The smells of the forest greeted me as I flew from the house. Lightning flashed in the ominous clouds, the air crackling with energy. Cold rain pelted my face and streaked down my wings, but I kept rising, higher and higher through the clouds until I burst above.
The starry sky was soft as velvet and twinkling, the stars like diamonds catching the light of the full moon.
How fitting, that the night of my release would coincide with the fullness of the moon’s beauty.
I plummeted into a freefall, streaking through the clouds, through the rain, and over the vast expanse of ancient trees. When I first came to Abelaum, twenty years ago, I hadn’t spent much time exploring the town. Now, after two decades of growth and change, the place was nearly unrecognizable to me. But I didn’t need recognition to find my way around. Scent and instinct were more than enough to guide me.
Everly’s scent led me to a house at the edge of town; a sprawling, metal-and-glass monstrosity of modern engineering, sitting there like a heap of trash carelessly abandoned in the woodlands. Perched in the trees outside, I observed the dark house until sunrise. There were four humans inside, and one demon. But he was young, barely older than a youth. It was easy to hide my presence from him.
One of the humans — Everly’s father, I guessed — carried magical trinkets. A protective talisman and a book of spells, a grimoire. But he was not a witch; magic didn’t course through him, only the items he carried.
He was the one Everly’s grandmother had warned me about. Kent Hadleigh. Leader of the Libiri, a human who absolutely dripped with hubris. It’d be a joy to slaughter him.
But Kent’s fate was interwoven with countless others. Killing him would have a severe effect on the balance of the world, which wouldn’t please Hell’s council in the least. It would get their attention, and that was the last thing I wanted.
If they found me, they’d take me away from Everly. Lucifer would be petty and claim it was for my own good, but he’d been blind to reality for centuries. He believed that as long as the gods were out of Hell, demon kind was safe from them. But gods don’t simply cease Their endless hunt for power after one defeat; it isn’t in Their nature. They were just as much a threat on Earth as They were when They were in Hell.
Lucifer had been furious when I left Hell to hunt down the gods that fled. The war was won; why did I insist on continuing to fight? But in my mind, the battle was far from over. I spent centuries tracking the fallen gods to all reaches of the Earth so I could destroy them. Most of the gods I encountered were weak. They sequestered themselves in Earth’s forgotten places: underground, or deep in the ocean, or high in the tallest mountains. They were barely able to defend themselves when I eventually ended Their miserable existence.
But this God in Abelaum was different.
Fed by a steady stream of human worship and suffering, the God who hid deep within Abelaum’s old mines was powerful. Not powerful enough to emerge from hiding, at least not yet.
I couldn’t allow It to get to that point.
But I also couldn’t fight a creature like that alone. I needed the strength of another; I needed the kind of magic only a witch could wield.
The man I sought wasn’t within the house, so I took flight again. Soaring through the rain, I continuously sniffed the air, searching for the subtle foreign scent I’d noticed on Everly’s clothes.
Whoever had bled upon her wasn’t the one who’d harmed her; I found that boy in a nearby building, dead in a pool of his own blood. Had Everly killed him? She didn’t seem vicious enough, but I refused to underestimate her.
As the sun rose higher behind the clouds and the town awakened, I was accosted by a flood of sounds and smells. Humans were everywhere; filling the streets and shops, speeding down the winding roads in their automobiles. Stinking, laughing, sweating, yelling masses, rushing through their short lives, hurtling toward their inevitable deaths.
Where the fuck was Sam Hawthorne? My rage was knotted up like a swelling tumor. I needed a release, an outlet for my violence.
“Patience, old boy,” I muttered. Flaring my wings to slow my speed, I came to perch on the steepled roof of a clocktower and shrouded myself in shadow to keep hidden. Looking down upon Abelaum’s streets, I watched the humans scurry through the rain, hiding beneath their coats and splashing through puddles.
Then, the wind changed and I caught his scent. The man whose hands had left bruises on my witch’s flesh, who’d dared to touch her roughly, who’d dared to touch her at all.
He and his friends were drinking in the parking lot outside a nearby liquor store. Reeking of beer and cigarettes, blood and sweat. Soon, the group parted ways. Two of them returned to an automobile, but Sam departed on foot.
He stumbled down the sidewalk toward the lake. The rain was pouring heavily now, so most other humans had retreated indoors. Sam hummed to himself, singing some obscene song. Every vile word that dropped from his mouth fed directly into my predatory instinct. I could smell his blood, his sweat, the stench of his breath. When I unfurled my wings behind him, the breeze must have tipped him off because he paused.
He turned, but it was already too late to scream. My hand clamped over his mouth, muffling his scream as I pressed my claws into his eyes. I lifted him and flew toward the thick dark expanse of the trees.
He was still screaming when I dumped him to the ground, thrashing in the dirt.
“What the fuck!” he screamed, hands shaking as he reached for his bleeding face. “Fuck…fuck…What the fuck —”
“No one can hear you,” I said, and he froze at the sound of my voice, panting as he turned his head toward me despite being unable to see. “No one will ever hear you again, Sam.”
“What the fuck is this, man?” Snot ran down his face, and my lip curled in disgust. “What the hell do you want — Is it money? You want money?” He fumbled for his pocket, but I caught his hand, holding his wrist as he cried out and uselessly tried to tug it back.
“Do you know Everly?”
His fingers clenched and shook.
“Everly? Uh…yeah…yeah! Everly Hadleigh! We’re friends, we’re — I mean —”
I laughed as he tripped over his words. “Are you sure that’s the right answer, Sam? You and Everly are friends?”
Wheezing, panting, he frantically whimpered, “How do you know my name? How do you know Everly? Are you her boyfriend or something? Honest to God, man, I thought she wasn’t allowed to date. I never meant any of the jokes I made about fucking her, I swear!”
“Fucking her?” I crouched, still holding his wrist, bringing it into alignment with my mouth. “Have you thought about fucking her, Sam?”
“Come on, man…come on, it’s — it’s not serious, okay —”
He broke off into a ragged scream as I bit off his finger. I’d been undecided between starting with his thumb or his pinkie, but the thumb had such a satisfying crunch. I spat out his blood and the appendage with it, but the taste of it still lingered in my mouth. My excitement doubled as he struggled against me.
“Stop! Stop, please, I’ll do whatever you want — I’ll — please —”
“Aw, come now, Sammy, it’s just a finger,” I scolded. “It’s not even that bad. It’s nothing compared to the whole hand.”
I sunk my teeth into his wrist, savoring his screams as I bit through muscle and bone. His screaming was drawing the beasts of the forest; I could see their milky white eyes in the shadows, their sharp teeth clipping together with hunger. They didn’t come out during the day, but Sam’s screams of agony were too good to resist.
They didn’t dare approach any closer while I was here.
“Now, there’s a lesson in this,” I said calmly, smacking the palm of his severed hand against his cheek as he shook, still shrieking indiscriminately. “The lesson is that you don’t touch what’s not yours. Everly is mine. Mine.” I snapped my teeth near his face, eliciting a sob that made me absolutely giddy.
“Please let me go. Please, I’ll never go near her again, I swear.”
I got to my feet and tossed his hand away into the underbrush. Within seconds came snarling yips, the excited snapping of teeth as the beasts savored their little snack. Sam’s head bobbed about when he heard them, but his ruined eyes wouldn’t show him the horrors lurking nearby.
“You can go,” I said. “In fact, you should run. Run as fast as you possibly can.”
He shoved himself up and clutched his opposite arm. “I’m — I can’t see — how can I —”
I wished he could have seen me pout at him, but I’m sure he heard the vitriol in my voice. “Such a poor helpless thing. How will you ever find your way in the dark?” I chuckled as I circled him, watching his head jerk right and left as he attempted to follow my position. “But it doesn’t matter where you run. It only matters that you do. You won’t reach home, but you can at least give me a little entertainment.”
He ran, or tried to. He stumbled into the trees, gasping, screaming for help, arms outstretched. I thought it was rather nice of me to give him a whole thirty second head start, but I couldn’t let him get too far away from me. After all, I wasn’t the only creature in this forest who wanted to kill him.
But I was the one who did.
