Soundtrack:
Requiem for a Dream - Winter - Lux Aeterna
When Shayton popped back into reality from his shadow travel and dropped onto the leather couch in his penthouse, he dropped his head back and blinked up at the ceiling far above him, mostly shrouded in darkness. He exhaled slowly, eyes flying over the ceiling as his mind flew over what had just happened. The angels had sent Anahera after him. Pride filled his chest. They recognized his power and his risk. Good for them.
He rose to his feet and went to his kitchen, pouring a glass of wine and toasting himself. “To many more failed attempts to capture me to come!” He chuckled and downed the wine in three deep gulps. Then, he frowned into his empty wine glass. Wine was good and all, but that human’s blood had been delicious. There honestly weren’t that many virgins in the age range he wanted and at the scenes which he frequented. That had truly been a lucky coincidence for him.
He rolled his left shoulder, wincing at the soreness. “Damn that angel!” He threw the glass to the floor at his feet, and it shattered into dozens of glittering shards. He glowered down at them and looked over through the open double doors to his wide balcony.
In a swirl of blackness, he was leaning on the railing, looking out around downtown. The night scene in Louistown was good, all things considered. He could hear the distant thumping of club music and the drunken giggles of two girls leaving the club more than a dozen floors below him. For a moment, he instinctively twitched like he was going to go down and have those girls for himself, but he stopped. No human girl would satisfy until he had claimed that one in the alley for himself.
He pushed off the railing, pacing to the far end of the balcony and peering out into the blackness. If he knew anything about the reactions of those idiot puffballs, Anahera would go flying soon to deal with his emotions. When he did, Shayton would be able to see where can came from.
Shayton snorted in disbelief again. Throlkrl had been positive that his spell would burn through everyone’s memories, but Shayton hadn’t believed him. Shayton had thought he was the only wise demon among millions to see that Aoith’s own brother wouldn’t forget him. He had thought all the other demons were fools, yet here he stood, proven to be the fool.
As the centuries passed, Shayton had watched in open admiration of Folster as he had gradually picked Aoith apart, bit by bit. Mentally, physically, emotionally. Sometimes, the master torturer allowed other demons to join in the fun—but only under his strict permission. If he wanted hissing insults and mocking laughter, nipping teeth and slicing claws, the line of demons biting at each others’ heels to help him could have spanned from one end of Hell to the other.
Folster had plans to never let Aoith die and to never stop torturing him. Shayton had to stop himself from simply fawning over Folster in admiration of his work. The demon had skills that no one else could compare to. Earth’s Spanish Inquisition had given birth to some of the most skilled and vicious demons in Hell.
Shayton’s thoughts were interrupted by an appealing caw to his left, and he turned his head to see a rook perched on the balcony railing, one beady eye focused on its master.
Shayton’s lip curled.
A hooker on the streetcorner beneath Shayton’s balcony shrieked in horror as a small, bloody body smacked to the pavement at her feet.
The raven that replaced the rook on the railing made sure to follow the rules, and Shayton gave the bird’s bowed head a bloody smile, his eyes still emitting purple wisps.
“Yes?”
A frown.
“Yeah, nice job, bird brain, I was there with the angel in that alley.”
If the hooker had still been on that corner, she would have seen the second broken body join the first.
***
As the weeks passed, Shayton was finally closing in his net. The animals serving him had mapped out the angel’s daily pattern and Shayton himself had confirmed, through a bird’s excellent vision, where Anahera and his human pet lived. Shayton had observed in glee through his minions’ eyes how the angel treated the girl day after day and how she took the abuse. He was doing half of Shayton’s work for him!
Shayton just had to wait for the perfect time to catch the angel off guard and get in the building. He sent droves of humans to Martini Italian Bistro during the shifts that Anahera was working, leaving him even more tired. His birds hounded Anahera is the sky, making it harder for the angel to get away with flying without the humans seeing him, and his creeping creatures on the ground. Shayton played with the foolish floofy boy, leaving him alone just long enough for Anahera to finally relax before having a crowd of critters so large that any zoologist would foam at the mouth if they saw it waiting just behind a door for Anahera to open. The angel’s self-righteous panic never got old.
Shayton waited, watched, and crafted, and one day, he struck.
He did have to step rather carefully throughout the building so as to not set off any of the fields that the angel had implanted and didn’t have to maintain himself. Those had all fallen as soon as the exhausted heavenly entity had stepped through the doors of the building. He was just soooo tired! Shayton’s grin was gleeful as he slipped through the apartment doors, blew the repellent human woman at the desk a kiss and a wink that left her choking on her cigarette smoke, and silently padded up the stairs, undetected and exhilarated.
Anahera had already vanished inside one of the apartments when Shayton stepped out of the rancid stairwell, but it would have been impossible to miss the golden glow radiating off one of the stained doors in the dimly-lit hallway.
Shayton shook his head and clicked his tongue. Angels really were so on the nose with their doings. Subtle wasn’t a thing that they did.
He was just approaching the door when it started to open. Shayton was tucked in the shadows of the doorframe before he even registered his reaction. He listened in delight.
"You should have just let Shayton take me in the alley that night.."
The door slammed behind the human, and
there she was. Her anger made her
all the more delicious, and Shayton took a moment just to appreciate the beauty of a human in pain before he slipped out of the shadows, right up behind her.
He wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides, and whispered, his lips brushing her ear, "Well,
hello there, my sweet-blood treat. I must say, I didn't expect to have you screaming my name so quickly, but I'm not complaining."
When, a breath later, the stricken Anahera to burst through the door, Shayton chirped, "Why, thank you, my good angel! You seem to have done my job
for me! I couldn't have made her hate you like this if I had tried!" With a cheeky wink and a nibble of the human's earlobe, Shayton and his prey evaporated into smoke and were gone to the
excruciatingly incredible soundtrack of Anahera's wail of pain.
The duo appeared in Shayton's open floorplan penthouse apartment at the foot of Shayton's king-sized bed. He merrily tossed the human on the crimson bedspread, made particularly bloody-looking by the sunset streaming through the full-length windows covering two walls, and stepped back to grin at her, arms crossed and posture relaxed.
"I couldn't have set up a better way for us to be united if I'd tried! I mean, Anahera did his part by treating you like a bitch to be kept in a cage, and I did mine by stressing him out and exhausting him, but
you, my dear,
you are the real star of the show--storming out like that. I have to hand it to you, you are
vicious when you want to be. You have my respect!"