I was feeling seriously sick, and I didn't even have control of my own stomach to throw up with. I wasn't even sure there was anything to throw up. Harpy-me had completely devoured two of the three, and made a spirited attempt on the third, and there's no way it should have all fit. Just like our flight, it was obvious that it was cheating somehow. It had completely ignored all of my efforts to get it to stop, and I couldn't even close our eyes to stop looking. Forced to stare at and smell human carcasses, little more than bones, cartilage, viscera and torn clothing by the time it was done, as harpy-me happily stuck our face into them to pick off what flesh it could.

It made me feel a little better that even if I had decided to let those police shoot me, it would only have resulted in dead police, and harpy-me would have escaped anyway; by the time it took over, it had already been too late to stop it. I shouldn't have let it get close to those three in the first place, despite my desire to spy. I should have told it they were poisonous or something. Now we'd both had our first taste of human, and it was simultaneously the most vile, nauseating, hateful and most delicious experience I'd ever had. Human turned out to taste even better than squirrel. Better than anything I'd ever eaten as a human, either, and harpy-me found them just as tasty as I had. I doubt I'd have any chance of stopping it next time.

Meal over, harpy-me set off straight towards Kholakel, apparently attracted by the tall buildings and bright lights, which were visible even from this distance once we'd taken back to the air. I did my best to stop it, but once again was completely ignored. I'd made some inroads towards manipulating the monster that was piloting my body over the past few days, but I was under no delusions about which of us held the real power in our relationship. It could certainly hear my suggestions, but it was under no obligation to follow them.

It didn't seem to be in much hurry, casually flapping along and picking up the occasional snack. Also a cow. It wasn't even a small one and must have weighed close to a tonne. It saw a cow in a field, grabbed it, carried it a hundred metres straight up and let go. I could feel the amusement it felt when the cow went splash, but at least it did eat some of the resulting mess afterwards.

If I needed any more evidence that harpies had no respect for gravity, that was a pretty thorough demonstration. Same as its disrespect for geometry; just like the way it had already eaten two-and-a-half people, the volume of cow it ate was greater than that of our whole torso. I had no idea what a harpy's internal organ layout looked like, but I doubted the stomach extended into the limbs. Combined with the lack of excrement, there was obviously something unnatural happening there.

By the time we reached the city, a couple of days had passed. Harpy-me made a beeline for the tallest skyscraper in sight, which of course was right in the city centre, flying straight up and landing on the roof. It wasn't exactly being stealthy, and how we hadn't been spotted, I had no idea. Given our proximity to the misty woods, a known monster nesting location, I'd have expected them to have some sort of surveillance. Although given what they'd said about control chips, maybe they had made alternative arrangements...

Thankfully, we hadn't run across any more people on our way here, so I'd been spared a repeat of that particular horror. Trying to stop harpy-me from eating people was going to be rough from now on though, now that it knew how great they tasted and that we were in the middle of a city where people were pretty much all that was available... Maybe I could make sure it ate the right sort of people? Take a visit to my school and snack on the PE teacher? No, eating people is wrong, no matter how good they taste. Argg! 'Right,' I thought at harpy-me, deciding to leave the diet problem to future-me. 'You need a better name than harpy-me.'

Harpy-me ignored me, as it generally did when I dared to use such complex, incomprehensible things as words. 'I'm named after a flower, but a flower doesn't really fit a superpowered, bullet-proof monster. Maybe if we take the lion from dandelion, given a dandelion seed's habit of flying and a lion's habit of being a big-arse predator? That would fit you a bit better. What's the female version of Leo? Leona, I think. Plus, that means we share the same first letter. Right, from now on, you're called Leona.'

The freshly christened Leona continued to ignore me, peering intently at the ground. Drat, apparently I was already future-me; Leona was staring straight at a young couple, walking hand in hand down a street. I could feel our mouth salivating and knew I had only seconds before she pounced.

I scanned the corners of Leona's vision, wishing she would at least let me lend our eyes, looking for some alternative. The city centre was not known for its extensive wildlife population, but with the crime rate of this city, no doubt there would be a mugging going on somewhere. I just needed to find it, and we could snack on evil criminal instead of loving couple.

It wasn't until Leona had dived off the roof that I finally found one. I desperately pushed the image of us eating my chosen targets at Leona, giving a metaphorical sigh of relief as she turned. Thankfully, she seemed to be slowly getting more receptive to my advice, or perhaps it was because I'd only asked her to switch target, rather than abstain completely.

A group of three masked individuals were in a street, waving knives at another couple, one of whom was in tears and the other of which was rooting thought a backpack, presumably looking for money. None of the group even noticed as we gripped the head of the first mugger and gave it a little squeeze. They did notice the thud as the resulting corpse fell to the floor, but by that point we'd already taken back off.

"What?" asked one, his voice shaking. "Boss?" he queried, turning back to the space where his apparent boss had been two seconds prior. It now contained a whole lot of nothing. "Boss?!"

We hovered in mid-air, Leona nibbling on a juicy chunk of arm, the disarmed and mildly dead boss of this group of muggers held securely in one talon. I wasn't sure of the professionalism of eating on the job like that, but she seemed to have everything in hand. In talon. Whatever. I was too preoccupied trying to ignore the chunk of flesh in my mouth to complain, although at least this time I wasn't feeling so violently sick about it.

The final mugger was looking around wildly, while their victims had seized up, even the crying having stopped. Oddly, none of them bothered looking up. It wasn't until the last mugger tried to run that Leona made her next move, lightly piercing his throat with a claw, then grabbing him by the shoulder, wheezing and bubbling, but for now still alive. Three people all at once was too much even for our extensible stomach, so maybe she wanted to keep him fresh for later.

She turned and looked the pair of victims in the eye, both of them utterly frozen with fear. Then she leapt over them, grabbed the last of the would-be muggers that had been abandoned on the ground, somehow holding both corpses with a single foot, and took off back towards what was apparently our new home. I'll admit it was a bit more spacious than our old one, and comfortingly less metallic, but it was rather lacking in facilities and heating. Also cold storage; she impaled the still living mugger on a lightning conductor, then sat down to eat the two corpses, ignoring the way the third one was never going to survive the night.

Just how far gone am I that I'm thinking how best to refrigerate human corpses for later consumption? It was obvious from the moment we'd killed those three kidnappers, and I'd just chosen to ignore it. Now that we'd made it to the city, feigning ignorance was getting harder. The fact was that even this 'me' that was supposedly still capable of rational thought was being influenced by my harpy side.

Although I'd been nauseated by what happened afterwards, I'd been happy to let Leona slaughter those kidnappers. I'd justified it well, but the simple truth was that the old Lily wouldn't have killed people for revenge like that. I was angry at what they'd done to me and my friends, but there was a sizeable police contingent a short distance away. I hadn't even considered trying to lead the two groups to each other, or something else non-violent.

And now I'd let her kill again, and this time it wasn't for personal revenge, but simply for a meal. What I'd considered a traumatising horror only two days ago now just seemed like an unfortunate necessity, with no more effect on me than making me feel a bit sick. The old Lily might have eaten someone, maybe, if her life depended on it and there was no other way, but she'd have felt terrible about it and probably had nightmares for months. She wouldn't have commented on the taste, or complained that impaling someone on a spike wasn't correct storage.

That... should have disturbed me more than it did. After eating my first raw rabbit, something I'd have been perfectly happy to do had it been cooked first, I'd ended up crying all night. Watching my disobedient body eating humans for the second time, I found myself ambivalent. It wasn't that I was happy about it, but that I could claim that they deserved it, that it wasn't me that did it, or that I couldn't do anything to prevent it. Justification was just so easy.

What was the point of me trying so hard? It had become easier now, but back when Leona had first taken over, trying to maintain my sense of self had been like trying to stand upright in a hurricane. I was trying so desperately to cling on, yet even now it seemed that my humanity was still being eroded. Would no amount of effort be enough to sustain myself? Was I even still Lily at all by this point?

As Leona was happily chewing away on nameless mugger number one and I was busy pondering how much of myself I'd lost over the past couple of days, I spotted a large bundle of paper sticking out of his jacket. A newspaper? With a bit of shoving of pictures of Leona grabbing the paper, and another attempt at teaching her the value of information, I convinced her to pull out the paper for me to read.

It was a bit blood-stained, but not to the point of unreadability. The headline read, 'Police captain kidnaps, rapes, slaughters children.' Beneath was a large picture of one of the guys who'd come to rescue us, along with smaller pictures of fifty much younger faces, most looking in the second half of their teens. It didn't take me long to spot my own.