She stormed up the steps, her tail pressed tight, her lips unable to contain her fangs. Oh, she knew these bastards, the same filth that sold young girls to high-paying lords. The same cunts that sold her to Amara, the ones whom made Cass’s and Cassian orphans. They called Daemons monsters, but what about those that ruined the childhood of thousands? Profiting off a time of war, a time of grief, when families were sold like toys.

  Lorelai growled through soot, claws raking steel as she crested the upper deck. And spilling out, off the invader’s ship’s plank, their shadows formed like piss around a basin, crusty, foul and staining the wood it’s self. Crude weapons, rusted and ancient, sparking with old circuits. The only reason this band of mutts avoided the city knights.

  “They didn’t deserve to touch such relics, such forged machinery.” Lore hissed.

  Serena panted, “Wait… up.”

  The wolf woman slipped her blouse back on, its wrinkles matching the creases in her frown.

  “You aren’t thinking of fighting them, right?”

  Lore cracked her jaw, her fingers creaking for a bite.

  “The realm would be better off without them.”

  Then Matthias climbed up, the man panting like a wheezing whore still getting fucked.

  “I..uh...” He swallowed, “I think we should avoid a confrontation at all costs. We’re not exactly prepared—”

  His gaze drifted to the raiders, Lore snarling at the state-of-the-art railgun in the goblin’s grip—green and sickly skin, the slobbering little creature, likely too dumb to use it right.

  Then tethering to the ship’s hull, like a parasite leaching shit. She noticed the looming eyesore, an imperial battle cruiser, so old that it was before her time—a legacy of three hundred years old, a stain on its original purpose.

  IBC - Hellcat.

  And its crew.

  The 12th Armourment, a division within the knights of hell.

  Demons who were sworn and duty-bound to protect.

  A look at how that turned out.

  Then came the strut of a man who fancied himself royalty, peeling off the planks like the ship owed him its spine—a rotten prince, without a kingdom. Sebastian Thorne, Knight of Lust.

  She remembered that face and spat, the rot filling her lips.

  And wrapped in the skinned remains of fur-lined demons, Lore watched Serena step back, her wobbling lips, unable to unsee her own fur around the prince’s neck. Worse, soft like untouched, babe. It was pristine white, fresh, and infanticide.

  Matthias stepped up, his tight hide itching past her, the captain’s expression flicking to stay calm.

  “I don’t remember permitting you to board my vessel, Sebastian.” Matthias said, “This was not part of the agreement.”

  The gaudy prince stroked his furs. His heart-shaped tail wagged in tune with his hum.

  “Sky’s crawling with mongrel half-breeds.” Sebastian mused, “Surely you won’t mind a routine inspection?”

  Matthias shifted. All the guns aimed at his head. Sweat-wetting plank.

  Then the Incubus narrowed his greedy serpentine eyes to the boxes of wine that Matthias’s crew managed to loot. His single arm—mutated, skin like stretched intestine—clicked against the rusted sword at his hip.

  “But since I’m here… I’ll take my cut. Whatever you got your sooty hands on.”

  Matthias paused, his eyes scanning his crew. Sebastian's tail curled as the seconds went by, his gaze fixed on Serena for a long moment. The slick lick of Sebastian's lips forced Matthias to look back.

  “Help... yourself,” Matthias said, “then you leave.”

  Lore stamped forward and snatched Matthias’s cowardly neck. “Are you going to let this, devil-bred, incestuous Valkar tell you what to do?”

  Matthias looked at the prince and then back at her, stammering.

  “No—she didn’t mean you, Sebastian. She must’ve—”

  “My my,” the incubus cooed, his wrinkled smile just like it had been those hundred years ago. “Little Miss Violette… You grew up lovely.”

  Serena pulled at Lore’s shoulder, her wolf eyes as wide as a full moon.

  “Violette?” the woman snapped. “As in—”

  The prince laughed, “You know I always did regret selling those fine legs of yours.”

  The filth drank her in, like she was something he could own. His eyes ran down her body, her flesh, to the tip of her tail, his sick fantasies oozing in that disgusting grin.

  Then he grabbed his groin.

  “Oh, and who would forget your screams. Daddy, Daddy, please save me!”

  Sebastian stepped closer, his tongue sliding over yellowed teeth.

  “You always begged so sweetly.”

  Lore swiped a pistol from Matthias’s belt.

  “Hey, Lore, what are you—”

  She pulled the trigger.

  The shot echoed once, then died somewhere in bone.

  The prince’s skull was peeled open like wet bark.

  Silence—

  Blood pooling slime.

  Her breath shaking like a quake.

  Then, railguns, knives and heavy-duty armour aimed her way.

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  “What have you done! What have you done!" Matthias screamed, “We can't beat them!”

  But Lore only knelt, her fingers plugging her ears, her voice starting to waver.

  “You loved my screams? He loved my screams?”

  Drops rained down her cheek, her skin burning away all sensation, her whimper the only noise in the Voidium dense air.

  “Stop. Stop—no more. Let me go home. Father, where did you go?”

  She felt small, tiny, betrayed by everyone, alone in this vast realm.

  “Lore…” Serena muttered, “What happened to you?”

  “Give up!” the goblin shouted, his rifle charging on the deck, sparks in pitch, the heat burning wood, “we’re going to make you scream, day after day. And now, since the boss is dead, I finally get to have a go!” his gun shook, “kill the men, capture the women.” He squealed. “Save me that one.”

  Serena yelled, “Get off me, I said get off me.”

  “Let her go, or I’ll fucking gut you!”

  Matthias reached for his pistol, but fumbled in the air, his face pale.

  “Beaumont? Mutt?”

  But both were already hog-tired, howling against gags.

  Then Serena… screamed.

  Lore looked up, her expression unreadable, her mood impossible to gauge.

  But the only thing that mattered was her sharp eyes, pinpointing the action, peering into the fumbles, cries, and struggles.

  And somehow, among that, everyone stopped. Every raider, pirate and goblin stared at her. The crew flinched from her blink, their faces pale and unholy.

  “Lore…” Serena whispered, her fangs jittering at the sight.

  Matthias took a step back, and even the raiders hesitated.

  Until—

  “What the hell are you?” the goblin snapped. He aimed his railgun at her. “What kind of monster are you?”

  Lore wiped her cheek. Chrome glinted on her finger. Her veins reflected under her skin.

  Her blood—

  Ice cold.

  Metallic.

  Consuming.

  “My name?…” said Ego.

  The fragment smiled—a horrible, beautiful smile.

  Voidium laced her lips, her breath chilling bone.

  “Is PRINCESS VIOLETTE!”

  “FIRE!” Screamed the goblin.

  All gun barrels aimed at her worst spots. Heart, head, core. The joint’s connecting limbs. The crystaline hot rounds, bursting from the calibres. Fire combusting, in scattered pops. Time felt slow, infinite, agonising.

  But Violette didn’t care. Why would she?

  She pulled out the Hemarite syringe and injected the entire thing.

  A muffled cry of Serena’s voice vibrated the deck, the pulse of ten times the recommended amount of crystal rushed through her blood. An amount that should have burned her inside out. Tore her inside, cell by molecular cell.

  But grinning like a mad woman, spreading her arms to welcome the rain of hot bullets. She felt the Voidium, a coolant so cold that it could liquefy carbon—freeze the blood in her body—frostbite her bones.

  And she surged.

  “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!”

  Round after round, bolts of metal, glass and burning plasma, blasted her again and again. Her arm blew off; her torso exploded in crimson, chrome, and bone. Her jaw hung off. Her eyes an unkillable flame red.

  Violette laughed, her pierced lungs coughing out the holes, her fangs hanging by a thread. But she didn’t stop, her jawless wheeze of adacuty—the gull at such feeble firepower.

  Then, hearing the magazines click empty, she punched her jaw back. Her tongue licked the carved bone, her lips boiling, a smile plastering her half-torn face.

  “Is that it?” Violette chucked, “Now… scream for me.”

  The loud green trash slammed his bolt back, a magnetic bar entering the barrel, Voltite amping up in a sparking charge.

  Then he aimed.

  “Die DAEMON!”

  Violette tensed her heel; her toes, knee, and thigh wound up like a spring.

  She reknit bone, protein, and fat. Her muscles, her tendons, her screaming threads, flexing like elastic, taught, primed, and ready to snap.

  Then the goblin fired.

  And so did she.

  She launched.

  The deck cracked.

  Her body, an armoured rocket — a wall of steel meeting green flesh.

  And twisting with the momentum, her freshly healed bone fingers gripped his skull, her little finger exploring his eye socket, her arm a piston of death.

  He screamed, of course.

  But then her triceps, biceps and forearms all released at once. And she slammed meaty face into the planks. Wood, blood and his cut-off voice, splatting her heels.

  Her tail wagged once, twice and twisted in glee.

  The spray led one action to another, one by one, two by two. Oh, she lost count.

  Her dress fluttered, her body danced, her heels clicked.

  Bullets.

  Howls.

  Then a kick.

  Her leg snapped.

  The swing of her body.

  A head rolling off her thigh.

  The screams that begged her to stop.

  “More. MORE!” Ego sang, “Let me play, splash and tear you to pieces.”

  The fragment smothered crimson down her body, her bones, her breast.

  “Let me show you what pain looks like.”