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(Page 2 of 2) Dark Flesh & Dark Hearts by Guerric Haché
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She *saw* him – which meant she had the second sight – which meant she was magical. He wasted no time; he blinded her eyes with darkness and moved in, clamping a hand down on her mouth. She tried to scream even as he drew his knife and started to cut down the center of her coat, and the shirt underneath. She struggled, but for some reason she didn't attack. Perhaps she didn't even know how, he thought with a grin. Ah, to have a mage against her will – that was something to relish.
He tore the last of her shirt off, looked down – and froze. Her body – though young and attractive – was wrong. Tainted. Blurred, in fact; it seemed like the fabric of reality broke down inside her, and while most of it was skin and flesh, some long, scar-like shapes were black. Blacker than black, in fact; they were void. They were shadow.
She was a mutant, he realized. Born to a mother exposed to the fallout of excessive magic in an area; cursed to grow old and die in less than twenty years, cursed to slowly decompose into some magical essence until there was nothing of her left. And her essence was his – shadow.
He swore under his breath, and shoved her away. It disturbed him; he didn't want to go through with this, not if the shadows were already taking her. "Get out of here," he hissed at her. "The next guy won't be so merciful."
He turned and started to walk away. A shadow mutant; the thought worried him. What if it was like the police said, and mages themselves were at risk of becoming mutants? Might he become just as helpless?
He shrugged off the thought. Nonsense; if that were the case, those Zefazji would be nothing but a bunch of limping cripples overflowing with magical growths and leaks. The power was his, and there wasn't any cost to speak of. He looked back down the alley one last time; the mutant girl was gone. He shrugged, but suddenly felt the autumn chill a bit more intensely.
"Freak," he muttered as he disappeared. He decided to go somewhere else – somewhere where he might be less likely to find mutants. This was too close to the Park.
Suddenly, though, the shadows he was moving through thickened. It was no longer like gliding through air; it was like swimming through molasses. Twilight scowled. What was going on? This had never happened before. Maybe he had caught some kind of magical infection from that –
Suddenly his back was on the hard, cold cobblestone ground, and was being pushed down by something huge and heavy. He tried to see, but all he saw was black. That – and a pair of eyes, like twin stars in midnight.
"Try to rape me, will you?" a voice snarled. His blood chilled. "Try to make my life any worse than it already is? Let's see how you like it, you son of a bitch!"
Twilight tried to scream, but the shadows, thick like dirt, plunged into his mouth and gagged him. He couldn't see it, but he felt something long, sharp and horribly cold plunge into his navel and start sawing – in and out, upwards towards his torso. Everything was dark; all he had to remind him that he wasn't dead yet was the pain. That, and the voice.
"You think you control the dark?" she hissed. "I *am* the dark."
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