Chapter 3, part 2

Who. The victims are Jean Martinez and Randy Kyle. Kyle is the one who is currently spread all over the floor; Martinez is outside with the EMT’s. I get the sense that there were two other people here, but I can’t be sure that they were both participants in the crime. What. It looks like several… garden tools it looks like… were used to torture and eventually dismember the victims. The tools are still here, but they don’t seem to have any fingerprints on them. Where. It seems like the victims were abducted somewhere else and brought here, but they have been here for a few days at least, judging by the marks the chains used to bind them left on the bodies. When. I can find that out by looking up the interview with the other victim later. How. Chains, knives, gardening shears… whoever did this guy in took his time and made sure that it hurt for as long as possible. He also made sure that the other victim had a front row seat for all of it. And Why. Well, the why is why, I assume, we have been saddled with Mary Beth.

“Ok Mary Beth, time to earn your keep. Tell us what happened.” Mary Beth had a talent for the Time gifts, and could see into the past amazingly well. Mary Beth nodded and went to the center of the room. She closed her eyes and began to chant.

“Res, Teth, Qoph!” She performed the hand seals and her eyes flew open, golden light emanating softly from them. As she looks into the past, she tells uus what’s happening as if she’s there seeing it live. I here the experience can creep you the hell out if you’re not ready for it.
A large black man sets his tools out on the folding tables. A Hispanic woman and a White male hang against the wall from chains wrapped around their hands. They both look haggard and weary, as if they and been through a great ordeal. Mary Beth walked over to the chains and touched them, her eyes still glowing.

They were here for at least 6 days. The demon possessed the male victim and repeatedly raped the female victim over the course of those 6 days.
The Black male wears a deep blood red suit, with a matching trench coat. He is immaculately groomed, and seems quite tranquil.

“This”, he intoned, “is my favorite part. Over the centuries I’ve gotten quite good at this, and I’ve performed this ritual 3, 4 dozen times, but really it never gets old.”

He goes over to the female victim and picks her head up, gazing straight into her eyes. She’s Puerto Rican possibly, maybe 26 years of age, medium build with shoulder length black hair. Her face is swollen from where she has sustained several punches and kicks both from the Demon and the male victim. Her eyes speak of the pain, heartache, and despair that she has experienced over the last 6 days. Mary Beth narrated the scene to us as if she was half writing a book, half writing a coroner’s report. I gotta tell ya, she was wholly giving me the chills. I’ve seen some shit, but like I said, we are all still relatively new to this magic stuff.

The Demon’s eyes blaze red as he stares directly into the female vic’s soul through her eyes and says “Your boyfriend has been holding you hostage for the last 6 days, raping you and beating you over and over again. But you still love him. Now you will watch him die over the next 24 hours, and you will feel every bit of his pain as if it was yours. Do you understand?” The vic’s eyes blaze red for a few seconds, then she nods her head in assent. He lets her face drop down, and slowly she regains consciousness. As her spent mind takes in the scene around her, I feel what is left of her sanity begin to crumble away. She tries to scream but the Demon had duct taped her mouth shut long ago. The Demon goes over here, to the male victim and unchains him from the wall. With one hand around his neck he drags the body over to one of the folding tables and slammed him down on top of it like he was a rag doll. The male victim is around 25 years of age, painfully thin with bad acne, oily skin, pale as a ghost, thick, coke-bottle glasses, and messy, greasy brown hair.

If it wasn’t such a horror show I would have taken this opportunity to point out to Mary Beth that this kid she was bein so hard on coulda been her brother, they looked so much alike.

His skin is broken in many areas from the beatings he has received over the last 6 days from the Demon. He is shirtless, and his ribs show through his skin; it is not clear if this was his normal state, or whether the Demon had not been feeding them. The Demon took a pair of gardening shears and slowly pushed them into the male’s sternum. His screams filled the room, and a few second s later the female victim screamed as if she was in exactly as much pain.

The Demon closes his eyes and begins to chant, “Beth, Daleth, Lamedh.” He performs the corresponding hand seals, and the victim’s blood ran from the table into the demon’s hands. Lucky for Mary Beth, our gifts are kind of like guns, you can point one and pull the trigger, but if you don’t put any juice into it, no one gets hurt. Just like shooting a gun with no bullets. Comes in handy when you have to mimic a demonic ritual and don’t want to, you know, become a demon.
“What I just did was attach your life to my soul. Now you will stay alive as long as I do, until I cut the tie. The practical upshot of this is that no matter what I do to your body, you won’t die until I want you to. Needless to say, you’re in for a long night.”

The male vic is trembling with pain and fear as the Demon resumes breaking apart his sternum with the gardening shears.

“Look… Maybe we can make a deal? Why don’t you take her, exchange my life for hers?!? I’ll do anything; I’ll kill her if you want… I don’t like her that much anyway; I was only dating her because she’s Puerto Rican! Please, just let me live, I’ll do anything, anything if you let me live!”

The Demon smiles a self-satisfied smile to himself. “You know, I watched you for a bit before I abducted you in order to find the right time to do so. You should be grateful that I’m ending your sorry excuse for a life.” The Demon sharply turns the scissors, a sharp crack echoing through the room, “I think even Jesus would have to admit that I am doing you a favor here. The fact that you have a girlfriend, and a reasonably attractive one at that, pretty much confirms for me that the Universe is sick and needs to be put out of its misery, much as I will soon do for you. You can thank me later.”

“Oh, but don’t misunderstand me either; I do appreciate you pleading for your life. Feel free to do so; it won’t help, but it may make the time go by faster for you.”

Over the course of the night the Demon systematically removes each and every vital organ the victim has, and separates them from the body. The Demon never loses his cool or strays from his methodical pace; he goes about this the way most people would go about making their morning breakfast. By the time he is finished he has arranged the male’s organs in such a way so that the female victim has nowhere to look in the room where she cannot see some piece of her boyfriend’s still functioning internal organs. On the table the hollowed out body of the male vic twitches involuntarily from the monumental pain it’s experiencing. The vic has long ago gone mad from the pain and trauma of seeing himself eviscerated, and he is probably insensible to what is happening to him now. Mary Beth’s eyes were still glowing as she looks over the table. Her focus was amazing; her voice stayed strong as she described the horrors she was witnessing, but I could see that her hands were shaking like she had just come out of a cold rain.

The Demon, his work almost complete, removes the still-beating heart from the victim and presents it to his girlfriend. “I understand that people who are in love speak often about giving their hearts to each other. I know they do not mean it literally, but I thought that you should have the pleasure of experiencing that concept first hand.” He took the heart and rubbed it over her face until she wore a red mask of her boyfriend’s blood. He then proceeds to crush the heart right in front of her. As it crumbles and falls away, a small white glowing pearl is left in its place. “Hm”, he said, “Kind of small. I usually don’t agree with humans, especially White ones, but this was an exceptionally pathetic life; almost not worth the trouble of harvesting his spirit. Still, a soul’s a soul.” The body goes though one final palpitation then thankfully goes still. The Demon looks over his shoulder and said “Is our deal satisfied?”

Mary Beth turned around and stared at nothing, “there’s another person here I didn’t notice him until just now. He was hiding behind my vantage point. This person watched the whole thing happen and did nothing to stop it. He’s human; he apparently sold his soul to this Demon to make all of this happen. She unconsciously started to bite her nails.
The man the Demon was addressing was another white male, approximately 23 years of age. He stepped into the light and admired the demon’s handiwork.

“Yeah”, he said, “This definitely taught that bitch a lesson. Just because I broke up with her was no reason for her to go and date someone else, especially not this skinny piece of shit here. Well, I guess he’s really skinny now, cuz that’s all you left of him. I told you he was pathetic. I was wondering if you could do anything worse to him than what genetics and fate already did.” The boy looks crazed; he is obviously mad with rage, and his jealousy and lust for revenge must have pushed him to sell his soul. He staggers over to his ex-girlfriend and slaps her in the face. “Bet you’re sorry now, huh bitch!”

The Demon steps over to the damned soul and says “Look, I just have to set her up, and then I will be finished. Are you satisfied with the job that has been done or not? I do not have time to waste while you gloat over the fallen body of your ex-girlfriend.”

“Yeah Blackwell, yeah this is fine. This is better than fine. So, uh, you don’t get my soul until I die, right?” The demon turned to the boy, his eyes and right hand glowing hellfire red again. He thrust his hand into the boy’s chest, and after grasping onto something, pulled his hand out. In it he held another glowing white orb, almost crystalline in nature. The boy’s body was unharmed, but Mary Beth realized what had happened immediately.

“This Demon; he’s a soul-stealer.” She said. “He finds corrupted humans and then helps the darkness inside of them grow until it completely consumes their soul. Once he’s done that he can steal their souls before they die.”

“Actually, I’ve had about all of you that I can stand. You run along now and cause havoc. I’ll make good use of your soul, since you obviously haven’t.” The now soulless boy ambled up the stairs and into the streets. “As for you young lady, I spared you because you are not White; but that doesn’t mean that you are off the hook, only literally.” He releases the chains binding her and she falls to the floor. Once again, he gazes into her eyes with his hellish stare, “You will remember every second of these last 6 days for the rest of your life, and the overwhelming emotional feeling you will experience is guilt, because this, all of what’s happened, especially your rape, was all entirely your fault.” The Demon dropped the girl to the floor and straitened out his suit. He placed the rage-filled soul into his jacket pocket next to that of the male vic.
“Another day, three more souls. There really can’t be many people who enjoy their work as much as I do.” The female curls into a ball on the floor, shaking and crying soundlessly as tears streamed down her face.

Mary Beth closed her eyes, and when they opened they were normal again. She collapsed, but Chike caught her. “Are you alright child?”

She shook her head and rose to her feet. “No I’m fine, thank you. It was just the strain of holding the gift for so long. I’ve researched lots of crime scenes; this isn’t so bad.”

“How many have you actually been to?” I asked.
She rubbed her eyes and said “This is my first that I’ve been to in person. I mean.” She seemed a little self-conscious about that, so I decided to push the issue.

“So this is the first time you’ve actually seen blood and entrails in person huh? Must be pretty traumatic I would think.” She looked like she was going to faint, which I didn’t think was possible for an Angel, but surprisingly she held it together.

“It’s ok. I mean, this is horrible, but I’m ok. I promise you.”
Chike looked as grim as I’d ever seen him. He also hadn’t said anything since we had got there. He was deep in thought, I knew that much, and he didn’t like what he had seen at all. I got the sense that he saw something we didn’t and it was turning his stomach.

“We have to report this,” Chike said. “The Demon Blackwell is extremely dangerous, and he hasn’t made an appearance in over 20 years. We need to put every Angel on the East Coast on alert. He’s sent more Angels back to the Maker in the short time he’s been reincarnated than any other single Demon in history. He’s the Demon lord of Wrath, and way out of our league. We need to return to HQ and get more direction.”

Chike was a very by-the-book guy, which is good because it’s always good to know exactly which rules I’m breaking so I can be aware of what’s going on when I get yelled at later. “We can call them you know. I say we stay down here and investigate further. We have two pressing issues that need to be addressed ASAP; first we have a soulless human wandering around New York City, and, call me crazy here, that can’t be a good thing.

“Aren’t there lots of soulless humans wandering around NYC? I mean, I thought that was New York’s main attraction. You know, come to New York for the homeless and the hookers and the soulless degenerates!” Mary Beth uselessly chimed in.

I shot her a dirty look and continued on unabated, “Second, we need to check on the spiritual stability of that other victim. We don’t know the ramifications of that ritual, and we don’t know what she could do in that state.” Just as I finished saying that we heard a scream from outside. “Damn I hate being right.”