Chapter 7, section 4: the Queen of the Dead returns

She was caught; crushed by mortal hunters about to violate her from the outside, and a hunter of souls about to violate her from the inside.

The boy behind the leader hooked his knife through her belt and yanked. The leather gauged into her back and the knife tore at the flesh of her hip. The top of her pants loosened suddenly, and the boy used both hands to tear them down the front until they lay wrapped around her ankles. The boy behind her dug her hands harder into the small of her back and dug the knife farther into her side, drawing more blood.

The leader stepped back and undid the top of his own pants, then stepped forward, crushing himself against her. The boy behind her rubbed himself against her back and the leader rubbed himself against her front. Prodding, poking, harder, sharper. She was caught between screaming and vomiting. Suddenly, the leader grabbed her hair, threw her to the ground and leapt on top of her.

Before he could violate her, the blackest of birds tore through the bars of its cage. It filled every pore of her body and the ringing blackness of her mind. The pretty, timid young dresser was replaced by something terrible.

The gang’s leader was too filled with his own heat and pressed too close to notice what was happening until too late. He already lay on his back, gelded and without arms, screeching and writhing in a growing pool of his own blood.

Before they could react, she spun and the three boys who had held her down all lurched backwards. Blood spouted from gashes over their abdomens. Pieces of intestine hung out as they doubled over in agony. The boy behind her had undone his pants, and like his leader was missing external organs as well as a few intestines.

The fifth boy was the only one with enough distance to react in time. He turned tail and ran for his life.

Persephone ignored him, and the four others who writhed gurgling at her feet. Instead of taking chase, she took what remained of her blouse and threaded it through her pants’ belt loops. Not elegant, with one leg shredded to below the knee, but it would do. The black-blooded raven stretched its wings languidly. Persephone examined her bare arms, but they were still flesh, not feather, and not stone. Paler than before, but still flesh. The age-old battle was lost. She had become once more what she dreaded, and she knew that there was no way to undo it now. It was too late.

From around the corner came a blood-curdling scream, cut short. What now?

All was silence. No engine hums, no dogs, no cicadas, not even the moans of her attackers. The iron weight that dropped on her heart told her who would round the turn at the bottom of the street before she saw him.

His large black wings were folded across his broad back. He held his axe loosely in one hand, and a decapitated head in the other. Both dripped blood. When he grew close, he threw the head in to the circle of his eviscerated companions and knelt on one knee before Persephone. His voice sounded like boulders crushing up against one another, “My queen, I am at your service.”

“Thanatos. Finish this and join me for a walk.”

The granite-faced god hefted his axe, ending four miseries in one swing. Then there was a coal-black raven sitting on her bare shoulder, clutching a twig between its claws.

She strode off uphill, “Let’s explore Rio, you and I.”