torn cheek, pathetic, scared, and completely confused.
The angel who’d torn out her teeth and ripped open her face shouted so all might hear, “This apostate is responsible for abandoning the remains of Chadwick Parker where humans would find them. I have brought it before you, my lord, as you ordered.” He threw her stolen coat on the ground before them. “And here is the proof. The dead human’s blood is matted into her coat.”