Silence greets me.
“Why would you do that?” he questions after a pregnant pause, taking a threatening step towards me.
For one single second, I lapse into a moment of insanity and almost take a step back. His image flickers, and for a split second, I see Daddy looming before me. I focus on the man and steel my spine, forcing myself to hold my place.
This monster will not intimidate me in my own home. Especially when I’m not the one that should be scared.
“Because I’ve cast my judgement,” I say, my own smile ticking up the corners of my mouth. “And you’ve failed. You’re an evil man, and you were here to hurt two women.”
“Two?” he queries, feigning stupidity.
“Yes,” I growl. “You deserve to die for what you had planned.”
“And what did I have planned?” He takes another step towards me. White hot rage prickles at my flesh. I do him the same honor and take one towards him.
He pauses, just for half a second, before he recovers and smiles. It was enough. He was surprised.
I giggle, an evil smile ticking at the corner of my lips. “Don’t play stupid, demon. You were going to kidnap them. Probably rape and torture them. You would’ve let your goons do the same. And then either kill them or sell them off to someone.”
He doesn’t speak. He just stares at me, his chest rising and falling in a steady, calm rhythm.
“Is that what you think?” he challenges, his voice deeper and huskier. He’s angry.
“That’s what I know,” I sass.
“Then it seems we’re done here,” he concludes before briskly walking towards me. I’m not sure if his intentions are to leave or to hurt me, but I don’t wait to find out. I charge at him, swiping my blade across his face.
But I miss. He bends backwards, the tip of my blade several inches from his face. It happens in almost slow motion—when he bends backwards and I catch the first glimpse of his face. I gasp, surprised by the sight.
And then time speeds. Like a viper, his hand snaps out and catches my wrist. I kick my leg out, my foot kicking in his kneecap. He stumbles, his hand dropping my wrist in surprise.
I bring my knife down in an arc, but he swivels out of the way.
“Feisty bitch,” he mutters, an almost amused pitch to his tone.
Growling, I continue to swipe my knife at him, backing him further into the room. I need to hurry and knock him out before someone stumbles in. My men will keep guests away as much as they can, but that doesn’t mean other staff members won’t take notice to discord in the system.
The man dodges each strike, seamlessly and swiftly. It looks as if he’s dancing and the fact that I don’t look as graceful as he does angers me further. He looks like something out of a film, the way his body curves around my knife, the strobe lights making him look like he’s skipping through time and space. It’s clear this isn’t the first time this man has been in a knife fight.
Of course it isn’t. He’s a fucking kidnapper! An evil, twisted demon who steals the innocent and auctions them off just to get money in their pockets. All for money and power.
It sickens me.
He has to die. And he’ll look so cute strung up by his entrails tonight, with his blood painting my body in red. I’ll dance on his shredded body, and let my henchmen play with me, too.
Growing frustrated, I grip my pretty knife and launch it at him. I didn’t expect it to strike true, but to cause enough distraction to wrestle him down.
He’s much bigger and stronger, but that can be limiting. I’m smaller and can slip out of positions easier than he can.
Problem is, he doesn’t fall for my trick. The prick leans to the side, the knife whistling past his head and lodging into the wall. A normal person would look back at the knife, surprised by the move. But not him. He just continues to glare at me beneath his hood.
The hood has fallen back far enough in our fight that I can now see the entirety of his face. Electrifying mismatched eyes stare back at me, rimmed by long, thick lashes. One eye so dark, it looks black. And the other an ice blue so light, it looks white. Yin and yang.
A thin, white raised scar cuts down through his left eye, giving his face a brutally masculine look.
That face is mesmerizing. It’s dangerous.
“I’ve been trying not to hurt you,” he growls, low in his chest. The sound of imminent danger in his tone forms a pit in my stomach. I never fear the demons, but this one has my heart racing and palms slick with sweat.
Which is exactly why he needs to die.
“Pity. I’ve been trying to do the exact opposite,” I snap.
A small smile graces his lips. In another life, he’d fit right in with my henchmen. He’s beautiful and terrifying all in the same breath, inhaling terror and exhaling a haunting beauty. It hurts to look at him. His face is scarred, his eyes are unsettling. A hard life lingers on the edges of his mouth. His beauty can only be seen on the face of the Devil. Tempting, but would eviscerate you in a matter of seconds.
“Your soul is made of brimstone and fire,” I whisper, stepping closer to him. “Come to me, little demon. I’ll show you what the devil really looks like.”
His smile widens and he meets me halfway, blocking every one of my strikes with ease, but not managing to make any hits of his own, either. We’re nearly evenly matched.
I’ve been fighting my entire life. Fighting Daddy and his punishments. Fighting to get out of a dangerous cult, just to fight the demons that riddle this Earth with filth. I’m no stranger to using my hands to defend myself no less than I use them to kill.
I manage to land a fist across his cheek. He doesn’t flinch from the impact but absorbs it like the towels Timothy uses to clean up demon blood.
He looks at me, his eye twitching with anger. He pauses, and despite my brain screaming at my body to keep fighting, my limbs freeze as well. And just like before, his hand whips out, striking like a viper and crunching straight into my nose.
My head snaps back as sharp pain explodes across my face. Stars dot my vision, and the force of his punch sends me stumbling backwards. My slippers lose their traction, and I’m falling backwards.
Blood spurts from my nose and I let loose a frustrated squeal.
The fucking audacity! The nerve of this lowly parasite!
I glare at him and bare my bloody teeth.
“I will fucking kill you,” I threaten. I spit out a mouthful, not enjoying the taste of my own blood any more than the blood of monsters.
“Yeah, you said that,” he mutters, before storming past me, whipping open the door and storming into the hallway.
I scramble upwards, expecting to see Jackal hauling him back into the room. But that doesn’t happen. I hear a grunt, and by the time I’m skidding out into the dark hallway, Jackal is flat on his back.
“Jackal!” I screech, stomping my foot. Squeals of laughter filters through, and I slinker back into the room before someone catches me. I breathe in deep—through my mouth—and breathe out. My nose is throbbing and clogged with blood. Blood that is still painting my face and dress in rivulets of crimson. No one would look twice at me in a setting like this, but I don’t want my face to be seen.
Gently, I prod my nose, finding that it’s completely broken.
No matter. Daddy has broken my nose a few dozen times.
“You act like a demon, I’ll make you look like one, too, Sibel.”
I take a deep breath, position my hands and snap the bone back into place. I squeeze my eyes shut tightly, willing the tears to go back down. It doesn’t matter that I’ve felt that pain before, it still really fucking hurts.
I stomp my foot again, this time to release some of the pent-up anger swirling like a Cat 5 hurricane in my chest cavity. Filling it as steadily as the blood filled my dress.
I’m going to slice this revolting parasite open, piece by piece until he’s chopped into a million different pieces.
Crawling back into the wall, I storm through the hallways, checking the rooms to see where my prey has run off to. I stop short when I see the man in the same room as the four older men and the wife.
A smile grows on my face, and excitement drums in my pulse, quickly replacing the anger. I squeal, not caring if they hear me, and run towards the door. I hear the man I had just attacked groan in what sounds like frustration. He must’ve heard my delight and sensed me coming.
Just as I thought, when I quickly crawl into the room, the man is already staring at me. Frustration and anger are evident on his scarred face.
“For the love of God, please leave me alone,” he says.
“God has nothing to do with this, silly,” I chirp, giggling at his evident anger at seeing me again. What did he think I’d do, just let him go? How cute.
The four older men all turn towards me, shock splayed across their faces. One of them remembers himself and smooths his face into what should look welcoming. He has white hair like the rest of them but wields sharp baby blue eyes. If I dissected those eyes, I’m sure I’d find that they have seen all kinds of sick and depraved things. Things done by his own two hands, sporting an evil smile on his wrinkled face.
He lifts his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey there, we’re incredibly sorry to linger. We were just talking. We’ll get out of your way so the other guests can come through.”
“I’d rather you stay,” I answer. My eyes clash with the wife’s, her green eyes round with fear. I try to convey that everything is going to be okay in a single look, but I think she’s too far in the depts of hysteria. I’m a bloody mess, and I don’t know what the scarred man was saying to these men, but it has the woman shaken.
It’s physically impossible for me to take on all of these men at once. Especially if the scarred man is here, too. I barely held my own against him, and in the end, he got away.
I’ll definitely have to bring in reinforcements. I just don’t know how to do this without attracting unwanted attention.
Huffing, the scarred man charges towards me. I raise my hands in a defensive move, but he smacks them away, wraps his calloused hand around my throat and slams me into the wall. Before I can lodge my knee deeply into his balls, he leans down and speaks lowly in my ear.
“Listen to me and listen to me carefully. We have a common enemy here. Those four men are extremely dangerous and sick men. You’re vastly outnumbered, and while I can take on four decrepit men, you would make my life easier if you’d help. So, let’s set our differences aside for the time being, kill these assholes together, and then you can try and fail to murder me after? Deal?”
My mouth slackens, shocked by his proposition.
Never, never, did I think this would happen.
A throat clears from in front of me. I peek over the man’s shoulder to see the four men starting to drift towards the door. The husband has his wife’s bicep firmly clasped in his arm and is starting to drag her towards the door.
Just like Daddy.
Making a split decision, I grit out, “Fine. We’ll knock them out. I can get them inside the walls and keep them there until the fair shuts down. But I promise you this, I will not fail when we’ve finished. And I will kill you.”
He doesn’t acknowledge me. Instead, he steps away and charges towards the first man within reach. They scatter like cockroaches, all skittering towards the two doors.
If I had my henchmen with me, this would be over far quicker. But a large part of me is very curious about the scarred man that broke my nose, and so I keep my henchmen away for now.
I run after the man closest to me. He doesn’t even see me coming, too intent on getting away. I grab his jacket and press my fingers into his pressure point.
He drops, and I move on to the husband.
“Not so fast, asshole,” I snap, grabbing him by the back of his suit jacket. His wife screams, startled as her husband is jerked away from her. He grips her arm harder as I haul him backwards, causing her to stumble and fall on her knees.
I gasp, appalled by what he just did.
“That was not nice!” I bellow, slapping the man across the face. The husband fights me, but my finger is pressing into his pressure point and he’s dropping like a sack of potatoes within seconds.
When he drops, the wife’s screams die, but the fear has her scrambling away.
“Hey!” I shout, right before her hand clasps the doorknob. She pauses, and looks over her shoulder at me. She’s trembling, and I’m concerned she’ll go into shock soon.
“You won’t have to worry about him anymore, okay?” I say, pointing towards her unconscious husband. Her eyes follow my finger. She looks at her husband with a mixture of fear and relief. A battle wages in her eyes. To save him or leave him. But we both know what she’ll decide. If she leaves, she’s free. Free. I’ll never forget my first taste of it, and I’m very sad I won’t get to witness hers.
“What are you going to do?” she asks finally, her voice trembling.
“Don’t you worry about that. Just rest assured, you will never see him again. And you can live in peace now. But if you tell anyone about this and what happened, I’m afraid I will have to fix that. Don’t make me regret letting you go.”
I don’t kill innocent people. But in this case, letting her go is a gamble.
Her green eyes hold mine for all of two seconds before she’s muttering out a, “I promise,” and scrambling out of the door before I can change my mind.
“You do realize that was stupid, right?” a deep voice says from behind me. I nearly jump, twirling to see the scarred man standing before the four unconscious men.
“Would you have killed her?” I challenge.
He doesn’t hesitate. “No. But I certainly wouldn’t have let her run free, either.”
Before I can ask what the hell that even means, he’s leaning down and picking up one of the men by the collar of his shirt and dragging him towards my crawlspace door.
“Let’s hurry up, please,” he grits through clenched teeth.
I let it go for now, and hurry through the door and drag the man in. One by one, he drags the men over, and I slide them into the hallway.
“I got it from here. The fair closes at eleven o’clock. It’ll take the staff about forty-five minutes to clear out so meet me back here at midnight,” I instruct. Just before I close the door, I remember myself and open it back up. He’s halfway through the exit door when I stop him.
“Hey!” He turns to me. “What’s your name?” I ask.
He considers me for a moment, but ultimately shakes his head, and says, “Zade.”
“You’re not going to hurt those girls, are you, Zade?”
When he just stares, I clarify. “The girl with light brown hair, and the pretty black girl. You’ll leave them alone, right? Because if you don’t, our deal is off and I’m killing you first.”
A small smirk tugs on his lips. He really is an incredible-looking man.
“They’ll be in good hands. Scouts honor,” he says, saluting me with a smartass look on his face. I scowl, not knowing what the means but sure of the fact that he’s mocking me.
Thinning my eyes, I suss him out. Daddy used to tell family members of his follows the same thing. And he was always lying when he said it.
“Don’t worry, your mother is in very good hands. Here, she will be able to follow the path the Lord has set for her.”
So, that can mean a lot of different things, and some of those things could very well be evil intentions. He doesn’t give me time to come to a conclusion. He turns and shuts the door behind him.
What a strange, strange man.
Deciding that I can’t save them all, despite those two women’s otherworldly scents, I focus on the matter at hand. I have four, saggy men unconscious in my hallway. I don’t know how exactly the scarred man knocked the other two out, but I know my two aren’t going to be out for too much longer. I could paralyze them with pressure points, but I usually don’t prefer that method.
Takes the fun out of it for me. And I really like having fun.
I hurry through the hallways and locate Cronus and Baine. With quick urgency, I get them to help me drag the men by the stairs and tie them up. Problem is, I only have one chair here.
I’ve never had more than one demon at a time. So, I’m left with the only option. I locate their pressure point near the spinal cord and press hard until there’s no chance of them getting up anytime soon. There’s no way to know for sure if it’s permanent, but no matter. I’ll have Mortis keep watch over them and make sure they don’t escape.
Learning pressure points is the only thing I can thank Daddy for. He had a weird fascination with being able to debilitate or even kill someone with a single jab of his finger. All that power to ruin or end someone’s life in one small movement.
I begged him to teach me, and despite the fact that I loathed Daddy, I spent hours with him for over a year until I learned every single point in a human’s body.
I’m unstoppable. And when the scarred man and I are done killing off the demon’s, I will turn to him and serve him the same fate.
I’ve already cast my judgement. And once I’ve made my decision, no one can stop me from carrying out my duty.
