XXI. Mourning and Mothering

The whiskey carried the tang of abandoned orchards. Overripe pears rotting beneath trees planted for futures that never took root. Lanie swirled her glass, watching dregs spiral into miniature maelstroms. Across the table, Evelyn cradled her drink like a stillborn songbird, its broken wings folded against her palm. Rain needled the windows, stitching the night into a shroud.

“Testicular cancer,” Lanie spat. Ice clinked like loose teeth. “Poetic, no? The great war hero, felled by his own jewels.”

Evelyn picked at the bottle’s label, her claw leaving glyphs in the parchment. “Easy enough to transform a corpse. Morticians love tidy endings. Should’ve rigged rigor mortis post coitus. Let the tabloids canonise him.” Her claw etched spirals into the table’s wood grain. “Funeral selfies need pathos.”

The diamond weighed down Lanie’s ring finger — Georgia’s ashes compressed into a stone that caught the light like a fresh scab. She’d reset her wedding band herself, pliers slipping as she crushed the gold around it, leaving grooves that could fit between her teeth.

Evelyn never took off the pendant — two rubies set in tarnished rose gold, stones the exact same since they’d been sliced from George. Lanie had ripped it from her own clit the night after the funeral, the piercing torn raw, flesh still weeping. Pressed it into Evelyn’s palm with a wet click of blood and bourbon breath: “I don’t deserve it.”

Evelyn’s thumb found the grooves where George’s sweat would have pooled. The ghost of Claire’s voice floated through her thoughts — “I’d marry it... keep it polished... best little wifey this side of the apocalypse” — as she fastened the chain. It sat like a burn scar across her collarbone, rubies nesting where George’s laughter used to kick her ribs like a mule.

“Tailored his death suit better than we ever tailored our lies,” Lanie said, remembering cold silk against colder skin. How she’d stitched his chest closed with golden thread, symbolic really but still as meticulous as sealing a love letter.

Evelyn lit two cloves with a snap and passed one across no-man’s-land. Smoke plumed Rorschach stains. “Remember drinks at the quarry? Six months after you two saved me. You threatened to geld him over spilt mead.”

Lanie’s fang pierced the filter. "Idiot mistook my grimoire for a coaster.”

“Dragged him fifty yards behind the Harley. Boot soles smoking. Laughed so hard I cracked a rib.”

“Laughed so hard I pissed myself.” Evelyn’s smile frayed. “Realised then you’d either wed or murder each other.”

The diamond caught the lamplight, refracting scales across Lanie’s knuckles. “Ninety-seven days. That’s how long the first pregnancy lasted before the curse took root.” She’d bled garnets into motel toilets while George recited Marcus Aurelius like a benediction.

Evelyn examined her claws—onyx filed to surgical points. “Wombs make wretched reliquaries.”

Glass shivered as Lanie slammed her tumbler. “He held the basin. Quoted Epictetus while I—”

“Brought you black orchids afterwards." Evelyn’s shrug was a poorly sutured wound. “Unborn ghosts crowd crypts.”

The storm thickened. The house groaned like a ship taking on water.

“Remose only corrodes.” Evelyn touched her rubies, voice raw as stripped wire. “Cast the curse in Blackreach’s shadow. Bargained my wings when i was blinded by rage. Never imagined…”

The necklace flared, casting its bloody light on her throat, only in her imagination though. Lanie rotated her ring. “Tried… to keep his heart close. Fed on my own instead.”

“Tried to undo...” Evelyn’s talons gouged the table. “Account books balanced in tumours and tears. Didn’t factor…”

A phantom laugh echoed—Georgia’s contralto spliced with George’s rumble, yet it was gone before the echo could name itself.

Lanie’s ring weighed more than a stillborn star now. “Yet here we roost. Drinking his eulogy.”

Evelyn traced her palm. “Ran audits on his nonprofit those first years. Expected offshore accounts, embezzled grants. Found quinoa casseroles and AA meeting schedules instead.”

Lanie’s cigarette paused mid-ascent. “I knew it was you lizard. The bite mark wasn’t a groupie.”

“Phase one: infiltration.” Evelyn’s claw clicked against her tumbler. “Dressed as some shell-shocked vet, all shaky hands and puppy eyes. Let him comfort me. Sank teeth in deep enough to taste… fuck…divinity.” She examined her palm. “Expected screams. Excommunication. Got…patience. Bandages. Mint tea and a warm meal. The nerve of that bastard.”

Sleet hissed against the glass. Lanie reignited her lighter’s tiny hell. “Never needed to ask about the scar. Knew it was your ugly fangs.”

“Wore it like a campaign medal. Proof he’d weathered worse than me.” Her laugh splintered. “Sent succubi to seduce him during the mageland fundraiser. Bastard served them chamomile, discussed Keats. They came back quoting sonnets.”

Rain blurred the windows. Lanie’s lighter flared. “Hauled your cursed junk too, didn’t he?”

“Half-ton of haunted marble up five flights across Manhattan. In peak July.” Evelyn’s smile faltered. “Sweat through his shirt, grinned like I’d granted wishes. Said…” Her throat clicked. “Said moving my ‘art collection’ beat CrossFit.”

Lanie exhaled smoke through her nose. “My George and his gentleman bullshit.”

“Hated it.” Evelyn shredded a throw pillow, goose down snowing between her claws. “Hated how he’d smile whenever I called him an idiot. How even now the rubies warm when I…” She pressed a fist to her sternum. “Miss the hatred. Simpler.”

Lanie crushed her cigarette into an ossuary of butts. “Miss loving him, you mean.”

Evelyn imploded—shoulders curving into the armorless hunch Lanie hadn’t seen since Blackreach. Her whisper rasps: “Lit pyres in Artemitra’s chapels. Offered my hoard, my true name…”

Lanie knelt in shrapnel. “Demanded double jeopardy?”

“Recompense denied.” Evelyn pressed the rubies to her neck. “She doesn't… doesn't trade in second chances.”

Lanie extinguished her eighth cigarette into the congealed puddle of ash. “Steal something tomorrow. Something gaudy and irreplaceable.”

“Planning to.”

“Leave a cigarillo behind. Our calling card.” She stood, vertebrae crackling like dry kindling. “Wake me before you ransom the pope.” But things couldn’t be. Knuckles had to rap on hardwood at just that moment. Once. Twice. Metric.

“Fuck off,” they harmonised.

The diamond hummed. Hinges protested as Evelyn answered—and froze.

She stood haloed in sleet, black silk drinking the porch light. Hair like spilled ink, features carved from winter twilight, not a drop of water on her though. Oh, she was not just beautiful, she was inescapable. Her gaze swept Evelyn aside with a tilt of her chin, the command did not need to be spoken.

Lanie lurched up. The stranger lifted an index finger—a motion only as subtle as continents shifting. Glass shattered in the kitchen cabinet. Bourbon pooled around Lanie’s boots like a sacrifice pissed on.

Just like that, they followed, compliant as penitents. To the couch where George’s ghost still dented the cushions. She settled where his laughter once resonated, skirts cascading like a landslide of starless night. Up close, her eyes betrayed epochs. Starfields and burial shafts, shipwrecked schooners, wedding bands, smiling children and chemotherapy ports. Those orbs were the event horizons where apologies went to die.

When she spoke, glaciers calved in her vowels:

“What.” (ribcages resonating)

“Did.” (lungs humming)

“You.” (teeth memorising the shape of confession)

“Do.” (tears exploding)

“TO MY CHILD?”
 
 
XXII. Broken Confessions

The diamond pulsed—once, twice—casting fractured light across the woman’s ageless face. Lanie had no choice but to clear her throat, no questions, no challenges, time for verbal diarrhoea.

“Cancer,” she said. “Choriocarcinoma. Little bastard nested in his left gonad like a tick. Rapidly metastasising.” Her laugh scratched raw. “Perfect, yeah? Survives siege engines and wyvern venom, undone by his own family jewels.”

She ground her molars. "Curse started with the miscarriages—our third girl came out clutching uterine tissue like a fucking souvenir. Killed all the children we hoped to have before it finally came to kill him.”

“Basic scrying caught it—only magic that stuck. Rest slid off him like piss on rusted iron.” Her laugh mirrored her nail. “—couldn’t risk advanced magic. Military anti-magic inoculations armored his veins better than dragonhide. But cancer?” The blood droplet quivered. “Tumor grew roots in what the needles couldn’t touch—”

Lanie’s talon clicked against her glass. “—the marrow we called hope. His resistance covered everything except—”

“Except mundanity.” The word hung like a noose-knot. Lanie’s grin flashed broken bottle edges as her talons tapped arrhythmically against her glass. “Irony’s a cut-rate bard with a meth habit.”

The woman leaned forward. Shadows pooled in the recess of her clavicle.

“Continue.”

Lanie inhaled ash and courage. “Standard healing spells bounced off him like BB pellets, only causing a minor irritation and hardening his resistance. Tumour metastasising nightly. So I… pivoted.” Her gaze fixed on the diamond. “Used what he’d handed me—that panty-loving devotion. Weaponised his shame into suture.”

Evelyn snorted. Wetly. “Claymaker rituals. Parlour tricks for bored aristocrats bonding with their chaise lounges.”

“Required proximity. Trust. Intimacy.” Lanie’s thumbnail split the label from her whisky bottle. “Commodities he’d already signed over.”

“Elaborate.”

“Transformed him into objects,” Evelyn cut in. Voice steadier now, clinical as an autopsy report. “Panties. Dresses. Whatever linen grave Lanie chose. Temporal suspension—halt decay, carved out the tumour like pumpkin guts. Turned his manhood into jewellery. Wore his shame as his protection.”

“That first night, when he said ‘I’ll do anything,’” Lanie’s smile hooked sideways. “Needed consent, him pliable and willing. Lucky for me, blessed luck—he’d been auditioning for years.”

The diamond dimmed. “Duration?”

“Few hours max.” Evelyn traced the rim of her glass. “Ritual breaks if the caster sleeps, falters, or steps fifteen feet away. Breaks if his will cracks mine. But—” Her fingers found Georgia’s pulse, talons pricking the hollow where a collarbone should’ve been. “If his love was a siege engine? I simply outlasted it.”

Lanie’s glass tinked against the table. “Required constant contact—symbiosis masquerading as control.”

Evelyn snorted, teeth grazing Georgia’s shoulder like a whetstone. “Dumbest fucking magic. Takes more focus than a raccoon guarding a dumpster on a meth binge.” Her claw sketched a derisive sigil in the condensation. “Clayamake’s ritual’s brittle as a whore’s vows. One stray thought and poof—he’d revert buck-naked in a Denny’s parking lot.”

Silence pooled. Somewhere, a pipe groaned like a wounded hare.

“Sacrificed his masculinity to save his life.” Lanie flicked a cigarette butt into the gloom.

“Rebranded his cock as bijouterie. Fed him scraps of autonomy between transformations.” Her voice frayed. “He hated me. Every. Damn. Time.”

Evelyn’s finger tapped her femur. “Fool. Sacrifice. Ours.”

“Motivation?”

Lanie met the woman’s gaze. “Same reason storms court coastlines. Habit. Hunger. Love dressed as demolition.”

Evelyn's claw skated along her whisky glass, etching accidental hieroglyphics in the condensation. "Caught them once in that shoebox studio. Went to jeer at their domestic circus act."

Her voice sandpapered raw. "Found her straddling him on a Salvation Army couch, both giggling over burnt microwave popcorn. He… brushed a kernel from her lip. Not grabbed. Not devoured. Brushed. Like she was glassblowing in progress."

Lanie's cigarette halted mid-air. "You never—"

"'Course I did." Evelyn's smile hung crooked as a thrift store painting. "Invented excuses. Reconnaissance missions. Told myself I was auditing your security flaws." The admission curdled. "Truth? Needed to study how he untangled your hair after transformations. Delicate as delousing a warhorse."

Lanie's ashes scattered like failed prayers. "Creep."

"Sue me." Evelyn's shrug cost her three centuries of posture. "Observed three months straight. Watched him steep valerian for your night terrors. Saw him mute TV commercials touting cribs when you miscarried." Her elongated claw tapped Morse code against her sternum. "That's true sorcery. Making devotion look effortless as breath."

Lanie's laugh cracked. "He forgot anniversaries. Rattled rafters with his snoring."

“But he was also your hero at the Solstice Ball. Him in that ridiculous sequined jockstrap, fetching you drinks while warlords gawked.” Evelyn’s grin curdled. “Pride’s a fickle compass. Watched him kneel for you in crowded rooms, expecting scorn, receiving only… tenderness.”

Evelyn leaned forward, millennia-old dragon queen reduced to sidewalk prophet. "You looked at him like he'd reinvented daylight. Whole empires evaporated in that gaze." Her voice dropped to a bourbon-soaked whisper. "Started drafting apology letters to Prime. Turns out, he'd rewritten the damn dictionary on love."

The woman's gaze pinned Evelyn like a butterfly to corkboard.

"Evidence."

Evelyn inspected her chipped manicure. "Snuck into that refugee camp clinic. Watched him reset a warlord's dislocated shoulder. Patient tried to stab him mid-procedure." Her laugh tasted of nickel. "Know what your boy did? Finished the reduction. Handed back the knife saying 'Appreciate the sentiment, but aim for the femoral next time.'"

Lanie's cigarette paused midway to her lips. "He never—"

“Wednesdays,” Evelyn overrode. “Trailed him for fourteen weeks. Saw him construct saline poles from mop handles. Once devoted hours disentangling a child’s necklace—silver moth pendant. Parents' charcoal in Belfast blazes.” Her claw clicked against the quartz countertop.

"That's when the fantasies started. Not throne room trysts or treasure hoard offerings." She swallowed a century's worth of pride. "Imagined him fixing my broken clasps. Teaching me potato stamp art. Calling me 'Evvie' when I botched pancakes."

Lanie's ashtray overflowed. "Bullshit."

"Oh, I committed." Evelyn's smile belonged on a battlefield. "Bought flannel at Target. Burnt six batches of cookies practising. Nearly torched Brooklyn attempting grilled cheese." She leaned forward, scales glinting like unshed tears. "Four thousand years of conquests, and I envied a mortal man's capacity to care about burnt sandwiches."

The woman's gaze fractured something fundamental in the air molecules. Lanie's spine snapped taut like reality itself might rescind its lease.

"Full reckoning."

Lanie ground her cigarette into her own thigh. Scar tissue hissed. "Original Evelyn's butchers took her clit. Cosmic scales demanded quid pro quo. Cancer merely…" She raked her ring finger. "…Preheated Hell’s oven."

Evelyn played with her pendant. "Ended up turning his jewels into literal ‘jewels’ to preserve them."

"The only practical choice." Lanie's talons carved dissolution sigils on the table. “Purged magic-resistant necrosis via…” Her jaw worked. "…hollowing out the man. Masculinity as Achilles' heel."

Evelyn stepped into the confession's blast radius. “ Forty-nine days observing their bathtub meth operatics…” She didn’t piss for three days. Ate gas station jerky off his hip while he bled out post-'surgery'. Fucker half-reverted mid-cut. Blood geyser. Had to shove my will into her skull—ham-fisted hack job. Hence the scar. Smart play with the DICKLESS tattoo. Siphon point. Stole George’s masculinity, and funnelled it to Lanie to then reconstruct Georgia.”

“How’d it feel?” Evelyn’s hand shot to Lanie’s throat, eyes glinting wet. “Carving him up? Wanted to gut you. Wanted to scream. Maiden tears for any male. Nil precedent." Her grip trembled. “But there you were—sobbing as you branded him. Half of me wanted to slit your throat. Half wanted to… fucking cry with you.”

Lanie's fangs felt blunted. "Regrets require luxury seating."

"Crawlspace confession—your cobweb magic was failing." Evelyn's cigarette trembled.

“That night, I boosted your sleep spell? Nailed twelve moths above your bedpost. Makeshift ley-line array. Every dying moth, my crude battery pack." Her laugh curdled. "Played Guardian Wraith all those nights. You never noticed."

Lanie's claws found Evelyn's collar. "Your troubadour stunt. Talk."

Evelyn bared teeth. "Men like George build shrines in their rib cages. Physical torment polishes their martyr complex." Her claw tapped Lanie's sternum. "But let their deity flirt with heresy?" A moth burst into blue flame nearby. "Watching you laugh at another man's jokes? Arch for inferior hands? That…" She inhaled Lanie's exhaled smoke. "…makes apostles doubt scripture."

Lanie's grip weakened. "He knew it was theatre."

"Kernel of doubt breeds terminal infection." Evelyn pressed closer. “Saw him dissect your interactions. Timed intervals between your texts, decibel variance in greetings. Catalogued betrayal like eclipse patterns."

Silence pooled like clotting factor.

"Congrats." Evelyn licked ash from her incisor. "Schrödinger’s gambit.. Destroying his love to salvage its host."

“Ashford’s fields… he held victory in his fist. Could’ve ended me, ended the war in his favour” She caught a tear on her knuckle, watched it steam. “But he lowered his blade. Saw the woman in the wildfire. He won me as his right of conquest.”

"So I… rewrote our vows daily to protect my ‘master’." Lanie's claws flexed. "Each stitch, each humiliation… bargaining chips for more time."

Evelyn’s breath hitched. Fractures spiderwebbed beneath her scales, glowing like blasphemous stained glass. “Nearly won 'her' back. Carved the cure from our own ribs—held it here—” Her claws cupped air, trembling. “—until the curse bit. Gnawed through marrow. Used my throat to say the killing words.”

She stared at her palms, where Georgia’s phantom pulse still fluttered. “These hands ripped out her heart. Peeled her open like...” A wet gag. “I killed her. Ours to mend, mine to murder—”

Her scream split into laughter, rotten as a gutpile. “I killed her!” A sob, arterial. “Destroyed my lodestar! I killed her—our love!”

Lanie caught her mid-collapse. She framed Evelyn’s face with hands still smelling of Georgia’s shampoo. “You. Me. Same blade, same sheath.”

“Conclusion.”

Lanie rose, walked to Evelyn and held her tight. “Saved him until saving killed her. Buried the tumour. Erased the man, burnt the woman. Crafted this—” She waved at the diamond. “—from what remained. Poetic, sure. Doesn’t rewrite the ledger though.”

Evelyn stood, shedding scales like autumn leaves. “Curse was mine. Wove it from Blackreach’s marrow. Tried everything to undo it…” She pressed a claw to her sternum. “Deserve the pyre. Deserve her ghost gnawing my liver through eternity.”

“Pyres are for endings.” Lanie pried Evelyn’s hand open, “We’re middling types.”

The woman stood. Eons folded into the sweep of her skirts.

“Arrogance. Frailty. Love insufficiently annealed.” Her sigh sounded like upturned graves.

“...and here we are.”

Lanie’s wedding band wept light. “Here we are.”

Somewhere, George’s ghost sat down.

And for once—didn’t cast a shadow.
 
 
XXIII. Waking Realisations
 
Flashback:

Ashford’s battlefield stank of charred earth and dragon vomit. The sky bled rust where artillery smoke clotted the sun. Lanie’s wings hung in tatters, membranes flapping like wet laundry in a hurricane. Her flank wept black ichor, pooling in the crater where George’s plasma blade pinned her—a holy toothpick through a demon roach.

He stood over her, armour cracked to show the sweat-slick man beneath—jaw set, eyes twin coals reflecting her guttering fire. The kind of eyes that could stare down a god’s tantrum.

“Yield,” he growled, voice grinding like tank treads over bone.

She laughed—a wet, splintered sound. “Do it. Let your meat-brigade see their golden boy gut a girl.” Her talons flexed, gouging trenches in the mud. “Give ’em a show.”

George’s blade hummed, edge kissing her throat. “Push for the treaty. Now. Or I carve your punchlines into your ribs.”

Her smirk dripped venom. “Since when do crusaders negotiate?”

“Since they’re tired of burning villages for this…bullshit theatre.” He leaned in, close enough for her to taste his sweat—salt and gunpowder and the cheap spearmint gum he chewed to mask corpse breath. “Talk to your leaders. Make the damn ceasefire happen. Then…” A flicker. A hitch. “…let’s grab a drink.”

Her pupils slit. “A drink.”

“Whiskey. Neat. Like adults.”

The blade withdrew. Lanie’s laugh chased him as he walked away, her roar shaking the carcass-strewn field: “Careful, hero! Dragons don’t do ‘neat’!”
 
Back in the present.

Lanie startled awake, sweat pooling in the cavity where the collarbone meets the throat. She knew the dream’s shape—smoke and scalpel-sharp whispers—even as it fled.

The guest bedroom door creaked like a guilty conscience. Inside, Evelyn twitched beneath tangled sheets. Her sleep-talk, a slurry of “shouldn’t have… Shouldn’t have...” Moonlight carved her into something fragile. Cock limp as a dead trout, scales dulled to gutter-grain tarnish. For a breath, Lanie savoured it. Let the rot feast.

Then George’s voice, soft as a thumb brushing a bruise: “Cruelty’s a cheap perfume, Lan. Washes off and itches after.”

She slid onto the mattress. Springs groaned.

Evelyn’s eyes snapped open—dragon-glow dimmed to pilot-light flicker. “Same dream?”

“Same morgue.” Lanie’s knee bumped hers. Cold. “Shift, you overgrown gecko.”

Evelyn complied, sheets rasping. “Guest bedrooms. Bollocks concept.”

“Agreed.”

Silence pooled, thick as motor oil. Somewhere, a tap dripped in rhythm with Evelyn’s pulse.

“You didn’t kill him.” Lanie’s finger found the scar on Evelyn’s wrist—raised, keloid-rough.

“We jointly authored that epitaph.”

Evelyn snorted. “Shared blame is still a noose.”

“First man to saddle a dragon.” Lanie’s laugh frayed. “First to… make her crave cheap bourbon.”

“Make it double."

Another pause. The radiator coughed up phlegm.

“Tradition.” Lanie’s smirk softened, a crack in armour. “Right of conquest. But he—” Her thumb brushed Evleyn’s lip, smearing ghost blood. “—didn’t claim shit. Just… asked for a damn old-fashioned."

Evelyn snorted. “Distracted by his dick?”

“By his eyes,” Lanie corrected, talons tracing Evelyn’s jaw. “His stupid hero smirk. The way he… fixed my cloak after.” A laugh, brittle as dried kindling. “First man to beat a dragon. First to fuck one. First to—” Her voice frayed. “—make her miss the taste of whisky."

Evelyn’s laugh slithered over Lanie’s shoulder. “Stole his sword, gave her a sheath. Poetic, ain’t it? Warrior. Weapon. Wife.”

Evelyn ground onto the mattress, the springs screaming like tortured familiars. “Seven weeks. Seven weeks of watching you two fumble through this… tragicomedy. Thought I’d get off on it. Popcorn and schadenfreude, right?”

She lit a cigarette with a snap of her claws. The flame trembled. “Turns out watching someone unravel your love? Turn him into her goddamn accessory rack? Snip his pride, stitch by stitch, then fuck alley rats raw with the scraps?” Her laugh curdled. “Less fun than gargling lava.”

Lanie’s snort shook the bed. "Should have charged admission.”

“Didn’t need to.”

Lanie’s knee jabbed Evelyn’s thigh. “The poet. Proper mounting, that. When’d we last saddle? Bronze Age chariot races?”

Evelyn’s smirk cracked like a windshield. "Yup, until I had to crawl inside your trash-fire romance. A broken grin. “I’m a slut for subtlety.”

Lanie fake-gagged. “Subtlety? You showed up with a sonnet carved into your dick.”

“‘Roses are red/Violets go splat/I’ll wreck your cunt/And blame the cat.’ Real fucking Basho.”

Evelyn’s chuckle grated like gravel in a petrol tin. “Back to timelines. Think it was around Pre-Vedic fire rituals. Turns out yogic contortions chafe my cloaca.”

“We … potentially … primordial fuckbuddies.”

"We've ridden that oxcart." Evelyn prodded her limp cock—a leech left to parch on monsoon-baked clay. "Burnt that dharma sutra. Hasn't rallied since… that night. Would hack it off if it bought her a breath."

Lanie’s claw skimmed Evelyn’s hip—featherlight, testing. “Chastity belts’d be overkill. Can’t cage what’s compost.”

Her claw catching on scale-seams now. “Offer stands. Blade’s sharp. Ghosts prefer sincerity over sausage.”

Evelyn’s laugh cracked. “Name the altar. Bring the cleaver.”

“Cheers, priestess.”

Moonlight pooled in the hollow where scales met skin. Lanie now bore scars even dragons couldn’t heal—a cratered heart from the night their lineage snapped.

“Last clutch died in-shell,” Lanie murmured. “Embryos crystallised mid-curse.”

“Secret.”

Lanie stilled. “Out with it.”

Evelyn’s cheeks burned sulphur-yellow. “John’s mouth on you. First time I’d ever…” The admission curdled. “Sucked cock. Even microscopic ones demand finesse.”

Lanie barked a laugh. “You tongued it like a sherbet lemon!”

“Research!” Evelyn’s fangs flashed. “Extensive. Clinical.”

“Clinical?” Lanie’s eyebrow arched. “Which backstreet cinema taught you? Human Plumbing Monthly?”

“Twat.”

“Still counts—” Lanie’s grin spoiled like milk left out, “—possession’s possession. Claire’s little fountain show?”

“My soul-shard. Tasted like honey ‘cause she was so …ugh…pure.”

Evelyn’s talon jumped. The pendant swung. “Belief requires lubrication. Had to make her feel. Your stitches were unravelling.”

“Con-artist.”

“Hopeful.”

“Pathological.”

Evelyn rolled, tarnished scales leaching orange from the kebab shop sign across the road. “Four thousand years conquering continents. Then…” A cogwheel’s death-rattle sigh. “Bankrupted myself for… love.”

Lanie’s sneer drowned in the stink of wet asphalt. She straddled Evelyn’s hips—flaccid cock nudging her thigh like a dead jellyfish. “Chastity’s back on the menu, lizard. Claire’s little stunt earned you a custom rig—” Her talons sketched a vulgar blueprint in the air. “—tighter than a landmine’s asshole. Gonna cage that wilted worm so deep, you’ll piss rubies.”

“Add ‘Property of George’ on the buckle,” Evelyn muttered, staring at the ceiling where water stains bloomed like bloodstains. “No—Georgia. Yeah. That’s the punchline.”

Lanie’s grin split like a rotten peach. “Nah. ‘Georgia’s Castoff Cockholster.’ Let the engraving match the stench.” Her claw pricked Evelyn’s inner thigh. “Should’ve let the curse shrivel it to a raisin as part of the price. Dogs need chew toys.”

Her palm found wing-scabs velvet-soft under calluses. Lips closed around the pendant—cold metal, faint brine of Georgia’s spirit trapped in crevices. Nothing stirred.

“Buzzards,” she mumbled, wedding-band diamond cutting moonlight. "Picking our own carcass."

Evelyn’s snort died mid-breath. “Put that on our headstone.”

They didn’t fuck. Just lay stacked like grimoires in a condemned library. Spines cracked open where moths supped on smudged prophecies and mice gnawed through the footnotes.
 
 
Continued in Part 9