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Screaming behind the clamp of rough fingers, Pearl threw a terrified glance side to side in a desperate attempt to see who’d caught her.

Nobody was there, only a wall and a garbage bin.

Fear elongated fangs behind her lips, kohled lashes spiked with cake mascara so wide, the whites of her eyes shone bright in the dark.

The feeling of jagged mortar grinding against her spine melted away, morphing from ice cold brick to the firm body of a man.

He hoisted her upward, despite frantically kicking legs, while silent figures materialized to her left and her right.

Brick met her face, cheek split, teeth cracked.

Dazed from the blow, Pearl’s mouth gaped and her eyes settled on an angel.

The being, the stranger, gripped her chin, his fingers distorting her cheeks as he smiled. That grin promised pain, the torments of hell, and was the most terrifying thing Pearl had seen in her long, laborious life.

Begging was not beneath her. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

From the monster’s mouth, a milky white pair of razor sharp teeth grew long and menacing.

Two long fangs just like hers.

It could not be…

It couldn’t.

Things like her did not exist. She was sick, that was all. She was sick and needed the absolution of God to save her from her deformity and perverse hungers.

Instinct would disagree with her. One look at those fangs and Pearl hissed, began to fight in earnest, and was punished horribly.

The smiling man jammed his fingers into her mouth. Gagging when he hooked her fang, she tried to bite. It took several hard jerks, but with a final twisting wrench, he ripped her tooth straight from her skull.

Gums torn, the socket open and spurting blood, Pearl wailed.

No pain she’d ever known compared to this.

Her second fang was gouged out, her cheek ripped fully apart from corner to ear when the man laughing in her face caught his sharpened nail on the flesh.

The angel had no interest in her words, the question in her eyes, or her gurgled prayers... only her agony.

Feet dragging over pavement, a stream of blood poured from her mouth to mark the path. In the time it took to bring her to this place, she had counted them. Three men with angelic faces and evil hearts had hauled her the distance, and not a single soul had seen.

Dangling between them, the best she could do was press a hand to her maimed face, swallow the constant flow of blood collecting in her mouth, and weep. Her attacker had taken more than her fangs, he had taken her misguided hope that there might be answers to her life—that there might be more for her than year upon year of isolation and loneliness.

There were others like her.

How could she have never known?

Even as they’d beat her, Pearl had tried to ask them what they were. But these men, these glowing angels, were so much stronger and possessed no pity for what they’d deemed an apostate.

She was going to die, be ravaged. If what he’d done to her face was any example, it would be a painful and brutal end.

Sticky crimson ran down her chin, over her neck, staining her clothes. Trying to keep her jaw together despite torn tendons and shredded skin, she failed at speech. Useless lolling tongue only smeared gore from ear to ear, mixed it with her tears.

Tearing the fabric, her coat was yanked down skinny arms, the girl left in only the supper club’s flashy uniform and torn stockings. And that was how they made her walk down the dark, littered alley where she expected they would murder her and leave her to rot.

It was not a good place to die.

Hair in the grip of the one who’d torn out her teeth, head bent back, she saw one last view of the stars.