Chapter Text
The scent hit me before the bike even stopped purring—
Copper. Burnt ozone. A little rot.
Not demon. Not quite. But still wrong.
My boots hit the asphalt hard, steel toes ringing off the cracked concrete like the start of a round. I popped the kickstand and took a long, indulgent stretch. My knuckles cracked like firecrackers. Something out there had been tearing through the city like it owned it—and tonight, I wanted to find out if it had the balls to swing first.
The leather of my vest creaked as I rolled my shoulders. This wasn’t some brimstone-slick hellspawn slinking through the gutters. I could smell it. No sulfur, no infernal sigils. Just blood. Cold. Clean. Clinical.
Something had been harvesting.
“Not one of ours,” I muttered, ducking under a rusted rail gate into the abandoned yard. “But whatever you are, sugar, you made a hell of a mess in my backyard.”
That was mistake number one.
Mistake number two was assuming I’d let it walk out again.
The warehouse district was half-dead. Flickering lights, a low hum from power boxes that hadn’t been serviced since the Reagan era. It was the kind of place you’d dump a body if you didn’t want it found until the next economic collapse.
Good cover for demons. Great cover for something that liked to cut clean.
I sniffed the air again. The scent trail was fresher now—coppery, electric, adrenalized. The air prickled along my arms like I was walking into a storm.
And I was smiling.
Gods, I was smiling like a drunk at last call.
It had been weeks since anything fought back. Most of the surface-skulking demons these days folded the second they saw me coming. I was a Collins. My name rang bells. My fists broke jaws.
This thing? This one was different. It had taken five men in two nights—spines gone, heads removed, hearts pulped in place. Some poor bastard had been strung upside down in a church bell tower like a crucified deer.
Cheeky.
The scent got stronger as I neared the loading docks—raw metal, faint singe, something mechanical laced with rot. It wasn’t Helltech, either. No glyphs, no soulbinding residue. Whatever this thing was, it used hardware, not hexes.
Cute. Real cute.
I stepped over a busted pallet and into the warehouse, toeing the door open like it might bite me. The hinges screamed. I didn’t care.
Inside was a tomb. No lights. No movement. The air hung dead and wet.
Then I saw it.
Strung from a rusted meat hook, swinging gently like some overgrown wind chime, was what was left of a man. Naked, headless, ribs cracked open like someone had gone digging for candy.
Spine was gone. So were the eyes.
Not Hellwork. Too surgical. Too fast.
I circled slowly, my fingers brushing the edge of my knuckle dusters like a lover’s touch. The body had been drained—no mess, no splash, not even a drop of blood beneath him. Just a dried smear where something had knelt.
The hook creaked.
I smiled.
“You’re still here, aren’t you?”
“You cheeky invisible bastard.”
No sound. No shift. Not even breath. But I could feel it. That little press on my senses. A weight, watching me from above.
I tilted my head and danced on the balls of my feet. My shoulders rolled. The leather squeaked.
“C’mon, pretty boy,” I purred. “Don’t keep a girl waiting.”
Silence.
Then—
THWACK.
Something heavy slammed into my back and sent me flying face-first into a support beam. My head bounced off the metal and I hit the ground with a grunt, rolling onto my feet with a snarl.
Oh, now we were playing.
“You’re gonna regret that,” I said through my teeth, already grinning.
I caught it out of the corner of my eye—a shimmer, a distortion in the air. Seven feet tall, give or take. Hulking. Moved like a ghost, hit like a truck.
I lunged.
I swung wide and dirty—aiming center mass—and my fist collided with something. Sparks flew. The shimmer flinched back. My boots dug in, and I followed it with a sharp jab to where I guessed its jaw should be.
CRACK.
A snarl. Not human. Not demonic. Something guttural, alien.
The shimmer dropped. A faint pulse of energy—then the Predator’s cloak failed entirely.
Seven feet of scaly muscle. Mandibles. Glowing eyes.
And for a moment—I just stared.
I’ve seen a lot of oddities in my time.
Man-made horrors, Hell-born beasts, shit that crawled out of the marrow of nightmares.
I could see the beauty in all of it—blood-slick or rust-crusted, infernal or industrial.
But this?
This thing was something else entirely.
Its armor was built like it had survived a hundred wars—worn, pitted, and scarred, but still humming with power. High-tech plates wrapped tight around its chest and shoulders, stained with old blood and ash. Its skin was tough and knotted like braided leather, colored in earthy greens and pale, oily yellows. The mandibles clicked—deliberate. Measured. Not in fear.
Judgment.
The head was massive. Crowned. Dreadlock-like cables twisted down its back, each one capped with etched metal bands. Its glowing eyes narrowed with that same kind of focused hatred I’d only seen once before—in a wrath demon that had watched me kill her mate.
And gods…
It was beautiful.
Beautiful in the ugliest way a girl could dream of—like a living war trophy. It looked like it had been born to hunt everything I loved. Like it would rip the spine out of a demon just to see what noise it made.
I breathed in deep, heart pounding, skin prickling.
“You’re not from around here,” I said again, this time almost reverent.
The Predator answered with a guttural roar, its mandibles flaring wide—spittle flying. The shoulder cannon flared with a high-pitched whine.
And my smile widened.
“Pretty and loud,” I whispered. “God, I could kiss you—”
Then it lunged.
*forgot this portion of the fight in my final draft oops!*
The change hit me like an old friend.
First came the heat—pouring up my spine and down my limbs, bubbling under my skin like lava under glass. Then the pressure, bones snapping out of place only to be reforged in something bigger, meaner, wronger. My muscles doubled, then tripled, my boots shredding at the seams.
My skin flared red—bright, blinding—before settling into something darker. More bruised. Warborn.
Four arms.
Twelve feet.
Knotted limbs bristling with bone-like studs.
A stubby tail ripped through the back of my pants, thrashing like it had a mind of its own. My spine realigned with a crunch and an audible POP, and an eye opened in the middle of my skull—ringed with fire, rimmed in something that shimmered like a lion’s mane gone rabid.
“Round two,” I snarled, all teeth and smoke. “Let’s dance, glowstick.”
It didn’t flinch.
Credit where it’s due—it didn’t back down. The Predator roared and launched itself at me with those twin wrist blades flared like a goddamn execution.
I met it with all four fists.
Upper left caught the blade.
Lower right slammed into its gut.
Upper right cracked into its mask—shattering a chunk of it clean off—and the lower left? That one hooked under its arm and threw it across the warehouse like a trash bag.
It crashed through a support beam and left a crater in the far wall.
I rolled my shoulders, spitting a little blood, and stomped after it.
“You’re real pretty when you’re pissed,” I called. “C’mon, show me what else you got!”
It rose—one arm dangling wrong, jawplate cracked, glowing blood spilling down its armor like warpaint.
And still, it came at me.
It didn’t care that I was bigger. Stronger. Wilder.
It wanted the fight.
Gods help me, so did I.
The Yautja surged again—blade up, shoulder cannon sparking, one arm barely working—but it came anyway.
They always come anyway.
I met it halfway, drove my lower right fist into its thigh to knock its footing off, and twisted—full-bodied—slamming it into the floor with a wet, meaty THUD. The concrete cracked beneath us. I landed hard on top of it, my knees on either side of its armored waist, pinning it down with all four arms as it roared and bucked beneath me.
It tried to bring a blade up. I grabbed its wrist and snapped it backward.
Bone. Tendon. Armor. Gone.
Blood sprayed—bioluminescent, thick, a color I couldn’t name but wanted to wear.
It hissed. Its mandibles twitched open and wide, exposing its throat like a challenge. Like an invitation.
That all you got? I whispered, voice low and dark and close. You come all this way to die like this?
Its eyes met mine. No fear. Just fury. And in that final second—I swear—it smiled.
I slammed my top right fist into its face.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The skull gave on the fourth.
It cracked like overripe fruit. Bone, blood, gear shards, and heat spilled under my hands, across my thighs, soaking into the floor in a steaming halo.
The Yautja twitched once—fingers flexing, jaw stuttering—and then fell still.
Silence.
Heavy. Warm. Saturated in copper and heat and the heady throb of victory.
I sat back on my heels, panting. Blood covered my hands. My arms. My chest. His, mine—it didn’t matter. I could feel it sinking into my skin like perfume. Thick and iron-sweet, still steaming in the cool warehouse air. My breath came in slow, open-mouthed pulls. My jaw ached from grinning too wide for too long.
My heart hadn’t stopped racing.
Not from fear. Not from pain.
From joy.
Fuck, I thought, staring down at what was left of him. You were something.
The body lay beneath me like an offering—ruined, still twitching. His chest plate cracked, ribs bowed in like the shell of a split crab. Glowing blood pooled in the creases of his armor and soaked into the shredded remains of my pants.
I ran my tongue across my teeth.
It tasted like fire and metal and satisfaction.
I lowered myself slowly, reverently, until my knees hit the blood-drenched floor. Then I sprawled—slow and lazy—spine pressing into broken concrete, blood soaking into my hair, into my clothes, into my pores . One hand rested across my stomach. The other?
The other drifted down to his chest plate. My fingers traced the cracked insignia there, slow and idle. Not reverent— possessive . I dragged my hand lower, letting it collect the thick wetness that coated us both. I rubbed it between my fingers, smeared it into my palm.
It was warm. Silken. Alive in a way most blood isn’t.
“Never even got your name,” I murmured, voice like velvet dragged over razors. “Guess I’ll just call you mine.”
I leaned in again—closer this time—and pressed my cheek to what was left of him. The heat of the kill still radiated from his chest. I could feel it through my skin. My breath ghosted over the broken plates. I dragged it in like a last inhale of a lover's sweat.
I found a little shard of skull near his shoulder—sharp, jagged, still warm. I picked it up gently, almost tender, and rolled it between two fingers. My thumb ran across the ridge.
Then I grinned.
Slow. Wicked. All teeth and appetite.
And I lifted it to my lips— not fast, not crude —but slow and savoring. I let my tongue flick over the Neon-slick edge. I tasted the copper and heat, tasted the fight , tasted him.
“Pretty thing,” I whispered. “You’d’ve liked me, I think.”
I licked again. Deeper this time.
And then I smiled up at the dark, empty ceiling.
Like a woman who’d just fucked God and left Him weeping.
Somewhere in the far reaches of the sky—something pinged.
A faint chirrup, mechanical and precise, hidden in the bloodstained wreckage of the Predator’s gear. A beacon. Silent. Blinking.
Target Confirmed.
Coordinates logged. Combat data recorded. Signature locked.
Far beyond the clouds, aboard a ship not built by human or hellborn hands, a red dot flared bright in the dark.
The Grendel King opened his eyes.
And below, in the ruin of a warehouse painted in blood and fire, you vanished—consumed by a column of searing white light.