Thatwas quite unexpected—but I so loved a monster, a butcher, a lord, a warrior who would set his dark desires aside for the sake of his lover.
Apparently it was one of my many kinks.
A sin before my fall.
Preferences I had no say in.
Kinks. Fetishes. Wants. Needs. Desires.
I had a few more in my arsenal after tonight.
Grin sharpening, I cut the last strings of this mask free and unveiled my wings. Scorched black burst from my back, eyes that could barely restrain the divine bleeding gold. Where once a thoroughly fucked, disheveled, and bruised human magpie stood—a fallen angel took her place.
A soldier of an ancient choir who chose to fall because she was sick of submission.
Who realized after she had the power to give her practiced surrender only to those worthy of it.
In the last five years, lovers came and went.
They were nothing compared to the beasts howling on the other side of that door.
Hellions who smelled innocence on my flesh, Heaven’s hold faint but there, fading by the year. In the grand scheme of immortality, I was still new. Freshly reborn. They thought I was a virgin, and perhaps in a metaphorical sense, I was until tonight. Until them.
But I was no virgin to violence and blood, to battle and pain.
Eyes widened around me.
“Oh, shit—”
I tore the head of the nearest guard clean off, wrenching it from his shoulders as one might twist an apple stem from its crown. Before his partner could level that handgun at me, I’d ripped his arm from its socket and shoved it through his chest.
Bullets bounced off my wings, the corridors an echoey symphony of gunfire.
This world thought the fallen weak.
Yes, our wings burned in the crash, gobbled up by Heaven’s fire—fire that burned thrice as hot as hellfire.
But they grew back eventually. Tainted. Harder. Angrier. Almost as strong as my brethren’s feathers in the holy choirs but far surpassing the gifts of mortal and immortal alike in this petri dish of a world.
Silver pierced my thigh. Iron cut through my calf.
Simple wounds that healed in seconds.
I whirled around and flew, each beat of these black wings unleashing a hurricane, upturning guards and dust and cobwebs and rat droppings alike. Screams serenaded me. Blood streaked the walls, the floors, the ceiling, sandstone stained red. One by one, the gunfire quieted, until it was just me, the flutter of my wings, and ten dead men.
Body parts scattered, eyes burned out by my touch, tongues ripped from their filthy mouths…
A tableau to be repeated across Ether Island tonight, what with Hera and Frigg infiltrating those luxe parties, wrathful goddesses there to slaughter real monsters. The three Furies at the Order’s main facility, dismantling it brick by brick, skull by skull, and whisking frightened magpies to Artemis, Freya, and Aphrodite for healing.
Lilith crushing the leaders of the organization under her red-soled heels. Eris ensuring her influence—strife and madness—was felt throughout the island.
Tonight had been a year in the making, a union of the divine feminine to abolish the Magpie Order at its very heart. Tomorrow, the next day, the day after that—we would hunt high rollers across the globe, freeing every last magpie, human and supernatural, until its legacy was but dust.
I had volunteered for this particular position.
The rest of those ladies, love them as I did, could not play a clueless wide-eyed human for long, nor could they suffer the abuse and the lies. Having spent a millennium under an angelic commander, I knew best how to keep my mouth shut and do what I was told. No matter the rage in my heart, I alone could play the part for the duration needed.
A little divine influence here, a few carefully planted questions there, and I found myself at this prison tonight, at the right time and the exact place to watch it all burn.