Chapter Three

Chapter Three

"When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you." �" Nietzsche

Ronnie

The club we were at was packed full of people, the thick smell of hot sweat enveloping me.  Yellow and green lights were flashing, changing to blue and purple every other time they flashed.  Music was playing loudly, controlled by a guy with long dread-locks and baggy clothes.  He was bobbing his head with a satisfied grin on his face as he occasionally glanced up at the crowd of people.  From what I could tell; he was human, so I averted my attention.

“Meet back here in two hours; you know the drill,” Corin said quietly in my ear.  The reason he had to say it quietly is because demons have better hearing than humans and us; they can hear fourteen times better.  Although they can kind of control it; if they want to hear something then they’ll focus in on it, but if they don’t really care or feel like blending in to humans more they won’t focus that much which then leads to them being able to hear just as well as everyone else.  The form they’re in can determine their hearing ability as well; human form they can only hear twice as good as humans but in their demon form it goes to its maximum.

“Alright.” I walked away from him before he even had time to consider kissing my cheek or anything, which was kind of my plan.  I was more interested in having fun than hunting again, but with Corin here I won’t get away with much partying.

I was talking to a few random people that could have possibly been demons, trying to see if I could get any glimpse of any form of tattoo on either of them.  Either I couldn’t find one for being hidden under clothing, or they didn’t have one and therefore weren’t demons.  I was going with the second possibility because none of them attempted to get me into the back alley or room or tried to kill me there.  The fact that none of them were demons bored me so I walked away every time.  Until I saw a blonde female, who had a black and red shield tattoo on her arm, talking to a human guy, who was falling for whatever crap she was telling him.  I just hung out by the bar, receiving a bottle of beer, and without taking my eyes off of the blonde demoness, I took a swig of the beer.  The green dress she had on looked expensive, and I was sorry it would be damaged as soon as she saw me, but what can you do?

She hasn’t seen me yet, and I’ve  been watching her for at least ten minutes, my beer halfway gone.  When was she gonna look at me?  She hasn’t even made a move to get the guy away from everyone yet.  I was getting ansty.  My hands started shaking a little bit and my foot was tapping the cement floor.  I was worried about the possibilty of someone, or a demon, finding the hiding spot of mine and Corin’s stuff for fighting.  There was everything we need in there to take down a demon.

She made a move.  It wasn’t a subtle one either.  She had grabbed his hand and was starting to pull him through the crowd, and he was following willingly.  I didn’t miss a beat.  Leaving my bottle on the counter, I rushed over to the two of them and turned the human around, realizing that he wasn’t following willingly.  He was compelled.  Damn.  I hated having to reverse a compulsion.  Yanking him away from her, I pulled him into me and kissed him, literally feeling the compulsion leaving his body.  It’s almost like a pulling feeling which caused the muscles in my chest to tighten and contract.  It’s my body getting rid of the little ‘spell’ it has absorbed.  I didn’t like it much less than the demons did, but it had to be done.

“Who the Hell are you?” The demoness hissed angrily at me, yanking me away from the human.  She saw my face and her expression changed to an all new form of pissed off, making me grin.  Her green eyes turned to their original onyx black and her perfect features turned into a feral expression. “What the Hell are you doing here?”

“Why don’t we go outside to discuss this?” Forcing myself to keep my voice calm, I turned around and walked away, which was against all of my internal instincts when confronting a demon.  The sound of her heels rang in my head over the loud noise of the music and I looked over my shoulder to see that she was giving me a dark glare, hot on my heels.  The diamond necklace that hung around her neck glimmered as the different colors of light hit it, her blonde curls bouncing with every step she took.  I was gonna have some fun out back tonight.

I faced her as I led her out the back door so that she wouldn’t be able to jump me, and she seemed to notice that.  Neither one of us bothered to close the door; we just stepped off the stairs which was when I ran to where we had the bag of weapons hidden.  Turning my back to her again was my first mistake, because when I stood up and turned around, she was there and had me by the neck, slamming me against the brick wall of a building.  Thankfully it wasn’t wet out, so I’d stay relatively dry.  The dumpsters were on the other end of the back alley, so they were probably useless to me unless we wound up down there.  But my guess is that we were gonna stay right where we were.

“You slayers always get in the way of our meal time,” she growled.  Keeping her hand on my neck, she changed from her human form to her demon form, which had long, lanky limbs, a long tail, and talon like claws.  The skin was a flat, dark green scaly cover over her bony but still strong structure.  Her onyx black eyes were glaring at me, even angrier now, but I couldn’t focus on them.  I was focused on the red jewel that sat in the middle of her forehead; that meant only one thing.  She was one of Satan’s many wives.  I wasn’t scared.  I was excited.  Another fight.  It’s what I’ve been waiting for all day.

“Which one are you?” I was smug.  I shouldn’t have been in this situation, but I couldn’t help it.

“Agrat-bat-mahlaht,” she hissed in a thick, husky accent.  Hm…demoness of w****s…respectable.  I grinned to myself as I casually reached into my back pocket, where I kept a small, very small, crucifix.  Her claws tightened around my neck, the pressure feeling like they were about to break the skin.

“I’ll just call you Aggie.” Shoving the crucifix against her chest, I pushed her away from me and went for my bag as I heard her pain-filled growl fill the air.  From what I’ve read and been told, this wife was one of the weaker ones, so it made my life easier.  That crucifix would’ve slowed her down a respectable amount, so all I needed was a dagger and some Holy water.  Looking back at her, I saw that she was tossing the crucifix aside, after having to pry it off her chest, and she was on her feet.  Hm…she shouldn’t be up after that.

I dumped some Holy water on the blade of my dagger and threw it at her, watching as it pierced her in the middle of her chest.  She cried out again and fell to the ground, but she managed to rip it out and toss it aside.  What the Hell?  I just stared at her in confusion as she got up and charged me.  Tackling me to the ground, her demonic face glowered at me, her fangs bared angrily in my face.  Her scaly skin subtly reeked of rotting flesh, even though no part of her was rotting away.  It must be what Hell smells like.

“Ready to die, little slayer?”

I looked around me as best I could and saw that my dagger was actually right next to my hand, and with a little reaching, I’d be able to reach it.  Looking back at her, where I hit her before, I noticed that the wound was all healed up.  Her shield tattoo was now more of a burn-like welt, which is what happens to their tattoos when they go from human form to demon form.  Well, it’s what usually happens anyways.  I casually reached off to the side, and when I felt the hilt of my dagger in my hand, I grinned at Aggie and shrugged.

“I am if you are.” The look she got after I said that was priceless confusion, so I brought my dagger up and aimed it in the spot that I had the biggest opening: the jewel in the middle of her forehead.  The quickness in which she turned to ashes beat her ability to make any loud scream of pain, but a quiet, distorted growl came out before she started crumbling on top of me.  Wasn’t the worst thing that’s happened to me.  And I’m glad they turn to ashes instead of bleeding, because that way I can just brush off everything.

Inside, I went back to my spot and saw that my bottle of beer wasn’t there anymore.  The bartender came up to me and set down a new bottle in front of me with a slight nod of his head.  On the house.  Nice.  I turned around so I was facing the crowd of people, leaning against the counter casually with the bottle in one hand.  The cold liquid burned a little as it went down my throat, but it felt good.  A beer feels nice after fighting with a demon.  Feels relaxing.

“Hey there pretty thing.” A guy stepped in front of me, looking down at me with an interested gleam in his eyes.  He was human, so I was safe.  Well, from what I could tell.  With his short, slightly spiked brown hair, tan skin and brown eyes, he was pretty good looking.  He was fairly muscular with broad shoulders and shoulders squared back.

“Hi,” I said calmly.  I smiled at him and then looked away, resuming my usual scan of the room.  Yes, I’d flirt with him, but I just fought a demon and I wanted to make sure that there weren’t any others trying to lure humans anywhere.  I didn’t see anymore, and as I started to look back at the guy in front of me, someone else caught my eye.  They were sitting closer to the end of the bar with a beer in hand, watching the crowd of dancing people.  There was a girl standing by him, not drinking anything, also looking at everyone.  She was beautiful.  Everything about her seemed perfect and there was no mark on her skin anywhere.  She was the kind of girl every guy would go for without argument.  The guy next to her was talking to her, without even looking at her.  I couldn’t really tell what he looked like though because he kept turning his head from the profile, making me see the back of it.

Then he looked at me.  He had slightly short yet shaggy jet black hair and tan skin.  His lean, athletic body was clothed with dark denim, slightly baggy yet slightly fitted jeans and a black T-shirt with a V-cut neckline.  He didn’t look much older than me, and the seriousness of his expression made him look like no one should mess with him.  He was probably the best looking guy I’ve ever seen; the kind of guy every girl would be throwing themselves at.  His eyes widened a little when he caught me looking at him, making me look away and smile as I bowed my head.

“Would you like to dance?” The guy that came up to me was still standing there, and I felt bad forgetting about him.  I looked up at him and gave him a small smile.  It was meant to be an apologetic one but something tells me that’s not what it came across as.

No. “Um…sure.” I took another swig of my beer before setting it back on the counter and getting off my stool.  Before walking too far into the crowd, I looked back at that guy on the other end and saw that he was starting to look back at me.