A woman in black silk danced under luminous shadows. Like a wraith in flight, her seethrough robes fluttered in the midnight wind. Her natural scents added to its enthralling richness. Her skin was as pale as the full moons face.

The predatory wolves in all forms howled to her curves and crevices all the same.

But she replied to none.

None except him.

He watched her saunter across the nightly expanse. Movements so preternaturally divine and explicit it felt wrong to watch. But he couldn't look away— even as wicked heat settled beneath the skin of his face. His eyes couldn't stop tracing the contours of her lips. The mole that sat just above. The nose that turned up towards the stars just above the mole.

He rested there, knowing the eyes were the true masterpiece on a sculpture of equally masterful creation.

They peered through his skull and rewrote his dna— assigning every cell and ounce of cursed blood to her. Making her presence magnetic from a mere gaze.

Her eyes were reddish purple. Like the edges of a sky under a setting sun. Elements of solar orange and ocean blue spun at the corners like some infinite shimmer.

Time became a reflection of her eyes. Multifaceted. Pooling and twisting and blending until—

She was standing over him, like a giant fertility godess with her lithe frame on full display.

She reached down and lifted him off his feet with hands as soft as shaped clouds, but the bone beneath was like a cursed metal of his clan. Unbreakable. Evil in origin. In its coldness.

He shivered in her grip.

She relished in the reaction— pupils dilating and grip tightening.

Was her skin darkening? Taking on a leathery luster?

He wasn't sure. Too busy watching her toothy grin transform into a predatory snarl. Her canines lengthened into fangs. Her ears sharpened and split her beautiful dark locks. Wings unfurled at her back, causing shadows to danced in his peripherals.

In seconds his beautiful dark dancer had become an Angel of death.

He tried to scream but sound didn't seem to exist where he was. He tried to fight but those hard bones locked him in place effortlessly.

Before he knew it she was pulling him into a kiss. Her lips were hard and grainy. She smelled like a dead animal and tasted like heavy metals coated in bile.

When they disconnected, she was the beautiful dancer once again. And in the reflection of her eyes, he saw that he'd become the dark Angel of horror with great wings and even greater fangs. His green skin was covered in silky dark fur. His face twisted into a snarling visage with sunken cheeks and sharp protruding bones around his cheeks and forehead. A crown of masculine aggression.

For the first time, he heard sound. Coming from his own mouth, and it was the most unfamiliar thing he'd ever heard—

"Stop dreaming about tits and wake up, you rat!"

"….."

"Ferrik Ag Fiendh! GET UP AND GET READY FOR WORK OR ILL SKIN YOU ALIVE!"

Ferrik opened his eyes, wiping away with crust with long wrinkled fingers as he sat up, trying to adjust to the abrupt change in scenery.

He was home. In his squat metal accented hut of thatch and stone. His mother hovered over him in her usual whool dress and dirty silk head wrap.

"You make me sick, boy! Our lives are hard enough as Goblins! The cursed ones! And here you are, oversleeping like we don't have work to do and quotas to make! Mumbling about vampires….. pssh! You better hope you're not blood sucker, boy! Because if I find out you're cursed twice over, I'll disown you myself. Now get!"

Ferrik got up out of bed and got ready for work.

"My mother must be blind. How could she think I'm lying?" Ferrik said to the mirror at the foot of his bed.

His reflection was nowhere to be found….