"I want to be conscious just long enough for revenge." Alice said.

The thing considered the girl's request and then asked a question with no breath nor sound.

WHAT FOR?

Alice looked down at herself, stick-thin arms wrapped around an impossibly frail ribcage. It was hurting her just to have this conversation, the entity realised.

"Someone did... this to me." She said.

The entity had possessed enough humans over the centuries to know that whilst the ones it possessed were immune to illness due to their transformations, more mundane humans often get sick and die. However, usually the sickness came from an unknown source. That someone would inflict it on someone else was new and therefore interesting.

WE HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING. the entity said.

Gideon was at home alone the following night. His door was locked but Alice knew where the key was kept and so just walked right in.

"Hello." Alice said to the man who had tried to destroy her.

In her new, stronger form Alice was beautiful. When she'd been sick she'd looked barely twelve but the vigour that the pendant around her neck had provided had allowed her to grow into a body more fitting to a young woman than a child. Her hair was thick and lustrous and her build finally had muscle and fat to coat her bones.

As soon as Gideon recognised her, he was afraid.

"You did this to me." Alice said as she approached.

"I... didn't mean to..." Gideon stuttered as he tried to back away.

Alice moved up close with alarming speed and held his wrist fast.

"Even if I believe that you hadn't known that you would do this to me with any certainty, I know that you were aware that you could do this to me. For that you deserve no mercy."

Gideon tried to struggle out of her grip but this new version of Alice was too strong for his and only getting stronger. He struck her and felt bone in plates where the human skeleton should have no such thing. He saw her nails change not back into the papery things he used to know but into claws, strong and sharp. Gideon saw Alice transform before his eyes and knew that any chance to escape or fight back was futile.

Alice killed Gideon quickly and bloodily and then sat on the floor next to his remains and waited to relinquish control to the entity. Yet instead of fading away entirely in favour of the entity she realised that she was being allowed to share this body. So far the entity has only been given host bodies by the trickery or foolishness of humans and once the pendant had made them transform the humans had fought back with fury and resentment. They'd had to go.

Yet Alice had entered into this bargain willingly. She had seen the new form she'd been provided with as a gift rather than a curse. She knew she wasn't human now but she'd stopped thinking of herself as human a long time ago.

This was a soul worth sharing a body with. So the entity and the ex-human combined into one monster and with no reason to fight each other, stepped out into the night.

It would be a new life for both of them.