The mother sings a hungry songOf blood and cracking teethShe dances in the dark belowwants to pull us underneathHer claws, they rise, they sway in danceto the melody of screamsHer lullaby will never endtill the world comes apart at the seams

Max?' he asked.'Yeah?''...What are you doing?''Shooting people.

He studied my appearance carefully. __ou cut your hair._ __es. Do you like it?_ __hat depends. How long is it?_ I pulled a curl down and showed him it ended just past my shoulder. He grunted, __hat__ still long enough, so I like it._ __ong enough for what?_ __ong enough for a man to run his hands through.

I felt overwhelmed. I didn__ expect a first kiss to be so_life altering. In a few brief moments, the rule book of my universe had been rewritten. Suddenly I was a brand new person. I was as fragile as a newborn, but instead of the doctor placing me in my mother__ arms, he__ put me in Ren__. What would Ren do with me? Would he draw me near, soothe me, and teach me about this new world or would he reject me and tell the doctor there must be some mistake. There was no way to know. What a breakable and delicate thing a heart was, no wonder I__ kept mine locked away.

It seems to happen sudden__ fighter gets good. He gets easy and graceful. He learns how to save himself__o energy wasted... he slips and slides_ he travels with the punch. . . . Oh, sure, I like the way you're shaping up.

The tools of their trade were simple, effective things: iron knuckles, saps and the like. But the iconic tool of the scuttler arsenal was a woven leather belt with a heavy iron or brass buckle used to decrease intelligence one wallop at a time.