Who took the fucking ledger?
“Very well then.” My hand drifted toward the table on my left, my fingers grazing the cool surface before settling on a round tray of gleaming instruments.
I selected a pair of scissors etched with the emblem of the Bratva–a python’s head, its fangs bared in a silent warning.
The soldier choked out a gasp, terror settling in the depth of his eyes. And seeing that deep swirl of horror stirred euphoria within me, my fingers trembling.
If the soldier was truly innocent, I didn’t care anymore…not that I cared before. His fate was decided the moment he ended up on the list of suspects. I wanted blood and I would make him bleed for me.
Callan, that bastard. He gave me control days late. I felt him fighting me off, trying to silence me. And he had never done thatbefore. He had never hesitated. I didn’t know what came over him. What made him bold enough to think of being this reckless, habour the idea of cheating me.
Was he changing his mind? Had he become selfish with sharing his body with me? Or was he hiding something, something he didn’t want me to see?
These questions had bothered me for days. But I didn’t even have time to source for the answers because I was too busy looking for a damn ledger. I woke up, barely had time to release a breath, and I was hit with a fucking missing ledger.
I couldn’t hunt, couldn’t do the one thing that always excited me.
I had been starved.
I positioned myself behind my new prey, my fingers gently curling under his chin, titling his head to bare the flesh on his neck to me.
“I guess this is goodbye then.”
“Please–” Before the word could have a chance to be heard by another ear, a continuous squelching sound of metal piercing through flesh echoed in the room. I repeatedly drove the scissors into his jugular, watching the soldier gurgle as blood oozed in waves from the miscellaneous holes on his neck.
He grappled for air, his frail hands thawing relentlessly at his own neck, desperate for a chance to save himself from the death glaring at him.
It took five minutes, just five minutes, and the soldier hit the floor.
I hovered over the paling body and not a sliver of regret dared to tug at my conscience. Rather, a twisted smile lifted the corners of my lips, power surging through my veins, watching the faint tremor in the man’s fingers as life left him finally.
“You’re wrong again, preacher,” I murmured, the scissors hitting the floor with a loud clatter. “Still, destiny has no role toplay in their deaths. They died only because I wanted them to. I am higher than any so-called destiny.”
A treacherous wind dragged me back in time, years ago, at St. Joseph’s cathedral, the Raskov family’s sacred ground.
I found myself standing beneath the vaulted ceilings, the air thick with incense and whispered prayers.
It was Eugene Raskov’s burial.
Father Thomas stood at the pulpit, solemn and unwavering, his voice echoing through the cavernous church.
“Eugene Raskov died because it was written in his destiny,”Thomas proclaimed, seeming so wise and so sure of the nonsense he just uttered through his chapped lips. “All who perish do so at destiny’s decree.”
Destiny’s decree,he said. But I remembered vividly, the gurgle of a severed throat, the warmth of blood spilling over my hands, the final rattling breath as Eugene’s life seeped away on the cold office floor.
Destiny? Really?
Who was she? This nameless, faceless thing they so willingly bowed to? Did she hold the blade with me that night? Did she whisper in Eugene Raskov’s ears as I carved the old man’s fate into his flesh?
No.
Only I played god that night. And yet Father Thomas had the gut to credit my work to some unseen force, absolving the guilty with the poetry of fate.
It was hard work carving into flesh. You had to be precise, position the knife well, make a clean and perfect cut. Sometimes it would take me hours as mathematics and physics came to play. It wasn’t easy, and yet, every damn time, every fucking time, they would credit my work to some entity I didn’t even know.
It was me. It had always been me, Zaghan. A deity. The god living through a mortal’s body.
An ominous breeze circled around the dead soldier’s body–death, who had come to collect another soul, the first one I would be collecting today. Because my hunger had been awoken. I wouldn’t stop until bodies that had been hollowed out laid around, eyes empty, fingers splintered, the city painted with their blood.
