Page 42 of Star Claimed Omega
Soleil surged with a soundless snarl, her form blurring, breaking, shifting.
Her bones cracked as red light ignited beneath her skin. Fur erupted, fire-bright and spectral.
Her body lengthened, reshaped, her spine arching, talons exploding from her fingers, jaw stretching into a lupine snout with obsidian fangs.
The transformation was not graceful; it was fury made flesh.
The men screamed.
She struck the twitching one first, claws ripping through his coat, sending him tumbling across the alley.
The bulky one tried to run but caught a slash over the back, blood misting the air. The last fell to the ground, shielding his face, shrieking for mercy.
Soleil roared, the sound part beast, semi broken soul.
They fled.
But not before the third thug, the goggled one, dove forward.
They snatched an item from the concrete floor near her makeshift bedding and sprinted away, clutching it to their chest with sweat-slick fingers.
Soleil stood in the wreckage of her rage, breath ragged, red eyes glowing in the dark, her claws twitching.
She jolted into her humaniform with a violent shudder, her whole body locked in a bone-deep tremble.
Her teeth clacked so hard and fast she feared they might splinter inside her skull.
Her skin was moist with condensation, her hair matted to her scalp in damp ropes.
The warmth from the shaft vent was gone.
In its place, an arctic-like gust sliced through her soaked clothes like knives dipped in frost.
She stumbled, fell, and tried to sit up, but her limbs moved as if weighted with stone.
Her lips were blue. Her fingers were numb.
The vent above her let out a sickly mechanical hiss as it belched more cold air, the kind that reeked of coolant, mold, and rust.
She rolled to her side and gagged at the ache that bloomed in her gut. Her body spasmed in protest, then tensed again as she realized something was wrong.
Her duffel was gone.
‘Nada,’ she croaked, pushing herself to her elbows.
Around her, scattered like bones in a graveyard, lay the remnants of her belongings.
A sock. A single boot, and her uniform was balled up beneath a rusted pipe.
Her underwear flung like rubbish, and her duffel was now in the grubby grip of a skeletal, toothless man crouched nearby.
He pawed through it like a crow picking at roadkill.
‘Hey!’ she rasped, throat raw.
She lurched forward, crawling, knees scraping across the stained deck. She reached him just as he yanked out her backup shirt and tried to stuff it under his jacket.
‘Give that back!’
