In a few hours, Evil would have to kill an entire building of people.
The sun was setting over the market, casting a transcendental glow over the hideous shouting. Merchants spewed dirt left and right, fighting like a bunch of Neanderthals. Never did the quiet reach such a place, and all the shouting intensified Evil’s migraine.
Children screamed, adults screamed at the children; the metallic sound of knives sharpening stood for an ominous predicament, the fate of those caged animals who had already given up making much noise, except for the occasional clucking of the chickens. A rugged-looking teen, with filthy clothes and soiled hair, ran around barefoot, sneaking goods from the stalls and earning growls from the vendors.
A beefy man, well over six feet, who seemingly had had enough of losing profit thanks to him, unseathed his machete and ran after him with the intensity of a cop chase. Some pedestrians watched curiously, cheering for the Robin Hood copycat, while others cursed at having to dodge them.
Evil’s headache wasn’t going away soon.
She cracked her fingers. Evil couldn’t be in a worse mood, but perhaps it would come to her advantage. After all, her job was to wipe out all those present.
Lucian briefly instructed her before she left, supplying just enough context so that her curiosity would be cured. Those present in that establishment before her had been associates of Lucian’s a while ago. That is, before they betrayed him. The heads of the operation, low-level demons, stole the receipts for a new drug. The said drug was quite innovative, its main substance being the extract of a mentre caputus .
Also known as captured mind, the little but deadly plant was found in the depths of Ferox. A long and sacrificial journey had to be completed to even get your hands on a few of those frail things with bright blue petals. Few could make the journey and return alive, but it was undeniable that once made into a drug, anyone could become a billionaire.
The flower had extremely addictive properties, but instead of making you dizzy, it crawled into your brain and took root, spreading inside with every dose. It had access to your feelings and memories, triggering the most vivid and serotonin-inducing memories in such a way that any person would pay a fortune to get their hands on more. Instead of living in this miserable reality, with just one dose, the flower would lull you to your demise. It would keep you occupied, feeding you spoonfuls of sugar, all the while it consumed your brain like a parasite.
Not every death was the same. Some died of heat attack, some died of organ failure, and others were driven to insanity and killed themselves. Perfect way not to arouse any suspicion.
The horizon, a saturated orange, was soaking into the fading blue of the sky. The sun was setting, descending like a deity retiring after a labor day, blessing the ignorant demons and mortals who saw a mere ball of fire. The fine smoke of Evil's cigarette rose laboriously into the sky, making circles, performing tricks- so fiercely, so ambitiously, that it almost wanted to reach the same level as the deity. Too bad it dissipated before it got even halfway there.
She exhaled the rest of the smoke slowly, chasing it down with a mouthful of bitter coffee to moisten her throat.
Her train of thought was cut by a person sitting across from her.
Her gaze met another pair of eyes with radiant crimson irises matching her bright red hair that stood out like a beacon in the night. The brunette roots were showing, though, betraying the artificial nature of it. From under her hair, two moving masses peeked out- ears. Long ears, pierced and ornamented with jewelry.
“You’re late, Naiten,” she reproached, raising her eyebrow sarcastically. “You’re cheating on me, aren’t you? Hell of a best friend.”
“I had business to attend to,” Naiten replied in her usual dull tone, taking a sip of the drink that had long gone cold.
“You and your shady line of work.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Evil shrugged, eyeing the last drops from her own cup. The owner came up to their table and, as he refilled her drink, slid an envelope towards her.
“Mister Valmort stopped by earlier. Left this.”
“Thanks, Onyx.”
The pristine black envelope, sealed shut with wax, betrayed nothing of its contents. Evil’s fingers toyed with it, spinning it left and right.
“Aren’t you opening it?” Nainten asked.
“I am,” she said and, with a dramatic groan, ripped the seal unceremoniously. Her eyes glossed over the handwritten note, already vaguely aware of its contents. A few pictures were graciously slid on top of the table.
Naiten eyed them from afar, scanning them with boredom. “If Valmort loves you so much, why doesn’t he hand you these personally?”
Evil huffed a laugh. “ Love a bit of an overstatement.”
In truth, Evil doubted that Lucian loved anyone at all. Perhaps only Fey, and even with her, he displayed a sort of unconventional parental affection. Never said I love you , never hugged her, barely praised her. Expensive gifts could fill the void of an absent parent, in his mind.
“Aren’t you his favourite?”
“Sure, maybe,” Evil shrugged again, analyzing the blurry pictures of faces she hadn’t seen before.
“And he still makes you do the dirty work,” Naiten observed, pointing at the patches of dry blood on Evil’s forearm.
“A girl’s gotta eat,” she said as she started aggressively rubbing at her skin with a scrunched napkin.
Evil had more than enough money to get by without taking all these extra missions from Lucian. Naiten was right. But Naiten couldn’t grasp the debt Evil felt she owed him. When she met him ten years ago, it felt like the universe finally offered her a helping hand. Lucian had saved her life, had taught her everything she knew. Ever since then, Evil had felt like she owed Lucian her life. For curing her and for offering her shelter after…
Evil bit her lip and shook her head.
The least she could do is work for him in return. Both parties win.
The ongoing war is tipping in their favour. Demons are winning. Lucian is on the winning side, gaining political power within the council day by day.
Evil shoved the papers back into the now crumpled envelope.
“He wants some angels.”
Nainten didn’t respond, so Evil kept explaining only to fill the silence. “Runaways, traitors of some kind. Lied that they wanted to join us only to gain information.”
“And Valmort wants you to kill them?”
“Precisely.”
“Does he pay double?”
“I separate my duty as a soldier from my job. Besides,” she crushed the cigarette bud into the ashtray, exhaling the last bit of smoke, “angels I kill for pleasure.”
Naiten had left and made way for Evil’s boredom to surface. She left the Ferox, making her way to the human world.
Like an apex predator, her dark eyes followed every person who passed in front of her; children of all ages, teenagers in large and small groups, carrying backpacks that would give them minor cases of scoliosis, parents, lonely men with their heads lowered, or women with wrinkles decorating the corners of their eyes, closed in laughter. Unconsciously, all she could think about was the level of difficulty in taking each one down. In any case, the level was quite low, knowing these were helpless mortals. Of all of them, maybe a muscular man would show some struggle- yet nothing Evil couldn’t solve at a glance. Even without her powers, she could take down a man twice her size.
These thoughts were automatic. As any individual would think about their job even on their day off, Evil did the same. She couldn’t help it. She was a soldier, an assassin at the end of the day. Trained to kill. Lived to kill.
Evil might have defended herself by saying she had morals, by saying she was a good person, but it couldn't be further from the truth. She was rotten to the core. There was nothing good, nothing human left in her. As a demon, that was her fate. To bring tragedy and pain, to kill, to humiliate, to maim, to burn the fields so that nothing grows.
So, in a sense, she did not differ from a monster.
She long since accepted her fate. Nothing could be done about the natural order of things. Fighting it is futile; it only brings more pain. Every time Evil tried, it ricocheted twice as hard. It not only stabbed her, but carved this message into her flesh- there's no way out .
You can’t outrun your destiny.
Before she knew it, she arrived at her destination. The building didn’t stand out. Four stories of abandoned apartments, save for the few used as conference rooms. She pulled out a map of the structure, roughly sketched out by Lucian. Each storey housed a dozen rooms, around the same size. The important ones were marked with red pen, sticking out like the red dot from a reflector sight.
Evil had been through so much fighting and massacre in her life that any mental block dissolved. She rolled up her sleeves and, with a crack of her neck, entered.
What followed was a series of angry screams that turned into a series of terrified howls. Evil didn't bother to look at their faces or listen to their pleas for mercy. With a single movement of her hand, she could make their arteries burst or cut the air from their lungs. Her knife cut many throats that night, spraying red all over her face and clothes.
With a blank face, Evil went through the movements as if she were shooting at paper targets and not moving figures, who tried to run and hit her back. A larger man, thinking he would catch her off guard and overpower her, punched her while her gaze was focused on another target, trying to make her lose consciousness.
He had a heavy hand; he moved Evil's face to the opposite side with little effort. A sly smile colored his face. A disgusting, happy childlike smile was plastered on the face of a sleazy man in his 50s. Within his excitement, the confidence in him grew so much that he raised his hand again, preparing to punch Evil once more. His hand froze in the air, fingers twitching, the moment he made eye contact with Evil’s black-filled eyes, which looked bigger and all the more sunken on her pale, bloodstained face, out of which not even a drop belonged to her.
The corner of her mouth twitched. Black veins spread out from under her eyes all the way down to her cheeks. With a swift movement, he cut off the hand of the ox who forgot that you couldn’t stand still in front of a demon who had an obligation to kill you. When he realized the origin of the blood that had spurted on his face, the arrogant man from before turned into a child who screamed and cried as hard as he could. Evil’s ears hurt. She slashed his neck and moved on to the next.
The whole ordeal lasted only half an hour. When she reached the head of the operation, he, too, held on to her pants with his head on the ground, begging for a little mercy. He didn't know that such a thing had long been a thing of the past.
“I beg you, I'll burn all the copies! I'll abandon the whole operation! I'll disappear from the face of the Earth!”
“I'll take care of all this. Evil grabbed his neck, veins purturuding on the back of her hand from the effort. She snapped his neck with a quick movement.
She let his body fall to the stained floor. Evil wiped her face with the sleeve of her leather jacket, which did nothing more than spread the gore across her face. Each breath burned her struggling lungs, which were trying their hardest to regulate her breathing. In the eerie silence, she pulled up a chair and sat down on the hard, uncomfortable surface.
With a boot, she turned the dead man on the floor so that he faced the ceiling. Evil sat for a few minutes, watching as any trace of life rapidly drained from the corpse's complexion, with only her breathing playing in the background like a sinister symphony.
His costume was stained with gold- a dash smeared right above his cuff, barely visible. Evil frowned, grabbing his arm with newfound concern.
They say angels cry tears of gold when they mourn.
Cold metal was pressed against Evil’s throat. She swallowed, feeling its icy weight move threateningly over her windpipe. The hand holding the dagger shook with a desperation of somebody with little left to lose.
“Which one are you?” Evil asked calmly, staying as still as a statue. With eyes rolled back as far as she could, she could discern a few locks of ginger hair falling on top of her shoulder. The golden skin of the stranger peeked through the slashed white garment.
“None of your business!” He spat at her.
Feisty.
“Since you’re threatening to cut my throat, I’d say we’re close enough to get acquainted.”
The blade dug deeper, carving a small cut into Evil’s skin.
“You’re The Reaper.”
“Infamously, yes. And you’re one of the runaway angels.”
The following silence was answer enough. His anguish filled the room with palpable tension. Heat radiated from his skin, and his constant readjustments of the blade betrayed the sweatiness of his palms.
“Since you’re acquainted with me, you’re aware a dagger won’t be enough to kill me.”
Silence.
“So what do you want?” Evil persisted. He must’ve wanted something, otherwise he could have killed her on the spot. He took her by surprise; that was true enough. She let her guard down, and he was one hell of a sneaky walker.
“You… you killed my brother.”
“Did I?” Evil asked calmly. “I don’t remember.”
That was the wrong response. He pushed down harder with his shaking hands, and Evil’s neck stung in warning. A warm drop of blood slid down her chest.
Evil wrecked her mind trying to remember, sorting through the tens, perhaps thousands of angels she had killed during the last decade. The ginger lock tickling her cheek dug out a vague memory of a teenage angel- no older than fourteen, probably.
The kid was brought along by a formation of angel soldiers trying to clean up the mess these fugitives had made. Evil had an order to kill every one of them. She did as she was told.
She remembered him calling a name.
“Melek. That’s you, right?
He took in a shaky breath, loosening his grip on the dagger. Evil thought to turn around and snatch it, but something in her told her to stay put and see where this pathetic try at revenge would go.
“He called for you,” Evil told him, adding salt to the wound. She thought about his weak figure and how little fight he had in him. Taking him out only took a few seconds.
She had the mind not to reveal those details.
“He had some fight in him, that kid,” she added instead. “Nothing personal. War is war.”
“War is war?” Melek spat through his clenched teeth. “He was just a child!”
“You killed our children, too. Don’t act so holy now.”
“Who are you putting this show on for? Hm? No higher-ups to be seen, no mortals to kiss your feet and sing hymns. Are you so brainwashed to believe this righteous facade even when nobody’s looking? Or…” Evil finally pushed away his dagger, turning in a blink to face him with her void eyes. “Are you scared your Goddess is watching?”
Evil tackled him. He struggled like a dying fish, and Evil couldn’t help but giggle at the funny image. His cheeks were tainted with gold.
“Take Caeles’ name out of your dirty mouth!
A maniacal laugh escaped Evil’s throat, rugged and ugly and thoroughly deranged. Melek’s features contorted in disgust, yet his limbs froze under Evil’s weight.
“You silly things never stop fantasizing she’ll come save you, do you? She's dead.”
“You don’t know anything!”
“Have you personally talked to her? Is that why you’re so sure?”
Malevolence oozed from every one of his pores. His lips curled into a snarling frown.
“She’s alive. Both of them are.”
Something in his tone made Evil stop in her tracks. Her insides suddenly went cold, as if some undertone in his statement -more so than the statement itself- creeped inside her bones.
“You’re talking nonsense.” Evil’s tone cooled down as well, that maniacal hint dissipating in a split second. She picked up her own dagger and placed it on Melek’s throat, mirroring his earlier moves.
Her power kept him unmoved. All he could do was glare with all the rage he could muster as a final act of hatred.
She wiped the golden tears off his cheeks with her free hand.
“About to die, and you’re still crying for somebody else.”
“You wouldn’t know what losing a sibling is like.”
“I guess not.”
With a flick of the wrist, the room was silent once more.