A World of Darkness

The next day, Amun awoke to hear shower noises and spotted Adam with a new goosebump atop his head. “You peaked, didn’t you?” asked the half awake vampire with half lidded eyes. “Yeah…” groaned the peeper. Amun sighed as he sat up and began fixing his bed hair and pulling up his watch. “Right, well we leave in an hour. Try not to get beat up before we even get to fighting…” he said groggily, still somewhat amazed that the other man managed to injure himself before they even got to the battle. ‘Whatever, at least it should only be one day.’ he thought to himself as he watched the idiot nurse his pained head.

As they left their lodging, it was quickly apparent that something was very off in the city. While during the day the population had been plentiful enough, at night it almost felt like a ghost town with little to greet them but the fog. They noticed the few who were out were armed, though even the demons passing through weren’t enough to spook them. They were watching for one specific threat. Halfway to the meetup area an onlooker even warned the group that it might be unwise to be unarmed. Josabelle and Adam had a laugh, but Amun recalled a number of other worlds where they would have been the ones hunted. It didn’t bode well at all that whatever this was was more threatening than a standard fare demon to a human.

    Eventually, they found themselves facing Doll and a line of armored transports. She ushered them inside one and they left immediately once seated. Josabelle seemed unworried, but even if her record was to be believed, missions collaborating alongside humans with this much firepower were exceedingly rare. The chief must not have realized they were planning the offensive to this degree.

    “So I’m sure you’re wondering a few things, but let’s get right to it. Your original briefing wasn’t entirely wrong, but this monster has only been theorized to be an ijiraq. While it shares the telltale feature in what we currently believe to be its base form and it acts with those abilities, along with some type of thermal power, it’s as if it’s on steroids. It comes off as far more intelligent and capable than any examples of said monster we were ever shown, but by your world’s classification system, we were unable to list it as any higher of a threat level. Fortunately, I pulled some strings. It sounded like at least two of you could do with a challenge.” briefed Doll, ending the last statement with an amused smile as she pulled out Josabelle and Amun’s files.

    Josabelle’s face seemed to light up immensely at the prospect while Adam had a look on his face as if she told him his pet died. Amun remained nearly unfazed, having suspected something for some time, but narrowed his eyes and locked his hands together in front of his face, resting his elbows on opposite ends of his lap.

    “So if this is all true, what’s the casualty rate? And what happened to the strike teams you sent in the past. You can’t tell me you have this firepower” Amun argued, glancing across the various advanced guns littering the vehicle. “but that you haven’t tried to take care of this personally.”

    Doll’s eyes narrowed. She looked to the side before looking right back into his cold, violet orbs before answering. “10,000” she stated plainly. Amun’s eyes softened as he spoke again “10,000 tota-“ “per month” she said again, as dryly as before. Amun had no comment. Adam looked horrified while even Josabelle gave a frown. After a moment of quiet, Doll continued, showing a bit of weakness. “By now, we’ve lost more than 12% of the city’s population to these vanishing acts. Of course I sent in some veterans. It didn’t help. Streams of encounters revealed an incredibly aggressive attacker with a true mastery of the transformation art, high levels of intelligence, and occasionally some rather unexpected abilities. Tch… the worst bit is that it honestly just toyed with them. We’ve seen it wave at our cameras a few times before smashing them…”

    Josabelle reached out her hand and in an instant summoned a spear in a crackle of electricity, shorting the lights in the vehicle for a moment and breaking one entirely. “Whoops…” She said through a wince as she nervously scratched her neck. “But listen lady, we’ll find some way to get this guy. I know Adam is a pretty useless pervert-“ “Hey!” “but this vampire and I have been through some real shit. If I’m honest, he’s been through way more and more difficult fights than me. We’ll get this asshole, you just watch!” proclaimed the surprisingly compassionate imp.

Doll simply sat with her forearms resting on her lap, supporting her head with the backs of her hands and eyes closed, perhaps recalling some unpleasant things. She reopened them after moment, a new fire in her eyes. “Thank you. I’d like to hope for all of our sakes that you can pull this off.”

    After a few more minutes in which Doll explained the roles of the support teams, they finally arrived. “Alright you all. We can’t pinpoint them within the complex itself, but I’m sure with your heightened senses you’ll find them. Even a human can feel that aura when close enough. Give ‘em hell.” She yelled as a send off.

    “Heh, don’t worry. If you wanted to bring them hell, you went to the right place!” replied Josabelle with her cocky lips and a wink. Doll gave her a thumbs up and wished them good luck before locking up the doors of the vehicle and retreating. In her wake remained a determined Josa, a focused Amun, and a decidedly disturbed Adam. However knowing his role, he began to lead the trio to the target.

Even without some crazy demon to track, Amun had to admit that this place was far from pleasant, particularly under cover of night, even if his eyes let him see through it just fine. The area was in shambles, as if it had been left in a hurry due to some experiment gone awry. Broken glass from shattered windows reflected the various bits of machinery which were almost all in some way destroyed. Burn marks and occasional areas with rather unnatural puddles seemed to confirm that secondary power set pretty solidly, although even Josa seemed to wince at some of the rather gruesome remains they started to find of the soldiers sent previously. This thing had gone out of its way to be sure they died in pain, as if it found the idea utterly comical.

While they were all at least somewhat nerve wracked, Adam was having the worst of it. In head to head combat, he certainly wasn’t expected to excel and really never tried to. However, this likely wasn’t the reason he was bothered to begin with. His specialties had always lain elsewhere and were perhaps his own downfall. It was how he had managed to be such an accomplished serial killer for a time, but perhaps also why he allowed himself to slip up enough to be captured. While most incubi and succubi were content with just draining their victims and leaving them for another day, Adam’s confusion of lust, love and sustenance lead to a bit of a broken creature that couldn’t stop himself from simultaneously destroying what he held dear while giving in to his selfish desires. Perhaps the intensity of this combined onslaught of feelings lead him to being even more in tune than almost any with the feelings of what he was tracking. A deadly, but double edged tool. Of course, as manipulative and intelligent a demon as he was, it was hard to know if this intensity was genuine or a farce in cases. Perhaps at times it was both.

    While Josabelle seemed either too excited or uninterested to care, Amun came to notice Adam’s lack of cohesion with an unusual amount of fidgeting. With his own tracking instincts, he could certainly feel a truly unusual presence although he lacked the emotional connection and potential of Adam himself. It was kind of eerie to him honestly how far away that he’d felt it. He figured the source must have been closer from how strong it had been initially and yet as they drew further in, it only grew. It was as if they were being invited and while this wasn’t atypical of this type of creature entirely, it gave even him goosebumps. He had to sweatdrop a bit looking at Josabelle. Imps had about the sensory potential for these things of a human, if that. Though while with this level of power she probably could feel it, she certainly wasn’t showing any signs of that. In fact, it was almost as if this trip was having the opposite effect with the girl skipping along sans a care and occasionally inspecting her spear.

    After a time of walking through what seemed an endless labyrinth of abandoned structures, Adam began to slow down in the courtyard of a large storage facility. Certainly, this was the most likely area for something malevolent to be with even a few craters and body sized dents in the storage crates of the surrounding area. Up towards where there should have been a door above some concrete steps, the metallic wall was punched inward with but a sizable black crevice to serve as an entrance. Amun began to reconsider their original plan of securing the structure. He began to wonder if- 

“Hey… something isn’t right here guys…” stated the incubus as he halted his steps. He frowned as his face paled, shivering slightly. “I don’t know what the hell you’re having me track, but it’s no ordinary demon.” 

“Well no shit, Sherlock. We’ve only went over this and been given evidence to support it a billion times now. You just want to get out of work, don’t you? Quit joking around and get your pussy ass leading us to where we need to go.” said the annoyed imp as she crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. However unlike the previous banter, there was no follow up pouting.

“Listen, guys… you can tie me down here or whatever, but I’m not going any further.” said Adam uncharacteristically softly. His eyes were agape, face contorted as if he’d had a knife twisted in his gut. He raised a shaking hand to his face and covered it, pointing forward towards an upcoming warehouse. “If you two want to get yourselves killed, you can go the hell on to there.”

Amun found himself raising an eyebrow. This guy was clearly showing real fear. He may be exaggerating himself, possibly as an excuse to meet up with that girl, but part of that reaction at least was very real.  Whatever was in that building up ahead must have been truly terrifying to him. Still, some things had a bark worse than their bite. He wished the guy would at least try to support them. Still, given his role here, it wasn’t like he could blame the guy too much.

“Whatever, cut the drama. I’ll write you up for this, but stop wasting our time and get going if you’re that much of a coward. Not like you’d cut it in a fight anyways.” stated the vampire matter of factly as the incubus gave some overly swift nods with a grim expression and began walking off. As he did, Amun caught a glimpse of something shiny in his hand.

“Prisoner, turn around.” ordered the detective. With a jolt and a slight jump, Adam stopped and began to turn around. As expected, he was grasping the pager.. There was a light smacking sound as Amun’s hand impacted on his face.  The imp next to him gave a deadpan. “If I find out you actually left to go mess with Teddy, you’ll be pumping red the next time rather than white.”

As if on fast forward, the incubus began nodding his head exceedingly fast, before clutching the tiny hat on his head and jolting off into the distance. As he watched the silly idiot fade into the distance, the vampire couldn’t help but chuckle a bit, pulling a device from behind his back as he did so. “I wonder if he realizes…” mused the officer, eyeing the pager he had swiped back. “Pfft” let out the imp as she noticed what he was holding. They both gave amused smiles as they set off for the building.