Chapter Two: Bleeding Before It Starts
Chapter Index
I didn’t take very long to prepare for this job. It wasn’t like it was a big deal. I did a tiny bit of background research on the murders-not much help there, they were all being chalked up to different serial killers, because there was no real modus operandi to connect them. They were just mutilated, all in different ways. You’d think, with as many murders that get committed by demons every year, people would be more likely to assume it was demons and not humans that killed in big cases like this. But no, it was always this human serial killer or that human serial killer, as if it were something to brag about. ‘No WE have the most horrible, soulless members of a species!’ ‘No WE do!’ Made me kind of sick to read the profiles, as if we could actually conjure up these things in our heads.
I looked at a blueprint of what used to be Pier 49, making sure I knew all the exits and entrances, though the building was so old I could probably just bust through a wall if necessary. I” tried to figure out exactly where it was, where the nearest dumpster was so I could put the body in there, or what was left after I torched it. I hoped that demons were as flammable as humans, ‘cause otherwise I’d have to drive all the way back to the office and pick up my ‘ACID- GENERIC BRAND!’ and that would just be annoying.
My one fatal mistake in the whole thing (well, it appeared to be fatal to me at the time-in the long run, well... it ended up being kind of beneficial,) was telling Jason that I was going to kill a demon, not a human. This instantly had him freaked out, beyond anything else I had ever told him. He seemed to be fine any time I’d go out with a gun and half-mumble to him, “Goin’ out to kill a mob boss,” or, “I have to kill a major leader of the free world. I’ll be back in a couple of days.” The whole “I have to kill a demon,” think made him clearly nervous, because he actually tried to argue with me over it.
“You can’t really go out there by yourself and try to kill a demon!” he told me as I was selecting my weapons. “Didn’t you say the client tried to hire a supernatural team and they failed?”
“No,” I sighed, looking over my array of knives and other sharp objects. “He said a few teams have tried and they failed. Foolish, adventuresome teams, I think were the words he used. Hey, what do you think about bringing a battle axe? A little two ‘demon slayer’?”
“No, I think it’d work. You know, for cutting off the heads. Just make sure it’s the light one and not the really big super heavy one because, uh, if you miss it’d be hard to rebound and bring it back, you know?”
I paused to look at him. “Is that a sports metaphor? You know I don’t do well with your sports metaphors.” I shook my head and went back to packing my arsenal.
“Okay, so he didn’t hire the teams. What does ‘failed’ mean, though?”
“Jared, you know very well what ‘failed’ means in this business...”
“Does it mean, like, they got caught, roughed up a little bit and released? They didn’t cut his head off but they escaped with their lives and decided never to do that again? What does it mean?”
I sighed, not bothering to look at him. “No. ‘Failed’ means they did not succeed in killing the demon, and the demon brutally murdered and mutilated them in cold blood and threw their body parts all over the places. Are you sure I shouldn’t bring the big battle axe just in case of an emergency?”
“If you’re not going to carry it in with you, I wouldn’t bring it,” Jared said. “Also, I don’t think you should do this.”
I stopped back again, sighed. “Jared,” I began, the warning clear in my voice. That’s the thing about kids, though. They never stop to listen for the warning.
“It’s not like you need the money, and you said yourself you didn’t want to do the job in the first place. You know what they tell you when you’re taking a multiple-choice test or a fill in the blank test or any kind of test that’s not an essay test?”
“What?” I asked, the sarcasm practically dripping off the words as they left my mouth.
“Go with your first instinct,” he said, nodding like it was the final judgment. “They tell you to go with your first instinct, even if you’re not sure. Because odds are, you’re right with your first instinct. I don’t know why, I’m sure there’s some kind of scientific explanation that I haven’t thought of for it, but that’s what they say to do. So go with your first instinct. Call up this Israel guy and tell him you’re sorry, but you can’t do this job because you don’t really need the money, and you’re not particularly interested in suicide missions.”
“Jared, with the money I’ll make off this job, I could give you a raise beyond your wildest dreams.”
“I don’t want a raise!” Jared shouted. “I want to keep this JOB, not be out of one because you’re DEAD.”
“Jared, lower your voice,” I growled at him. “Because although the government agents who come in here ignore the fact that technically this is an illegal business, the police won’t, and neither will our neighbors. You think that dentist doesn’t have his suspicions?”
“Doc Roe is as blind as a bat and deafer than Helen Keller,” Jared told me blankly.
“I’m sure that’s what he wants you to think.”
There was a moment of silence where I continued to pack and Jared continued to seethe. I was getting pretty irritated with him at this point-I hired him to be a help, not a hindrance-when suddenly he looked up at me.
“I’m coming with you,” he said, and I sighed and closed my eyes, rubbing away an oncoming headache.
“No, you’re not, Jason,” I said.
“You need someone to drive the getaway car,” he said. “I’ve memorized the area around Pier 49. I know the quickest way to the hospital, the nearest grocery store, anywhere you need to go. I have my license, I’m good at looking inconspicuous-“
“Jared, I’m not taking you with me,” I said. “There is no way you’re going to convince me.” I quickly slid a knife up my sleeve and grabbed the small battle axe. “Now,” I exhaled heavily. “I am going to go out to Pier 49 to kill a demon. I shouldn’t be more than two hours. If you need anything during that time, I will have my cell but I will probably leave it in the car. I’ll be sure to check my messages when I’m done with the job. Quit moping, please don’t forget to feed the fish, and there’s some paperwork that needs to be done that probably could have been done during this whole time.” I walked out the door before he had a chance to answer.
Getting to a mission isn’t the time to have a little breakdown. You don’t want to have that moment of weakness, the ‘oh god I’m going out to kill someone’ reaction until AFTER, preferably hours after, you’ve made the kill, because the ‘oh god I’m going out to kill someone’ reaction tends to make you freeze up. Those morals you pretend you don’t have? Tend to attack you in moments of weakness like that. The drive to a kill should be the time where you mentally prepare yourself for what you’re about to do, where you decide if you’re going to play it casual and have witty one-liners for when you actually make the kill, or if you’re doing it totally stealth, just in, kill, out. With most assassinations stealth is the best way to go, but in certain cases-when killing mob bosses, for example-it’s good to lighten the mood with a little zinger right as you put a bullet in his head. So there I was, thinking of good zingers as I pulled up into an alleyway between what used to be Pier 49 and the building next to it, climbing out of the car with my battle axe and walking to the side door I knew would be there.
There’s one thing I hate about warehouses, having made enough kills in them to know: they smell. A lot. They smell like piss and fish and bad morning breath and it gets hard to concentrate sometimes because you’re trying not to choke on the smell. They’re not the best environments to get a job done in, but you generally tend to manage, mostly because you have to, because your next paycheck depends on it. Pier 49 wasn’t any different-in fact, the smell was WORSE, like rotting meat (or flesh?) and spoiled milk. I gagged as I walked through that door, almost pushed backward because of how strong the stench was.
It didn’t take long to find the demon, either. It’s like he was waiting for me, stiff spines on the back of his head and his dark-nut brown... plating? Skin? I couldn’t tell, but whatever it was it was dripping with demon-sweat. This was too easy. I crept up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and as he turned around, I swung the axe and bam, off came him head.
“Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” I said, kicking the head clear across the room. I’ll admit, not one of my best lines, but it would have to do. I hadn’t been expecting him to show up right when I walked in the door, and so I was kind of pressed for time.
And then things started to go bad.
“No, actually,” a loud, booming voice said. “That was Ricky. And he was my assistant. And you just killed him.”
Oh shit. I turned around slowly, and there was a fucking HUGE demon standing behind me. His... tentacle-like arms were crossed over what I assume to be his chest. His head was incredibly square, and slick, like it excreted some kind of disgusting demon sweat. His hair-I guess on a human it would count for hair, considering it was on the top of his head-stood straight up, every silver strand at the ready. His mouth took up at least seventy percent of his face, and in that mouth, his teeth-sharp, carnivore teeth-took up at least ninety percent of the space in there. I swallowed hard. “Well,” I said, trying to raise the battle axe without him noticing. “I’m sure sorry about that. I hate it when I get the wrong guy.”
“I just hate it when I lose assistants to dimwitted assassins.” He was moving, on his... they were legs, I suppose. They were just scaly, though the scales seemed to shift as he went forward, like there was some kind of fluid-y thing under them rather than bone. He was backing me up against the wall, and there was nothing I could do.
“Oh, dimwitted isn’t really fair is it?” I asked, my eyes glued on his face while I searched for an escape using my peripherals. “Do I really look stupid to you?”
“Stupid enough to come in here clanging around with a giant battle axe and killing my assistant,” the demon replied, and then before I could retort, one of the tentacle arms snapped out and grabbed my leg, yanking me upside down. The battle ax fell with a clatter to the floor as I struggled to regain my composure, the shaft just out of my reach. I sighed.
“Was that really necessary?” I asked, my tone heavy with sarcasm. The demon just shook its head.
“You really are dumb, aren’t you?” he asked me. “Don’t you know what comes next?”
“Tea and crumpets?” I replied, twitching just enough to slide the knife down into my hand.
“No.” He shook me a little bit. I closed my eyes, holding tight to the hilt of the knife so I didn’t drop it and give myself away. When I opened my eyes, he had lifted me over his giant mouth, the teeth glittering in my face. “You die next.”
“While I compliment you on your excellent breath,” I quickly said, “I don’t think that will be happening today.” And with that I swung the knife upward, cutting into the soft flesh of the tentacle-y arm. The demon sort of yelped and shook me like I was a spider on the end of his finger, like he was trying to throw me off him. And then I noticed that the knife was disintegrating. A tiny drop of his electric green blood-why is it always electric green with the supernatural?-fell onto my arm, where it sizzled. I bit back a scream. Great. Acidic blood.
“That was not the wisest of choices,” the demon replied. “Because I was going to be nice and get it over with. But now I think I’m going to kill you slowly.” His other tentacle arm snapped up and cracked me on the back of the head. My vision spun. It felt like he had hit me with an anchor, not a piece of arm. Another drop of blood fell on my arm, and then he turned me over in the air. I was probably going to be sick soon. His arm swung up again and then, from what I could tell, some kind of spine shot out of the fleshy underside and stabbed me in the shoulder. I gasped, doubled over, my face staring into his mouth, my eyes locked at the back of his mouth. I twitched and flailed violently, having totally lost any control of my muscles whatsoever.
He began to lower me, feet first, into his mouth and it was then I realized that I just might die today. I tried to swallow but everything was spinning and I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. My core was buzzing, and then suddenly I vomited, straight into his mouth. He screamed-it was a very girlish scream, I remember-and threw me away, where I smacked against a wall and felt something snap in my arm. My head rolled as I slid down to the floor, and once I had settled and my eyes had focused, I could only watch as the demon spat up the vomit, a little bit of which was dribbling down my chin, though I couldn’t move to wipe it off if I wanted to. I couldn’t move anywhere, couldn’t even twitch any more. The demon glared at me from across the room, and it was at that time I noticed that he had red eyes.
“I can’t even begin to describe the ways in which you are going to suffer,” he told me. I could have cared less what he meant by it, because at that moment breathing was very very difficult. I gasped and wheezed, but no matter what I couldn’t get air past my throat into my lungs. My eyes burned as I tried to push it down with my own will, but of course that never worked. My vision was going black when suddenly there was some kind of outrageous noise, an explosion, and heat seared my face as I finally passed out.
I didn’t take very long to prepare for this job. It wasn’t like it was a big deal. I did a tiny bit of background research on the murders-not much help there, they were all being chalked up to different serial killers, because there was no real modus operandi to connect them. They were just mutilated, all in different ways. You’d think, with as many murders that get committed by demons every year, people would be more likely to assume it was demons and not humans that killed in big cases like this. But no, it was always this human serial killer or that human serial killer, as if it were something to brag about. ‘No WE have the most horrible, soulless members of a species!’ ‘No WE do!’ Made me kind of sick to read the profiles, as if we could actually conjure up these things in our heads.
I looked at a blueprint of what used to be Pier 49, making sure I knew all the exits and entrances, though the building was so old I could probably just bust through a wall if necessary. I” tried to figure out exactly where it was, where the nearest dumpster was so I could put the body in there, or what was left after I torched it. I hoped that demons were as flammable as humans, ‘cause otherwise I’d have to drive all the way back to the office and pick up my ‘ACID- GENERIC BRAND!’ and that would just be annoying.
My one fatal mistake in the whole thing (well, it appeared to be fatal to me at the time-in the long run, well... it ended up being kind of beneficial,) was telling Jason that I was going to kill a demon, not a human. This instantly had him freaked out, beyond anything else I had ever told him. He seemed to be fine any time I’d go out with a gun and half-mumble to him, “Goin’ out to kill a mob boss,” or, “I have to kill a major leader of the free world. I’ll be back in a couple of days.” The whole “I have to kill a demon,” think made him clearly nervous, because he actually tried to argue with me over it.
“You can’t really go out there by yourself and try to kill a demon!” he told me as I was selecting my weapons. “Didn’t you say the client tried to hire a supernatural team and they failed?”
“No,” I sighed, looking over my array of knives and other sharp objects. “He said a few teams have tried and they failed. Foolish, adventuresome teams, I think were the words he used. Hey, what do you think about bringing a battle axe? A little two ‘demon slayer’?”
“No, I think it’d work. You know, for cutting off the heads. Just make sure it’s the light one and not the really big super heavy one because, uh, if you miss it’d be hard to rebound and bring it back, you know?”
I paused to look at him. “Is that a sports metaphor? You know I don’t do well with your sports metaphors.” I shook my head and went back to packing my arsenal.
“Okay, so he didn’t hire the teams. What does ‘failed’ mean, though?”
“Jared, you know very well what ‘failed’ means in this business...”
“Does it mean, like, they got caught, roughed up a little bit and released? They didn’t cut his head off but they escaped with their lives and decided never to do that again? What does it mean?”
I sighed, not bothering to look at him. “No. ‘Failed’ means they did not succeed in killing the demon, and the demon brutally murdered and mutilated them in cold blood and threw their body parts all over the places. Are you sure I shouldn’t bring the big battle axe just in case of an emergency?”
“If you’re not going to carry it in with you, I wouldn’t bring it,” Jared said. “Also, I don’t think you should do this.”
I stopped back again, sighed. “Jared,” I began, the warning clear in my voice. That’s the thing about kids, though. They never stop to listen for the warning.
“It’s not like you need the money, and you said yourself you didn’t want to do the job in the first place. You know what they tell you when you’re taking a multiple-choice test or a fill in the blank test or any kind of test that’s not an essay test?”
“What?” I asked, the sarcasm practically dripping off the words as they left my mouth.
“Go with your first instinct,” he said, nodding like it was the final judgment. “They tell you to go with your first instinct, even if you’re not sure. Because odds are, you’re right with your first instinct. I don’t know why, I’m sure there’s some kind of scientific explanation that I haven’t thought of for it, but that’s what they say to do. So go with your first instinct. Call up this Israel guy and tell him you’re sorry, but you can’t do this job because you don’t really need the money, and you’re not particularly interested in suicide missions.”
“Jared, with the money I’ll make off this job, I could give you a raise beyond your wildest dreams.”
“I don’t want a raise!” Jared shouted. “I want to keep this JOB, not be out of one because you’re DEAD.”
“Jared, lower your voice,” I growled at him. “Because although the government agents who come in here ignore the fact that technically this is an illegal business, the police won’t, and neither will our neighbors. You think that dentist doesn’t have his suspicions?”
“Doc Roe is as blind as a bat and deafer than Helen Keller,” Jared told me blankly.
“I’m sure that’s what he wants you to think.”
There was a moment of silence where I continued to pack and Jared continued to seethe. I was getting pretty irritated with him at this point-I hired him to be a help, not a hindrance-when suddenly he looked up at me.
“I’m coming with you,” he said, and I sighed and closed my eyes, rubbing away an oncoming headache.
“No, you’re not, Jason,” I said.
“You need someone to drive the getaway car,” he said. “I’ve memorized the area around Pier 49. I know the quickest way to the hospital, the nearest grocery store, anywhere you need to go. I have my license, I’m good at looking inconspicuous-“
“Jared, I’m not taking you with me,” I said. “There is no way you’re going to convince me.” I quickly slid a knife up my sleeve and grabbed the small battle axe. “Now,” I exhaled heavily. “I am going to go out to Pier 49 to kill a demon. I shouldn’t be more than two hours. If you need anything during that time, I will have my cell but I will probably leave it in the car. I’ll be sure to check my messages when I’m done with the job. Quit moping, please don’t forget to feed the fish, and there’s some paperwork that needs to be done that probably could have been done during this whole time.” I walked out the door before he had a chance to answer.
Getting to a mission isn’t the time to have a little breakdown. You don’t want to have that moment of weakness, the ‘oh god I’m going out to kill someone’ reaction until AFTER, preferably hours after, you’ve made the kill, because the ‘oh god I’m going out to kill someone’ reaction tends to make you freeze up. Those morals you pretend you don’t have? Tend to attack you in moments of weakness like that. The drive to a kill should be the time where you mentally prepare yourself for what you’re about to do, where you decide if you’re going to play it casual and have witty one-liners for when you actually make the kill, or if you’re doing it totally stealth, just in, kill, out. With most assassinations stealth is the best way to go, but in certain cases-when killing mob bosses, for example-it’s good to lighten the mood with a little zinger right as you put a bullet in his head. So there I was, thinking of good zingers as I pulled up into an alleyway between what used to be Pier 49 and the building next to it, climbing out of the car with my battle axe and walking to the side door I knew would be there.
There’s one thing I hate about warehouses, having made enough kills in them to know: they smell. A lot. They smell like piss and fish and bad morning breath and it gets hard to concentrate sometimes because you’re trying not to choke on the smell. They’re not the best environments to get a job done in, but you generally tend to manage, mostly because you have to, because your next paycheck depends on it. Pier 49 wasn’t any different-in fact, the smell was WORSE, like rotting meat (or flesh?) and spoiled milk. I gagged as I walked through that door, almost pushed backward because of how strong the stench was.
It didn’t take long to find the demon, either. It’s like he was waiting for me, stiff spines on the back of his head and his dark-nut brown... plating? Skin? I couldn’t tell, but whatever it was it was dripping with demon-sweat. This was too easy. I crept up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and as he turned around, I swung the axe and bam, off came him head.
“Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” I said, kicking the head clear across the room. I’ll admit, not one of my best lines, but it would have to do. I hadn’t been expecting him to show up right when I walked in the door, and so I was kind of pressed for time.
And then things started to go bad.
“No, actually,” a loud, booming voice said. “That was Ricky. And he was my assistant. And you just killed him.”
Oh shit. I turned around slowly, and there was a fucking HUGE demon standing behind me. His... tentacle-like arms were crossed over what I assume to be his chest. His head was incredibly square, and slick, like it excreted some kind of disgusting demon sweat. His hair-I guess on a human it would count for hair, considering it was on the top of his head-stood straight up, every silver strand at the ready. His mouth took up at least seventy percent of his face, and in that mouth, his teeth-sharp, carnivore teeth-took up at least ninety percent of the space in there. I swallowed hard. “Well,” I said, trying to raise the battle axe without him noticing. “I’m sure sorry about that. I hate it when I get the wrong guy.”
“I just hate it when I lose assistants to dimwitted assassins.” He was moving, on his... they were legs, I suppose. They were just scaly, though the scales seemed to shift as he went forward, like there was some kind of fluid-y thing under them rather than bone. He was backing me up against the wall, and there was nothing I could do.
“Oh, dimwitted isn’t really fair is it?” I asked, my eyes glued on his face while I searched for an escape using my peripherals. “Do I really look stupid to you?”
“Stupid enough to come in here clanging around with a giant battle axe and killing my assistant,” the demon replied, and then before I could retort, one of the tentacle arms snapped out and grabbed my leg, yanking me upside down. The battle ax fell with a clatter to the floor as I struggled to regain my composure, the shaft just out of my reach. I sighed.
“Was that really necessary?” I asked, my tone heavy with sarcasm. The demon just shook its head.
“You really are dumb, aren’t you?” he asked me. “Don’t you know what comes next?”
“Tea and crumpets?” I replied, twitching just enough to slide the knife down into my hand.
“No.” He shook me a little bit. I closed my eyes, holding tight to the hilt of the knife so I didn’t drop it and give myself away. When I opened my eyes, he had lifted me over his giant mouth, the teeth glittering in my face. “You die next.”
“While I compliment you on your excellent breath,” I quickly said, “I don’t think that will be happening today.” And with that I swung the knife upward, cutting into the soft flesh of the tentacle-y arm. The demon sort of yelped and shook me like I was a spider on the end of his finger, like he was trying to throw me off him. And then I noticed that the knife was disintegrating. A tiny drop of his electric green blood-why is it always electric green with the supernatural?-fell onto my arm, where it sizzled. I bit back a scream. Great. Acidic blood.
“That was not the wisest of choices,” the demon replied. “Because I was going to be nice and get it over with. But now I think I’m going to kill you slowly.” His other tentacle arm snapped up and cracked me on the back of the head. My vision spun. It felt like he had hit me with an anchor, not a piece of arm. Another drop of blood fell on my arm, and then he turned me over in the air. I was probably going to be sick soon. His arm swung up again and then, from what I could tell, some kind of spine shot out of the fleshy underside and stabbed me in the shoulder. I gasped, doubled over, my face staring into his mouth, my eyes locked at the back of his mouth. I twitched and flailed violently, having totally lost any control of my muscles whatsoever.
He began to lower me, feet first, into his mouth and it was then I realized that I just might die today. I tried to swallow but everything was spinning and I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. My core was buzzing, and then suddenly I vomited, straight into his mouth. He screamed-it was a very girlish scream, I remember-and threw me away, where I smacked against a wall and felt something snap in my arm. My head rolled as I slid down to the floor, and once I had settled and my eyes had focused, I could only watch as the demon spat up the vomit, a little bit of which was dribbling down my chin, though I couldn’t move to wipe it off if I wanted to. I couldn’t move anywhere, couldn’t even twitch any more. The demon glared at me from across the room, and it was at that time I noticed that he had red eyes.
“I can’t even begin to describe the ways in which you are going to suffer,” he told me. I could have cared less what he meant by it, because at that moment breathing was very very difficult. I gasped and wheezed, but no matter what I couldn’t get air past my throat into my lungs. My eyes burned as I tried to push it down with my own will, but of course that never worked. My vision was going black when suddenly there was some kind of outrageous noise, an explosion, and heat seared my face as I finally passed out.