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REVELATION 10:9

Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter,

but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.

REVELATION 18:14

And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee.

~ * ~

Try as she might, Anyelet could not drive the beast from her dreams. It wrapped rotting arms around her with a lover's intimacy as she whipped her head from side to side in a vain attempt to escape the fetid kiss of its lips against her neck.

Then it was gone, driven away by that girl, the one with the silken, silver hair whose blood had splattered everyone last night and blistered their flesh like fire, leaving them all screaming and sick. And having this Child-woman in her mind, her gaze burning with holy fever, was far, far worse than the nightbeast who lusted after Anyelet with a Hunger that eclipsed even her own.

~ * ~

She woke in Stephen’s arms, not knowing how he'd found her room or why he would return after so effectively slipping away the night before. The feel of his flesh should have stirred her dark need immediately, and yet . . .

There was no Hunger.

Anyelet tried to sit up and found she couldn't. The hand she brought to her face was wretched and stank of decomposing flesh. She stared at it in horror, then shrank away from Stephen, but he seemed unperturbed by the smell or sight of her. "What's happening?" she croaked. He looked at her in pity and pulled her back against his chest, smoothing her hair and cradling her gently.

"It's time to die, Anyelet."

~ * ~

How strange, Anyelet thought blearily, to lie next to the body of the white-haired girl who had brought destruction down upon them all. Stranger still to be moving and thinking, yet so resemble the girl's quickly disintegrating corpse next to which Stephen had placed her on the Franklin Street Bridge; now he leaned against the railing somewhere off to the side like a silent, ancient sentinel. She could hear the water lapping sweetly below, feel the breeze on her burning skin. The sun, she knew, would find her in the morning.

No matter. She would be dead by then.

Death, a concept she had not considered applying to herself since . . . when? Something else that didn't matter. All that did was now, on the ground with her cracked, oozing lips drawn in pain as her body ate itself away. Not long ago she had stood on the other bridge and laughed at the stars; in the morning the sun would laugh at her. What would its golden rays feel like upon her flesh? She would never know.

She closed her eyes and let the true darkness take her.