Tainted Blood

“A death demon,” Angelica mused. “Never been up against one but I’ve heard they can be really vicious.”

“It sank into the floor and vanished.” Ren explained. “We haven’t been able to find it since.”

“It’s still here,” Syn informed them.

“I know… I can feel its evil energy crawling all over me like a damn disease,” Ren said in frustration.

Angelica took a deep breath and began to mentally feel her way across the hospital to the floors above and below. Sometimes she could follow the invisible path a powerful demon made, but this demon had been all over the place, crossing its own path too many times to make it easy.

Ren’s eyebrows shot up into his bangs when he felt her power touch him. “Interesting,” he said having never felt it before. He supposed that when they were within the sanctuary of the castle, her power was always dormant because she didn’t need it. Ren shrugged, knowing right now wasn’t the time to be testing out new powers and returned to his job.

Angelica moved away from the massacre to the emergency staircase. Syn was right behind her when she entered the tall, slim area and watched her look around for a moment. He felt the blood in his veins start to heat up when his sensitive ears heard the sounds of children crying… they were begging for someone to help them. Syn’s amethyst eyes slowly rose to the ceiling as he zeroed in on the sound.

Angelica inhaled sharply and started running up the stairs at breakneck speed. They ascended three floors and exited on the tenth. She slid to a stop and placed a hand over her mouth at the scene of carnage.

Looking down at her feet, she felt tears spring up in her eyes when she saw she was standing in a pool of blood. A small child not more than five years old lay just a few feet away, his life force slowly bleeding out. Small bodies lay strewn everywhere, some of them with expressions of terror frozen on their angelic faces.

“No,” Angelica whispered. She could handle almost anything that came with the job she did… blood, gore, and demons, but these children were innocent.

An eerie inhuman scream came from down the hall making Angelica and Syn look up. The death demon was standing in the main room of the children’s ward covered in blood. It slammed the butt of its scythe on the floor cracking the tile before coming at them.

Syn slowly moved past Angelica, stalking toward the demon as it approached at a rapid pace. It brought the scythe up to cut him down but Syn’s hand came up, grasping the weapon just as the blade was a centimeter from his skin.

“Let me introduce myself,” Syn hissed and slammed the palm of his hand into the chest of the demon, reaching through its robes to grasp something inside. The demon screeched and backed away, leaving Syn holding the scythe in one hand and something black and beating in the other.

“To kill a child is not allowed.” Syn said in a dangerously calm voice, hefting the scythe with a practiced hand. “You will know the pain you give.”

Dropping the black heart and shifting the scythe to his right hand, Syn spun the weapon in front of him before cutting through the demon with a precise swing. He didn’t cut the demon completely in half, wanting to watch it suffer and knowing it would take more to kill it.

“You are not the true reaper… he shows mercy where you do not,” Syn growled and brought the scythe across the demon’s chest. “He will see you shortly and lock you in a cage where others will rip you to shreds like you have done to these children.”

Syn’s last swing of the scythe went directly into the dark hood, piercing the demon’s head. The tip of the scythe buried itself into the wall, pinning the demon there. Angelica watched as Syn continued to glare at it for a moment before it suddenly burst into bright white flames.

“Syn,” Angelica whispered when he didn’t move and slowly approached him.

Syn was breathing heavily with his hands fisted at his sides. “War is not for children,” he said trying to contain his rage and keep from leveling the hospital. “This needs to be erased from history.”

Angelica reached out to touch his arm but he moved away from her. She felt tears well in her eyes when Syn walked over to the closest child, a little boy, and very carefully picked him up. Placing the small lifeless body in a bed, he sat on the edge of it and gently pushed the hair out of the child’s face.

He put his hand over the little boy’s heart. Angelica’s jaw dropped open in awe when she saw a soft white light shine where Syn’s hand was touching the child’s chest. The wounds on the boy slowly vanished along with any trace of blood.

Angelica pressed her hands to her mouth, unable to control the tearful laughter when the child suddenly inhaled deeply then started breathing normally.

Syn leaned down to whisper something in his ear before standing up and retrieving another child from his own pool of blood. He began the process again, ending once more with whispered words next to the child’s ear.

When he started on the third child, Angelica began to see sluggishness in Syn’s movements and a darkening around his eyes. She gazed around at the children still sprawled on the floor. She picked up the child closest to her and laid the little girl on an empty bed.

Syn staggered away from the third child, finding the next bed already held a body. He stumbled toward the bed as he felt beads of sweat forming on his skin… cautioning him that he was using too much power. He ignored the warning.

The two of them began to move in sync… she would pick up the children while he moved behind her, healing and whispering to them. When Angelica had placed the last child in a bed, she turned around to look at Syn and gasped as the powerful man reached out to steady himself against one of the life support machines, stumbling and knocking it over.

She rushed toward him with a hand outstretched to help him, but Syn brushed by her and went to the next child. There were tears silently streaming down his cheeks but he paid them no mind.