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The packed space held row upon row of office cubicles, all in a dingy state of disrepair. She skirted the outside, looking for the elevator. The inconvenient height of the cubicle walls once sported colors in coordinating beige, eggshell, and coffee tones and stood a few inches above her eyes, preventing any reasonable line of sight into the middle of the room. Nadir heard the sounds of her cabal-mates in that general direction as they smashed heads and invoked screams. They would no doubt keep the inhabitants well occupied until she caught up.
Nadir rounded a dark corner and located the elevator doors, as well as a pair of youngling daemons hiding out under what used to be a receptionist’s desk across from the elevator. She focused first on the elevator while monitoring the pups, who couldn’t have been more than a few years old. They were over waist-height on her, but daemons developed quickly despite their immortal lifespan. She mentally fused the doors' metal seams together in mere moments, and then she shifted her complete focus to the wee daemons. Hiding her weaponed hands behind her back, she sauntered closer to the desk and kneeled down beside it. She didn’t scent any other daemons nearby, just these two.
They appeared to be of the same brood, purple-skinned with tufts of black hair covering cream-colored horns, running in ridges down their spines. They had lovely, round lavender eyes. Had they even had their first kills? How could she tell if they’d dined on human souls?
Bile rose in her throat. She had no way of knowing. Belial’s orders stood. Kill all you find. Oath bound, she risked death at his hands if she didn’t follow through.
“Come here, little ones. Let’s go find everyone else, okay?”
For whatever reason, they ran to her and threw their spindly little arms, all eight of them, around her. A heavy weight rolled around in the pit of her stomach as she reflexively hugged them back with weapon-laden hands. At that moment, a male daemon crawled down the hall, limping from a deep gash in his leg. From his purple coloring and wide eyes, she guessed he was the youngling’s parent.
When he noticed the blades in Nadir’s grip, he faltered, his eyes begging for mercy. “Mercy, please. Whatever your purpose, spare them.” She let two of her needle-daggers fly, wrapping them around his wrists and then mentally forcing the metal ends together where she twisted them in place. Portable handcuffs were never easier.
The younglings tensed under her grip, turning and attempting to flee to their father, but Nadir held firm. She didn’t run an orphanage for daemon children whose parents had been put on her master’s hit list. She pinned the one on her left to her side and sunk the sancre into the one on the right, hating herself as she watched the horror in their father’s eyes.
A sancre destroyed daemons differently than the tre’jor. Where the tre’jor caused the daemon’s essence to become tied to the wielder of the weapon, the sancre simply destroyed the creature, powdering it into a fine dust.
Thus, as Nadir watched the child issue a wordless scream, the father fought against his makeshift cuffs and wailed, and then the child burst into bits, covering her with a fine layer of silt. The youngling’s sibling screamed, uselessly struggling in her powerful grip.
Nadir moved to sink the sancre into the second youngling, but before the blade made contact, the child’s flesh rippled and contorted.
The father lifted his head. “I beg of you, not both…“
As one, both father and youngling erupted into dust. Nadir rose to her feet, shaking the layers of powder, which had once been a family, off her face, hair, and clothing. Yeah, they’d been a daemon family, but a family all the same. Before today, she’d never killed younglings before. Another dubious first she’d done in Belial’s name.
Nadir regarded the brilliant reflection of light off the sancre’s edge. What sorcery had Big Blue forged and enmeshed with the wrought metal?
The scream snapped her out of her trance. She charged straight into the chaos, not stopping to think about what could be in her way. Fangs and claws tore at her clothing, searing heat scorched her skin, and daggers were thrown from all sides. To ensure she was protected, she sheathed the sancre securely against her thigh.
A large, dark hulk of daemonic muscle who lumbered into her path didn’t even have a chance when he leaped out in front of her, eyes blazing. In passing, her gleaner warned that his tusks held deadly venom, and she used her lust to confuse him, then punched him hard enough to knock him on his ass. Using her razor-sharp claws to rend through his rhino-like hide of his thigh. Nadir pounced and tore open his leg with her fangs, indulging an internal daemon she’d kept on a short leash for too long. She continued to allow her lust aspect to flow over him. Poor bastard didn’t know whether to cuddle her or fight her off. Before long, he could do neither.
Wiping her face onto her sleeve, she stood up from the empty husk, which had once been a threat. Nadir could consume ten more if she let herself, but for now, she relished the raw power coursing through her veins. It had been too long since she’d fed. The austerity plan Azimuth and the others adhered to was for the birds.
Heading deeper into the nest, the cubicles here were torn apart and thrown aside. Her cabal-mates stood over the final three who were clinging to life. Kobol bent down to run through one with his sancre, emotionless in the cleanup process.
Why shouldn’t he be? How many times had they done this?Nadir sighed.
“Find any humans?” Azimuth asked.
She shook her head. “No luck on that front. Did any of you notice any of the daemons disintegrate without being hit by one of us?” She scraped her claws together, noticing the slight lisp of her speech from the fangs. There was a time she’d be disgusted by looking so daemonic. Now? She didn’t care.
Kobol killed the next brood with equal efficiency. Nadir pressed the back of her hand over her forehead, and it came away bloody. She knew immediately by the scent that it wasn’t her own blood.Oh bother, when did that happen?
Azimuth, who’d been sifting through the rabble, likely looking for clues on whatever the daemons were doing, holed up downtown, turned to her, eyes narrowing. His aura spiked ghostly white in the darkness. “That your blood?”
Nadir shook her head. “Nope.”
He nodded, his aura dimming. “I lost track of a female. I’m not sure who killed her, but it wasn’t me.”
“The timid one hiding out in the corner?” Orias asked. “Cream-colored skin, horn-back ridges?”
“The very one,” Azimuth replied.
“It wasn’t me,” Orias replied. They looked at Kobol.
He held up his arms and shook his head. “She must still be here.”
Nadir scented the air but knew what she’d find. When she’d first entered the space, it’d been hard to track all the daemonic signatures. There must have been at least twenty present. Now it was down to the four of them and one last wounded daemon, lying limp against a crushed cubicle wall.
