Post by bran_sinnach on Nov 17, 2006 19:57:13 GMT -5
It was the posters that led him to her, that showed him the way. They grew along the axis of the city’s main streets, planted there by her acolytes and pawns, her eyes staring out from dozens of images as he passed by. Festooning the walls of construction sites, circling lampposts, tacked onto trees, they were the signs she used to trace her paths throughout the city, to show the borders of her kingdom.
At first, he had barely noticed them and their subtle hints. He had been too intent on hunting down another of the blatant sinners he had vowed to eradicate. But when she had played him false and proved, despite extensive examination, to be no more than any other wicked daughter of Eve wandering a wicked path, the posters had been waiting.
He stood before a broad wall of them now, while the cold wind spun the long dead leaves of October in circles about his feet. How could he have missed the signs? She flaunted them like twisted badges of honor for all to see; the shock of midnight hair, the eyes black-lined and hellishly bright against the corpse-like pallor of her skin, the alluring promise of her smirk. Even her name- Lilith. The rejected first wife of Adam, cast out of Eden for witchcraft and hatred, she had thrown in her lot with the Dark Prince and left Adam to Eve. What woman who was not a witch would ever choose such a name for her own?
But they could display such Darkness in the open now, for they had thought themselves safe, the Daughters of Evil. Thought that in a world of televised carnage and sensual corruption, they could hide in plain sight. Who would believe in such ancient evil as they, when modern ones abounded like mushroom clouds and anthrax showers just on the horizon?
But he had not forgotten. He remembered his Lord’s injunction, for it was written down for all to see, even if none would heed to it. “Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live.”
The command was very clear to those who chose to read it and, clear of mind and conscience, he had chosen to obey it. It had not been hard to find the offenders; they advertised their presence freely and fearlessly. Fortune tellers and Pagan heathens, writers of Occult pornography and simple smut, what were they all but manifestations of that one great harlot, the first witch? What were they but the children of Lilith?
And so he had obediently tracked them down one by one, submitting them to the ancient tests that had been explained in the Malleus Malificarum, the Witches Hammer: The needles to search out the Devil’s mark that did not bleed, the racks and thumbscrews, the water that would purify them in death. That not all confessed to their crimes had disturbed him at first, as did the incontrovertible evidence of innocence the drowned corpses represented as they stared with their unseeing eyes. But then he had realized that they were mere dupes of the greater evil, bound to it by their sex, if not by their conscious will. These minor witches had been set in his path to distract him from the greater darkness, from those who had taught the ways of sin to them to begin with. After that, the confessions no longer mattered.
The world, of course, did not understand such things. The papers, the television, the bars all brimmed with news of his latest exploits, of how he had completely baffled the police yet again. But what did they expect? He was about his Lord’s business, and his Lord would protect him. And yet, the words did sometimes hurt. Psychopath, maniac, sadist. If they only knew the truth, of the reasons behind his hunts, he knew they would praise him for his actions, that they would acknowledge the righteousness of his long and lonely crusade.
Rapist was the word that hurt the most, and that he knew was the most false. It was true, he had fallen once or twice, tempted beyond resistance by the naked, bruised body spread out before him. But that was their wickedness, not his. How could any man resist for long the wiles of a witch and the dark glamour they wove even in death? He had scourged that weakness from himself now, and that printed lie at least had stopped.
Yes, the sin was gone from him now, or so he had thought. But now, standing before the wall emblazoned with her taunting image, he felt those old traitorous stirrings once again, and for that there could no longer be any doubt. The weak humanity in him knew the lure of her evil, felt it calling to him as the serpent had called to Eve in the garden all those years ago, sensed it beckoning to him to join her in her dark embrace. For him there could be no clearer sign.
He began to track her then, through the cavernous temples where she held her rites and shouted her blasphemies. Their very names were infamy to him...The Cave, The Pariah Club, Raising Cain. It cost him to pass through those hellholes untainted. The darkness, the sleek bodies in black and silver, even the thunderous, seductive rumble of her music, all had an allure that drew him. Yet he could see the corrupt, rotting features of the damned beneath the painted faces and hear the laughter of demons in her soaring voice, and that gave him the strength to remain pure and focused.
As the nights steadily passed, he learned where she lived, who she was, and what she looked like under her mask. What he had found had surprised him at first, that the Queen of Darkness would look and seem so...ordinary. Without the erotic allure of her paint and erotic slithers of her dancing, she was no more than a passably pretty young woman. And then, once again, he saw the subtlety of that trap and marveled at the infinite, deceptive power of evil. No one, unmasking the witch Lilith, would see the danger in those young, pale features. And so they would turn away from her, forgetting that they had ever suspected. Yes, many were the tricks of evil, and all of them clever.
Night after night, he watched her whirl and twist about the stage, a lean black dervish. He listened to her voice wail out over the screaming crowds, chanting to them like an ancient Siren. Her songs were blasphemy, as wickedly seductive as her lithe body and black lipped mouth. She sang of shadows, demon lords, and the powers of darkness. Night after night, he quietly followed her home and crouched on the fire escape outside her window, secretly watching all the seemingly innocent rituals of her life.
He could have taken her a thousand times as he sat there, but some soft little voice inside told him the time was not right, that the battle should not be fought here. This was no simple task he had set himself, this destruction of the greatest of Evil’s whores he had ever faced. When the time came, he would know it, and he would spring.
The posters told him when his chance would be, just as they had led him to her in the beginning. “Special Halloween Midnight Show.”
The day of All Hallow’s Eve dawned cold and gray, as if the weather sensed the cold work ahead of him. He barely noticed. The anticipation that surged through him made the world a flame in his eyes, eyes that were blind to all else but Her. All the weeks of waiting and watching would come to an end tonight, for he would put an end to her evil wiles. And so too would cease his increasing nervousness, the strange itchy twitch between his shoulder blades that made him feel watched and that had kept him from her fire escape for the past week. Tonight, his great duty would be done once and for all. What would come after that, he did not know, but he distantly imagined a rapture that would trumpet him to Heaven.
He was in the club early, pushing his way closer to the front than he had ever dared to go before. Tonight he was stronger than all her rituals and spells. Tonight, he was omnipotent. Moments later the announcer took the stage as the midnight hour finally settled on the club, a leather clad hand seizing the microphone as crimson-contacted eyes stared down at the costumed crowd.
“Good evening,” he drawled, his voice as thick and dark as crude oil. “It’s Halloween boys and girls. Do you know where your soul is tonight?”
The crowd around him surged and howled like the demons whose garb they had affected, screeching and growling like the very host of the Pit. He knew where his soul was tonight. He could feel it, bright and hungry, filling him, urging him on to do what he knew must be done. “Well, we’re going to take it...we’re going to shake it...and we’re going to steal it. Because tonight, Raising Cain is proud to present our very own Queen of Darkness...Lilith and the Nightstalkers!”
The lights suddenly plunged out and about him, the darkness swallowing him as he heard the crowd screaming and chanting her name. He was screaming too, he realized, in challenge.
The bass rumble began, then the heavy heartbeat of the drums, the wail of the guitar, all of them combining like the rumble of some giant sleeping beast. It was then, as the music built to an ominous crescendo, that from the shadows came her voice, caressing the darkness like an old lover.
When he had stepped into the crowd before the show he had not imagined that she could be more wicked than the times before- and yet she was. Her glaring eyes burned like amber flames in the dancing shadows as her body coiled and uncoiled on stage with all the savage grace of a jungle cat. Her voice was incandescent, burning along his nerves, sapping his strength, clouding his mind. He found himself swaying and jumping with the tightly packed crowd to the hypnotic rhythm of the music, and when he tried to fight it, they all seemed to laugh at his feeble attempts and push him closer to the stage.
He clung desperately to his resolution, to the memory of the great responsibility with which he had been charged putting that old strength into him once again. He chanted the sacred instructions under his breath, a charm to ward off the pull of her voice, her eyes, her body.
“This song,” she said, during a lull in the cacophony of sound, “is for someone out there. I know who you are, and I know what you want my love.” She gazed out into the crowd for a moment, eyes shining like a beast’s, and then bent her dark form towards them and let her voice drift into the cold air once more, the sound like crushed velvet wrapping about his mind.
She knew, he realized with a horrified shock. She knew. Knew he was there, knew his mission, knew his very soul. The thought horrified and revolted him all at once, made him feel ultimately unclean. How could she know? Had he not taken the greatest of precautions? Or perhaps she had been toying with him all along, sending out her decoys to tempt him, and then the posters to draw him to her?
He struggled to turn, to flee that mocking, knowing voice that almost laughed at his terror, but he could not move, hemmed in by the surging, pulsing crowd. Their fists pounded the air with their familiar demonic symbols about him, the field of thrusting horns driving him back towards the stage again. Desperately he fumbled in his pocket for his knife, blessed and purified in preparation for the night’s work he had planned for it. He clung to it like a talisman, praying it would shield him from her sensual charms, her searching eyes.
She repeated the last line over and over, beckoning, cajoling, begging. She was on her knees, calling to him as she stared with those fiery eyes, her voice a promise not to be broken. He felt his body respond to her charms again again, felt the rush of fire along his limbs and the dimming of his mind as her evil worked its inky fingers into him.
“No!” he screamed, his voice a whisper above the thunder of the music. “No!” She could not do this to him. He would not let her do this to him. He had to make her stop. Had to end her evil now, no matter what it cost.
It was in that moment that the thin row of people between himself and the stage seemed to melt away, and before he knew what was happening he was alone, scrambling up into the blinding light. In its glare, time seemed to slow to a stop, his quarry finally so close to him. He saw her wild eyes widen in terror, her mouth open to scream as she saw the knife. But then there were shouts from his right and he half turned to stare into the black barrels of the guns. Distantly, he heard the policemen ordering him to freeze.
Why had she called them? He wondered. This had been between the two of them. Didn’t she know that the battle between good and evil must always be fought alone? Betrayed, confused, he turned back to face her, the knife still clutched in his hand.
The first bullet shattered his shoulder, spinning him back to take the second though his chest, a bloody rose blossoming on his breast. The din in his ears faded to a buzz of sound and the lights that wavered before his confused eyes, feeling tendrils of cold slithering throughout his body. Dimly, he realized he was lying down and couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there, and then he remembered her. Where was she? With his last once of strength he turned his head, his vision narrowing as the edges went dark, and found her crouched in the arms of one of the policemen.
As the lights went out in those eyes, he almost swore he saw a tear sliding down her painted cheek.
Lilith sat on her bed and stared at the red wrapped bundle in her lap. The candles set on the altar she had brought back into her room, melted to mere stubs after their long duty the night before, cast flickering shadows across her face as she stared down at the red fabric, her eyes having lost none of the intensity they bore on stage.
The sound of a trashcan tipping over came from the street, and out of habit, she forced herself to avoid glancing at the fire escape outside the shrouded window, the window where the dark figure had crouched so many nights. She let a long breath sigh out, reminding herself that he was finally gone for good. Living out the routine of her life while trying to ignore the staring, hungry eyes of that evil man had been more draining than she had thought, especially after the police had finally admitted the suspected identity of the voyeur.
They had managed, even in their self-congratulatory triumph, to remember to reprimand her for not telling them about the song ahead of time, or about her plan to lure the killer into their sights that night at the club. But she had known what had to be done. How long could you have protected me? She had countered. All he had to do was wait. I wanted it to end once and for all...for all the girls that evil man has harmed.
Slowly, she unwrapped the red silk satchel, carefully peeling away one corner at a time. She began to hum in faint, lullaby-like tones that seemed the antithesis of the wild violence and roiling noise she conjured up on stage. From the red silk she reverently drew out, one by one, the objects the red satchel in her lap had unfurled to reveal.
The first items she removed were four bullets of the same sort that police were issued for their weapons, though these four were flattened and misshapen, as if they had been fired. After these she removed one more bullet, this one seemingly nothing but a spent shell, black lines of gunpowder and crimson veins of what looked to be blood curling about the shell in patterns that seemed somehow arcane. It so happened that the killer had been hit by four non-fatal police rounds the night before, or so she had heard, being killed instead by a single stray bullet that pierced his heart.
She set the bullets down and stared at the last object for a moment before she removed it, a soft sigh escaping her thin lips. The cotton doll was clumsily made, features stitched roughly across its face, hair being mimicked by a patch of course brown yarn. She had never worked the darker spells such as this, but her need the previous night had called for it. Even without her inexperience in the darker magics, it was already hard enough to create such a poppet without a possession of the person it was to represent, and so there had been no room for subtlety in either its appearance or its purpose. The method had been crude, but the despite her worries about the outcome, it had all gone just as it should have. When she put her finger to the bullet hole in its little chest, bits of charred cotton flaked away and clung to her skin.
She wondered absently what his name had been, who he’d been, if he had had a family that never knew what he did on the weekends. She’d find out, no doubt, when the papers came out the next day and every front page would be screaming the story. Whoever he was, he had been right this once, for Lilith was indeed a witch and had been one for a great many years. She was also the first, only, and last real witch that he would ever hunt.
At first, he had barely noticed them and their subtle hints. He had been too intent on hunting down another of the blatant sinners he had vowed to eradicate. But when she had played him false and proved, despite extensive examination, to be no more than any other wicked daughter of Eve wandering a wicked path, the posters had been waiting.
He stood before a broad wall of them now, while the cold wind spun the long dead leaves of October in circles about his feet. How could he have missed the signs? She flaunted them like twisted badges of honor for all to see; the shock of midnight hair, the eyes black-lined and hellishly bright against the corpse-like pallor of her skin, the alluring promise of her smirk. Even her name- Lilith. The rejected first wife of Adam, cast out of Eden for witchcraft and hatred, she had thrown in her lot with the Dark Prince and left Adam to Eve. What woman who was not a witch would ever choose such a name for her own?
But they could display such Darkness in the open now, for they had thought themselves safe, the Daughters of Evil. Thought that in a world of televised carnage and sensual corruption, they could hide in plain sight. Who would believe in such ancient evil as they, when modern ones abounded like mushroom clouds and anthrax showers just on the horizon?
But he had not forgotten. He remembered his Lord’s injunction, for it was written down for all to see, even if none would heed to it. “Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live.”
The command was very clear to those who chose to read it and, clear of mind and conscience, he had chosen to obey it. It had not been hard to find the offenders; they advertised their presence freely and fearlessly. Fortune tellers and Pagan heathens, writers of Occult pornography and simple smut, what were they all but manifestations of that one great harlot, the first witch? What were they but the children of Lilith?
And so he had obediently tracked them down one by one, submitting them to the ancient tests that had been explained in the Malleus Malificarum, the Witches Hammer: The needles to search out the Devil’s mark that did not bleed, the racks and thumbscrews, the water that would purify them in death. That not all confessed to their crimes had disturbed him at first, as did the incontrovertible evidence of innocence the drowned corpses represented as they stared with their unseeing eyes. But then he had realized that they were mere dupes of the greater evil, bound to it by their sex, if not by their conscious will. These minor witches had been set in his path to distract him from the greater darkness, from those who had taught the ways of sin to them to begin with. After that, the confessions no longer mattered.
The world, of course, did not understand such things. The papers, the television, the bars all brimmed with news of his latest exploits, of how he had completely baffled the police yet again. But what did they expect? He was about his Lord’s business, and his Lord would protect him. And yet, the words did sometimes hurt. Psychopath, maniac, sadist. If they only knew the truth, of the reasons behind his hunts, he knew they would praise him for his actions, that they would acknowledge the righteousness of his long and lonely crusade.
Rapist was the word that hurt the most, and that he knew was the most false. It was true, he had fallen once or twice, tempted beyond resistance by the naked, bruised body spread out before him. But that was their wickedness, not his. How could any man resist for long the wiles of a witch and the dark glamour they wove even in death? He had scourged that weakness from himself now, and that printed lie at least had stopped.
Yes, the sin was gone from him now, or so he had thought. But now, standing before the wall emblazoned with her taunting image, he felt those old traitorous stirrings once again, and for that there could no longer be any doubt. The weak humanity in him knew the lure of her evil, felt it calling to him as the serpent had called to Eve in the garden all those years ago, sensed it beckoning to him to join her in her dark embrace. For him there could be no clearer sign.
He began to track her then, through the cavernous temples where she held her rites and shouted her blasphemies. Their very names were infamy to him...The Cave, The Pariah Club, Raising Cain. It cost him to pass through those hellholes untainted. The darkness, the sleek bodies in black and silver, even the thunderous, seductive rumble of her music, all had an allure that drew him. Yet he could see the corrupt, rotting features of the damned beneath the painted faces and hear the laughter of demons in her soaring voice, and that gave him the strength to remain pure and focused.
As the nights steadily passed, he learned where she lived, who she was, and what she looked like under her mask. What he had found had surprised him at first, that the Queen of Darkness would look and seem so...ordinary. Without the erotic allure of her paint and erotic slithers of her dancing, she was no more than a passably pretty young woman. And then, once again, he saw the subtlety of that trap and marveled at the infinite, deceptive power of evil. No one, unmasking the witch Lilith, would see the danger in those young, pale features. And so they would turn away from her, forgetting that they had ever suspected. Yes, many were the tricks of evil, and all of them clever.
Night after night, he watched her whirl and twist about the stage, a lean black dervish. He listened to her voice wail out over the screaming crowds, chanting to them like an ancient Siren. Her songs were blasphemy, as wickedly seductive as her lithe body and black lipped mouth. She sang of shadows, demon lords, and the powers of darkness. Night after night, he quietly followed her home and crouched on the fire escape outside her window, secretly watching all the seemingly innocent rituals of her life.
He could have taken her a thousand times as he sat there, but some soft little voice inside told him the time was not right, that the battle should not be fought here. This was no simple task he had set himself, this destruction of the greatest of Evil’s whores he had ever faced. When the time came, he would know it, and he would spring.
The posters told him when his chance would be, just as they had led him to her in the beginning. “Special Halloween Midnight Show.”
The day of All Hallow’s Eve dawned cold and gray, as if the weather sensed the cold work ahead of him. He barely noticed. The anticipation that surged through him made the world a flame in his eyes, eyes that were blind to all else but Her. All the weeks of waiting and watching would come to an end tonight, for he would put an end to her evil wiles. And so too would cease his increasing nervousness, the strange itchy twitch between his shoulder blades that made him feel watched and that had kept him from her fire escape for the past week. Tonight, his great duty would be done once and for all. What would come after that, he did not know, but he distantly imagined a rapture that would trumpet him to Heaven.
He was in the club early, pushing his way closer to the front than he had ever dared to go before. Tonight he was stronger than all her rituals and spells. Tonight, he was omnipotent. Moments later the announcer took the stage as the midnight hour finally settled on the club, a leather clad hand seizing the microphone as crimson-contacted eyes stared down at the costumed crowd.
“Good evening,” he drawled, his voice as thick and dark as crude oil. “It’s Halloween boys and girls. Do you know where your soul is tonight?”
The crowd around him surged and howled like the demons whose garb they had affected, screeching and growling like the very host of the Pit. He knew where his soul was tonight. He could feel it, bright and hungry, filling him, urging him on to do what he knew must be done. “Well, we’re going to take it...we’re going to shake it...and we’re going to steal it. Because tonight, Raising Cain is proud to present our very own Queen of Darkness...Lilith and the Nightstalkers!”
The lights suddenly plunged out and about him, the darkness swallowing him as he heard the crowd screaming and chanting her name. He was screaming too, he realized, in challenge.
The bass rumble began, then the heavy heartbeat of the drums, the wail of the guitar, all of them combining like the rumble of some giant sleeping beast. It was then, as the music built to an ominous crescendo, that from the shadows came her voice, caressing the darkness like an old lover.
“I’m on the night shift
Oh, tonight I’m waiting...”
Oh, tonight I’m waiting...”
When he had stepped into the crowd before the show he had not imagined that she could be more wicked than the times before- and yet she was. Her glaring eyes burned like amber flames in the dancing shadows as her body coiled and uncoiled on stage with all the savage grace of a jungle cat. Her voice was incandescent, burning along his nerves, sapping his strength, clouding his mind. He found himself swaying and jumping with the tightly packed crowd to the hypnotic rhythm of the music, and when he tried to fight it, they all seemed to laugh at his feeble attempts and push him closer to the stage.
He clung desperately to his resolution, to the memory of the great responsibility with which he had been charged putting that old strength into him once again. He chanted the sacred instructions under his breath, a charm to ward off the pull of her voice, her eyes, her body.
“This song,” she said, during a lull in the cacophony of sound, “is for someone out there. I know who you are, and I know what you want my love.” She gazed out into the crowd for a moment, eyes shining like a beast’s, and then bent her dark form towards them and let her voice drift into the cold air once more, the sound like crushed velvet wrapping about his mind.
“Your hear her singing, with a voice like temptation
Like the one you hear in your deepest dreams
Painting demons over throbbing drums
She’s stealing souls in the steely hum”
And you know, you know what she really means...”
Like the one you hear in your deepest dreams
Painting demons over throbbing drums
She’s stealing souls in the steely hum”
And you know, you know what she really means...”
She knew, he realized with a horrified shock. She knew. Knew he was there, knew his mission, knew his very soul. The thought horrified and revolted him all at once, made him feel ultimately unclean. How could she know? Had he not taken the greatest of precautions? Or perhaps she had been toying with him all along, sending out her decoys to tempt him, and then the posters to draw him to her?
“You see her moving like a serpent in the garden
Like the one that leaves the fire in your veins
Just like all the good books say
Everyone’s gonna thank you someday
Cause you know, you know they’re all the same...”
Like the one that leaves the fire in your veins
Just like all the good books say
Everyone’s gonna thank you someday
Cause you know, you know they’re all the same...”
He struggled to turn, to flee that mocking, knowing voice that almost laughed at his terror, but he could not move, hemmed in by the surging, pulsing crowd. Their fists pounded the air with their familiar demonic symbols about him, the field of thrusting horns driving him back towards the stage again. Desperately he fumbled in his pocket for his knife, blessed and purified in preparation for the night’s work he had planned for it. He clung to it like a talisman, praying it would shield him from her sensual charms, her searching eyes.
“As you’re pulling down the shade
You can hear her calling
As you’re reaching for the blade
You can see Her falling
Just one touch and shell be falling, falling, falling
Falling for you..."
You can hear her calling
As you’re reaching for the blade
You can see Her falling
Just one touch and shell be falling, falling, falling
Falling for you..."
She repeated the last line over and over, beckoning, cajoling, begging. She was on her knees, calling to him as she stared with those fiery eyes, her voice a promise not to be broken. He felt his body respond to her charms again again, felt the rush of fire along his limbs and the dimming of his mind as her evil worked its inky fingers into him.
“No!” he screamed, his voice a whisper above the thunder of the music. “No!” She could not do this to him. He would not let her do this to him. He had to make her stop. Had to end her evil now, no matter what it cost.
It was in that moment that the thin row of people between himself and the stage seemed to melt away, and before he knew what was happening he was alone, scrambling up into the blinding light. In its glare, time seemed to slow to a stop, his quarry finally so close to him. He saw her wild eyes widen in terror, her mouth open to scream as she saw the knife. But then there were shouts from his right and he half turned to stare into the black barrels of the guns. Distantly, he heard the policemen ordering him to freeze.
Why had she called them? He wondered. This had been between the two of them. Didn’t she know that the battle between good and evil must always be fought alone? Betrayed, confused, he turned back to face her, the knife still clutched in his hand.
The first bullet shattered his shoulder, spinning him back to take the second though his chest, a bloody rose blossoming on his breast. The din in his ears faded to a buzz of sound and the lights that wavered before his confused eyes, feeling tendrils of cold slithering throughout his body. Dimly, he realized he was lying down and couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there, and then he remembered her. Where was she? With his last once of strength he turned his head, his vision narrowing as the edges went dark, and found her crouched in the arms of one of the policemen.
As the lights went out in those eyes, he almost swore he saw a tear sliding down her painted cheek.
Lilith sat on her bed and stared at the red wrapped bundle in her lap. The candles set on the altar she had brought back into her room, melted to mere stubs after their long duty the night before, cast flickering shadows across her face as she stared down at the red fabric, her eyes having lost none of the intensity they bore on stage.
The sound of a trashcan tipping over came from the street, and out of habit, she forced herself to avoid glancing at the fire escape outside the shrouded window, the window where the dark figure had crouched so many nights. She let a long breath sigh out, reminding herself that he was finally gone for good. Living out the routine of her life while trying to ignore the staring, hungry eyes of that evil man had been more draining than she had thought, especially after the police had finally admitted the suspected identity of the voyeur.
They had managed, even in their self-congratulatory triumph, to remember to reprimand her for not telling them about the song ahead of time, or about her plan to lure the killer into their sights that night at the club. But she had known what had to be done. How long could you have protected me? She had countered. All he had to do was wait. I wanted it to end once and for all...for all the girls that evil man has harmed.
Slowly, she unwrapped the red silk satchel, carefully peeling away one corner at a time. She began to hum in faint, lullaby-like tones that seemed the antithesis of the wild violence and roiling noise she conjured up on stage. From the red silk she reverently drew out, one by one, the objects the red satchel in her lap had unfurled to reveal.
The first items she removed were four bullets of the same sort that police were issued for their weapons, though these four were flattened and misshapen, as if they had been fired. After these she removed one more bullet, this one seemingly nothing but a spent shell, black lines of gunpowder and crimson veins of what looked to be blood curling about the shell in patterns that seemed somehow arcane. It so happened that the killer had been hit by four non-fatal police rounds the night before, or so she had heard, being killed instead by a single stray bullet that pierced his heart.
She set the bullets down and stared at the last object for a moment before she removed it, a soft sigh escaping her thin lips. The cotton doll was clumsily made, features stitched roughly across its face, hair being mimicked by a patch of course brown yarn. She had never worked the darker spells such as this, but her need the previous night had called for it. Even without her inexperience in the darker magics, it was already hard enough to create such a poppet without a possession of the person it was to represent, and so there had been no room for subtlety in either its appearance or its purpose. The method had been crude, but the despite her worries about the outcome, it had all gone just as it should have. When she put her finger to the bullet hole in its little chest, bits of charred cotton flaked away and clung to her skin.
She wondered absently what his name had been, who he’d been, if he had had a family that never knew what he did on the weekends. She’d find out, no doubt, when the papers came out the next day and every front page would be screaming the story. Whoever he was, he had been right this once, for Lilith was indeed a witch and had been one for a great many years. She was also the first, only, and last real witch that he would ever hunt.