The Demon Huntress

“I think I prefer the old movies,” Stella’s bodyguard tells her on his second day. His obsidian horns catch the dying light of the sun on the way back from school. “You know. Humans and demons at war. In conflict. And then, of course, the romance, it’s all for the romance—" 

“You were just hired to protect me,” she says. He doesn’t see the way her nails are cutting into her palms, the way she’s forcing her breath and heart to remain even, the way her power thrashes in her chest. “Don’t pretend there’s anything more to this than that.”

He stops in his speech, smile falling from his face. It was fake anyway, just another persona he’d thought he’d try out to do his job more effectively.

This suits him fine, all told. 

“Of course, ma’am.” He adjusts the gold watch on his wrist, feeling completely at ease in the three piece suit his employers have him wear.

She lets her heart shut back down and goes back to staring out the window.

*******************************************

The mask is an age old thing, something that they put on her as a child. It’s a bit like a muzzle, she thinks, curling under her chin and cupping up and over her mouth and the tip of her nose. There’s enough space to breathe, but not too hard, and it makes her feel like she’s drowning if she does more than sit or stroll.

She, like most things in her life, hates it.

Nothing shows on her face. She thinks that’s why her bodyguards and maids and watchers call her empty. She remembers the first time she heard the word, six years old and struggling to breathe around leather and oil.

Her parents had thrown her a birthday party, glittering and golden with balloons and sweets and lights. Children her age from school, from good, respectable families, had been there, laughing and begging her to play with them. She’d heard their parents entreating them to make the effort since her parents were oh so very powerful.

“Here you are,” her parents had said, smiles shining like the room. She thinks they’d actually been the empty ones all along. They were just wise enough to hide it. They’d given her a puppy that day. When, a week later, they took it back, they told everyone it ran away.

She hadn’t cried. She knew what had happened to the puppy. It had never really been a gift in the first place, just a gesture to show everyone what sore of people her family pretended to be.

They called her empty after that.

 ******************************************* 

She goes to school and, as a consequence, her bodyguard goes to school too. He looks the same age as her, masquerading as a childhood friend, and they call him “Chad.” She doesn’t know if that’s his real name but wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t. Not very much around her is real.

She’s left alone mostly, students that might have talked to her put off by her never changing expression and the mask. The rest know her family’s name, know their duty, and know better than to get involved with the likes of demon hunters.

That’s what’s so funny, actually. They don’t want to get along with demon hunters, but demons are their idols, their bosses, their heroes.

Take Chad, for example. He’s a demon who, for his own reasons, is working for her family. 

The students flock to him and his red eyes, sharp teeth and seductive laugh. His hand is like a hot brand on the small of her back, on the nape of her neck, as he laughs and escorts her from class to class to class.

This, too, she hates. It’s another thing she won’t ever look at directly, this feeling in her chest, another thing that’s never hers to have.

She keeps her face empty, her brow unfurrowed and her eyes passive. She wears her long, raven hair in a french braid and wears clothing that’s easy to move in.

They call her cold. Empty. A robot.

She thinks she has to be.

 ******************************************* 

A limo comes to pick them up every day. It always takes a minute or two for her bodyguard to say goodbye to all his friends and classmates. She’s been warned by him not to wander if he can’t get away, to stay close enough that he can reach her, so she hovers behind them, a dark, sharp entity with such a cold aura that they shrink away from her.

“Don’t you wish you had friends?” he asks her in the car.

Like I want to live, she thinks and answers honestly. “No.”

She doesn’t believe in friends without strings. She’s been taught not to.

 ******************************************* 

She’s barely eighteen and it’s time that she starts to do her duty. 

“Active duty, huh?” he asks her on the ride to school. “Excited?”

“No,” she says. “I haven’t been given a mission.”

“That eager to kill my kind?” he asks, smile going all funny. There’s darkness in his eyes and the way the rising sun shines from behind him sends long shadows across his face. “Don’t worry, little demon hunter. You’ll get your chance.”

He’s only been with her for two years. He doesn’t know that she’s already had her chance.

She looks out the car window and says nothing.

“Don’t disappoint us,” her mother says. Her hands are encased in long, leather gloves to hide the scars of her own demon battles. “You are the first of our family to be born with the Old power. You must not fail.”

Between them are her real birthday presents, blades and knives designed to cut and hurt and kill. They’re the only gifts she’s ever allowed to keep, them and the scars.

Her father’s eyes glitter from across the room, pure black in their hostility.

She bows to them both and takes her new weapons out of the study.

No escape. There’s never any escape.

 ******************************************* 

She tries to run away when she’s eight. They put her in a room with a woman who smells like strawberries and fire, a woman with blood dripping down her side and a terrible grin on her face.

“I’ve gone insane,” she coos to the shivering child. Her hands are tied behind her back but they’re not bolted to anything. She makes her way unsteadily across the room. “I killed a little girl like you. A little priestess. That’s why they’ve locked me in here with you.”

She knows the demoness is telling the truth by the look in her eyes. She’s insane, all right, with red dripping from her black eyes and blood already on her teeth.

“Kill me, demon hunter,” the woman laughs, head winding like a serpent. “Kill me, kill me, kill me!”

She has no choice, in the end. She barely survives, could be argued to not have survived at all, but her power awakens.

And that’s all they wanted in the end.

 ******************************************* 

Her first mission comes within days of her 18th birthday, much sooner than any other member of her family. She’s the one with the old power, after all, destined to win against the evil rising in their city.

She thinks her parents have always been trying to kill her. This is just another attempt.

“The target is in the building ahead,” her bodyguard tells her. There’s a manila folder across his knees and a frown on his face. He’s in his suit, gun open at his side. “Male demon, three hundred years old. A fire breather. He missed his last check in with his probation officer.”

She’s already opening the door, climbing out in the leathers her family gifted her with so many years ago. Her training’s been tough enough that she hasn’t grown much at all and they still fit perfectly.

“Hey!” he reaches across her, pulling the door shut with alarm. “I haven’t told you the rest!”

“It’s fine,” she says. She feels empty, is empty, because she knows what’s to come. She brushes his arm away and, startled, he lets her. She turns back to look into the interior, into his confused face, and says, “Don’t follow me.”

He begins to say something, but she doesn’t hear it. Instead, she goes into the building alone and isn’t surprised when he doesn’t follow her right away.

She finds the demon and releases her mask, eyes too blank to be cold. By the time her bodyguard charges in, there’s nothing left but a crystal. In it, barely the size of her fingernail, is everything the demon ever was or could be. In it is three centuries of memories, of love, of hate, of life.

She pockets it like it’s nothing more than a stone and heads out to the car.

The car ride back to the compound (never home) is silent. He’s angry, somehow, and she’s staring out the window like nothing in the world can touch her. Her right leg is singed, and her stomach is roiling with the taint of evil, too much to have gone down so smoothly.

“That,” he says, “wasn’t your first kill, was it?”

She doesn’t look away from the dark road, counting lampposts as they go. One hundred and twenty-seven more until they’re back. “No.”

He breathes in evenly. “You weren’t 18.”

She doesn’t respond because it’s a pointless question.

 ******************************************* 

Chad doesn’t speak the rest of the drive, stealing glances at the little girl in the seat across from him. As usual, there’s nothing on her face, that damned, awkward mask hiding whatever he might have been able to read from her lips. 

He’s come a long way in time from child soldiers. It makes something in his gut twist to imagine his charge--as cold as she may be--fighting one of his kind so young. It had twisted his gut when he was tasked in giving her this mission. He thinks her too young, too inexperienced, too weak.

He remembers her standing in the middle of scorch marks, staring at the demon crystal that was left from demon death. Her dark eyes had slid to him and nothing had been in them. Nothing.

She’d been more than a match for an adult of his kind. More than a match for a fire breather. He’d been wrong to think her incapable.

What else had he been wrong about?

Maybe it had been a mistake not to dig deeper. Maybe it had been a mistake to come here without backup. Maybe he needed to look a little harder in the compound's basement.

 ******************************************* 

She walks into the house without limping despite the fire crawling up her calf. She doesn’t look to Chad as she takes the stairs. She doesn’t need him here. Here, if anything hurts her, it’s supposed to.

He follows anyway.

“Your parents will want to speak with you,” he says. There’s something different in his voice, softer, less accusatory. 

Cautious.

“Just give them the crystal,” she says. She saw him pick it up, saw him put it in his pocket. “That’s what they want.”

He pauses, eyes assessing on her. “I’m sure they’ll want to see that you’re okay.”

She slips into her room and closes her door behind her. She needs to take care of her wound and she doesn’t want to tell her bodyguard how wrong he is.

The next mission isn’t so simple. The demon gets away, spitting acid that nearly takes her arm. Her bodyguard protects her at the last minute, comes charging in, firing, and pulls her away from the deadly spray.

“Damn it,” he snarls, too focused on the escaping prey to notice that her mask is off. By the time he turns, she’s secured the straps over her hair and isn’t moving. “Our intel was wrong.”

“I failed.” Her voice makes the words calm, uncaring, but she thinks she might be sick. “Let’s go.” No use putting off the inevitable.

“You didn’t fail,” he argues with her, following her back to the car. “They told us the target was fifty, at most. That demon was nearing closer 500.”

She climbs into the car, letting his words wash over her without really hearing them. Eventually he fades out and she’s aware of him staring at the side of her face as if waiting for a response.

When they get back to the compound, she doesn’t head up the stairs as she normally would. Instead, she marches towards the study where she knows her parents and the others will be if they’re home.

Her bodyguard follows her. “You’re not going to your room?”

“I failed,” she says again, not looking at him. 

“I’ll let them know the target got away,” he says, moving around her so that he’s blocking the hall. He’s much bigger than her, big like demons are, and his hands look like they could circle her waist when he holds them up. “You should go get patched up.” His eyes trail to the blood she’s left behind them, small drops from a thigh wound the demon had managed to land before his intervention. “Maybe the infirmary?”

What would be the point? She doesn’t say it out loud, but he falters, something complicated crossing his face. She ducks around him before anything else occurs to him and slips into the study, closing the door in his face.

This is her responsibility alone. She won’t reveal anything more than she must to him. She won’t subject him to any more than she must.

Unfortunately, both of her parents are there, as well as two of her big brothers. They’re lounging there, lying in wait, and it makes her grit her teeth behind her mask.

Still, her voice is empty when she says for the third and final time, “I failed.”

“We know,” her mother says.

“You’ll have the opportunity to fix your mistake,” her father says.

“But,” her brothers say, “until then...”

“You must be punished,” her mother finishes.

She lowers her head in acknowledgement and doesn’t see her bodyguard for three days.

 ******************************************* 

“Where were you?” her bodyguard asks on the morning she emerges from her room for the first time in three days. His eyes are hard and his shoulders are tense despite the relaxed position he’s taken up against the wall. “No one would tell me where you were.”

She pauses, feeling the way her muscles scream a protest under the weight of her school bag. “Then you didn’t need to know.” Her voice is still raw from locking screams behind her teeth. 

That makes him angrier though she can’t imagine why. He knew what sort of position this would be when he agreed to work for her family. She can’t believe he didn’t when he knows so much already.

He stalks behind her all the way out the front doors to the car, practically radiating heat. After so long in the cold, she wouldn’t care if he really did kill her, so long as she could still feel his heat on her back.

“I’m supposed to be with you at all times,” he says once they’re seated. He’s still radiating heat and tension, mouth an unhappy line. “How am I supposed to be an effective agent if I don’t know where you are?”

Her eyes slide to him and then away. Her shoulders burn. “Your only job is to protect me when I’m not in the compound. I never left.”

That doesn’t appease him. “I searched for you. I couldn’t even smell you.”

It does something to that secret part of her, the admission that he looked for her. She ignores it and puts her masked chin in her hand. “I’m here now.”

“I’ll find out where you were,” he says. There’s an edge in his voice. “This won’t happen again. I will not be kept from my objective again.”

His objective? To protect her? Or something else? She examines the curl of suspicion absently. “It may happen again. Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Whether I fail or not,” she says and gets out of the car. She’s got class to attend and a lot of makeup work to do.

 ******************************************* 

The next time she sees the acid demon, she has to shake off her bodyguard. It’s easy in the abandoned factory since she’s so much faster than him. She doesn’t like to be watched while she works, doesn’t like to be seen without her mask, so she focuses more on losing him than finding the demon at first.

When she finally sees the acid demon...well. She knows why he fought so hard to run away.

“I can’t let you touch them,” he says, voice cracking and warping under his blooming insanity. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, fighting back the madness with everything he had. “My brother’s family…!”

Behind him is a demoness with beautiful, platinum hair. She has fresh bruises on her face and tear stains on her shirt. In her arms is a child, a toddler really, silently crying.

“Please,” she says softly, her own voice wrought with pain and exhaustion. “We can’t go back to the demon world. My mate...he died before we could marry.”

She puts it together faster than she should have been able to. She watches them with passive eyes. “He was a citizen?”

The woman nods, tucking her child closer to her chest. “Yes, he--”

“Stop talking!” The acid demon grabs at his hair, skin cracking black. He turns on the woman, face filled with wrath. “Don’t tell this demon hunter anything!”

“Jacob,” the woman whispers, “please. We’ve gone too far and you need--you need help.”

“He’s too far gone for help,” she says very softly. She doesn’t like that the woman gave this demon a name, that she knows he still cares about his loved ones even as his bloodlust rises. She bets that the bruises on his family are from his own fist, laid there in bouts of insanity. “Aren’t you, Jacob?”

He spits at her, but she’s prepared this time. She brings up the small, metal shield she’d been hiding at her side and rolls forwards. The acid splashes against it, spraying into the air but not on her. When she comes up, he’s in striking distance.

His eyes widen and his hands come up, but it’s too late. She grabs him around the neck and, with supernatural strength, throws him away from the demoness and her child.

The fight is short and brutal. He has no chance now that she knows what he is. 

He knows it.

“Why don’t you just end it?” he snarls, wrestling her back. “Gonna kill me? Kill me? Kill me?” He laughs and it’s so like the strawberry demoness from her childhood that she almost loses her nerve.

As it is, she slams him into the ground, behind a pillar and rips off her mask with one hand. “You want this done in front of them?”

His eyes lock on her mouth and she can see it changing in the reflection of his eyes. Sanity creeps back in just enough that he looks afraid. “No, I guess not.” Tears surface and he goes limp underneath her, swallowing heavily. “He asked me to keep them safe. They won’t last in the demon world. They won’t--”

She leans down with her terrible mouth and, so quietly she can almost convince herself she doesn’t make such a stupid promise, whispers, “I’ll protect them.”

She doesn’t know why she does it. Or, maybe, she does. 

His eyes shine with relief. “Thank--”

She swallows him whole before he can finish speaking, face burning. His crystal clatters to the ground between her knees. She takes a moment, just staring at it, before she remembers her promise. Her secret duty.

Her bodyguard can’t know.

She can’t sense him nearby, but that doesn’t mean his arrival isn’t inevitable. She clips her mask back into place and shoves the crystal into the pouch at her waist. She takes a deep breath, struggling through the mask, and exhales slowly. 

She walks around the pillar to find the demoness still collapsed on the floor, little boy in her arms.

“Oh god,” the demoness whimpers. Tears pour down her cheeks and her arms tremble. “P-please. Please have mercy.”

She feels tired. There are spots all over where stray drops of acid have burned through her leather and to her skin. She walks with heavy steps towards the demoness, not taking her eyes off of her. She see the fear in the other woman’s eyes and feels emptier because of it.

The demoness scrunches her damned eyes closed, in preparation for a blow, as she comes to a sharp stop in front of them.

She pulls one of her pouches off of her belt and practically drops it on her head. “Run.”

The demoness looks up through teary, confused eyes. Her hand picks the pouch up from the ground. “W-what?”

“The credit card will remain active for the next 48 hours,” she says. “There’s some cash, but not enough for what you need to do. Take the cards and run. Don’t stop. Don’t come back. Just go.”

The demoness doesn’t seem to understand. “Y-you’re letting us go? You’re not going to kill us?”

“You’re not my target,” she says. Her eyes scan the holes in the walls and the doors for any sign of her bodyguard. She can’t have much more time and her wounds are beginning to drain her. “Take your child and run.”

The other woman finally scrambles up, cradling her baby to her chest with one hand and holding the pouch with the other. She pauses just as she might have turned, hesitant. “Jacob’s dead, isn’t he?”

She looks at her. “He was my target.”

The demoness licks her lips. “H-his crystal. If possible can I--”

She’s already shaking her head. “No. Go.” Her hand goes instinctively to where the crystal lies. If she returns without it, she’ll be punished. Again.

“The old rites,” the woman tries again. “He can’t rest peacefully--”

“Don’t ask for the impossible,” a familiar male voice says. There’s a growl there that she’s unaccustomed to, but she recognizes it nonetheless. Her bodyguard comes stalking into view, gun naked in his head. “They’ll follow if we fail here. Go or risk never being free.”

The woman inhales shakily, eyes darting from demon hunter to demon. Then, as if realizing at last the precarious nature of her position, she turns and flees.

The demoness leaves him and her staring at one another, too close for comfort but too far for action.

“What,” he asks casually, “else are you hiding?”

Her heart is racing, something she thought impossible outside of straining her body. “I couldn’t sense you.”

He laughs, a low, unamused sound that sends an unexpected flash of heat through her veins. “I’m much older than you give me credit for. I can hide my presence from the likes of you.” His eyes are very, very dark. “You let them go.”

“They weren’t my target,” she says. 

“They’re demons,” he says and takes a step closer. “They’re always your target.”

Anger rises in her, hard and fast. It leaves her breathless, the strength of it. She doesn’t feel as a rule, but in one day she’s been pushed to her limit. Pity. Fear. Anger.

Too much.

She matches his step, making sure he can see the deadly purpose in her eyes. “Are you going to talk?”

“About what?” he asks slowly. He’s still watching her with his dark eyes, heat and tension. Always heat and tension. “You got your target, didn’t you?”

She nods slowly. She doesn’t trust him but, damn him, she wants to. “Yeah. I got him.”

“Then let’s go,” he says and, this time, it’s her following him to the car.

They don’t speak the rest of the way back to the compound.

She feels as if she’s drowning.

 ******************************************* 

He doesn’t talk. He must not, because she doesn’t end up in the dark again. She tries to go about her days normally, but she feels like she can’t do anything but look at him. He’s not as high energy as usual at school, waves off his friends when they come to get him for lunch. For once, he lets them stay in the classroom to eat where nobody comes to bother them.

“Why,” he asks, leaning against the teacher’s desk, “do you come to school?”

She wants him to leave so she can take off her mask and eat her granola bar. Resigned, she leaves it on the desk in front of her, unopened. “It’s the law.”

He snorts. “Your family is above laws.” His voice is bitter, hard lines of tension running through his shoulders. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“I like to get out,” she says. She keeps her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the table. She’s looked at him enough for one day.

“Do you?” He pushes off the desk, stalking towards her with intent. “Do you like anything, really?” He stops short of her desk and stands there, staring at her. Watching her.

“Stop.” Stop seeing me. She raises her eyes, making them as cold and empty as she knows how. Being empty is what saves her. Keeps her alive.

His jaw ticks, but then he’s losing his tension, going back to the easy-going student persona he favors. Outside, some of their classmates pass by the window. “I’m just asking. No harm in that, right?”

She takes her granola from the table and slides it into her pocket as she stands. She doesn’t answer him because any answer she gives now will be too much. She feels like she’s cracking, all her careful facades and repressions finally breaking under the strain.

“Hey,” he says, alarmed, “where are you going?”

“Bathroom,” she says. She doesn’t say anything as he follows her and waits outside the door.

She eats her granola in a stall, stealing deep breaths from the world without her mask. She sits there after she’s done, staring at the wrapper and hating how vulnerable she feels without the leather protecting her face.

How free. The sound that comes out of her mouth is barely human. Free. In hell.

She clips the mask back into place and opens the stall with too much force. She throws the wrapper away, stomach still growling and washes her hands. She isn’t surprised when, upon exiting, she finds him still standing there, arms crossed and face carefully devoid of any expression.

“Good lunch?” he asks. His eyes are mocking.

What are you so afraid of? Me?

Her face burns and she turns away without answering.

 ******************************************* 

She still wants to die. She just doesn’t know how. She thinks she’d like a demon to do it, something in her blood aching to feel teeth on her throat and her blood leaking and leaking until she’s cold and truly (truly) empty.

She dreams about it, dark and curling dreams that leave her awake in her spartan room, staring at the dark ceiling. She doesn’t reach for her weapons even when she can still feel the phantom impression of teeth on her neck. She still feels groggy, maybe like she’s still asleep, and she’s not convinced she’s awake even when her feet touch the ground.

She gets up for water, feet silent on the hardwood. He wakes anyway.

His door opens across the hall from her. He doesn’t look like sleep has even touched him except for his attire. He’s in a t-shirt, something he might wear to school instead of the normal suit he’d be wearing in the house.

She may still be asleep after all.

She wanders past him, eyes sliding from his broad chest to the darkened hallway. Her power allows her to see in the dark much better than any normal human and her years of experience in this house means she avoids all the creaky floorboards and cameras.

She thinks she must have dreamt him because she can’t even feel a whisper of his presence behind her.

Her feet take her to the kitchen, her hands get her a glass, the water runs and her glass is filled. Everything is happening a far way off as she sits at the table, brushing aside mission stats and newspapers to clear room for her arms.

When she looks up, he’s sitting in the chair across from her, watching silently.

She drinks her water and lets her eyes close again. She can’t sense him, can’t sense anyone around her, which means this is still a dream.

She watches him right back, lets her eyes linger on the curve of his jaw, the breadth of his chest under the thin shirt. His horns aren’t the little ones she’s used to, there’s something regal about the way they twist from his skull and then dance back along his crown. His hair is mussed from the day and his eyes aren’t so red in the dark.

Demons like him are rare. Sane and older than he’ll admit. That’s how she knows that he’s a spy, in the end. Because he’s hundreds of years old, pretending to be a teenager, and fooling the likes of her father.

It doesn’t matter to her, what she knows. There will always be demon hunters, power or no, because there will always be demons who don’t find their stability in time. There will always be demons here, on earth, and that means there’ll always be prey for people like her.

Her family can burn, in the end. Their legacy is heavy with blood and its own brand of insanity. But until it does, until the morning dawns on the black skeleton of this house, she’s alive.

“Do you think,” she says, “that you’ll be the one to kill me?”

He goes still, face carved from marble and says nothing. Dreams don’t talk, after all.

I have to be empty, she thinks. The water is cool on her throat, easing the lump that’s formed there. She puts her glass in the sink when she’s done and ghosts back to bed. 

She looks behind her, halfway into her room, to find him standing behind her.

His eyes are dark as he reaches up and out and--

Touches the bare skin of her cheek.

“Maybe death isn’t the only answer,” he says. His presence slams into her like a wave, licking past her nerves and power to her bones. She feels it like flames, like fire and she knows she’s not blank right now. Not empty.

Not dreaming.

She steps back and slams the door shut between them, mouth twisting against her wishes, twisting and lengthening and opening. She’s a monstrous thing, empty, empty, empty, and she repeats that until she’s able to push down the feeling, seal her power, be normal.

She shuts the door and stands there for a long time, feeling his presence on the other side into the little hours of the morning.

 ******************************************* 

He knocks on the door. “It’s time to go to school.” His voice doesn’t sound any different than it usually does. 

She opens the door, mask firmly in place. She doesn’t meet his eyes, doesn’t answer, just walks out of the compound to the car. She wants to be away from the heat of him, away from his watching eyes, but knows any deviation in their routine could raise questions. Too many questions.

No escape. There’s never any escape.

 ******************************************* 

The next mission is...stupid. She can’t find the cold objectivity she’s shielded herself with for so long. She’s stuck in that moment with him on the other side of her door, mouth yawning with darkness and eyes wide with fear.

“Stay in the car,” she tells him and slams the door shut before he can protest. She uses a touch of her strength, her power, to warp the door handle. It won’t hold him for long, but she doesn’t need long.

The target is older than her (all of them are), but by demon standards they’re practically a kid. She’d heard the gravel in her bodyguard’s voice during the brief of the mission and she doesn’t want him to be involved in this.

This is what she’s made for.

She pushes into the two story house, the broken door screeching as she does so. It’s an evacuated neighborhood, all the humans fleeing from the demon’s bloodlust, and there’s evidence of violence everywhere she looks. The table on the living room is splintered, crushed, and there are holes in the walls all the way up the stairs.

She can smell the demon up there, sweat and wilting mint. There’s something else there too, something that makes her skin crawl.

The smell of rotting meat.

She climbs the stairs, heavy boots loud and foreboding with each step. Still, no demon comes to meet her.

She finds the target in the room to her left. It’s dark in there, torn curtains still effectively blocking most of the sun’s light. The target is standing just beyond the bed, glowing red eyes meeting hers without hesitation. On the bed is a body, a demon, eyes wide and sightless. His face is beginning to rot, pale blues and greens creeping along porcelain skin.

“I love him,” the demon says. His voice is rough from his roars and his hands are balled at his sides. “I lost control.”

She can see right away that this demon isn’t insane. Insane with grief, maybe, but he’s not lost.

She lets the silence stretch between them, watches the look on his face in the darkness. His eyes leave hers to go to the man on the bed, face twisting with the force of his grief and guilt.

“Did you kill him?” she asks finally.

He shakes his head. “His heart...he never got used to earth’s atmosphere.”

She lets out a breath. “Did you hurt anyone.”

He nods. “Neighbors. They came to see about--about the smell…” He wipes at his eyes and begs her to understand. “I wasn’t in my right mind. I don’t want to die.”

She springs when he’s not expecting it, unclasping her mask with one hand and reaching with the other. He’s a kid so he doesn’t expect it, doesn’t think about how he’s so much stronger than a human, that they might be, at least, equally matched. He flinches, eyes squeezing shut and hands coming up to ward her off.

She opens her mouth and focuses on the body on the bed. When she lands there, so close to the kid, all there’s left of the body is the crystal.

He opens his eyes just as she fits her mask back in place. He opens his mouth. “What did you--”

She leaps forward again, this time slamming a hand over his mouth, eyes blazing. They don’t have much time, she can’t let her bodyguard see this, another of her bouts of insanity. If she wants to help this one, the less anyone knows, the better. “You can’t stay here. You have to go. Do you understand? Change your appearance, don’t use your cards, disappear. They reported you and sent me. Run.”

He gasps around her palm, eyes leaking. “I--my life is ruined. I can’t--”

“You can,” she hisses fiercely. She doesn’t know what it is, what’s gotten into her lately. She keeps pushing too hard, feeling too much. She can’t seem to stop. She slips the crystal into his hand. “If you loved him. Go. Bury him.”

He blinks, looking down at this gift in his hand. He nods and keeps nodding even when she releases him.

When he looks back at her, his eyes aren’t emitting light and there’s determination on his face.

“Thank you,” he says. And then he’s gone, racing out into the sun just as her bodyguard bursts into the room, weapon drawn.

“I felt you use your power,” he says. “Is it done?”

“Yes,” she says, turning to leave.

He stops her at the door, hand on her upper arm. “Where’s the crystal?”

She should have kept the one, should have lied, should have done a lot of things. Stop making so many mistakes for one. “I don’t know.”

He searches her eyes. “How can you not know?”

She shakes him off and goes back to the car, mind a snarling mess. What should she say? What should she do? She didn’t have proof of a kill, didn’t even have a way to fix this blunder. She could tell them she let him go, that he wasn’t insane, but would they believe her? With him in the wind and an execution order draped around his shoulders?

No. She’d let him go because she knew they’d have her kill him, sanity or no. And she’d given him the demon crystal because he’d been too close to actually turning without a push.

She’d done what her heart told her to do. The problem, of course, is that her heart’s never protected her.

“I failed,” she says when her bodyguard joins her in the car. “He wasn’t there when I entered the house.”

He’s silent for a long moment. Then he asks, “What really happened?”

She doesn’t say anything, heart pounding in her wrists. She still doesn’t know exactly why he’s here and she can’t afford to make any more mistakes. She can’t afford to reveal herself to him.

“Tell me,” he commands. “I can help you.”

She closes her eyes and turns her face to the window. “I never saw anyone there. I couldn’t track him. He’d been gone for hours. I failed.”

She nearly jumps as his fist slams into the steering wheel, a curse ripping from his throat. She keeps carefully quiet and doesn’t turn.

“Fine,” he seethes. “I’ll find out on my own. For now, we should go back to the compound, try to keep a lid on this--”

She lets the soothing cadence of his voice wash over her. She feels afraid, angry, maybe, and terrified. Two fear words. She lets his words try to reach her in the dark place, knowing that she won’t be hearing the sound of his voice for a good long while.

 ******************************************* 

They put her in the dark room, no sound, no light, no heat. She takes a moment in the center to just breathe, to try and center herself. There are cameras in here, she knows, and she always tries not to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cower.

There’s also no clocks in here, none that she can see anyway. In the end, she always ends up in the same corner, praying that she’s counting seconds right and that the time is always shorter than she thinks.

After what feels like days but is probably hours, she gives in. She takes the three strides to the corner of the room and sits, not letting herself put her back against the wall. If she looks too relaxed, they’ll flood the room. They’ll probably do it anyway, which is why she needs to be as alert as possible.

There’s a pit for the bathroom in here, a mocking concession that she’s not embarrassed to take advantage of. There’s also a leaky tap for water in the other corner, but she does her best not to drink in here. Sometimes they’ll turn it off entirely, other times they’ll poison it.

Everything in this dark room is a terrible, terrible trap. She ties her scarf around her eyes, just to cut off the feeling of being blind, of being trapped.

Slowly, she begins to count.

 ******************************************* 

The light that floods the room an eternity later hurts even through her blindfold. The room’s been flooded twice since the beginning of her punishment which could mean it’s been two days or 30. No real way to tell.

There’s a grating, inhuman sound, like a roar, that makes her gain her feet, heart beating wildly in her chest. Her parents wouldn’t have made that sound, they’re silent, like ghosts, like executioners.

Something moves towards her, whatever’s opened the doors, and she can either go for her mask or for her blindfold. She goes for her mask, fingers stiff from the cold as she struggles to unclasp it.

A hard, hot hand latches onto her wrist, arresting her movement, and someone much bigger than her slams them both back into the wall. She instinctively shoves a foot out to hook around their ankle and pull, but all it does is bring her in closer proximity to them. They’re immovable, uncompromising, and so long in the dark has made her slow and stupid. She thrashes, throwing her weight around as much as possible in the hopes that they’ll loosen their grip for even a second. Just one second and she’ll--

“Stella, stop!” 

At the sound of his voice, she stills, heart thundering in her chest. After forever without sound, it’s a shock to hear something so familiar, so warm. It’s him, her bodyguard, in her room, the room he’s not supposed to know about.

Her name. He called her by her name.

“It’s been two weeks,” he says. He still hasn’t let go of her, but her mind is too foggy to linger on that. “Two weeks, Stella. I looked for you everywhere, I never thought they’d have locked you in a closet.”

It’s been longer than she thought, even with time passing by so slowly. She can feel the hunger now, a terrible, clawing ache that isn’t helped by the way he’s got her hands stretched up.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says dumbly. She twists her wrists and is grateful when he lets go. She breathes deeply around the mask, trying to find some equilibrium. “I failed. You shouldn’t be here.” Her head jerks as she remembers the camera, face turning towards it though she hasn’t yet removed her blindfold. “You can’t be here, they’ll see--”

“No one’s watching those cameras,” he says.

She finally remembers the light, the fact that she’s not in the dark anymore, and reaches up to take off her blindfold. It’s tied tighter than she remembers, still wet from the last time they flooded the room. She still can’t see when she takes it off, blinded by the light, but she feels freer.

His face swims into view before his words really sink in.

“Someone’s always watching,” she says. There’s blood on his face, eyes helplessly bright, and brow pinched. For once, she finds herself watching him instead of the other way around. “What did you do?”

He doesn’t look away. “Well, I’ve placed your family under arrest,” he says. His lips quirk. “For being a terrorist organization.”

She stares. Tries to look behind him but can’t see around his broad shoulders. Looks back up into his face. “You...arrested them? All of them?”

“Yes,” he says. “We’ve been investigating them for years, but it wasn’t until recently that we got the proof we needed.”

She can’t quite wrap her head around that. Oh, she knows that her family’s been betraying their society for decades--she just can’t believe they’re facing consequences. That Chad is the one actually bringing justice to their door. “They’re in jail?”

“Prison,” he says. “No parole.”

“What did you get them for?” She asks. There’s pressure in her stomach, a foreign feeling that makes her voice shake.

“Tax evasion,” he says.

The feeling explodes and she’s suddenly laughing so hard she can barely breathe.