89: Murderer

“There’s a little trick to these keys,” Vincent said as he gently lowered the both of us down onto the ground and then gripped at the key hanging to a chain around his hips. He held it out towards me, and I took it in my hands. Despite the hellish temperature down here, the key was cool in the palm of my hands.
“The keys which open the door are warm and those which will send you to your grave, are cool-”
Suddenly, Vincent gripped at my hand and placed me behind him. It took a moment for me to realise that this was all in an effort to protect me from the vicious demon which had tried to attack me from behind. Vincent’s hand was outstretched, and his fingers were enclosed tightly around the black neck of the demon before him. He didn’t look anything like Vincent. His skin was scaly and beneath it, a fiery orange glowed. His teeth were all jagged and the skin of his face was rough, red and scaly too. On the top of his head were two, large, thick, sharp horns which curved into three spirals at the end. His eyes were completely black, void of any sense of remaining humanity. It was almost as though he were completely lifeless, like an empty, soulless shell. He completely lacked any sense of humanity to him, and unlike Vincent, he did not have that same strange attractiveness.
Vincent snarled at him and then tossed his body to the corner. I watched as it fell limp against one of the stone walls, and then something rather unsettling caught my eye. Xavier and Liam were close to the fallen demon, battling against their own. The problem wasn’t so much that they were losing, but that they were outstandingly skilled. That was when it dawned on me. This entire time they’d been holding themselves back, all in hopes of protecting each other and me. We’d become weaker in this game with each other- constantly needing to look out for one another. I had to put an end to this here.
“You need to stay close to me. It might not seem like it now, but they are all after you, Phoenix. As soon as they catch a whiff of you, it’s all over. Your soul will be trapped here. You’ll be worse than dead. You’ll be an immortal stuck in hell.” Vincent said with a sad tone. But it was his tone that had begun to unsettle me.
“You sound as though you know what it’s like to be miserable here… or rather, you know what it’s like to watch someone else be miserable down here.” And then it hit me.
“Tell me, Vincent… there’s more to the relationship between you and Lucretia, isn’t there?”
Vincent sighed and then gave a little chuckle. “You’re a smart girl. Lucretia was… is my wife. *I’m* Sebastian’s great, great, great grandfather.”
As he said this, another demon seemed to have caught my scent. He lunged towards the both of us, with his dark, clawed fingers outstretched, ready to claw at me when Vincent gave a roar and drove his fingers right through the demon’s chest.
“That’s why I’m here. If you’re Lucretia and Sebastian’s family, then you’re mine as well.” He said.
“Does Sebastian know?” I asked, reaching for the key on the demon which Vincent had just killed. The warmth radiating from it made me sigh in relief.
“No. He doesn’t need to know. His own parents have already disappointed him. I don’t want him disappointed in the only family he has left.”
I gently touched at his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. “Trust me, the last thing you are is disappointing, Vincent.”
He returned my smile for a brief moment before tugging at my hand. “You’ve got your key. You need to get moving towards the door.”
But I shook my head at him and pointed towards Liam and Demetri. “I can’t…” The gravity of what I was about to do had begun to sink in and I could feel the nervousness begin to kick in.
“Do you need to save them? I can he-”
“No. I’m afraid I must do the opposite. I need to get them disqualified. I need to hurt them.”
Vincent stayed silent for a moment, and then gave me a curt nod. “I can help with that too.”
He was about to take a step forward, when I placed a hand on his chest. “No. I must do this.”
“Still,” he said as he placed a hand on my bare shoulder, “I will stay by your side until you leave through that door. I cannot, however, protect you in the celestial realm.”
“I understand.”
I gazed from Liam to Xavier. Both were still standing, but Xavier looked worse-off than Liam did. And so, I made my choice. The person I’d be disqualifying would be Xavier.
I hesitated a moment- what kind of lover would I have been if I didn’t- and then charged towards Xavier. At first, he smiled at me, relieved that I was safe. But his expression soon turned to confusion as I stretched my clawed fingers, ready to drive it right into his stomach. It would cause enough damage to severely injure him, but not enough to kill him, as long as I left him with some of my blood in his system. The distance between us began to shrink until I was just close enough to sink my claws into him.
But I couldn’t. I just stood there with my hand frozen in the air, staring into his confused eyes. We stayed like this for a moment, before I saw my saving grace from the corner of my eye. The demon who’d been fighting Liam suddenly stiffened and sniffed the air deeply before turning his head towards me. He snarled and Vincent shifted. I touched at his hand and yanked at it gently. I didn’t need him interfering.
The demon scraped his foot on the floor, his long nails emitting sparks from the ground. He then outstretched his wings. They were larger than I expected, and when he used them to lift himself off of the ground, a cloud of dust began to swirl around us. He was as quick in the air as he was on the ground but had something I hadn’t quite seen on the other demons. On the top ends of his wings were long, sharp tusk-like edges which jutted out. He enclosed his wings around his body, tightly, and then he dove right toward me. This time, I couldn’t afford to hesitate. I waited for the demon to be just close enough before I grabbed onto Xavier and pulled him in front of me. There was a sudden searing pain which surged throughout my entire hand which was against his back. I looked down to see that the large tusk had pierced right through Xavier and even right through my hand. The other side of the tusk-like object was blood-stained and sticking out from the back of my palm.
Xavier stood there, frozen and silent. I couldn’t even muster up a word myself as the horror of what I’d just done, sank in. It was only when the demon pulled his tusk out, that Xavier collapsed to his knees and blood spluttered from his lips.
A piercing cry sounded in front of us. But it didn’t belong to me, nor did it belong to Xavier. Instead, it came from Liam who’d begun a vengeful attack on the demon that had injured Xavier. While his attention was fixated on the demon, mine was fixated on Xavier. The wound was deep and serious, but not serious enough to get him disqualified. He needed one more hit.
I gazed down at him conflicted as blood still leaked from his mouth. This time, his face wasn’t contorted in confusion. Instead, he seemed calm and reassured.
“Y-you do what y-you have to.” He whispered.
“I’m only doing it for you.” I said softly.
He nodded. “I know.”
I bit into my wrist and lowered it to Xavier’s lips.
“Drink up… this is going to hurt like hell.” I said.
Xavier gripped at my wrist and drank from it hungrily. I gently ran my fingers through his hair and let my eyes wander to Liam who was still clawing into the demon. As long as he was distracted, I could injure Xavier enough.
As soon as he’d finished drinking, I raised my clawed hand into the air again, ready to attack.
“Stay safe, Phoenix… and make sure you bring that big oaf there home too.”
I nodded before plunging my hand right below his chest. Blood splashed all over my face and came streaming from the large cavity in his body. Xavier coughed out, heaved a few times and then fell limp on the ground. It would take a moment for my blood to kick in, and even then, the wound was too severe to heal quickly enough for him to complete this challenge. I’d done it, and although I felt a sense of heaviness in my chest, there was a sense of relief on my shoulders.
Unfortunately, my act of harming Xavier did not go unseen. David, who had been rather quiet this entire round, yelled from the top of his lungs, “She killed Xavier!”
A few of the vampires spared me glances, but none seemed to be paying close attention to me, except Liam. He’d vanquished the demon, and now he stared at me with a mixture of disbelief, sadness, disappointment and doubt.
“N-no… he… he’s lying. Xavier’s not dead… y-you didn’t kill him…”
Before I had time to answer, Liam came rushing towards us. He placed his hands gently on Xavier and gasped at the lack of pulse. I was about to explain to him what I’d done when his eyes moved from the gaping hole below Xavier’s chest to the blood all over my hands and my outstretched claws.
And then it left his lips in a low, vengeful tone. “Murderer.”
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Stay safe! Stay healthy! Sending my love!