Chapter 220

• Long nails, yellow and brittle looking, but fiercely sharp. Waxy white skin, covered in a soft down of ugly hairs on arms and legs and weirdly oversized rib cages that are not in proportion to their bodies in any way. They’re more hideous than I thought like this. Bony with no connections to the human qualities of Darrius.
• “Various degrees of DNA dilution. These are mongrels. Or as Darrius would call them, gutter rats.” Leyanne points out as Carmen and Sierra turn to human to join us. “Wings are common in pure, just not so much in rats.”
• “Meaning?” Carmen asks with genuine curiosity as she and Sierra find their places by my side once more and look down at the mess at our feet with pinched expressions. The smell is so bad in here it’s hard to breathe properly, and we all shield our faces with our palms to cut out the worst of it. Not that it helps much, but it’s better than inhaling ashes of remains.