Who: Badb (Brenna) and Ian Ward What: Crows come home to roost (and tear the shit out of the nest) Where: The Ward's penthouse, Manhattan When: 5amish, Sunday morning Rating: High for violence
Smoke and chaos in the air above New York; it mixed so well with the smog-vapors and clouds rolling in; a potent, sweet mix of cold water vapor and film that fingered through the Crow's feathers as she sliced through the pre-dawn sky. She'd been satiated; the tang of bloodlust and adrenaline still pumped through her veins, so much more pure than the evil concoction of chemicals that had bound her inside Brenna Ward, chained to the pit of her soul. Her wakening had come with an explosive reemergence into the world. If there was a feeling close to peace for Badb, she was feeling it now, and was ready for rest.
As she landed on the perch of her host's lavish sky-palace and preened her feathers from the wind, she soothed the mortal woman with promises of sleep and sanity, but first...
The goddess had one more thing to deal with: Brenna's husband, the war monger, whom Badb had watched through Brenna's eyes for three years with a mix of intrigue and predatory attachment. She'd also watched him hand Brenna those confounded pills, and twisted inside the woman's lethargic, hapless body as he used it as his own object of power. Normally, the goddess wouldn't have cared a lick about a husband taking liberties with his wife in such a manner (the list of things Badb didn't care about could fill several volumes). However, personal violation was not tolerated. And since Brenna's body was her own...
The Crow peered into the dark glass that separated her from the inside, and squalled loudly to grab the attention of the mortal man inside. She watched him turn his head, and dismiss her shape as ordinary. Badb called out hard one more time, then shed her feathers and black beak for the much more recognizable shape of Ian Ward's slightly unbalanced wife, perched dirty, bloody, and naked on the stone railing, thirty stories off the ground.