"And you," she said, "are mine."
She smiled.
Every tooth in her mouth showed at once.
The boy had half a second to process that smile before the air between them collapsed.
She crossed the distance in one step and drove her palm into his chest.
The force threw him backward.
His back slammed into the stone wall hard enough to crack it, his shoulder and skull striking a moment later.
Pain burst white across his vision as he slid down.
He had been in worse fights.
He told himself that as he fell, and his body began to change.
Bones snapped and forced their way outward.
Skin split open.
Chitinous plates pushed through his arms and back. Four extra limbs tore free from his sides. His jaw unhinged and split. His eyes multiplied into six.
He hit the ground on all six limbs and launched himself straight at her legs.
She was not there.
He spun around.
She stood on the wall above him, feet planted flat against the stone, still in her human form.
Her arms hung loosely at her sides as she looked down at him.
His six eyes took in every angle at once.
She did not move.
"Change," he hissed. "Show me what you are."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I want to know what I'm eating."
She smiled... and stepped off the wall.
She did not fall.
She descended slowly, as though the air itself held her.
As she came down, the human shape began to slip away.
Her hair darkened, then continued darkening until it stopped being hair altogether.
Five tails spread out behind her, each formed from a darkness that swallowed the light around it.
The bones within them were visible, every joint clearly defined. At their tips, thin black threads trailed downward and dissolved before they could touch the ground.
Her body grew wrong.
Too tall, too narrow at the waist, the ribcage pushing through the darkness around her, each rib curving outward, moving when she breathed.
Then her face.
One pair of eyes became three, stacked, all six burning red.
Her mouth widened, and the rows of teeth inside caught what little light was left in the corridor.
The five tails spread behind her. The stone under her feet went dark.
She looked at him.
The boy had fought twelve Umbrals.
He had eaten nine of them.
His plates tightened involuntarily along his back. His secondary limbs pulled inward.
A thin sound started in his throat and he bit it off.
He launched himself at her anyway.
Three limb-points aimed at her torso, fast and staggered, one high, one mid, one low — the attack that had ended seven of the nine.
He drove forward with full weight behind all three.
The high point hit her ribs.
Her tail snapped around his forearm before the other two landed.
The bone tip at its end punched straight through the chitinous plate at his elbow joint — the only gap in his forearm — and the pain was white and total and immediate.
"AAAGH—"
He wrenched his arm back with everything he had.
The plate split from elbow to wrist.
The tail released.
He landed and reset.
Dark fluid ran down his cracked arm.
She hadn't moved.
Her six eyes watched him and waited.
She was still smiling.
The tails drifted in slow arcs.
He understood then.
She wasn't fighting.
She was playing.
Every move he made she answered with the minimum required and nothing more.
She had not yet tried.
He went low and swept at her ankles with two limbs simultaneously.
She lifted both feet and stepped over the sweep without looking down at it.
He twisted mid-movement and drove two points at her back from behind.
A tail swung back and raked deep score marks down his second limb, the bone tip tearing through the plate from shoulder to elbow.
He still had five good limbs. He had ended fights with less.
He feinted left, hard enough to force her to commit, then cut right and drove his highest limb down toward her face.
She caught it.
Her fingers closed around the tip, just above the point, and held.
He yanked back.
She did not move.
He pulled again with his full weight. Still nothing.
The chitin began to crack under her grip. Fracture lines spread down the limb toward the joint.
"NAAAGH—" he screamed.
She pulled.
The limb tore free at the joint.
The sound was wet and heavy.
Dark fluid spilled from the stump.
She glanced at the severed limb in her hand, turned it once, then let it fall to the stone.
He staggered back on five limbs, shaking. He had not shaken in a fight since he was new.
That was the worst part.
She had not even tried.
She had barely moved from where she landed.
He had four good limbs, one cracked, one torn away, and fluid leaking from three places.
She stood in the center of the corridor, her five tails drifting slowly behind her, her six eyes fixed on him.
He charged.
There was nothing else to do.
She let him come the entire distance.
Then she moved.
Her right hand shot forward and closed around his throat.
Not the outer throat of his transformed body. The real one.
Buried deep within the mass of his reshaped torso.
Hidden.
Untouched by any before.
She knew exactly where it was.
Her fingers locked and tightened.
Her left fist drove into his chest.
The chitin caved inward.
Her hand forced through the break and closed around his core, the dense knot of energy holding his form together.
"STOP—GET OFF—GET OFF—"
She lifted him off the ground with one hand.
His five remaining limbs drove at her from every direction.
The points hit her form and passed through the darkness and found nothing solid. They had nothing to grip.
His body understood before his mind did.
"I found him when he was a child," she said.
Her voice hadn't changed at all. Completely even.
"He has been mine since before you were born. Before your father was born. Before his father was born."
"L— let go—" The words broke apart in his throat.
"There is nothing in this city that touches him." All six eyes looked up at him. "There is nothing in this world that touches him."
She paused.
"He is mine."
She squeezed both hands at once.
His chitin cracked.
Then buckled.
Then gave.
She put him on the ground and started at his outermost limbs.
She found the joint at the base of the first limb, drove her thumb into the gap in the plate, and pulled.
It came away with a tearing wet sound.
He screamed.
She moved to the second without stopping.
He tried to fight her.
His remaining limbs struck at her arms and her head.
They found nothing.
She worked through each one, finding the seams between the plates and forcing them open.
Underneath the plates he was soft and dark.
The cold of the stone corridor reached places that had never been exposed before.
"STOP — PLEASE — PLEASE STOP—"
She didn't stop.
He tried to shift back to his human form. His body refused.
Too damaged.
The form locked open.
When she reached his head he opened his mouth to speak and nothing came out.
She opened her mouth and bit down.
Everything that made him real began pulling loose from the inside, coming apart in threads and flowing toward her.
Into her tails.
The bone tips along each tail flared hot and dark once and went out. Her eyes burned brighter.
Her form solidified.
He felt himself becoming less.
He had done this to nine others.
He had never thought about what it felt like from the other side.
Now he knew.
Then there was nothing left of him to know it with.
The corridor was empty.
A dark stain on the stone, already fading back into nothing.
She stood in the silence.
The tails pulled back.
The darkness receded.
The bones disappeared.
The human form settled around her until she was standing in her crop top and jacket and skirt, thigh highs, choker, red eyes still glowing faintly at the edges.
She licked her lips once, slow.
Ahead in the corridor, footsteps.
The exorcist was nearly at the other end.
He had heard nothing.
He had no idea.
She watched his back until he turned the corner and was gone.
"Mine," she said quietly.
Then she stepped into the shadow and was gone too.