Jaws bit down, missing by a hair.

He thought that wasn’t real?

That that bite couldn’t hurt him?

This is gonna be fun.

Yes, this was virtual. And yes, in the outside world, his body would remain unscathed. But in here...thanks to my careful immersion and the tweaks I’d made along the way, myth had the unnerving ability to become real.

Brain damage had been an unsightly side effect because my mirages were...entrancing. Hypnotic. A mesmeric tool to trick the mind into accepting fiction over fact.

While being used as a stage for sex, that realness wasn’t a problem.

But use it in warfare? Turn its salacious nature into treacherous?

Well, there was a reason the Pentagon had contacted me a few months after a high-placed politician came to get his kicks. Why I received offers with unlimited zeros for their exclusive use of my Euphoria.

Use my VR for anything other than its intended purpose and it became the most dangerous thing on the planet. Not Tritec, not elixir, not all the other scrapped and trialled drugs combined.

This...this was true power because Euphoria could take war into the mind. Battles could be won without troops being stationed overseas. International squadrons could be patched into a battleground where no loss of physical life occurred, only the liquefying of a brain.

Drake would not die...not physically.

But holy fuck how his mind would snap.

It would crack like bone and dribble out like marrow.

I could trap him here forever, keep him awake so he couldn’t escape, flay him from sanity, one body part at a time.

A slow, sadistic smile spread my lips. “Allow me to give you your first lesson, brother of mine.”

“I don’t need a lesson from a bastard like you. Give me back my goddess, fuck the hell off, and—”

“Ah, Drake. How sweet this is going to be.” I sucked in a sulphur laced breath. Scales hissed down my spine and thighs. Inky black, soaking up the fire flames, natural shielding for sensitive flesh within.

“Bite me, asshole.” He bared his teeth. His stupid, useless human teeth.

I grinned, my monster teeth stabbing into my lower lip, making me bleed and staining my mouth red. “Oh, it will be my fucking pleasure.”

He backed up as two wolves stalked him, their snouts low to the ground, their coarse fur quivering around their scruffs. Drool dripped from black gums, yellowed fangs glistening for his jugular.

“Not yet,” I murmured, mostly to myself, partly asking a wild animal I’d encrypted to back the hell off because Drake’s proverbial death was mine.

I didn’t expect the wolves to freeze. For their moon-yellow eyes to lock onto me. For their heads to duck in obedience.

Huh...that’s interesting.

I flexed my shoulders, feeling the colossal weight of bone scaffolding and fibrous membrane that formed the wings behind me.

When I’d hastily written this deception, I hadn’t typed anything about animals listening to a master. They were there just as background threats. An atmosphere to turn forest into boneyard.

But...

Wasn’t that poetic? Fatalistic even.

Drake had not only tried to kill me, he’d killed so many other beasts.

It was only fair his death would be shared.

“Tear off his left hand,” I whispered, the grumbling of my creature sounding part earthquake.

There was no pause.

No signal the wolf couldn’t understand.

In a single heartbeat, the wolf on Drake’s left side launched, snatched, and bit.

Drake howled.

Fuck, he howled.

The crunch of bone, the tear of tendons, and the slap of something heavy landing in the fire.

Instantly, the sizzle of skin and pop of blood scented the sky with charred meat.

Drake fell to his knees, cradling the stump where his hand used to be. Blood poured down his forearm, pooling in the dirt.

The wolves sat back on their haunches and joined in his howl. An orchestra of worship and agony.

Drake’s avatar met my gaze. The redheaded man crumpled in on himself, cuddling his arm into his impressive belly. “What the fuck! Tell them to back the fuck off!” His face twisted into livid hate, and the same haughty arrogance he used whenever he’d beaten me and killed my strays appeared.

He tried to see past my disguise of fang and claw and berate the boy he’d tortured from the crib. A kid he’d always won against.

A brother who’d been too weak to stop him in his human form.

Pity.

Such a fucking pity that his own ego had ensured the slowest, most sickening death possible. I would spare him nothing. I would grant no leniency.

I wanted him in motherfucking pieces.

Not wanting to walk, aware that my thrice broken leg outside the fantasy would not tolerate exertion, I spread my heavy bat wings and flew.

A conscious instruction. A whim delivered by virtual reality. A simple tilt forward and swoop...and I soared through the fire.

Drake blanched as I landed before him, right in the midst of timber wolves.

“Sullivan...break the illusion. Get us out of here and we’ll talk...alright? We’ll have a beer in the blau lounge, even smoke one of Dad’s old cigars. We’ll—”

“His ear,” I murmured.

A wolf on his right side pounced and sank its incisors into Drake’s gristle. With a fierce yank, it tore Drake’s ear straight from his head.

“FUCK!” Drake bellowed, his remaining hand slapping over the hole where his ear used to be. “Sully!”

With a toss of its muzzle, the wolf shot the bleeding body part straight down its gullet and swallowed.

I laughed.

The noise in my chest sounded like asteroids colliding with mountain tops. A pummelling of rock and unmovable stone.

Drake rocked on his knees, blood drenching his clothing. “Fuck you, Sullivan. Fuck!”

I wished it was the brother I recognised and not an avatar before me, but...it wouldn’t ruin my enjoyment of his destruction.

“A hand for touching what wasn’t yours to touch. An ear for believing I’d listen to your lies. And a...” I cupped my chin, stroking the scales running down my throat. “His foot, if you’d be so kind.”

A wolf behind him nodded its giant canine head and snatched at Drake’s foot. It yanked him clean off his knees, biting down hard, the crunch of his jaw heard even over Drake’s bloodcurdling scream.

It took a few gnaws, a death shake or two, before Drake’s ankle shattered, his Achilles tendon severed, and the mangled meat of his foot was removed from his borrowed body.

The pack squabbled over it, tearing at toes, eating Drake all while he watched.

“And a foot for ever stepping onto my islands.”

He screamed again, his face glazed with agony.

How did the pain feel?

Was it just mental or had his mind taken full ownership of this form? Could he feel the throbbing wrongness of no longer having complete limbs? What did his body look like in the outside world? Did his nose bleed as his brain scrambled? Did sweat coat his nakedness?

I hope it’s the worst thing he’s ever felt.

I truly fucking hope so.

I hoped he felt every tear, felt every droplet of blood, heard every snarl from the wolves.

A spider the size of a small dog scuttled past.

“Wait.”

Its eight legs paused, its many eyes locking onto me.