Bloody

"We never saw her coming. One moment, the entire house was still; we had no reading of life anywhere in the structure. The next, Agent 0237-3 was impaled by a mass of bone and our right cannon housing was torn completely off. We still have no readings on her, and our only visual recording shows just blurs before 0237-3's fluids obscure it. Losses constitute four entire members and catastrophic damage to surviving satellites; discovery, acquisition and assimilation of replacement satellites will take as much as a year. We think you knew we did not stand a chance. We still do not even know what you sent us against, but if you are attempting to accumulate data, we are no longer available as your shock troops. We have lost too many satellite agents already, and we are requesting reassignm-" Agent 0237-Core, whereabouts unknown

---

She grinned, only a little distracted. She couldn't hear Them, but They were close, still, and They were pleased. She wondered why her prey couldn't work like she did, move and see and kill like her. Now they never would. The weak once again justified the strong. She brushed a stray hair from her eyes with one bloody hand and glanced at the shattered, torn forms around her...

She found herself staring at the "bone" she'd been playing with. Four feet of osseous blade projected from her clenched fist, fat and dense and... not particularly sharp. Must hurt to be cut by it. It weighed strangely little, and she had no idea where it came from. The entire implement was covered in gore, rent flesh and bits of bone not of itself.

A voice cut through her meandering introspection. Not Them, but something piercing. Something young. A girl, alone, calling to her. The mirror was in place, the candle lit, the sun shut away. Older magicks sang to her.

She smiled again. Something feral stirred. She could smell blood, and a haze crept into the edges of her vision, a copper taste tinged her tongue. Another feast. Another revenge. They would pay. They will pay until the end of time.

She stood up straight, suddenly, and glanced down at the shard in her hand with vague disgust. Without a second look to her victims, she cast the bone aside and stalked away. The shard slammed through the door of a car parked nearby, coming to rest as it slammed through the far door and into the brick wall next to it.

Rarely did a victim call to her, anymore. When they did, she could not hear the Voices, feel the force of Their will. She could see. She could live. She could touch the rage in her heart.

It didn't happen often enough, anymore. She needed a mirror.