Free Rage by Jackie Morse Kessler Page B

Adam, she would show him just how much she had been thinking about him. She'd carve her name onto his stomach, brand her kiss on his back. She'd paint his world red in vicious, meaty streaks.
    He's probably home,
she thought, nodding to herself. So that would be where she went next: his house. And if he wasn't there, well, someone would know how to find him. Missy would just have to ask nicely. She'd use the Sword to punctuate the question.
    She heard sirens in the distance. Maybe the police were finally en route to break up the party, possibly joined by an ambulance or two, coming to tote revelers away to the land of IV drips and white cotton sheets. Nothing like a little jaunt to the police station or the hospital to really build character.
    Missy smiled tightly as she sheathed her Sword. Ares pawed the ground, and Missy mistook her steed's action for impatience. "Don't worry," she told the horse. "We'll find him, even if it takes all night."
    From behind her: "This is how you squander your power?"
    The speaker's voice squeezed Missy's stomach, leaving her suddenly, overwhelmingly ravenous.
    She turned to face a woman seated atop a midnight-black horse. The woman—cadaverously thin, and covered head to toe in black, from her wide-brimmed hat to her trench coat to her boots—held an old-fashioned set of scales in one gloved hand.
    Missy stared at those scales, and though she didn't recognize them, War snarled a silent challenge.
    "I shouldn't be surprised," the woman said. "You've always been one to flaunt yourself like a whore."
    Wide-eyed, Missy asked, "Who
are
you?"
    "The Black Rider, wielder of the Scales and blight of abundance." The woman in black flashed a smile, her teeth small and white and perfect. "But you may call me Famine."

Chapter 8
    The cacophony around them was nothing more than static, the chaos of violence reduced to an afterthought. There was the woman in black on her horse, and there was Ares, and there was Missy herself—that was the entirety of the world.
    The woman called Famine looked Missy up and down, that dark gaze measuring Missy's worth down to the pound. Missy's stomach plummeted to her toes. It wasn't just that the black-clad woman could see her when others could not, although the naked hunger in the woman's pitiless eyes left Missy's heart pounding. It was the sheer power radiating from the whipcord thin form that reduced Missy's confidence to ash. This was no brute show of strength, bludgeoning Missy into submission; this was a subtle display, the insidious tug of undertow. It pulled her under, squeezing her like a sponge, wringing out her life.
    God, she was so hungry.
    Stop,
Missy tried to say, but her words fell stillborn from her lips.
    Famine watched her silently, her face smooth, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
    Missy, dizzy with the need to eat, stumbled backward. If not for Ares standing just behind her, she would have fallen to her knees. She reached for her steed and drew in a shuddering breath. Her fingers threaded the warhorse's rough coat, and she whispered, "Help me."
    Ares lunged, snapping its teeth at the black horse. Famine's steed reared back, out of range of those powerful jaws. The woman in black—still holding her scales in one hand—managed to keep her balance. When her horse came down, she spoke softly to it, quieting it. In those moments of distraction, Missy's hunger abated.
    Missy murmured to Ares as she stroked it, thanking the horse for its help. She barely heard the steed's snort of acknowledgment; her thoughts were dust motes in a windstorm, scattered and powerless. Part of her wanted to flee, to climb atop Ares and take to the sky, leaving the shadowed woman far behind. But another part wanted to see how the woman's smile looked after Missy punched out her teeth. She clenched her fist, imagining the feeling of flesh against flesh—the give of muscle, the crunch of bone. She could almost smell the tang of blood, the woman's blood, spicing the air.
    Her