Happy New Year everybody!

And because I missed that self-imposed deadline, merry Christmas. :P (a bit late but hey)

Okay, okay, first things first... um, sorry for not posting for so long. I just moved out you see, and it’s taken me a while to adjust to the new lifestyle and everything.

Yes that was a blatant excuse to try and avoid the lynch mob, but what can I do? I just haven’t been able to write properly with everything else going on around me.

So in this chapter I’ll pick up again with Cecil. Yes, Cecil. This is where I feel the storylines are going to split apart into several branches with each character pursuing their own objectives or just trying to stay alive, should be fun. :P

Hope everyone has a good year, and even if the glass is half empty for you, persevere and try to have fun. :D

The keys:

“Person speaking.”

“Daemon/Executioner speaking.” (or a Daemon in control of his/her host’s body)

‘Normal thoughts.’

‘Daemon speaking while not in control of his/her host’s body.’ (which would be inside their host’s mind)

God/Goddess speaking.

BALANCE OF WORLDS

Chapter 23

Cecil opened his eyes.

He wasn’t in the Temple anymore.

In fact, he had no idea where he was.

Was he dead? The darkness around him seemed impenetrable, not even his eyes could pierce it, though he thought he could make out a few shapes out in the darkness. No, his body was too sore. Which meant he was still alive. His thought processes were sluggish, something seemed to be missing, that feeling that one always gets when leaving the house. The feeling that he had forgotten something important, whether he really had forgotten something or not.

‘Daemon?’

He waited expectantly for her answer. When he got none, Cecil frowned. The seeds of worry silently began to germinate in the fertile soil of his still slightly confused mind.

With an effort, he pushed it aside for a moment. Okay, he was obviously alive- that was definite... probably. One could never be too careful about these things. Over the last few months he had learned not to take things at face value. By letting his guard down he would only be making it easy for a surprise to ambush him.

Something covered him, and for a moment he thought it might have been some sort of restraining device. No, he could still move his arms. Whatever covered him felt soft to the touch. It was then that the information from the other receptors on his body began contributing their share of perceptions. So it was a bed.

“Where am I?” he asked the darkness, softly. He would be the first to admit that the question was so clichéd that those three words were probably ingrained into every mind in one form or another, but there was a good reason for it. The first thing anyone emerging from the depths of unconsciousness would do was to get their bearings. All the confusion upon waking, the disorientation, and the hope that someone would answer the question was all rolled into three neat little words. What more incentive did one need to use them?

When no one answered his question, he didn’t know whether he was glad or sorry. Searching through his memory, he couldn’t recall what happened. The Keeper had taken him into the Temple, and... the old man had apologised for... something. Then his brain felt like it was being sucked out through his eyes, he had blacked out, and what seemed like a second later, here he was in this room. What did the old man do to him?

Sub-consciously, his hand strayed to the stone hanging around his neck. He frowned when his hand encountered a second one. ‘What’s this doing here?’ it was the amber he had given Diana. The chain was different, but the stone was definitely the same one. He knew it well enough to recognise it by touch alone. It was slightly warm, while Diana’s was a leaden block of ice- no surprise there though it still pained him to be reminded of what the girl had become. Reaching around behind his neck, he undid the clasp and held up the stone in front of his eyes. In the darkness, he could make out its shape. It was definitely the one he gave Diana, but what was it doing around his neck? Had someone taken it from her, or... did she give it to him?

That last thought sent a small pulse of pain through his chest. Was she really that far gone? He waited expectantly for an answer, and only when silence answered his question did he remember that the Daemon was no longer in his mind. Or at least she wasn’t answering his questions.

Was that why Diana’s stone had been around his neck? In the absence of his own soul, the Daemon would have suffered. Did she take it from Diana in an attempt to save herself, or had Diana somehow known that the Daemon was suffering, and gave her the stone? He fervently wished it was the latter, but deep down he knew it was unlikely.

‘Daemon...’

Well, lying there on the bed would achieve nothing. After painstakingly working this out in his head, Cecil pushed himself into a sitting position. His fangs suddenly extended, puncturing two neat little holes in his cracked lower lip. He tasted the blood on the edge of his tongue. Slightly metallic, and strangely familiar. ‘That’s right, I’m a vampire,’ he brooded silently. With the books he had read, being a vampire wasn’t exactly a glorious occupation and it was hard to bend his mind around the concept that he was a bloodsucker. A leech. He held his head in his hands, barely aware of how cold his hands were against his forehead.

A drawn-out squeak made him look up. Light entered the room, peering surreptitiously around the door before a figure blotted it out. Using the flat of his hand, he shielded his eyes against the sudden brightness, and wished he had his glasses with him.

“You’ve been out for more than three weeks, in case you want to know.”

Startled, Cecil squinted through eyes stung by the light. “Isaac?! What are you doing here? What am I doing here?”

The man paused. Confusing grappled with trepidation inside Cecil as the silence drew on. Though only a small portion of Isaac’s left cheek was lit by the light, he could still make out his eye. However, the glistening orb told him nothing. It might as well have been glass for all he could see in it.

Eventually, Isaac spoke, shifting his face so that the darkness hid it entirely. “It’s a long story, but you’re still in the underground complex. I expect you’re hungry or at least thirsty.” Being as he was, Cecil still picked out the small spark of irony in Isaac’s voice when he mentioned the word “thirsty”.

“You don’t need to get up now if you don’t feel like it. I have food and drink, so if you need I can bring them in here.”

This was his chance to get his questions answered, Cecil thought with relief. When he thought about it, he was quite hungry, but he didn’t feel he was at the level where he needed food to be brought to him. He wasn’t that incapacitated.

“No, I feel well enough to get up, thank you,” his gesture of gratitude it sounded woefully inadequate for some reason.

“I’ll wait for you in the kitchen then,” Isaac nodded, and walked away, his clothes rustling. Cecil sat there on the bed for a moment longer before shaking his head and pushed the blanket off himself. He was surprised to find that he was fully dressed, but not in the same clothes he remembered wearing when he had been down at the Temple. These clothes were a little dusty in some places, which left him wondering where else he had been since he had passed out.

Standing up, he tested his legs. A little shaky but they would support him. Sliding Diana’s amber into his pocket, he made his way out the door.

Three weeks. How was that possible? His body should have wasted away by now, and yet it was still in great condition, as he hadn’t neglected it for almost a month. What or who had maintained his body for this long? Again, he called for the Daemon, knowing that she probably had something to do with it. Again he received no response, only a faint whisper like the wind blowing through leaves, brushing lightly against his mind but gone before he could properly comprehend it. He shook his head again.

There was some food laid out on the kitchen table when he got there, walking on legs which still didn’t feel as if they belonged to him. Isaac was leaning against the counter, a coffee mug in his hand. When he saw Cecil, he gave him a nod that indicated for him to help himself. Cecil complied willingly, but he did take care not to eat too much too quickly. He wasn’t some glutton that wolfed down food on sight.

There was even a bottle of “medication”. Yes, he knew it was blood, but calling it “medication” made the concept easier to swallow. It wasn’t in the small, plastic bottles that Cecil was used to, but a large one the size of a soft drink can, made from clear glass.

“Drink it all down, you’ll need it.”

Isaac’s voice made Cecil look up, but not in surprise. The man obviously knew enough about all this.

He unscrewed the bottle lid, and took a tentative sniff, expecting any moment for the putrid smell he knew so well to assault his senses and strip the insides of his nostrils of their lining. Instead, the smell was more pleasing to his olfactory senses, like the aroma of a delicious meal, taken to a new level where it wasn’t just being perceived by his nose alone. It sent a delicious tingle down his spine.

Without hesitating, he tipped the liquid down his throat. To his surprise, it was still warm, and thick in its consistency. It warmed his insides, making him feel lightheaded as if he had just ingested too much alcohol. The only difference was that this liquid didn’t leave his senses reeling, quite the opposite.

Everything focussed, from his vision to his hearing. The beating of his heart inside his own chest was like a drum being played inside a vast cavern, the sound echoing back and forth from wall to wall. Isaac’s heartbeat was dimmer, but no less powerful, a deeper accompaniment to his own. Every single little pit, every inconsistency on the plastered wall in front of him. The small strands of fibre on the tablecloth in front of him. Even the mould lines on the glass bottle in his hand leapt into sharp focus, as if he had his face pressed up against them with a magnifying glass. He heard the silent but slow progress of worms through the soil beyond the wall, seven feet from where he sat. The scrabble of tiny feet as insects scuttled along the floor. The crunch and the wet spurt sounded like a gunshot next to Cecil’s ear as Isaac killed the cockroach that had been running across the floor. He smelt the sour, organic smell of the cockroach’s insides, and the food in front of him.

And the blood.

His hand was trembling. A voice in his head told him that he had drunk too much too quickly. But how was he to know? All he knew was how good it felt having the warm liquid inside him, soothing all the pains in his body. He could take on the entire world, and slaughter every single living thing within it.

He was invincible.

The glass bottle shattered in his grip.

Glass shards dug into his skin, drawing more blood. The pain shocked him out of his little world, a painful reminder of his mortality.

Breathing heavily and sweating as if he had just run the marathon ten times over, he let the remains of the bottle fall to the table. Blood dripped from his shredded palm, staining the white tablecloth like cheap red wine.

Isaac put the coffee mug down, making that clicking sound that every mother makes when confronted with a child who had done something exceedingly stupid or foolhardy and ended up hurting themselves. Pulling back a sleeve to reveal a wristband studded with a row of different gemstones, Isaac activated one. Cecil winced as the man took a hold of his wrist to hold his hand steady, and extracted the glass shards embedded in his flesh, reshaping the broken bottle as he went.

“Don’t you know what they say about too much of a good thing?” Sighing, the man began to heal Cecil’s wounds, stemming the flow of blood by closing off the ruptured blood vessels, and finally knitting flesh and skin back together until the only thing that remained of the accident was the blood. “Go wash that off, I doubt you’re still hungry.”

He didn’t need prompting to hurry to the bathroom to wash the blood off. His hand no longer hurt, but the blood only served to remind him of just how little control he had over himself. This was the second time he had taken too much of the stuff. The last time it wasn’t as bad as this, though.

Looking up, he stared into the mirror. A face he barely recognised stared back at him, eyes slightly wider than they should be. Staring into his own eyes, he saw the pain still lingering behind them, the consternation. There was blood on his lips, working with his eyes to make him look like a crazed psychopath. He could see the tips of his fangs in his open mouth. His teeth were also stained pink with blood.

Suddenly, he just didn’t want to think about it anymore. Snapping his eyes away from the sick parody of who he had once been, he splashed cold water on his face, wiping his lips until he was sure the blood was gone. He swilled the icy cold water around his mouth, spitting it out again and watching the liquid twist down the drain, laced with strings of diluted blood. He didn’t stop until he was sure there was nothing to remind him of blood he just drank. Only then did he dare confront his own reflection again.

His face dripping with water, he finally saw something he recognised. Yes, this was him again. No longer the bloody killer but himself. Cecil Druzha. Druvach. Vampire.

‘No!’ he screamed silently, frantically trying to forget that disturbing fact.

“Tell me, Cecil. What can you remember about what happened to you?”

Cecil twisted around in shock, not expecting him to just suddenly pop up behind him like that.

He was standing there, expression impassive. Again, Cecil could divine nothing from the man’s raven eyes.

Isaac’s reflection hadn’t been in the mirror.

How else could he have missed seeing him?

Without turning his body, Cecil looked back at the mirror. According to its reflective surface, he should have been the only one in the room. But when he turned back, Isaac was still standing there, larger than life. Only this time a small smile graced his lips.

“Wondering why I’m not in the mirror?”

Cecil could only nod, not sure he was capable of answering the question.

Isaac grinned, his lips pulling back to reveal two rows of perfectly formed, white teeth. Fangs suddenly extended from his gums, falling into place in rapid succession like rows of knives that interlocked perfectly. Cecil took a step back, his eyes going as wide as saucers. Isaac suddenly looked like something out of a horror movie. Something that shouldn’t exist outside of nightmares or deepsea trenches.

With small, wet, sucking sounds, the fangs retracted into the man’s gums, folds of flesh hiding the small slits from which they emerged until Isaac’s grin was no longer so dangerous-looking. He opened and closed his jaws a few times, running his tongue over his gums before he spoke.

“Of course, the fangs do make it quite hard to speak when they’re all extended,” he said casually. “I’m just a vampire, like you,” he added when he saw Cecil’s expression. “Just a little different, that’s all. Now are you going to answer my first question?”

Cecil nodded again. It seemed that was all he was capable of doing just then.

Silence. Isaac waited expectantly. Cecil suddenly understood that he was actually required to talk.

“... All I can remember is... going into the Temple, and then the Keeper did something to me, and then I woke up here,” Cecil stuttered, unable to get the image of that grin out of his head. Toothy wasn’t the half of it.

“You were captured, your soul ripped right out of your body. It would seem to me that you are more important than you think you are,” Isaac observed, eyes piercing through Cecil’s and right into his mind. He looked away, uncertain as how he should be taking this. Important? Him?

Cecil allowed himself to be led back into the main chamber. The layout of this apartment seemed to be exactly the same as his own, though the furnishings and their placements were different.

When both of them had seated, Isaac steepled his fingers, giving him a quick smile that he supposed was intended to be reassuring. Now that the euphoria of ingesting so much blood at once had worn off, his muscles tingled with a pleasant warmth. It was a feeling of wellbeing that he had missed. But even so, it lacked something. And the answer was simple. The Daemon. Without her there was a hole in his mind and an unnerving silence inside his head which he couldn’t get used to.

‘I’ve only truly acknowledged her presence in my mind for a few months, and yet I’m already missing her...’ he mused sadly.

“Cecil.” The word made him look up. Isaac was studying him with a look that Cecil knew well enough to understand that it was designed to set the atmosphere for an important revelation that the listener would do well to heed. He watched the man carefully.

“Do you understand why you have been captured?” Isaac’s voice was sibilant, every word and syllable pronounced as if they were sung.

In return, Cecil gave him a flat look. “You obviously do, Isaac, judging by your voice. Why don’t you tell me instead of asking stupid questions?” sarcasm dripped like syrup off his voice. He had had enough of people asking him blatantly stupid questions which they were obviously privy to.

“Well done,” a small smile made Isaac’s lips curl up briefly. He clapped his hand once, and waited expectantly. Cecil quirked a brow, wondering what he was up to.

Isaac started speaking again, without prompting and totally out of the blue. Cecil felt as if he should be asking the man questions, but whenever one popped into his mind and he opened his mouth, Isaac would answer the question in a way that integrated it flawlessly into his recount of the events since he lost consciousness in the Temple.

It was a lot to take in all a once, but since he had been through such circumstances where he was just bombarded with situation like a castle under siege, he had learned to adapt to it. He only registered the most important pieces of information, while the rest were filed away for later perusal. Of course, it was impossible to retrieve everything he stowed away on a whim, so the Daemon had helped with that. Now that she was gone, he would have to rely on other, more difficult methods to dredge them up. It mightn’t be that bad, more like trying to dredge the ocean’s depths with a garden spade.

So the Daemons had stopped coming into this world all of a sudden. For some reason no one could fathom. Not even Isaac.

His friends had survived, and rebuilding of the city had begun.

The humans were flabbergasted.

Amy was dead. Probably.

His mind felt detached from it all. A moment was all it took for him to realise that none of this seemed mattered to him. So his friends were safe. The city was safe. So what? his mind seemed scream. He felt unnecessarily jittery, sitting there on the couch listening to Isaac answering his questions as if the man could read his mind. The silence in his head was replaced with a pent-up need to do something.

Isaac stopped speaking, cutting his own voice off as if someone had suddenly pressed the mute button.

Fighting the need to rush out the door, Cecil asked, “so can I go home?”

“No.”

His eyes widened. Cecil’s head snapped up from where he had been staring at the floor to lock with Isaac’s eyes. Again, he couldn’t penetrate their depths, merely scratch the surface. Slowly, his brows drew down until it became a frown. “Why not? What’s stopping me? The Daemons aren’t a threat anymore. My parents would be worried.”

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Cecil,” Isaac scoffed, shaking his head. “You know perfectly well why you can’t go home.” With that he stood up, and walked away into the kitchen. “You must decide what you are going to do from here on. Your old life is effectively dead to you now,” he said over his shoulder.

Cecil’s lips hardened, his fangs straining to extend despite his best efforts. He was more irritable than he remembered himself to be, or was it just a side-effect of the blood he had ingested? Either way he felt he shouldn’t take such a comment from someone like Isaac.

The still reasonable part of his mind tried to calm him down with some success. No, he couldn’t go home, could he? Whoever had captured him wouldn’t let him walk around scot-free, or else why would they capture him in the first place? He debated this back and forth inside his own mind. But without the Daemon, it was a little one-sided.

It all depended on who was involved. He knew the Keeper was, but if it was restricted to the Keeper alone, then the situation was a little more reassuring. On the other hand, the Keeper was a highly-ranked personnel amongst the Druvach, and because there had been others there when he lost consciousness (or at least he thought there were others), there was no guarantee that he was the only high-ranking person to be involved. In circumstances such as this, he had found the best way to go about it all was to take the worst possible scenario, and try to work his way out of it. but right now, there seemed to be no way out of it. The Druvach had people everywhere and the fact that the underground facility was crawling with Druvach. Who knew who was after him?

He was being a little over-paranoid. But when there were people after you, it paid to be careful, and right now he was careful not to let his mind carry him away to the point where he would be afraid to even breathe lest someone should hear him and come bursting through the door.

On top of that, there was the question of why Isaac was helping him. Was he going to turn him in for a reward of some sort? What could the man possibly get out of this? He obviously didn’t want to capture him as those others have. There wasn’t anything Cecil could immediately think of that Isaac could want from him, and he wasn’t naïve enough to think that the man could possibly be... nice enough to help him for the sake of helping. As helpful as Isaac had been, Cecil had the gut feeling that the man would only ever help someone if he thought it would be advantageous for himself later on.

‘How could you be thinking of such things when one of your friends are dead?’ he chided himself, then stopped. no, he had every right to worry about such things. Amy was probably dead, and deep down he knew it was going to hit him later. But more immediate concerns drew his attention. Worrying about her wouldn’t help him get out of this. As much as it sickened him to think about it, he would have to worry about his friends later.

Possibilities flickered through his mind. None of them, however, were viable.

Except for one.

He chuckled without humour. No matter how impossible a situation seemed, there was always, always at least one way out of it. It might be no more than a mean little way, overgrown with weeds and situated on the edge of a cliff, but it was a way. And he just found his.

There didn’t seem to be any other viable options. Without the Daemon it was harder to work out what options there were in the first place, but something compelled him towards this particular pathway. ‘And I guess curiosity has its part in it, too...’ he mused.

He found Isaac at the kitchen table, sipping a glass of what Cecil hoped fervently was red wine. ‘No such luck,’ he thought, knowing full well what the reddish-brown liquid was.

On cue, Isaac turned around and looked at him expectantly. “I see you’ve made up your mind.”

“Just one question first. Who’s involved in this? Is it just the Keeper, or...” he left it hanging, letting the man fill in the gaps.

“The Keeper was only doing what he thought was the best for the Temple. You were seen as a threat, and he had to get rid of it. So what have you decided to do?”

A threat? He let that one pass for now. “Would it be possible for the Vachdru accept me? It’s obvious I can no longer stay here, or live above ground.”

The silence that followed was pregnant with potentialities. He felt that everything was riding on this moment. All on what the man would say next.

“Why the Vachdru?”

Now it was Cecil’s turn to scoff, sitting down opposite the man and leaning back in the chair. “Someone who obviously knows as much as you cannot be that stupid, Isaac. Don’t be deliberately obtuse,” he threw the man’s words right back at him, and watched for his reaction.

Isaac didn’t move, but raised an eyebrow and cracked a small, knowing smile. He sipped at his... drink, leaving a bloody mustache over the top of his lips. A few seconds later, he nodded slowly. “I’m sure the Vachdru would welcome one as powerful as you, though you might not necessarily conform to their... philosophies as such.”

“So you know where they are?” Cecil asked, already knowing full well what the answer was going to be.

“Of course.”

It didn’t come as a surprise, and he expected no less.

“How do I get there?”

Without answering, Isaac drained his glass, wiping the blood away from his lips with a napkin. “Are you sure you want to pursue this? I mean to say that once you have become a one of them, there’s no way you can return to a normal way of life. Ever. Not that there’s any chance of that now anyway,” he added as an afterthought.

Cecil looked up sharply, his mouth opening before he realised that the last sentence had been a bait. “What do you mean?”

There was a touch of disappointment in the man’s expression, and Cecil got the fleeting impression that he had just failed some sort of test. “Your parents are dead, Cecil.”

Maybe this was a test, too. He strove to keep his expression unchanged, not yielding an inch. Dread was already beginning tightening its grip on his heart, making it difficult to draw breath without visible effort.

“You don’t believe me. This isn’t a test for a change, Cecil,” Isaac said flatly, reaching down and picking up a newspaper. The Sydney Morning Herald. The man stared at the front page for a moment, and then tossed it across the table.

‘...’ He stared down at the front page. The words “Gas explosion claims family” leapt up and slapped him in the face. Eyes widening, he grabbed the newspaper, and scanned through the words at t a furious rate.

The silence was stifling. Isaac watched him like a hawk. He ate up the words on the page in front of him like a condemned criminal at his last meal. This didn’t seem real, his mind kept screaming. The explosion had been caused by gas filling the house. Something had sparked, and set off a conflagration that burnt down the entire building. Four barely recognisable corpses were found in the burnt-out husk of what used to be his home. Two were police officers, and the other two were his parents. The media had been told that the officers were there to inform his own parents of his death on a camping trip out in the Blue Mountains. This was a most unfortunate accident. Neighbours grieved.

Bullshit.

His voice was surprisingly steady when he put down the paper, and locked eyes with Isaac’s raptor gaze. “And this is all true?” he asked, eyes straying to the top of the page to the date. November 5th.

“That was two days ago. Today is the seventh,” Isaac prompted, somehow reading his thoughts. “The Druvach are trying to cover this up as an accident, but I’ve been doing some research of my own. It would appear that your former friend, Herman, had something to do with it.” He put his hands up in a placating gesture, “I’m not saying he directly ordered the house burnt down, but I know he was involved.

“Right now, to the rest of the world. Your friends, schoolmates, relatives, and anyone else you knew. To them you’re effectively dead. You no longer exist in this world. That Blue Mountains thing is a cover-up so no one would go looking for your body where it had been kept in the cells several levels down. If I hadn’t got you out, it would have rotted away in there.”

His former life was collapsing like rotten wood. His parents were dead. Herman probably had a hand in it. What friends he had thought he was dead. He couldn’t go out into public lest he be captured by the Druvach again. “What happened to the Daemon? Where is she?”

“Without the presence of your soul, the Daemon was slowly wasting away within your own body. I’m... sorry, but I wasn’t in time to save her. She’s dead now, ceased to exist. I have taken the necessary precautions to ensure that your soul doesn’t waste away, since you needed her presence to survive just as much as she needed you to survive. It gets a little technical, but-”

“What about Diana?” he cut in impatiently. Somehow this issue seemed so much more important than any other. No emotions occupied his brain except a bleak emptiness. It was worse now that he knew the Daemon was well and truly gone. A part of himself since he was born was gone. Tears stung his eyes but he refused to let them overflow, and instead put all his efforts into maintaining a steady voice.

“She is well enough.”

There was something wrong with that answer. It was too bland.

But before he could say anything, Isaac stood up, and began to walk away. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

Cecil was about to bristle at the comment when he realised the man hadn’t meant to mock him. He didn’t know what Isaac meant to imply with that last comment. Sometimes his words were like his eyes, impenetrable.

“How? I don’t know where she is.”

Isaac chuckled. “She’s been here all the time, and you haven’t noticed her? Use your eyes, Cecil.” He shook his head, opening the front door and left the apartment. “I will be back shortly.”

Confused, he looked around. Like cloud-watching, the shape suddenly emerged from the shadows as a cloud could suddenly look like a rabbit or a balloon. It was in this way that one of the shadows suddenly resolved itself to be Diana. With her black cloak wrapped tightly around her and her hood over her face, all he could make out clearly was the lower part of her face

Her hair was a little messier than he remembered it being. It was still neatly cut to frame her face, but there were loose strands. The girl was- or used to be- impeccable.

“Diana,” he stood up, and made his way across the room to her.

“I-” mouth still open, he stopped. It would be fairly pointless talking to her. He wasn’t even sure she still remembered who he was, and the icy cold stone around his neck attributed to that. “I see you’re well.”

Without another word, he reached into his pocket. Holding her stone carefully in his hand, he offered it to her. “Here, I don’t know how it ended up with me, but... this is yours.”

Slowly, she shook her head. “... I do not require it,” she deadpanned without even looking up at him.

“But it’s yours,” he was dangerously close to breaking down now. “Just take it.”

“...”

A hand emerged from the depths of her cloak, and plucked the stone out of his hand. Her skin had the icy, slightly waxy quality of a corpse in a morgue.

Only when her hand disappeared back into her cloak did she look up at him. He quickly looked away, not wishing to see the silent torment under the glistening surface of those orbs. There was what could have possibly been a tiny sigh or a chuckle, followed by the whoosh of displaced air as the girl vanished.

Refusing to think, Cecil stared at the spot where the girl had been. So he was alone in the world again. Everyone he cared about was either dead, no longer cared about him, or was ignorant of the fact that he was still alive. He had only himself now. Even the Daemon, the one who had been closest to him, was gone for good.

He leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and finally let the tears flow down his face.

---

So the boy wanted to go over to the Vachdru.

Isaac waited patiently in the twins’ apartment. Outwardly he was staring off into space, but inwardly his mind was already paving the way for Cecil’s further development. Matthew was quietly reading a book he had found on the bookshelf. The rustle of pages turning was the only sound in the chamber as Matthew devoured the words on the pages at an incredible speed.

Matthew suddenly stopped reading and looked up. He closed the book, inserted a red ribbon to mark his place. Isaac had been waiting for this. Matthew was so attuned to his twin that he knew intimately where she was. And right now, she was returning.

Shadows deepened. From a shadow in the kitchen a girl emerged. She was tightly wrapped in a black cloak, which she let fall open as she stepped into the light of the main chamber. A chain tinkled gently around her waist as she pushed her hood back, revealing a face that looked exactly like Diana’s. Isaac smiled, judging by her expression, it had been successful. He was somewhat disappointed, though, that the boy hadn’t penetrated her disguise. But he was untrained, and soon enough he would know better.

An emerald around the girl’s neck was glowing gently.

Matthew stood up to greet his twin. “So you were...” he began.

“... Successful in gaining possession of the stone,” she finished for him without skipping a beat. Arranging the cloak around herself, she sat down in a chair, and let the emerald’s glow dim.

Instantly, her features flickered, and reverted to its original state. Her hair shortened slightly, and became fairer. Both the twins had high cheekbones, and combined with their narrow skulls, gave them an otherworldly appearance. Their eyes were identical. Green as deep as the emerald Susan wore around her neck.

Crossing one leg over the other, Susan took the stone from around her hip, and dangled it in front of her face. “Still, Isaac, I fail to see...”

“... What’s so special about this stone,” this time it was Matthew who finished the sentence for her, leaning over her shoulder and studying the amber. The two looked at each other, and shared a quick kiss.

Matthew and Susan weren’t twins in the biological sense, but they had been living with each other for so long they might as well be. He was never sure what their relationship was, a cross between lovers and siblings that was never fully revealed nor ever discussed. He still remembered rescuing the pair from the bowels of s sinking ship. Had he not been there, the two of them would have been trapped within the ship at the bottom of the sea, alive but in torment as their flesh slowly decomposed.

And for that the two had come under his service. In three hundred years they had ages- physically- about two or three years which made them slightly younger in appearance to the physical body he occupied now. But what made them really peculiar was the fact that they looked almost identical to each other. Their faces had, over the centuries, warped to almost exactly match the other’s. Susan wore her hair slightly shorter for a human female, and Matthew wore his slightly longer for a human male. If the two wore baggy clothing, kept quiet and stood next to each other anyone would have been hard-pressed to tell one from the other.

“Just give me the stone,” he snapped his finger. “And you two can do whatever you two do later when I’m gone, now listen up.” The twins looked at him with suffering expressions, but Susan tossed the stone to him nevertheless. It was slightly warm to the touch. He couldn’t destroy the stone, because that would hurt the boy- perhaps permanently- but it was good enough as a tool.

“Tomorrow, I want you two to make a trip to the Vachdru headquarters, and inform them that my... protégé has had a change of heart. Use whatever tact and subtlety you have, but-”

“Knowing us we will most likely use a more...” Susan cut in.

“... Direct method,” Matthew finished for her, and the twins grinned unpleasantly.

Isaac shrugged, and stood up. “I don’t care how you do it, though I know that your ability with the stones far outweigh any sense of diplomacy you might possess within you.”

“This should...”

“... Be a piece of cake.” They beamed. To anyone else, it would have seemed like an innocent gesture, but to Isaac they were like two sharks. He had seen them control and ruin too many lives to think they were merely a pair of innocent young people.

“Another thing before I go. The boy needs some incentive to get him moving. I’m sure both of you are more than able to make that happen.”

“Yes, sir,” they said in perfect unison, and threw off two salutes.

“I know you won’t disappoint me,” he said, and meant it.

Just before he closed the apartment door behind him, he heard muffled giggles from behind him. Shaking his head, he closed the door behind him to silence them.

---

He had to have a purpose.

Revenge was too petty. He didn’t do things like that. Revenge tended to go out of control really quickly and, inevitably, one tended to kill the wrong people. and that’s when revenge turned into simple psychopathic rampage. Plus, he liked his sanity where it was.

Diana seemed a lost cause no matter how long he thought about it. Without the Daemon to guide him, he had no idea what he could do to help her. As much as he felt he loved her, the feeling was- to his horror- beginning to subside into a dull flame. The more he thought about it the worse it became, so he was avoiding the subject like the plague now. If the Daemon was here, she would have reprimanded him for running away from his problems... but she was gone, wasn’t she?

What about the Daemons? (And this seemed such a better subject to dwell upon because it took his mind away from his immediate problems.) There had to be some reason they suddenly stopped coming into this world. There was no rhyme nor reason to it. the Daemons could have had a stranglehold over this world by now. It’s not like the humans could deal with them in any way, and there were only limited number of both Druvach and Vachdru- even if they did decide to band together against the Daemons. Daemons were immortal, they were not.

He remembered asking Isaac why they hadn’t tried to close the pathway between the worlds. The only answer he got was because the Daemons were still guarding the entrance to their world. And if they were to close the pathway, someone had to get into the Daemons’ world. Somehow the answer seemed inadequate, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone had hid something from him.

In a way, he felt liberated. There was nothing else to care about except himself now. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that it felt good. The tiny part of his brain that said- quite firmly - who cares if the rest of the world goes to hell, was finally being paid some attention.

He had found a bag of stones on the bookshelf, tucked above a thickset, leather-bound novel. Not old leather, but more like new leather that was designed to look old. When he pulled it out, he saw that it was the Lesser Key of Solomon, the book he had been reading up in the library what seemed like years ago.

There was also a collection of weapons on the walls. Pole-arms, axes, swords, bows, shields. Most of them had the shiny, sparkly look of weapons that were made for display purposes only, but some did have the slightly worn quality of weapons well-used to killing people. He spent some time admiring some of the finer pieces before he decided that he needed something to do. Taking the pouch of stones and the book he found to the coffee table, he sat down and stared at them for some time.

The material of the blue velvet bag felt smooth under his fingers. When he loosened the drawstring, the stones inside clacked together gently. A sound he hadn’t heard for so long and yet so reassuringly familiar. He gently shovelled the stones out of the bag, and spread them out on the wooden table in front of him. All the stones he remembered were there. Garnet, sapphire, emerald, peridot, diamond, even a moonstone.

With his knowledge of the stones, he could do a lot of things- and he hadn’t even discovered half their potential. Everything was in his head, waiting to manifest itself when he needed it.

Scooping the stones up, he deposited them back into the bag. Subconsciously, he sent a small jolt of power to the amber at his throat. Grudgingly, the cold stone began to warm up. That old sense of power flowed through him. Sluggishly like congealed blood. And if he boosted the stone’s powers to its full... like so, the voices within the stone became audible. Whispers connecting him with every single other person that had used the stone ever since that first soul made it its home. Pieces of others’ psyches, filling him with knowledge, experience, and a sense of wellbeing he was sure not even the best human drugs could possibly emulate.

A hammering on the door snapped him out of his trance. The voices shut off, and the feeling drained out of him, wringing him dry like a wet sponge.

“Is there anyone in there?” a voice shouted. The owner of the voice banged on the door again.

Self-preservation was the first thing on his mind. An overwhelming need to get away from whoever was at the door. He looked around wildly for somewhere to hide. They were here to get him!

His eyes fell on the bag of stones. He dug his hand into it, searching frantically with fingers slippery with sweat for the right stone.

There. He had it now. It took him a moment to activate it, and knowledge of its abilities spring to his mind. In less time than it took for him to activate the stone, he vanished.

Not wholly, though. He was still there in the room. Just that no one else could see him. Without thinking he grabbed the bag of stones, and a panicked moment later, the book he had picked off the shelves as well. The still-calm part of his mind told him that he would need something to defend himself with, too. A quick scan over the weapons and he selected a sword with a plain-looking leather scabbard and belt.

He then deposited himself next to the bookcase, where his shadow- thrown by the lights overhead- wouldn’t be noticeable. With another thought, he extended the stone’s power to everything he held, hiding the book and the weapon along with his clothes from sight.

The hammering stopped. He heard a key being inserted into the lock in the ensuing silence. When the door opened, two men stepped in, and Cecil couldn’t help but gawp at their appearance.

‘There are people that actually dress like that?!’ he thought, eyes tracking the pair as they checked every room. The two of them were dressed in what he could only call medieval garb. Tights, puffed sleeves, capes, gaudy colours, even a feather in their caps.

“Doesn’t look like he’s here,” one remarked, looking around the room with casual interest.

The other one threw up his arms. “Where else could he have gone? No one saw him leave the room. Are you suggesting that there’s a secret passage around here?” he asked with a most exaggerated accent.

“Why do our lords want him anyway?” the first one asked. Cecil noticed this one had a slightly higher voice than was usual for a man. “What’s so important about him?”

“Who knows what goes through their heads. All I know is that he needs to be captured, and surveillance saw Isaac carrying him into this apartment.”

“You and your modern-day technology. We should have gotten him when we had the chance.”

“It’s not my fault the higher-ups didn’t respond in time, now is it?”

The two men were trying stare each other down now, and unfortunately for him, didn’t seem like they were going to leave anytime soon. Holding his breath, Cecil slowly edged along the wall, darting from shadow to shadow so he wouldn’t be noticed. He breathed a little easier when he reached the safety of the bedroom doors, no more than a few metres away from the apartment’s entrance- which had been conveniently left open.

He couldn’t afford to stay down here a moment longer now. Everything within him impelled him to run away, to seek exit from this deathtrap. When he was finally out in the corridors, it took him no more than a few seconds to get his bearings before he was off again. Lucky for him there weren’t anyone travelling along it as far as he could see, for a speeding shadow would have aroused much suspicion and unwanted attention.

The elevators were out of the question. should anyone happen to come along, his cover would be blown instantly. He had to take the stairs, but how was he to get past the guards?

Approaching footsteps behind him made him stop, and flatten himself against the nearest door. It was the two men that had been in Isaac’s apartment a minute ago. To his amusement- despite the situation- they were still arguing with one another, albeit in more discreet tones.

“... We’ll have to get Isaac, now too. He’s involved himself in this.”

“See? See what I mean? If we took care of him when we had the opportunity...” This last word was accentuated with some vigorous hand gestures. “... We wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of capturing both of them!”

“So what do you want me to do? Turn back time?” The calm one was beginning to get heated now.

“There’s little point in doing that now,” the first one muttered somewhat petulantly. “Let’s just go downstairs and report to the higher-ups. And we’ll use the stairs this time, I dislike being stuck inside that little metal box.”

“You mean the elevator?”

“That’s the one.”

This was his chance to slip past the guards. His body almost moved without prompting, following the men at a safe distance as they quietly bickered their way towards the stairs. The rational part of his mind warned him that real life never worked this way. when you were trying to escape a complex filled with potential enemies, people didn’t just conveniently come along and unwittingly help you escape. That sort of stuff only ever happened in stories.

On second thoughts, though, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth? Here was an opportunity to escape, and he was questioning it.

A few times other people walked along the corridor past the peculiar pair. Sometimes greetings were exchanged, and either one or both men would pause in their current debate to nod or reply in response. Other than this no one seemed to give them a second glance. This raised his eyebrows. If they were so well-known, how come he had never seen them before in his time here?

It was a relief to finally reach the guarded door that led to the stairwell. The men dug their ID cards from the depths of their clothing, and presented them to the guards. A quick inspection later, the door was opened. Cecil held his breath. This was his chance now. The two men had struck up conversation with the guards, and the door seemed just open enough for him to slip through without disturbing it.

Taking a deep breath, he ran for it, still keeping to the walls. The doorway was situated in the middle of a T-junction, the corridor branching off to either side of it.

Two people suddenly turned the corner in front of him. He screeched to a halt. A few more inches and he would have hit them. Pressing himself against the wall, he watched them pass, barely holding back a gasp when he saw who they were.

Mark and Kristy.

The two of them weren’t speaking, but the mere sight of them made his heart clench with a mixture of fear and happiness. At least he knew now for certain that they were safe. So they thought he was dead, he would have to deal with that fact later. With an effort, he turned his head away from them and back towards the door.

It was still open. Good.

Without pausing, he dashed for the opening. Praying silently that no one would notice a shadow speeding along the floor, he turned sideways and slid between the two men, straight through the door.

The stairwell was ill-lit with a few paltry bulbs. One pair of stairs led downwards, and another up. He leaned against the wall a small distance from the still-open door, avoiding the sliver of light that shone through it. footsteps echoed along the stairwell, whether from upstairs or down he couldn’t tell with all the echo. It was more than one person definitely, but the width of the stairs meant he could probably evade anyone without too much trouble provided they didn’t walk abreast of each other.

He took this small break to catch his breath and still his beating heart. Putting the book down, he put the swordbelt around his waist, feeling a little better now he had the comforting weight of a weapon at hand. The pouch went into his pocket, and he was set. Picking up the book again, he closed his eyes and calmed his mind as best as he could. Panicking would only make things worse.

A squeaking made his head turn towards the door. The two men closed the door behind them, much to Cecil’s relief. For once they weren’t talking, but began to walk downstairs without even looking at each other.

He waited for their footsteps to meld in with all the other footsteps before beginning his ascent. His sneakers didn’t make much sound to begin with, and amongst all the other sounds echoing back and forth there was no way anyone could have detected him through hearing while he bound up the stairs two at a time.

The strain of maintaining the stone’s power was beginning to tell. Dizziness would overtake him occasionally, and he would pause for breath. He saw other people along the way, either going up or down, but no one seemed to detect him. More than once, in his hurry, he brushed up against someone’s arm. These times he would freeze up, and wait for the other person to put it down to a breeze or an insect before resuming his journey upwards.

Once he reached the top, another problem suddenly became apparent.

He had no key card, therefore he couldn’t actually go out the door.

‘Damn it!’ he berated himself. There was only one way out of this now, and he had to make it quick.

Pressing his ear against the door leading into the building, then checking that no one was coming up the stairs, he let go of the emerald’s power. If he couldn’t get out the conventional way then he would have to use force.

Gently he put the book on the ground, and fished around in the pouch, taking out the first stone he encountered, trusting his instincts. An opal. ‘This is a healing stone...’ he frowned, and was about to put it back in when the knowledge hit him.

An opal is formed when a stone is shattered. Then over time the pieces would fuse back together. It was this latter quality that they exploited to heal wounds. Now he would use the former to get out.

This was the destructive side of the stone’s power. It glowed in his hand, multi-faceted and beautiful to behold. Power leaked into his body through the hand holding the stone like poison.

‘Let’s see if I’m right...’ the thought came like a distant voice. He pressed his free hand against the cold metal door that would lead to the small alley- and freedom.

In that moment, he could sense all the different pieces of the mechanism that held the door together, that worked the heavy locking bars, every individual piece that made it work as one efficient whole. He sent a pulse of thought through his stone, and it answered with a pulse of its own that raced through his body. A shockwave, slowly amplified by the power already in his body until it made his whole body shake. It reached the hand pressed up against the door, and paused.

A low boom was the only warning he had, and even then it was too late. The energy was unleashed from his hand with the force of a localised nuclear bomb, sending him sprawling on the dusty concrete. The opal flew out of his hands, and shattered on the wall beside him, raining him with multi-coloured pieces. Stars swam in front of his eyes and there was a stabbing pain in the back of his brain, like someone repeatedly jabbing it with a needle.

A tortured groan emanated from the door, followed a moment later by a deafening crash as it literally flew off its hinges, and slammed into the alley wall, leaving a sizeable dent. Where the metal bars had inserted into the wall were several rents where they had torn themselves out with the door.

As he watched, the door fell down with a dull boom. It fell apart, spilling pieces of machinery as a disembowelled person would spill their internal organs.

Bewildered voices both from inside and out were getting closer. Feet rattled up the stairs, and workers outside were approaching. Behind him the lock was slowly turning. He had to get out there now. Scrambling, he picked up his pouch and the book. He activated his emerald a bare second before the door behind him opened, and faces began to appear over the stairs.

Careful not to step on the door, he ran around the back of the building, away from the curious onlookers and Druvach alike.

The building behind the hotel was a ruin, ten metre high walls holding a messy pile of rubble like a box of scrap wood and metal. Shouting could be heard now, as people tried to get the onlookers away so they could start to find to what the hell just happened. Knowing people, it was going to take some time to disperse the curious mob, precious time he could use to get away from here.

And to think, a few hours ago he was happily out of it all. What he wouldn’t do to turn back time now.

Wishful thinking aside, where was he supposed to go now?

---

Nighttime, he was back in the suburban streets again.

He knew where he was going, but didn’t have the energy to stop it. A day without food was making his stomach grouchy, and it protested loudly every few minutes, much to his annoyance.

His feet were subconsciously taking him back to his home, and as much as he wanted otherwise, he couldn’t find the energy to stop. One step after another. He did make sure he was out of sight, though, so in this case a local park made for a convenient place to plod through while keeping out of sight.

Sleep had been another luxury he hadn’t been able to afford, even though he was well out of the city centre. The Druvach were just too omnipotent to take risks, they had people everywhere.

No, he couldn’t keep going like this. Who was he kidding? It hurt every time he put his foot down. He was hungry, and the insatiable thirst for lifeblood was slowly becoming a maddening force inside his mind.

Leaves rustled, the wind sighed. Summer was nearly here, and even at night the temperature was markedly higher than he remembered it to be. He pushed on through the foliage, twigs and leaf litter cracking and scrunching under his feet. Cicadas were already filling the night air with their incessant cries, like tiny, high-pitched alarms. He could barely keep his eyes open now, a day of clambering over rubble and evading anyone he saw depleting his energy levels to a dangerously low level.

There were voices up ahead.

He paused, and waited a moment to make sure it wasn’t just voices in his head.

No, he wasn’t delusional. Two people, a man and a woman. The mere thought of the latter made his fangs dig painfully into his lower lip, his own blood merely making his raging hunger worse. Exhaustion sloughed off him.

There were people. Therefore there would be blood.

Too far gone to hear what the voices were actually saying, and not caring what they said anyway, he went down on all fours, and slowly made his way towards the sound like a spider. With one hand, he loosened his weapon. Reason was beating at the bars of his mind where hunger had locked it up.

Slowly, he set his book down. It was the one thing he kept, though he didn’t know why. He didn’t read it, but he didn’t know why he kept it, either. It just seemed a good idea, something he kept for the metaphorical rainy day, whatever that could be.

Right there, in front of him. It was a courting couple. Two bodies lying in the leaf litter amongst the undergrowth. Whispers and giggles fell on deaf ears. All he could hear was the blood rushing through the woman’s veins.

Without making a single sound, and moving with speed belying the exhaustion he felt only a few moments ago, he burst from his hiding place. His sword rang as he unsheathed it, chopping through the man’s neck. He died without a sound, blood spurting like a fountain from his half-severed neck. It splattered him and his clothes, but he wasn’t after the man’s blood.

It took a moment for the woman to register what had happened, and when she did she let out a scream of sheer terror, scrabbling to push her lover’s corpse off her body. Cecil stood with eyes wide and unseeing while she freed herself.

Others would come soon, he had to be quick.

Dropping his weapon, he dove for the woman’s throat, fangs extended like a beast. He had no time for finesse, the raging hunger turning him into an uncontrollable killing machine. Biting down hard and jerking his head back, he ripped a chunk of flesh from the flailing human’s neck. Planting his mouth back onto the ruin of her neck, he let the fluids flow into his mouth, drinking hungrily.

The woman thrashed around, but he was far stronger than her in his current state, and she could do little to escape. He fingernails raked weakly at the flesh on his arm, leaving behind parallel wounds that wept blood.

Eventually, her sobbing weakened to a whimper, and he let go of her. She tried crawling away, her bloody body glistening in the moonlight. Too much blood loss, however, prevented her from moving more than a few inches. Breathing heavily, Cecil picked up his discarded sword, holding it in both hands.

This human was no longer useful to him, and leaving her alive would only prolong her torment. With this issue resolved in his mind, he hacked the weapon through her neck, severing her head. It rolled a small distance, resting on its side where her features- contorted with horror and pain- stared unseeingly at his feet.

He felt invigorated now. Every sense sharpened until he could see every branch and leaf on the trees in the darkness. The smell of leaf litter and blood assailed his nostrils, while the nocturnal cry of insects and small mammals seemed as if they were right next to his ear.

Picking up some of the clothing that the couple had discarded, he cleaned his sword before sheathing it again. In the distance, he heard sirens, and the sound of people shouting. He hadn’t been aware that it had taken so long. Now the police were here.

Not that it mattered. What could they do to him?

Smiling at the thought, and feeling confident enough to take on the world, he walked towards the flashing lights and blaring sirens, one hand on his sword and the other holding his book. Branches hit his face, but he just kept walking through them.

A flashlight beam found him, and there was a cry of alarm.

He didn’t wait for whoever it was to run back to get help. Following the source of the sound, he sprinted through the trees, evading branches and trunks quickly enough to make the best slalom racer gape. He could see now, it was a police officer. Without hesitating, he leapt forward, crash-tackling the man to the ground, landing on his back. From there it was a quick struggle, one hand going around the man’s neck while the other took a fistful of hair. One quick wrench was all it took. The man fell still.

He hadn’t even broken out in a sweat. Standing up, he retrieved his book from where it had fallen, kicked the body a few times, and continued to walk towards the sirens.

Finally, he emerged from the treeline and confronted the crowd. Two police cards were parked by the side of the road, lights flashing and sirens screaming. An officer was trying to keep the onlookers back, another was questioning a woman whom Cecil assumed had reported the scream. The other two looked like they were about to investigate, flashlights in hand.

The hubbub slowly died when they saw him standing there, only to start again- louder- a moment later. He guessed that, in the current lighting conditions, he must look like something that stepped straight out of some horror movie. The blood on his clothes hadn’t dried completely, and there was still the blood on his face and around his mouth. A few people fainted when they got a good look at him. He grinned, letting his fang slide out of their sheaths. Some people screamed.

He could almost hear the gears ticking inside the officers’ heads. It didn’t take much to work out what had happened and what the screaming was about.

One of the officers, a middle-aged man with balding hair, took a wary step towards him. “I think you should come with us, son.”

Turning to look at the officer, Cecil let his grin fade. “No.”

There was a tense moment. Neither of them looked away.

Suddenly, he exploded into action. Ripping the sword from his scabbard, he leapt forward, aiming low and slashing the weapon across the officer’s abdomen. He screamed and clutched the rent as his intestines slid out like slimy ropes. Cecil whirled, and kicked him in the face, sending him flying backwards into the crowd. People screamed and moved out of the way, the crowd flowing around like water as the officer landed on the ground with a crack.

“Drop your weapon!” one of the officers screamed, half in bewildered terror. Cecil turned calmly, and saw that the other officers had drawn their guns. He burst into laughter.

“I said, drop the weapon!”

Cecil didn’t bother replying. These humans were beginning to annoy him. He stepped towards the one who had demanded him to drop his sword.

“One more step and I’ll shoot!” he warned. Cecil sensed the confusion in the man’s voice. He had never encountered someone like him before. Someone who wasn’t intimidated by their useless blackpowder weapons.

He took another step forward. Deliberately making it seem slow and purposeful.

The gunshot was deafening in the night air. Cecil could tell the officer had been aiming for his leg, as he felt a small pressure like a finger being pressing gently into his thigh. More screams from the crowd. A few people ran off, but the majority stayed to watch the show.

“Nothing you can do with that little gun of yours can ever hurt me, human,” he spat the last word, bounding forward to cover the short distance between the two of them, and shoved his sword through the officer’s ribcage. In the same movement, he spun around with the man’s body still skewered on his weapon, in time to intercept the other officers’ bullets.

He held the body steady as bullets thudded into it. The officer gurgled, and twitched as he died. Cecil twisted his weapon, kicking the body off his sword, facing the onslaught of bullets himself. The sound of gunfire, the sirens and the screaming was a symphony to him, spurring him on.

“Come on then, shoot me,” he challenged them, sword by his side. The officers, already half-filled with terror, opened fire again. Cecil smiled as he felt the small pressures as the bullets disappeared inches from his body, before they did any harm. Casually, he reached into his pocket and withdrew his pouch. By this point the cops had realised that shooting him wasn’t doing anything, and was staring at him like mice seeing a cat for the first time.

Between his forefinger and thumb, he held up the stone he selected, sending power through his fingers into the stone itself. The diamond began to glow, a bright, almost cheery colour despite the situation.

As quick as thought, he compressed the air around both officers’ heads, using it like a vice. They didn’t struggle much, he gave them little chance to do so. Their heads seemed to stretch briefly before their skulls cracked under the pressure, and all the miscellaneous bits inside were forced out as their heads were compressed like pancakes. He let their corpses go.

Before their bodies had a chance to fall, he was already activating the other stone he held. In a single moment, he became lightning-fast.

The world slowed.

He bent down to pick up his sword. The effect of ingesting the blood was slowly wearing off, but the bloodlust was still very much foremost in his mind.

He stepped forward towards the nearest spectator, a man in a singlet and shorts. Cecil could see the fear in his expression, which in his current state merely served to spur him on. The sword went into the man’s mouth and emerged from the back of his head with a satisfying spray of blood.

Ripping the sword from the quickly-dying body, he moved onto the other onlookers, letting his pent-up frustration and sense of helplessness manifest itself in a berserk rage that even overrode the strain of maintaining the serpentine’s power. Down went another man, a woman, their throats neatly slashed. He jumped across the hood of a police car and cut down an obese man in a T-shirt, driving his sword neatly through his sternum.

A little boy was in front of him. To him it was just another human. He raised his sword.

From behind him came a small disturbance, like displaced air.

The sword began its descent towards the small human’s exposed skull...

Only to hesitate when all sounds suddenly died away. The lights stopped flashing, the people stopped screaming. The world, even in the darkness, seemed to lose some of its colour. The air cooled from a stuffy summer heat to the cold whispers of winter.

A hand clamped down on his wrist.

“No.”