Chapter Eight

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I MIGHT WEAR THE FLESH of a beast, but my heart was still that of a man. A heart that stuttered and howled as Eleanor turned limp and lifeless in my hold.

She hadn’t been able to see the syringe. The illusion keeping her firmly in the spell of my new conjuring. I hadn’t been able to see the injection either, but I could feel it in my unsensored hands. I uncapped the needle and punctured her arm, plunging the sedative into her veins.

In the fantasy, my claw was what pierced her.

Her shock at my causing her yet more pain made my stomach seize. Her rapid unconsciousness did its best to cleave me out of Tritec’s icy control.

I’d taken a gamble.

I’d used a sedative that I’d thought would be used for my failing heart and shielded hers instead. Sleep was the only gift I could give her.

It has to work...please.

She turned into a ragdoll.

No longer haunted by elixir. No longer at my brother’s mercy or mine.

She’s free.

It was the only solution I could think of to protect her.

Take her mind out of the fantasy and that solved one deadly consequence. Put her to sleep, and elixir could no longer play havoc with her heart.

But my theory hadn’t been tested...

Yet again, I’d put her in grave danger just like I had since we’d first met.

I’m so sorry, Eleanor...for everything.

Cradling her gently, I placed her on the forest floor. Her gorgeous hair swept over her face as she sprawled at my feet. Her lips parted, her features utterly serene, her eyelashes thick stencils on her cheeks.

Was her mind free?

Was her heart calm?

Had I saved her or killed her?

I wanted to stand vigil. I needed to ensure I’d done the right thing by knocking her out. But I didn’t have the luxury to stand guard.

I’d entered this hallucination for two reasons.

One, to save Eleanor from being raped by my sibling.

And two...to kill that sibling motherfucking dead.

Sweeping her hair away from her face with savage gleaming claws, I stood. The bat wings spread from my spine, heavy and pulling on muscles already fatigued. The sensation of being ten feet tall and controlling a frankensteined creation of reptile, carnivore, and chimera made my body throb within its new skin.

My eyes remained on Eleanor, flinching as she suddenly disappeared.

Her mental awareness of the fantasy completely shut off in sleep, extracting her from all the lies I’d coded. She was gone simply because her mind was no longer reachable.

I stared at the empty dirt, missing her. I would give fucking anything to be beside her in the lounge of my parents’ estate. To collect her from the floor and carry her to a soft bed. To lie down beside her and keep her safe.

But...for now, I was locked in this mirage until it ended.

Time to play.

Balling my fists, feeling the sharpness of my talons embedding into my palms, I cricked my neck and turned away from Eleanor and love, and focused on my brother and hate.

He stood on the opposite side of the fire, his face illuminated by flickering flames, darkness thick behind him, a ring of wolves penning him in a trap made of teeth.

So that was why he hadn’t approached me. Why he hadn’t been a nuisance after I’d thrown him off Eleanor.

He can’t move.

My lips spread over fangs as sharp as scalpels. “Seems I have allies holding you at bay.”

Drake straightened, his hastily tied pants hanging low on his hips, his avatar of a burly redheaded lumberjack not fooling me. Drake had always been sick in his proclivities of hurting those more vulnerable than himself, but when the tables were turned on him...his fear stunk in an instant.

His armpits released an aroma reeking of sour stress. His muslin shirt soaked with sweat, and moisture glistened in the dip of his throat. “Who the fuck are you?”

I laughed, awed at the hastily created creature I’d typed. The creature I now lived within. When I’d altered the text and coding, I’d thrown everything into the mix. Every predator, pain, and poison I could think of. I’d followed no boundaries or common-sense.

I’d embraced the nonsensical and whatever beast I’d conjured now chuckled with dread and death, its chest purring with feral blood thirst. “Don’t pretend you don’t know me, brother. You and I are well acquainted.”

Drake blanched, the redheaded complexion flushing grey. “Sullivan...?”

“Unless we have another relation I am unaware of.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Assumptions will get you killed.” I cocked my head, complete with gilded horns. “And I’ll happily deliver.”

He gulped. “What the fuck did you do?” His pompous arrogance returned, dragged around him like tatty armour. “Sick of being the fool so fashioned a monster?” He sneered. “It’s just fake. Just like this whole piece of shit fantasy is fake. Do you honestly think you can scare me? That I’d cower before you?” He stepped toward me, earning the terrifying snarls of timber wolves. He stopped but continued sneering, “You’re just the same old cocksucker as before. A laughing stock. A nerd who somehow convinced himself he’s powerful. Newsflash, you cunt, you’re not powerful. You and your computer games can take a flying leap, Sullivan, because unlike you, I don’t wet my fucking pants over something that can’t hurt me—”

A wolf lunged, snapping at his wrist.

Drake backpedalled.

Jaws bit down, missing by a hair.

He thought that wasn’t real?

That that bite couldn’t hurt him?

This is gonna be fun.

Yes, this was virtual. And yes, in the outside world, his body would remain unscathed. But in here...thanks to my careful immersion and the tweaks I’d made along the way, myth had the unnerving ability to become real.

Brain damage had been an unsightly side effect because my mirages were...entrancing. Hypnotic. A mesmeric tool to trick the mind into accepting fiction over fact.

While being used as a stage for sex, that realness wasn’t a problem.

But use it in warfare? Turn its salacious nature into treacherous?

Well, there was a reason the Pentagon had contacted me a few months after a high-placed politician came to get his kicks. Why I received offers with unlimited zeros for their exclusive use of my Euphoria.

Use my VR for anything other than its intended purpose and it became the most dangerous thing on the planet. Not Tritec, not elixir, not all the other scrapped and trialled drugs combined.

This...this was true power because Euphoria could take war into the mind. Battles could be won without troops being stationed overseas. International squadrons could be patched into a battleground where no loss of physical life occurred, only the liquefying of a brain.

Drake would not die...not physically.

But holy fuck how his mind would snap.

It would crack like bone and dribble out like marrow.

I could trap him here forever, keep him awake so he couldn’t escape, flay him from sanity, one body part at a time.

A slow, sadistic smile spread my lips. “Allow me to give you your first lesson, brother of mine.”

“I don’t need a lesson from a bastard like you. Give me back my goddess, fuck the hell off, and—”

“Ah, Drake. How sweet this is going to be.” I sucked in a sulphur laced breath. Scales hissed down my spine and thighs. Inky black, soaking up the fire flames, natural shielding for sensitive flesh within.

“Bite me, asshole.” He bared his teeth. His stupid, useless human teeth.

I grinned, my monster teeth stabbing into my lower lip, making me bleed and staining my mouth red. “Oh, it will be my fucking pleasure.”

He backed up as two wolves stalked him, their snouts low to the ground, their coarse fur quivering around their scruffs. Drool dripped from black gums, yellowed fangs glistening for his jugular.

“Not yet,” I murmured, mostly to myself, partly asking a wild animal I’d encrypted to back the hell off because Drake’s proverbial death was mine.

I didn’t expect the wolves to freeze. For their moon-yellow eyes to lock onto me. For their heads to duck in obedience.

Huh...that’s interesting.

I flexed my shoulders, feeling the colossal weight of bone scaffolding and fibrous membrane that formed the wings behind me.

When I’d hastily written this deception, I hadn’t typed anything about animals listening to a master. They were there just as background threats. An atmosphere to turn forest into boneyard.

But...

Wasn’t that poetic? Fatalistic even.

Drake had not only tried to kill me, he’d killed so many other beasts.

It was only fair his death would be shared.

“Tear off his left hand,” I whispered, the grumbling of my creature sounding part earthquake.

There was no pause.

No signal the wolf couldn’t understand.

In a single heartbeat, the wolf on Drake’s left side launched, snatched, and bit.

Drake howled.

Fuck, he howled.

The crunch of bone, the tear of tendons, and the slap of something heavy landing in the fire.

Instantly, the sizzle of skin and pop of blood scented the sky with charred meat.

Drake fell to his knees, cradling the stump where his hand used to be. Blood poured down his forearm, pooling in the dirt.

The wolves sat back on their haunches and joined in his howl. An orchestra of worship and agony.

Drake’s avatar met my gaze. The redheaded man crumpled in on himself, cuddling his arm into his impressive belly. “What the fuck! Tell them to back the fuck off!” His face twisted into livid hate, and the same haughty arrogance he used whenever he’d beaten me and killed my strays appeared.

He tried to see past my disguise of fang and claw and berate the boy he’d tortured from the crib. A kid he’d always won against.

A brother who’d been too weak to stop him in his human form.

Pity.

Such a fucking pity that his own ego had ensured the slowest, most sickening death possible. I would spare him nothing. I would grant no leniency.

I wanted him in motherfucking pieces.

Not wanting to walk, aware that my thrice broken leg outside the fantasy would not tolerate exertion, I spread my heavy bat wings and flew.

A conscious instruction. A whim delivered by virtual reality. A simple tilt forward and swoop...and I soared through the fire.

Drake blanched as I landed before him, right in the midst of timber wolves.

“Sullivan...break the illusion. Get us out of here and we’ll talk...alright? We’ll have a beer in the blau lounge, even smoke one of Dad’s old cigars. We’ll—”

“His ear,” I murmured.

A wolf on his right side pounced and sank its incisors into Drake’s gristle. With a fierce yank, it tore Drake’s ear straight from his head.

“FUCK!” Drake bellowed, his remaining hand slapping over the hole where his ear used to be. “Sully!”

With a toss of its muzzle, the wolf shot the bleeding body part straight down its gullet and swallowed.

I laughed.

The noise in my chest sounded like asteroids colliding with mountain tops. A pummelling of rock and unmovable stone.

Drake rocked on his knees, blood drenching his clothing. “Fuck you, Sullivan. Fuck!”

I wished it was the brother I recognised and not an avatar before me, but...it wouldn’t ruin my enjoyment of his destruction.

“A hand for touching what wasn’t yours to touch. An ear for believing I’d listen to your lies. And a...” I cupped my chin, stroking the scales running down my throat. “His foot, if you’d be so kind.”

A wolf behind him nodded its giant canine head and snatched at Drake’s foot. It yanked him clean off his knees, biting down hard, the crunch of his jaw heard even over Drake’s bloodcurdling scream.

It took a few gnaws, a death shake or two, before Drake’s ankle shattered, his Achilles tendon severed, and the mangled meat of his foot was removed from his borrowed body.

The pack squabbled over it, tearing at toes, eating Drake all while he watched.

“And a foot for ever stepping onto my islands.”

He screamed again, his face glazed with agony.

How did the pain feel?

Was it just mental or had his mind taken full ownership of this form? Could he feel the throbbing wrongness of no longer having complete limbs? What did his body look like in the outside world? Did his nose bleed as his brain scrambled? Did sweat coat his nakedness?

I hope it’s the worst thing he’s ever felt.

I truly fucking hope so.

I hoped he felt every tear, felt every droplet of blood, heard every snarl from the wolves.

A spider the size of a small dog scuttled past.

“Wait.”

Its eight legs paused, its many eyes locking onto me.

“Gag him, his screams are tiresome.”

It happened faster than Drake could suck in a breath to beg. A web of silky strands shot from the spider’s funnel and slapped over his mouth with sticky, silvery strands. It covered his nose too, making his chest heave for a proper breath.

His intact hand rose to scratch it off, achieving a small tear to breathe.

“Another snack?” I smiled at the timbers. “His right hand, if you please.”

Two wolves leaped on him this time, both biting down on his forearm, tearing more than just his hand but everything below his elbow.

The pack lost its hierarchy, pouncing onto Drake as dirt flew. My brother was stampeded by starving canines, and his hand and forearm were devoured.

His screams were muffled, his eyes flowing with disbelieving tears. He shook his head, holding up the stumps he now had, blood spurting from ripped arteries.

The spiderweb still hushed him.

“Muuuuuummyyy.”

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I bowed over him, my wings cocooning us in a morbid cape where earth scattered, and wolves continued to squabble over his tissue, fighting each other in a tumbling mass of fur. “Are you saying Mummy or Sully? Because neither of those can save you.”

“Mweeeassee.”

“Please?” I stabbed a claw beneath his chin, tilting his head up until our eyes met. “You’re begging me now?”

He nodded so fiercely that he punctured his own chin on my talon. “Mweeeassse!”

I clucked my tongue, sounding like a snake hissing over its prey. “Ah, brother. When did you ever show me mercy? Do you remember me begging when it was me you hurt?” I cupped his cheek, shaking my head. “No, you can’t remember because I never begged for my own salvation. I only begged for those I tried to protect. But you don’t have any idea what that feels like, do you, Drake? No loyalty to an animal, a lover, a friend. No loyalty to a brother who was your only kin.”

“Memanor.”

“Eleanor?” I squeezed his jaw in my fist. “You dare try to say her name. Why? You think by reminding me of her that I’ll take mercy on you? That I’ll stop before I go too far?”

He nodded, his nostrils flaring over the web gagging him. “Mont.”

“Don’t?” I chuckled right in his face. “Oh, there’s no going back now, Drake. I couldn’t stop myself, even if I wanted to. Even if you showed some meagre redemption at this late hour, I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from extracting every droplet of pain I can.” I let his face go, swooping to my feet. “Not because I need revenge for myself, but because you owe it to Serigala, to my otters, pigs, dogs, rabbits, apes, and everything in between. Your screams are for them, Drake. Your howls are for Eleanor. Your agony is theirs because it’s justified...but your death...” I grinned, once again revealing blood-stained fangs. “Your death is mine, and frankly, I’m having far too much fun to rush to that finish line, aren’t you?”

He thrashed in the lava-racked earth. He mumbled and moaned, turning dirt rusty with his blood.

The wolves took off, sated with what they’d eaten, no longer bound by my control. They were free, just as all creatures should be.

Another carnivore arrived.

A sabre tooth tiger that only existed in history books and fiction. Its sable coat gleamed in the fire as it prowled around Drake, sniffing the remaining pieces.

I crossed my arms, flaring my wings and flying back a little. “Fancy a taste?”

The tiger growled, licking its chops.

“By all means, please shred my brother of his clothing.”

The cat didn’t wait. With unsheathed claws and a paw bigger than Drake’s chest, he sliced ribbons into my brother’s skin.

Drake’s pain reached levels that threatened to pop eye vessels and cause cardiac arrest. He writhed and tried to crawl away, but the cat rolled him onto his stomach and slashed at his shirt from behind. Furrows of blood erupted down his back as the sabre grabbed the sliced muslin and threw it to the side.

“Good, now his trousers.”

The tiger snarled and swiped at Drake’s ass. Claws cut through dense material, sinking into his flesh and dragging him across the ground until the cat shook his paw to remove him.

Drake’s caterwauls mingled with sobs as the tiger repeated the shredding, dragging its sharpness down Drake’s legs, catching on the stump of his missing foot.

Taking the trousers in his teeth, the cat shook until Drake fell out of them. A naked, bloody, still-breathing corpse who could never die.

Not here, at least.

I could tear out his organs, one by one, and he would remain breathing.

He was a true condemned immortal.

He was sentenced to watch himself be eaten by creatures he’d never dined on but taught an agonising lesson what it felt like to be an unwilling meal.

The tiger dragged its sandpaper tongue along Drake’s footless leg. It grumbled in delight, suckling at the wound.

Drake sobbed harder. His chest heaving, his nose flaring over the web, his eyes popping out of his head.

“One bite. You can choose,” I whispered, never taking my eyes off the graphic smorgasbord before me.

The cat roared before pinning Drake onto his belly and sinking its fangs into his shoulder. With an effortless tug, he shredded a steak of flesh from Drake’s back, revealing the whiteness of his shoulder blade, the beads of his spine, the innermost workings of a man who was full of evil.

I stayed silent as the cat gulped back his delicacy before slinking into the dark forest.

For a moment, we were alone, and I flew back to Drake. Rolling him onto his flayed back with my cloven hoof, I murmured, “I actually pity you, Drake. I pity the man I am because of you. I wonder if we’re as bad as each other, and if I should die beside you tonight.”

My wings stabbed into the ground with their hooked barbs as I braced myself. Drake tried to claw at my leg with his handless stubs. “Mweeassssseeeeeeeee!”

“I have a secret, brother.” I looked down at what I’d done. I took responsibility that he was evil but...so was I. I’d just chosen different victims. I’d used humans. I’d purchased souls. I should be beside him having my sins ripped from equally rancid flesh.

“I’m on borrowed time.” I hissed in the fiery gloom. “My heart is close to its final beat, and I have one chance of staying alive...if I choose to use it.”

I ducked to my haunches, cupping my perspiring, pained brother’s cheek. “But...if I can do this to you and feel no regret or want to stop...I don’t think I deserve that chance, do you? It proves exactly what I feared. That I’m unredeemable, just like you. That I deserve to die. I should end our line...eradicate the last two Sinclairs from this earth because really, it’s a better place without us.”

Drake’s gaze caught mine, amber pupils instead of our inherited blue. He was drawn and haggard, white-fleshed and small.

An echo of the man who’d locked me in a cage and tortured me.

I’d never seen him so petrified or so defeated.

It was a look I’d craved to see my entire life.

I’d finally earned it.

Finally taken vengeance on so many things.

And all I felt was empty.

Empty because it didn’t bring Serigala back. It didn’t stop him from laying his hands on Eleanor. It didn’t make me a better person. If anything, it showed me just how fucking similar we were because I liked seeing him this way. I liked destroying him in every depraved and despicable way possible.

We’re as bad as each other.

I’d come here knowing my intentions weren’t heroic. Accepting my selfishness of keeping Eleanor for myself and removing my brother so he couldn’t ruin our future but...what sort of future did a man like me deserve?

By doing this, I’d just condemned myself because how could I ever claim a happily ever after now? How could I sleep beside Eleanor and believe myself to be worthy of her after I enjoyed the sick pleasure of watching my brother bleed out?

Fuck.

I’d been kidding myself.

Sighing heavily, I stood to my full height and scanned the hungry beasts waiting their turn. Interspersed with bears and hyenas were shadows of so many other animals.

The darkness came alive with four-legged and feathered.

Ants and beetles, crows and vultures, deer and badgers. Rabbits from labs and apes from cages. Mice and beagles, guinea pigs and rats.

And they all had their eyes locked on Drake.

Drool dripped from jaws and cackles of hunger sent a shiver down my scale-covered spine.

Seemed I’d created an illusion that’d taken on a life of its own.

An ending I couldn’t stop.

I smiled at my brethren, bowing respectfully. “Our task is not yet complete.”

A growl from a bear; a wing ruffle from a vulture; a bark from a dog.

“Each take a piece. You have my blessing.”

“Mwat?” Drake shook his head furiously, rubbing his bloody stumps over his mouth to try to rid himself of the spider’s webbing. “Mooooo!”

“Goodbye, Drake.” I unfurled my wings and swooped backward, avoiding gore splatters—relinquishing my sibling to them.

Only once I nodded again did the creatures move in mass. They were a part of me. Figments of my psyche, every painful memory, every doomed stray. Each of them made up Drake’s destiny, ready to tear him into nothing.

I clenched my hands together, almost as if I worshipped at the church of carnage as a bear lumbered into Drake and knocked him onto his back. With a bared snout, he buried his teeth into Drake’s belly.

My brother did more than howl.

He howled with his entire body. His soul screamed in clamour, tears spilled down his cheeks, and he wailed as he endured the cracking of his ribs and the wet mastication of his kidney as the bear burrowed deep and tore out one of the iron-rich organs.

Once the bear had swallowed, he moved away, granting a smaller animal to take his place.

A swarm of ants covered Drake, fire stinging and swift.

Drake shrieked as they poured into his abdominal cavity, reappearing a few seconds later with pieces too small to recognise. They marched into the eerie forest, each holding aloft micro pieces of what I assumed were Drake’s intestines.

Gritting my teeth and feeling my fangs dig into my chin, I never took my eyes off Drake as he slowly turned from man to misery.

A deer nuzzled next, pulling out Drake’s liver before tossing it to a hyena to eat. A chimpanzee hopped close, wrapping its dexterous fingers around Drake’s cock and yanking it clean off his body. Balls and all.

Drake screamed louder, his throat shredding with ear-splitting screeches.

I winced as the demolished manhood vanished into the monkey’s mouth.

Both herbivore and carnivore systemically broke him apart, representing so many dishes he’d chosen. So many lab tests he’d approved.

Time lost all meaning as Drake’s internal organs slowly vanished into the mouths of beasts. Shreds of his flesh were torn off, revealing his skeleton beneath.

His heart pumped with terror in an open hole within him.

His screams turned to wails and finally fell into whimpers.

His body jerked as each creature approached, chose, and chewed.

A spurt of lava erupted from the encrusted ground, rumbling with warning that a volcano bubbled beneath our feet, ready to wipe this fantasy clean once Drake had been consumed. Once his evil had been spilled. Once he was no longer capable of surviving.

I stayed and watched it all.

My wings kept me propped up when my heart stuttered and buckled beneath Tritec, warning I’d reached critical consumption. The stacking effect, keeping me strong and functioning, had reached its fatal toll. I was at the pinnacle of my power. The crest of my strength. The only way forward from here was the inevitable shutting down of my body that could no longer survive on lies.

Tritec-87 was designed to give high strength and whip-quick intelligence in bad accidents requiring self-evacuation. It did precisely what it’d been designed to do—stealing health and vitality from other parts of my body, conning the brain into believing all systems worked perfectly.

But the brain was too smart to be lied to by adrenaline for long. Eventually, the neural network kicked back in, revealing the extent of injuries and exhaustion, prompting a rapid contingency plan to stay alive.

It was that contingency plan that killed the host. A cannibalistic side effect of the brain taking back control. The chemicals it released, the attempts at self-repair, all rapidly increasing the pressure of a system that already operated at max voltage.

The result?

A fried circuit—a stroke or heart attack caused by the very same body you’d been trying to save.

I could feel the distancing already, the strangeness of acknowledging I would soon be free of this form. Not just freed of this fanged monster I’d created, but the shell I’d been born into.

I sighed as the wolves returned, awaiting their final snack once the furred and feathered crowd had had their fill.

Not much of Drake was left.

His inner organs removed. His eyes pecked out by vultures. His tongue chomped on by a beagle. His torso the only thing left with no arms or legs.

“Wait,” I whispered, splaying my membrane wings and swooping to stand over Drake.

The wolves paused, sitting on their haunches as I did the same and cupped Drake’s cheek.

Sticky with blood and ice, ice cold, Drake mumbled with a tongueless mouth something I couldn’t understand.

His empty eye sockets couldn’t relay a message.

His missing lungs couldn’t draw breath.

He was well and truly my prisoner, unable to run, beg, or strike. For a man who’d been spoiled and privileged his entire life, being reduced to nothing but a pile of viscera and bones was a savage and fitting end.

“I’m leaving you now. I’m leaving you within this nightmare where you can never die. That is your true punishment, Drake. Not being mauled and devoured but never being whole again. You took so many pieces of my happiness. You never let me be who I could’ve become because you took so much of my trust. This...this is my attempt at showing you how it feels to exist with parts of you missing. Parts you need to be a functional individual. Parts that are integral to being human.”

I scanned the animals, their peace granting me peace. Their satisfaction doing its best to fill the emptiness within me. I’d done my best at plugging up my holes by caring for those far more innocent than me. I’d fought my love for Eleanor because it showed me just how much I’d failed at life.

This was the burnout I’d been running from. The absolute acknowledgment that I couldn’t be saved. That I didn’t want to be because I hadn’t done enough to be absolved. My lack of trust had been exhausting. My life of loneliness had been miserable.

If this was the end...at least I would be free of such things.

Eleanor would be free of me making further mistakes.

The world would be free of my entitlement and black and white rules.

Looking down at my bleeding brother, I accepted our joint end.

I chose a fate far more fitting for a man like me and let the burnout wash over me. I was tired. So, so fucking tired. It was almost a relief to stop trying. And besides, thanks to Tritec, I was most likely dead anyway—whether I chose such a finale or not.

“I’ve made my choice, Drake. Just like you stole pieces from me, I refuse to keep on living with them gone. I was kidding myself to think I could heal. That Eleanor was the cure I needed. A devil cannot change his colours...not after he’s embraced such a calling—not when we are true brothers and share the same sickness and sadism.”

I ran my hands through his bloody hair. “But don’t worry, brother. My time is short so you won’t suffer too long. When I feel my heart failing, I’ll come back for you. We can die together...just like we were raised together.”

Standing, I bowed at the creatures who’d formed a semi-circle around Drake and the fire. “Guard him. Nibble some more if you get hungry.”

A lone wolf howl made Drake’s eyeless sockets weep.

I looked one last time at the most horrific thing I’d done.

I waited for regret, for shame, for some barometer of right and wrong to tell me I’d gone too far.

But just like I was empty, I was grateful too.

Grateful that Drake was dealt with.

Soon, I would be dealt with.

And the circle of life for two monsters would be complete.

But before that happened...

Before I took my last inhale and accepted my encroaching death, I had a goddess I wanted to make love to one last time. A woman to adore and a queen who wore a priceless crown.

A crown that needed one last jewel to be complete.

It needed my heart because she was the one and only owner of it.

She could cut it from my chest and chisel it into a diamond because only in her care could it be redeemed.

Tucking up my wings, I inhaled a sharp breath.

I didn’t have another sedative to knock me out of this fantasy.

But I did have a thrice broken leg just waiting to black me out if I put full pressure on it.

Gritting my fangs, I stepped forward.

I walked in the illusion.

I tripped in real life.

My bones fractured further.

My ankle shattered.

My toes cracked.

I passed out and left the realm of myth.