|
Chapter 4 "You know, I've always wondered," the seraph mused quietly, playing absently with a long lock of his lover's hair as usual, "maybe you can clear this up for me..." "Hmm?" the incubus replied lazily, not really paying attention. They were lying on a grassy hillside in a deserted part of the mortal world, just spending a few rare moments together watching the clouds. "What is it?" he asked more clearly, shaking himself from the half-trance he'd fallen into. "Well, everyone knows that angels can Fall," the white-winged being pointed out. "If they do too many evil things, or if they disobey one of the Laws of Heaven, or half a dozen other things." "Sure," the demon agreed, rolling to face him curiously. "Worried that you're going to Fall because of me?" he asked gently. The seraph shook his head. "No. I mean, I WILL Fall if we ever get caught, but I gave up worrying about that a long time ago. I can't bring myself to give you up, so that's that, and there's no point in fretting about it." The incubus had to smile to see some of his own careless attitude rubbing off on his lover. How it surprised him, sometimes, to remember what a stiff-necked puritan the angel had been when they'd first met! "So?" he prompted, wondering what had brought about this sudden bout of philosophy. "So... why isn't there a correlation among demons? If angels can Fall from grace, doesn't it stand to reason that there might be demons who could... I don't know..." "Rise to grace?" the incubus suggested, and the seraph nodded. "We can. It just never, ever happens." "Well, why not?" the angel wanted to know. "You're no more inherently evil than an angel is inherently good. Why hasn't it ever happened?" The incubus sighed, and rolled back over to stare up at the sky. "Because it's not permitted," he answered reluctantly. "God," his mouth twisted as he said the word, "is merciful. He gave His creations free will, and He lets them use it. If an angel chooses actions that cause him to Fall from grace, He cries but He lets the angel make that choice." "And Lucifer... doesn't?" the seraph hazarded a guess. "Any demon that shows signs of Rising, is destroyed," the incubus confirmed. "Lest it give the other demons ideas." He sighed. "I don't think the angels would allow a demon in Heaven anyway, Risen or not." "But... if I'm in danger of Falling because of our relationship, aren't you in danger of Rising?" "Yes. If I hadn't fallen in love with you, I'd have just been congratulated on bringing about an angel's destruction, but... the fact that I CAN love you means that I'm very close to Rising. I think." The angel hugged him tightly, burying his face in the crook of the demon's neck. "I don't want to be the cause of your destruction," he whispered, anguished. "I couldn't bear to cause you pain!" The demon stroked his silver-blond hair reassuringly. "It's too late for worries," he pointed out inexorably. "You said so yourself. I can't give you up, so there's nothing we can do about it. And angel..." The seraph raised his head to see the demon looking at him with such love in his gaze that it brought tears to the angel's eyes. "I love you," the incubus whispered, choked with emotion. "Even if I'm destroyed - it will be worth it, to have been with you."
Omi automatically seated himself at the computer, sitting backwards on his chair. It was as far away as he could get from Ken, sitting on the couch, and still be in the same room. It was a reflex, now, after nearly three weeks of studiously avoiding the ex-soccer player. Ken had apologized to him the next morning, and Omi had accepted that apology; but he knew it would be a long time, if ever, before their friendship returned to some semblance of what it had been before. They were awkward around each other now, Omi shying away from Ken's touch and Ken not sure what he could do to make it up to his friend. If Aya and Youji had noticed their teammates' odd behaviour, they forbore to comment on it. Birman watched them all impassively, waiting until they were all settled. The moment the lights went off she popped the tape into the player, and the new Persia's shadowy form appeared on the screen. "This is not a mission of your normal type, Weiss," Persia told them in his smooth baritone. Omi shivered - even after all this time, it was still strange not to see his uncle's form on the video. At least they weren't using that horrible computer generation anymore. "At each of your last several missions, there have been people going missing. Guards, passers-by; innocent people. The abductions occur at approximately the same times that you are making your strikes. Now the bodies are turning up." Several photographs flashed onto the screen, and Omi had to work hard to suppress his gag reflex. He heard a strangled noise from the vicinity of the couch that told him the others were having trouble as well. The bodies had been literally ripped apart; all the organs and large chunks of the limbs were missing. It looked as though they'd been eaten by some kind of huge, rabid animal. "It is possible that someone is attempting to frame you for these deaths," Persia pointed out. "Regardless, this horrific loss of innocent lives must be stopped. White Hunters in the darkness, hunt the futures of the dark beasts!" The video ended, and Birman stepped forward with several file folders. "Who's in?" she asked impartially, seemingly unaffected by the gory scenes they'd just witnessed. "I'm in," Ken said immediately. Aya nodded to indicate his acceptance, and Youji sighed. "Even if there weren't women involved, I'd take this one," he admitted roughly. "But there are, so there's no question. I'm in." They all turned to look at Omi, surprised that he hadn't already spoken up. "Bombay?" Birman prompted him impatiently. Omi swallowed hard. Something about this mission was deeply upsetting to him, though he couldn't put a finger on it; the bodies were gruesome, but he'd seen others just as bad. There was just something in the pit of his stomach that was screaming at him that he wanted nothing to do with this one. Steeling himself, he ignored it. People were suffering, and his presence on the mission might make the difference between life and death for more innocents. "I'm in," he said, glad that his voice didn't squeak to betray his terror. "How are we going to go about this?" Birman shrugged, passing around the files. "The police have already exhausted all clues afforded by the bodies and crime scenes. They lead nowhere. It's as if some monstrous beast suddenly appeared, devoured the victims, and then disappeared into thin air. There's been no DNA traces left on the bodies, and the bite marks aren't consistent with any animal our scientists can identify..." "Wait. Bite marks?" Ken repeated, sounding ill. "You mean something actually ATE them?" "It appears that way," Birman replied coolly. "However as I said the bite marks aren't indicative of any known animal; the obvious conclusion is that someone is making it LOOK like the victims were eaten. Why, we don't know." Omi wasn't so sure, looking at the photos that were in his file. The killer would have had to go to an awful lot of trouble to fake that, and whoever it was they were working fast. Weiss had never caught a glimpse of them, hadn't even realized that there were corpses not of their doing. "Are all the victims from our mission sites?" he asked, forcing his bile back down to his stomach where it belonged. Birman shook her head. "No. Most of them, yes, but a few have been found at seemingly unrelated sites. However research of those sites has shown that they were locations Schwartz was either guarding or attacking. Additionally, more than the usual number of bodies has been found at sites where both groups were present." "Could it be Schwartz that's doing it?" Youji asked. "Farfarello's been even more nuts than usual - this is a little gory even for him, but..." "No, when we're fighting them they're all accounted for," Ken pointed out. "And sometimes bodies were found in two different sites in one night," Omi added, studying the sheets of printed information. It always struck him as sad to see so many innocent people's lives reduced to nothing more than black marks on a piece of paper, just one more statistic. "Times of death indicate that in certain cases it couldn't possibly have been Schwartz - they were busy at one site while people were being killed at another." He followed the thoughts to their logical conclusion. "The only time the killers strike is when we're on missions," he pointed out. "That means our best chance of catching them is to hold someone back in a mission, specifically to watch for them. What else have we got coming up?" he asked Birman, who looked thoughtful. "I'll check the files," she told him. "I'll try to find you something relatively easy, so that it won't affect you to have one or two members holding back. In the meantime, I suggest you try to figure out what common enemies you and Schwartz might have."
Omi fidgeted nervously, trying to shake the feeling of eyes trained on his back. He was perched high in a tree overlooking the target warehouse, straddling the branch with his back against the trunk. A few feet away he could just make out Youji's dark form in another tree. "Who put the ants in your pants, bishounen?" Youji's smooth voice murmured at him from his earpiece. Despite the fact that they were less than ten feet apart, he couldn't hear the older man's voice except through the receiver. He touched the switch that would restrict his transmission to Youji. "You know how I keep saying that I feel like we're being watched on missions?" he asked, long practice allowing him to whisper almost silently and still be understood. "Well, it's stronger than ever tonight. I feel like it's breathing down my neck, whatever it is!" "You think this feeling of yours has something to do with our killers?" Youji wanted to know. Omi shrugged, forgetting that his teammate couldn't see him in the darkness. "I think it's too much of a coincidence not to be connected," he replied nervously. "I started getting the feeling about the same time the first victims disappeared." "Right after the Esstet fiasco," Youji pointed out. "You think maybe they're behind this? They've got good reason to hate Schwartz as much as us, and I wouldn't put it past them to find or create something freaky enough to eat people." Omi shivered. "It would make sense," he admitted. Beneath him the guard passed by on his regular rounds, completely oblivious to the presence of the two assassins above him, not to mention the two assassins who had already penetrated the perimeter. "Target acquired," Aya's voice sounded over the comm as if on cue. "We're going in." "Acknowledged," Omi returned absently. "Be careful, guys. No sign of our killers yet." Abruptly the feeling of being watched shifted, as though the observer's attention had gone elsewhere. At the same moment a horrifying aura of pure evil washed over him, making him cry out and clutch at the branch for support. There was a massive presence nearby, and below him to the left he thought he heard a strangled whimper. "Yo... Youji," he croaked out, hoping his teammate would hear him since he couldn't gather the strength to raise his hand to his transmitter. He felt the tree sway as Youji jumped over to him. "Bombay, what's wrong?" Youji asked in concern, putting a hand on the boy's arm and feeling him shaking badly. "It's... it's here," he whispered, teeth chattering so hard he could barely speak. In his terror he forgot about using codenames entirely. "Youji, it's here. It got the guard, I think. I... I felt it..." "Sit tight, kiddo," Youji replied, and swung down to the ground. He slipped silently through the trees to where the guard should have been returning on his rounds. Omi wanted nothing more than to obey him, but morbid curiosity and fear for his friend drove him off his branch. He heard Youji's quiet exclamation before he saw them - the playboy was hunched over a dark form on the ground. Standing, he backed up to where Omi was and took him by the shoulders, forcibly turning him away from the grisly sight. "Don't look," he advised wearily. "It's pretty bad. How the hell did it get by us, and how could it do that so fast, and without a sound?" Omi was hyperventilating, his eyes darting back and forth around them. Every shadow beneath every tree was suddenly a potential monster, and he was certain that whatever the killer was, it wasn't gone yet. "It's still here," he squeaked, quaking in Youji's arms. Youji looked around as well. "I don't see anything," he said quietly. "I don't know what you're picking up on, Bombay, but you seem to be the only one of us that can see this thing coming." "We... we have to warn the others," Omi managed. Youji nodded, and released his shoulders to move a few feet away. "Balinese to Abyssinian, our killers have struck," he heard the older man say quietly. He heard the words in a kind of eerie stereo over his receiver as well. "Bombay felt it coming, but we didn't see it." "What do you mean, he felt it coming?" Aya demanded, his voice tinny over the tiny speaker. "That same feeling of being watched that he keeps getting, only stronger," Youji replied, and you could hear his shrug in his voice. "I didn't see or hear a thing, but we've definitely got one dead guard here. Whatever it is, this sucker is FAST. It came and went before we knew it was there, and the guard was practically right beneath us." "Be careful," Aya cautioned them. "We're on our way out." The breath froze in Omi's throat as that awful presence suddenly swelled again, the only warning he had. He threw his arm up to shield his face instinctively, and that was the only thing that saved his life. Slavering jaws closed over his forearm instead of his throat, and he screamed with pain and terror. Glowing red eyes stared balefully down at him, full of hatred and cruelty. He knew without question that this thing was purely evil, and its sole intention was to rend him to shreds with its double row of sharp teeth. He screamed again and struck at it with his free hand, kicking and squirming beneath it as it clung to him. Its saliva dripped down, burning like acid where it touched his bare skin. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving him panting and crying on the bare earth, lying in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood. He clutched his wounded arm to his chest and frantically tried to stop the bleeding, praying that it hadn't severed an artery. After a quick glance at his arm, he changed the prayer to just hoping that he would be able to save the hand. He felt someone drop to their knees beside him, and suddenly other hands were holding the wound closed. He sobbed and writhed in agony, nearly jerking his arm out of the person's grasp before someone else knelt forcibly on his shoulders. A third set of hands held his legs still, and he glanced up through his tears to see his teammates surrounding him. Ken was sitting on his shoulders to keep his arm steady for Youji, while Aya crouched down over his legs. "What the hell happened? What was it?" Ken demanded, voice high and tight with fright. Youji shook his head, and Omi had never seen the playboy so pale and frightened looking. "I didn't see it," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "It was right on top of him, it HAD to be, and I didn't see it. All I could see was him screaming and hitting at something, and his arm torn to shreds!" "Demon," he whispered, his voice more than a little hysterical. He knew as he said the word that it was true. "It was a demon! Oh, gods, it's stalking me. It's playing with me! It could kill me any time, but it wants me to suffer..." he was babbling but he couldn't stop, the words pouring from him on a wave of terror and pain. "Shh, Omi, it's okay," Ken hushed him, stroking the side of his face gently. "It's gonna be okay. Just relax..." He choked on the words as he realized what he was saying, the words too similar to that horrible night at Villa White. Omi moaned, then shrieked when Youji shifted and jarred his arm. "My... darts..." he managed to get out, panting and shaking. "Left side... they're tranquilizers. White bands on the grips, not black. Knock me out, PLEASE!" Aya nodded and reached forward to rummage through his jackets, pulling out a dart and examining it carefully to be sure it was a tranquilizer, and not loaded with the lethal poison Omi used on his victims. Omi felt a sharp sting on the side of his neck as Aya leaned forward and jabbed him, and then everything faded away on a blissful wave of oblivion. | |
|
|Part 1| |Part 2| |Part 3| |Part 4| |Part 5| |Part 6| |Part 7| |Part 8| |Part 9| |Epilogue| |