In Nero’s corpse-choked Rome, Campanula Necatrix seals its doors against the Lupercal’s black heart. No one stirs. Childish giggles fracture into throat-shredding shrieks. Mothers’ wails erupt as phantom blades vivisect unborn spawn, throats vomiting clotted gore. Then the bells awaken: cymbala anklets—bronze death-rattles forged from flayed courtesan skin—jackhammer cobblestones into crimson craters, ghost stomps pulverizing ancient bones to marrow-slurry in seismic rape-orgasms that hijack your pulse.

A princess, tormented by the prison of her own mind, seeks out Nestor, the magician of memories, begging him to mend what's broken so as to be whole again. For a fleeting moment, she tastes the sweetness of life she always dreamed of, until the dream curdles and she collapses into a nostalgia far crueler than the pain she tried to escape.

Lyra Morrigan is a headstrong witch with incredible power who just wants the freedom to forge her own path. Her entire life is upended when she is kidnapped by a group of werewolves desperate to find a cure for a curse ravaging their pack. Lyra must walk a precarious line between the freedom she desires and doing what is right while fighting a magnetic attraction to the enigmatic pack alpha.

A flash fiction story. Haunted by an accident that claimed the life of a travelling clown at a circus, the father responsible lies in bed waiting for a curse to take him.