The stinging pain pricked his temples like sharp needles, making Jules hiss as he woke. It felt like his skull was about to split, the area between the bridge of his nose and eyebrows so painful that he had the urge to dig his eyes out. Maybe the pain would lessen if he did.
Jules took a deep breath and told himself to calm down; the pain was excruciating, but self-harm wouldn’t help. So, he gritted his teeth and forced his eyelids open. What then lay before him was an unfamiliar room. He frowned and thought of standing up to take a better look at his surroundings, yet he didn’t even move an inch before stopping dead in his tracks. What was that sound he had just heard…?
Dread rose in his chest as he lowered his eyes to his ankle. He foolishly blinked at the shackle seared into his skin, chaining him to the wall.
“What the—?”
The sentence was cut short as another wave of agonizing pain assaulted his brain. Never mind the chain: his head was about to explode.
His thoughts were in shambles, and Jules couldn’t understand what was going on, much less remember what happened. His memory was hazy, dozens of images swirling in his head until nothing was left but a blur of indistinct figures. It seemed like he was following two police officers to the police station with Cains, but afterward…. It was pitch-black.
“Right, Cains!” Jules cried out before wincing in pain. Talking seemed to trigger the discomfort in his head, so the teenager shut his mouth. For starters, screaming his colleague’s name in an unknown place wasn’t wise, lest he wanted to attract unwanted attention. He had to assess the situation before doing anything; that was what his mother had taught him, and it was what he’d do.
With this in mind, Jules straightened his back and sat on the rug he had been lying on. He looked around, but there wasn’t much to see; the faded wood walls were bare, a massive hearth stood before Jules—but it was out of reach, thanks to the shackle—and two large sofas enclosed the rug. The room had a surprisingly warm atmosphere, yet it did nothing to alleviate the anxiety rising in his stomach. The more something seemed ordinary in an unusual setting, the more unsettling it was. It’d have felt less out of place if he had woken up in a dungeon and not in a cottage-like living room.
Chasing away the uneasiness, Jules glanced to his left, and a second chain on the wall finally caught his eye. He frowned and followed it until his gaze landed on a shadow behind him. His muscles tensed, his body instinctively readying itself for battle, until he noticed it was a familiar figure. Once he realized it was Cains, he couldn’t help but heave a sigh of relief.
The fire crackling in the hearth cast a dim light on the witch, barely illuminating his pallid face. For a second, Jules dreaded he was dead. He held his breath and crawled closer, hesitating until he saw the teenager’s chest lift up and down. His colleague’s breathing was shallow, but he was alive at least.
Jules ignored the pain and not-so-gently shook Cains’s shoulder. “Cains,” he whispered, “wake up.”
But no matter what he did, Cains’s eyelids didn’t twitch. He was in a deep slumber, and Jules had a hunch that the witch wouldn’t wake up any time soon. Whatever had caused them to fall unconscious was potent enough to knock out an archangel’s bastard son, after all. Before starting his training, his mother had explained to him what his half-blood constitution entailed, and Jules had thus learned that he wasn’t just “a little healthier” than his peers. And yet, he was currently dying of a headache, wishing he could pull his brain out of his skull. He honestly didn’t want to imagine how awful Cains, a human, would feel once awake—probably, not fainting again from the sheer pain would be nothing short of a miracle.
‘Great, just great,’ Jules thought before shifting his attention to the chain. ‘Alright, let’s break this thing first.’
Spiritual energy could be used in many ways, and Jules wanted to blast the chain with a burst of spiritual energy. However, when he gripped the cold chain and gathered the spiritual energy in his hands, sparks flew and burned his palms and fingers. He was pushed backward and fell on the rug. His head hit the hard floor with a deafening thud, his vision blackening for an instant.
“Fucking hell, that hurts like a bitch!” Jules cursed, waves of pain crawling down his spine until his legs turned numb—even his toes spasmed in pain.
Lying on his back, Jules took a moment to recover before lifting his hands to look at the wounds, only to wince at the sight. Chain marks were now seared into his flesh, his skin peeling off until he could see the red fibers of his muscles underneath. Tiny spots of white also dotted his palms, which he gathered were his bones. Or were they his nerves? He couldn’t tell.
“Oh my, you woke up by yourself?” A gentle voice echoed within the room, and Jules’s whole body stiffened. He hadn’t heard anyone approaching. “What a surprise! It has never happened before, has it?”
“No, it hasn’t,” another voice answered. “If anything, it shouldn’t be possible for a human child to wake by themself—even a high-ranked demon would need to be fed the antidote to awake, so how…?”
“Who knows? But at any rate, this is fascinating.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
Slowly, Jules raised his eyes to the door in which stood two men. They were the police officers he had met today; they still wore gentle smiles, their facial features so common-like they were quickly forgotten. Brown eyes, brown hair, skin that was neither too pale nor too tanned, standard body build—yes, they couldn’t be any more average-looking.
A dumbstruck look flashed across the teenager’s face as reality crashed in.
The demon didn’t hunt alone.
But how the hell could this be?! All the evidence left behind was from one demon! It ate the flesh of its prey and gnawed on the bones to suck out the marrow, always leaving distinctive teeth marks behind. If these two hunted together and shared their meals, there should have been at least two sets of teeth marks. Yet, when the higher-ups dumped the case on Reyes, it was written on the report that the teeth marks and the lingering spiritual energy on the victims’ corpses matched perfectly and were from one living being. It led to the conclusion that the demon acted alone. So how come he had a partner now?!
“Oh, child, you look confused,” the demon on the left chuckled softly. “What’s on your mind?”
Jules pinched his lips, deciding not to answer. The demon didn’t take it to heart and prattled on instead, “This skin bag is starting to feel itchy, I must say.”
The not-so-human police officers exchanged glances, and one said, “Let’s shed it then. My body has grown numb, anyway.”
“Same. Why are humans so tiny? Compressing our bodies into such small skin bags is honestly annoying.”
The words had barely left their mouths when they morphed into a half-human, half-snake form, their pants torn to shreds as their legs turned into a five meters long tail. The obsidian scales shone warmly under the dim light of the fireplace, but Jules didn’t even spare the muscles-packed tails a glance. No, it’d be more accurate to say that he couldn’t take his eyes off their faces. He stared in disbelief as they clawed the human skin off their cheekbones, revealing beautiful facial features underneath. Their pupils elongated into vertical lines, and their irises took on golden hues. They had an ethereal but fearsome kind of beauty. However, that wasn’t what had entranced Jules.
Twins. They were identical twins—lamia twins, even.
‘Just how rotten can my luck get?’ the thought crossed Jules’s mind as despair sprouted in his heart. Supernatural beings that were born twins were extremely rare, even rarer than an archangel’s bastard son. Though they were born as two, they were one entity that mirrored each other. If one were wounded, the other would be too. They were each other’s replica down to the sources of their spiritual energy, for they shared it. That being said, even if they divided their meals, the teeth marks seared into their victims’ bones would be identical, and so would be the leftover spiritual energy. It was impossible to differentiate them, no matter how good of a hunter you were. The Association hadn’t made a mistake. They simply couldn’t discover what was wrong with the bits and pieces of information they had.
A weak demon with barely enough spiritual energy to pose a threat, wasn’t it? It couldn’t be any more off the mark. Every hunter knew lamias weren’t something to trifle with on a whim. No, these things were feared for a good reason, enough for his mother to warn him to flee if he crossed their paths. Fighting them was a no-go; running away was the only option.
But here Jules was, brought to their lair and chained to a wall.
“How strange,” the lamia on the right said as he ripped his shirt off, revealing a lean waist littered with scales. “They’re usually scared out of their wits or bawling their eyes out by now, yet this kid looks oddly composed…. His gaze shows no fear.”
“What did you expect? This child is young, but considering who his mother is, he should have been well educated. I can’t believe the Battlefield Goddess of the Association wouldn’t even teach her own son how to react in such situations. It’d have been a letdown had he started to scream and cry right away.”
“Regardless, she said it was his first hunt, so shouldn’t he be, I don’t know, panicking a little after things went awry? Isn’t he too cool-headed?”
“Stop worrying, will you? At the end of the day, he’ll still be begging for his life like the others, and you’ll have your fun.”
“If you say so.” The lamia paused, a smile growing on his lips as he scrutinized the teenager up and down. Then, he slithered closer to Jules, his forked tongue hissing when he asked, “Not saying anything?”
Jules clenched his jaw, and though he’d rather not talk to them, he forcefully opened his mouth to growl, “This “she” who told you about today being my first hunt, who is it? And how do you know about my mother? She retired years ago.”
A hearty, deep-throated laughter was the lamia’s answer.
Author has something to say: Sorry for the day! My PC died and I had to buy a new one! ;A;
Edited by Clozed! ♥
