Quintessentially Q (Monsters in the Dark, #2)

by Pepper Winters

Something unlocked inside, some darkness billowed, blocking out the light I’d been fighting so hard to keep bright.

I shrugged off the falseness that I could never be. I growled and welcomed the feralness, the raging psychotic temper. The beast sprung free, and I breathed hard. This was who I was.

Q featured and he morphed from naked perfection with his sparrow tattoo, into a raging black-winged angel. His back sprouted three-metre-wide wings, glistening ebony with oil-slicked raven feathers. His pale jade eyes glowed with ferocity. He shook his head in weighted disappointment and turned his back on me. His wings encompassed him into a black cocoon until he exploded into a million birds and took wing.

I found Franco in the corridor. The poor man looked fucking beat. Eyes hollow, face gaunt, and a wiry edge that would petrify anyone if they’d known what he’d done to the rapist last night. I’d seen the remains. I’d stepped over dismembered fingers, toes, and cock while holding a bleeding heart in my hands. We were a nasty pair of work, but through killing together we’d been granted a kind of peace

“How do you do that? You were feeling something. I could smell it. And now you’re like a shell. You smile, you talk, you heal at a miraculous pace, and yet you’re not really here.”