She was also much too afraid that they’d recognise her, learn of her identity for friends to happen let alone a lover to suck faces with. Anyway, it didn’t take long for the machine to notify her on what exactly she’d found in her loot.

“Dildos!” she’d snorted. “Fantastic. The Omegas might dig this if it isn’t melting from radiation.” She turned the virtual hologram of the box this way and that. “Guess Alphas could use this during their ruts.” She shrugged. “Who knows?”

Quinn wouldn’t know, she didn’t know shit about Ruts or Heat cycles.

The good thing about Euodia was that she was a Beta and she’d been pretty much a normal human being. While she did have a better sense of smell, she didn’t have Ruts like the other females—periods of time in which she should be begging for something to fuck so that she could reproduce and create a gazillion babies with a sweet Omega.

This brought her to the second perk of being a Beta.

Quinn did not salivate over Omega ass like it could be her last meal in the world, growing weak and hungry for them over the years. She’d seen the other Alphas whine and moan over the lack of breeding Omegas in town, had seen them grow crazed with talk over how it had been like during her rule.

When it was women first before men, and they’d been allowed to take the Omegas whenever and wherever they wanted. It was fucking disgusting, but they did look increasingly sick with each passing year.

The drone made quick work to return to her, its plunder enclosed within its frame. Soot whizzed towards her, a boxy floating space craft that spewed blue flame, stopping short before her to proudly reveal the treasures it had found.

She opened one of the plastic boxes, surprised by the quality of the fake veiny flesh. A quick tap on the silicon told her that while it had grown soft from time, the body-safe toy was surprisingly still pretty intact and pretty damn fuckable. She smiled already hearing the sound of dollar bills flooding her account.

It wasn’t as if the New World didn’t have dildos or sex toys.

They’d advanced quite quickly once they’d cleaned up the bits from the war. But she guessed it just wasn’t the same as the ones they used to make when they had more material and resources to expend on. She could also always count on the rich people and their strange, deranged hobby of displaying vintage vulgar items in their homes.

So this would sell for a pretty penny as an art form.

“Nice work,” she slapped the drone and it hummed, the metallic skeleton vibrating in the sun. “Much better than the mouldy cans of curry you found this morning.” She squinted at her surroundings, now really taking note of the exterior. “Must be a red-light district, or some sex toy outlet. Would be nice if we could find some drugs. That’ll get me more credits than I can count and then you can get an entire overhaul for greater bandwidth or maybe a little brother. Anything to keep my lazy ass on this seat.”

It spat out smoke and filth, the black flecks wafted before her staining her clothes, and she grimaced waving a hand.

“I’d have to fix you first Soot,” she scowled, tapped at its frame and her fingertips sizzled with sparks of electricity—a sign of her magic working to repair its interior. Already, she’d found the problem—overheat from the sun. “You might explode one day, and then I’d be royally fucked with shit to haul all the way back to town. Or I could lose my face, wouldn’t that be nice?”

Soot didn’t respond.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Can’t lose Euodia that easily, totally need a plastic surgeon and a whole scent gland transplant.”

It didn’t matter because the weather changed so rapidly and horribly that she shot ramrod straight in her seat, her eyes turned skywards to the clouds.

Darkness rolled over her, thunder whistling as cracks of lightning surged through the sky striking ground and blowing up machinery. Fire blossomed in the distance and already she could see parts of the buildings collapsing into an avalanche of dust. She pushed back her hood, in high alert, her nose sniffing at the petrichor.

The cataclysm was building.

It was grey, dull sour grey like coughing factories and bellowing incinerators. The onslaught lashed down upon her sharp, needle-like, and icy, washing filth away in sheets of water. Quickly the area began to pool and flood, soil ballooning with too much to drink. Overfed, the pavement began to crack and break, her bike wobbled, losing balance on the rocking mud.

The city was shivering, the frisson expanding.

Already she began to quake, her shirt once stained with sweat was now sticking tight to her skin, clinging to bra-less breasts, it was women’s land after all—her nipples sensitive from the cold. Fuck this weather and it’s 180-degree switch from sun to rain and then rapidly to ice.

She groaned, tying Soot to her motorbike with a snap of the chain, and then sped off in the direction of the town. She didn’t want to be caught in the darkness and the rain— two conditions which promised the arrival of the zombies that could outrun her bike and kill her in one bite.

The Lonely.

They had once been people, normal, sane Alphas and Omegas.

No one knew why and what caused them to change but it started with a growing need to fuck—much more than the usual cycle. It would then proceed into a madness where the person would blindly spend days searching for something they could never find.

And finally, they would start eating people, swallowing hearts, gulping blood.

They’d once assumed it was an infliction from a recessive vampire gene, but that all changed when they realised quite quickly that even the purest of fey could have the disease. Now they just threw the crazy people out of the New World once they hit the ends of Stage Two. Just more trash in the disaster they called society.

She’d heard that it was growing worse in the cities, and the rate of Lonely creation was increasing daily, doubling after the war. It just seemed like more reason not to be an Alpha or an Omega. More reason to stay away from that place.

The roar that echoed behind her was a sign of their presence and she cursed, speeding quickly. She didn’t care now if she was going far past the speed limit of the living. She had to get out of here before the storm hit and she was stuck between the ghosts and the world.

It was then when lightning flashed through the skies, so close that it blinded her eyes, illuminating all in a brilliant white crack. The electricity landed inches from her bike, scaring the ever-loving shit out of her soul, piss leaking from her body.

But that wasn’t the main point, as her eyes dashed straight up into the sky, tracking shadows. Something pretty damn big, and pretty damn furry was crashing down from the heavens like a giant gorilla. It smashed violently against her frame, knocking the wind from her lungs, then rolled eight times across the sandy road.

Quinn had squawked, leaping out of her seat, and then pushing her bike a little too hard. And for once it actually did hit a rock—the force far too strong for it to stop and hover. It crashed against the edge of a cave, flipping once and then twice, pulling along poor Soot who opened its body in response, allowing the rain of dildos to bounce upon the landscape.

Quinn was thrown off quite violently. Her body skidded across the mud, knees tearing right open before she bumped hard against the hairy thing which she was pretty damn sure was another flesh-eating zombie. With that thought, she was up the moment the impact vibrated out of her skull, scooting back on blood-soaked hands like it was plague.

Quinn screamed, scrambling back further, but paused when a body revealed itself to her, slumping backwards. Its dark wings were singed and its clothes dripping wet from the rain. She blinked, then squinted quite sure that the Lonely was far crazier, and much hairier than this smooth looking ape.

She prodded it, fingers moving over its flesh and her heart surged, electricity flying. A bolt of heat jolting through their hands.

It was nothing like she’d ever felt before, like a snap of wire locked in place or the touch of two magnets too strong for its own good. It clapped between them, warm and then soupy smooth in her chest. There it stayed like an annoying buzz of heat in her gut, and there it laid throbbing along to the beat of the annoying beginnings of arousal.

The face that turned to her had been far too pretty and far too bloody for its own good, but it was one Euodia recognised instantly. And Quinn almost died from the shock of it all.

Helios, the angel of all her nightmares.

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