Because Eve's hands are not hands. The skin has split open from the wrists all through the fingers, and there are tendrils, oozing black tendrils, spilling through the gaps -- cold against Teresa's bare shoulders, and monstrously strong --

In an eyeblink, her hand is at the branescythe on her hip.

Eve's tendrils whip down, fast and strong --

-- but too slow. The tendrils are wrapped around her arm, but the slender silver point of the branescythe is aimed between Eve's gleaming black eyes. One squeeze of the trigger, and she will be cut into ten thousand pieces.

There is no fear in those eyes.

"Teresa," Eve whispers, and her voice is a slithering hiss.

"You want to save Lynia, don't you?"

"Do you think I won't do it?"

There is a quaver in her voice, and Teresa curses herself. You can't show it. You can't --

"For Lynia, I will blast your brains to shreds. I -- I knew you were different, that something had happened, but this -- "

What even is this?

She retreats to the side -- away from the wall, and along the alley.

Eve follows, her tendrils still gripping Teresa's hands.

"That will destroy her, you know," Eve says. "If the woman she struggled so hard to save is scattered all across this alley, revealed as a parasite. Can you imagine how she'd feel?"

Teresa stares her down, and does not move the branescythe an inch.

"What choice do I have?" she whispers.

"You have a choice. Haven't you figured it out by now? You know how the sxelanthe are. The way they hunger for intimacy. I need to hurt somebody, Teresa. Somebody I love. And it can't be Lynia, because she would die. So..."

She was too distracted to realize the implications until now. It hits her with a jolt. She swallows, and her heart beats faster.

Control.

Eve advances on her, the branescythe turning aside in her weakened fingers. There is something altogether strange in Eve's dark eyes, and when she opens her mouth to smile, her teeth are like writhing snakes.

"I love you, Teresa," she says.

"Let me hurt you. For Lynia."

Teresa can scarcely hear her over the thudding of her heart in her ears.

All these years she's spent slicing sxelanthe to ribbons, and now --

But it is an easy calculus, in the end.

"For Lynia," she whispers.

She drops the branescythe.

In an eyeblink, Eve's strong tendrils have caught it: and with a violent motion she hurls it up and over the adjacent building. It gleams in the dim moonlight, and then it is gone.

And now --

Now she is alone, and unarmed, beneath the monstrous eyes of a nightmare.

It hits her. What she just did. What's going to happen now.

She has fought, many, many times. She has killed. But never before has her person been directly under threat.

And so it is new to her: the way her heart leaps to her throat; the way the dread gives way so swiftly to panic, and the panic grips every muscle in her body. Eve let go her hands to throw away the branescythe, and so she turns and runs as if she has never run before, down the alley, along the cobblestones --

How could she have done something so stupid? She should never have -- she doesn't want --

A thin black tendril wraps around her delicate ankle, and pulls.

She falls flat, striking the cobblestones hard. One of the gemstones about her neck cracks under the impact.

She struggles to right herself, to get up.

But Eve is above her, tendrils waving, sheets of glistening black like eldritch wings blotting out the moons.

For just a moment, that face is a girl's face again.

"You're so sweet, Teresa," she says. "I never knew you had such fear in you. You were always so perfect..."

She feels the hard stones against her back through the thin silken dress she wears. It is stained by sweat, now. She is panting.

Control. She...she has to stay in control. It's more important than anything...

Why?

She's forgotten. She needs to do it anyway.

Eve lowers herself, straddling Teresa's slender body, resting her arms upon coiled tendrils. Her growing wings are behind her, tasting the cool night air. She feels...

How can she even describe this? It is like freedom, or like joy. Is it the sxelanth's, or hers? No: they are one and the same.

And Teresa is so very, very beautiful.

She is lying there silent beneath Eve, her muscles tense but still, because she wants desperately to struggle and flee but knows deep in her heart that it would be utterly fruitless. Her pale silk dress has begun to rip. There are tears in her eyes.

Eve doesn't think she's noticed them.

"I guess..." Teresa whispers --