“Funny seeing you boys here,” the voice coos.
“Kasdeya?” I respond, taking in the figure before me. Beautiful and deadly, you need to guard every part of your body around her. Her dark hair is in a long ponytail and her outfit looks like she’s supposed to be in some sort of action movie. She clicks her tongue and then scrapes it over her teeth as she looks at Asmodeus. She usually spends most of her time in Hell, so I have no idea why she’s here.
“I go by Kas now. You truly didn’t think our lord would send two incompetent men to do a woman’s job, now did you?”
Asmodeus groans next to me. If anyone here isn’t happy to see Kasdeya, it’s him. They used to have a thing, and then she locked him in the fairy dimension for a few decades. He still doesn’t talk about what happened.
“Seriously, he sent you to find out who is doing the possessions, too?” Asmo complains.
“Of course, you two seem too preoccupied with drinking and tasting the locals. But I’m here to make sure the job actually gets done.” It makes me wonder how long she has been watching us. Did she see me with Blair? The idea of it causes me to be irrationally angry.
“What intel do you have?” I ask her, tired of her bullshit.
“Why would I share that with you?” She arches a dark eyebrow at me and I groan. I just want this case to be over. Give me the demons that need a simple slap on the wrist. Simple cases like, no ripping angel wings, no telling humans about the supernatural unless necessary, no shifting into demon form in the middle of concerts. You know, the straightforward stuff.
“We’ve been hunting them for weeks with no luck finding them. Every time we get close, they leave the possessed in shambles.”
“I guess we’ll just have to see who solves it first.” She winks at Asmodeus and portals back to whatever hole she crawled out of.
“This just keeps getting worse and worse,” Asmo bitches next to me.
We’re about to portal home, forget how unfruitful this evening has been, and start over tomorrow when I hear the whimpering.
“Do you hear that?”
“Yeah, what is that?”
“It sounds like someone crying,” I say. Usually I would just ignore it, but the fact that they tipped us off to this location makes me want to check it out.
We walk around a few shipping containers, our steps making slight slopping noises as we walk on the wet pier. The sounds are coming from a woman, hunched over by a shipping container. Likely in her late twenties, she’s cradling her head between her palms. Her blonde hair is wet and plastered to her face. She’s clawing at her skin as she tucks her body close to her.
“Make it stop, make it fucking stop,” she cries.
She slaps her own head hard against the shipping container she’s leaned against as she continues speaking to herself. She doesn’t even notice us approaching.
Asmodeus crouches down next to her, and she flinches. She stares at him wide-eyed. I can tell she knows what we are by how scared she is.
“Please. Please don’t do it again. Just make it stop.”
“What did they do to you?” Asmo asks in a soft voice.
“I watched her. I could see and feel everything. With my hands. She used my hands.” She holds her hands out in front of her. They’re shaking and cold. No evidence of her doing any wrongdoings, but it’s clear that she feels responsible.
“Do you know the being who did this to you?” I ask her.
“She called herself Mara,” she says and winces after she says the name. She looks around like speaking her name might bring her back to collect her again. “I need to make it go away. I need it to stop.” She smacks her head again, hard.
“I could make it go away,” Asmo says kindly to her, giving her his dazzling smile.
“You can. Can you make it go away?” The sad woman looks at him with hope in her eyes. I suppose Asmo’s methods are better than this woman’s suffering as he gets down on his haunches and gets closer to her.
“Is that what you want?” he asks.
“Yes,” she pleads, grabbing his shirt. “Make it go away.”
I watch as Asmodeus cups her jaw, almost like a tender embrace, as his other hand wraps around her neck. She smiles at him, almost like she knows the raging in her head is going to stop. He quickly snaps her neck with his powerful hands and the woman collapses to the floor.
“Information and a collected soul,” he says, sucking his teeth. “Not so bad of a night, after all.
