Kissed By the Devil

PROLOGUE It was well after midnight when my foot first set foot on human lands. The naked body absorbed the moonlight and illuminated the trees for miles around with an unnatural brilliance. I could have taken the job away from the lighthouses that day if human vision had been able to endure such torture. The thought that I had doomed a couple dozen mortals to blindness was strangely reassuring. It's nice to realize that suffering is firmly established not only in my life. Only one guess overshadowed the elated mood: such radiation cannot go unnoticed. But I won't let them find me. Chapter 1 Blood trickled down my chin while I wiped my mouth with a handkerchief, thoughtfully putting it in the inner pocket of my coat. Hmm. I didn't think that dark-skinned people could turn pale, but the dead guy in front of me definitely convinced me otherwise. By throwing a clot of fire on his clothes soaked with death defecation, not forgetting to first pull out a wallet with disappointingly poor contents, I provided him with a warm departure to another world. In any case, for the next five hundred years he will have to get used to the hellfire. The snow pleasantly cooled the skin, heated after an exhausting hunt. Killing was still not easy for me, despite the fact that I punished notorious bastards. If I had known that bloodlust would become an unavoidable condition of my stay on earth, I would have thought twice about going down. Although the iron tasted just like bitter chocolate – at first glance it sucks, but the more you eat, the more you get into it. The frosty wind tousled her hair, knocking a few strands out of the bun at the back of her head, and together with a piercing shiver brought back memories of two years ago. It was the last week of the month of my stay in a seedy area of a big city, the capital of Frivia. Having decided that it would be easier to get lost among several million people, I got into this environment teeming with rich capitalists. I hadn't been able to get to work for several days, while I was writhing in the basement of a large family that smelled of damp and mold, the sugar content of which made my jaw ache. Time without the cries of the little scum would seem like a blessing, if not for the desert in the throat, which prevented reasonable thinking. The last eggplant, stocked by prudent mortals, was the first victim of my thirst, but it did not drown out the desperate need. The second target, in the form of the owner returning from the night shift, became a pleasant warm-up for the older daughters, who vigorously rushed home after their debut trip to the club. Wet hair, forcefully pulled back by a hand with white knuckles, and salty skin from sticky sweat were imprinted in bright flashes on the back of consciousness. Supporters of a healthy lifestyle simply never had to face a hungry fallen angel, otherwise they would thank heaven for the opportunity to die painlessly. The drunk girls did not have time to realize how death was biting into their throats with its fangs – only holy faith in this allowed me to get along with the pangs of conscience. Exactly three hundred and fifty-four days later, I still didn't know if I had done the right thing by exchanging the safe walls of the Academy for an inhospitable environment saturated with human squalor. Here, one day was like another, the routine dragged on with frightening speed. It would be a lie to say that the longing for life above did not respond to a sharp pain in the chest. Behind the closed eyes, a gallery of paintings was replaced, in each of which the voices that once formed the center of my existence were heard. A single tear with a loud squelch was sucked into my nose when I harshly checked myself: the people who kept me there had been dead for a long time. – However, you are here, blooming and smelling, while your relatives serve as food for worms, – the sarcastic whisper of the subconscious worked without vacations, no matter how I tried to persuade him to it. – Well, I agree about the smell, – wrinkling my nose from the disgusting corpse stench, which had already knocked out a residence permit on my clothes, I had to hurriedly move away from the burning man. A cursory inspection revealed that the suit borrowed from a business lady for a gratuitous period had undergone crimson staining. Seriously wondering if it was possible to pass off a bloody pattern as the latest fashion, I promised myself that someday I would learn not to dress up for hunting like a fucking avenging angel. Rejecting the first thought of burning damaged clothes, I just pulled my coat tighter. The condemnation of grandmothers for walking around in an indecent form could cause an irreparable blow to self-esteem. – You won't learn. Goosebumps ran down my back with Olympic speed, making me shiver from a sudden chill. The world continued to move: birds still circled the forest in rare pairs, preparing to leave the city completely shamelessly in search of a resort, and the leaves sparred on the branches, gradually losing fighters, touching the ground to the south. But I was the one who didn't move, and the world around me warily quieted down, as if someone was playing a tape at a low sound. – Lilith? The sound of my own name sobered my head, which had already said goodbye to life, a little. – Ah! Are you completely insane? – okay, I would recognize this hysterical intonation out of a thousand. The dagger stuck into a tree a couple of centimeters from the fatal blonde's ear. One of her spirals of hair, always sticking out in different directions, was pinned there. "I'm not missing," I squinted in confusion, but the relief that flooded my soul overcame the fleeting surprise at the speed of her reaction. –Holy shit, Celeste. What the hell are you mumbling into that scarf? I thought ... – biting my tongue in time, I turned away in panic to the corpse, finding in its place only a pile of ashes, carried away by the wind grain by grain. Thank all the hypocritical asses of the Gods – in the end, they turned out to be good for something. – What are you doing here anyway? I pounced on her to hide the fear flowing out of my body in comforting waves. – I can ask you the same question, – she stubbornly pushed out her jaw, but quickly faded under my sharp gaze. – You've been gone a long time. – And? – And I decided to find you by location in the phone. I closed my eyes, practicing the breathing technique that I had recently read in a battered brochure that a promoter forcibly forced on me in the subway. –Okay," I finally said, proud of the equanimity of my reaction. Just a couple of years ago, I would probably have hung her by her feet over a cliff and kept her there until she realized the wrongness of her act. Not that I've done this before… Okay, maybe it was one time. Or two. It's a good thing she doesn't remember that. "So what were you doing here?" Celeste continued to stare at me as she pronounced the last word with emphasis. – I... – my God, my vocabulary has just decreased to the level of a five-year-old child. I didn't know how to lie at all, but I had to do this to her for months. – I came to shout in the forest. You know, to release emotions. Life is unfair and all that shit,– I blurted out, briskly walking towards the exit from the oppressive atmosphere of this place. – Are we going to the bar again today? - of course. I have my own methods of releasing emotions," she mimicked my remark, chuckling. Cheerfully grabbing my elbow, Celeste ran beside me, chatting about how she had spent the day. I slowed down so that her petite figure could keep up with my long legs, and calmed my racing heart: her naivety allowed me to justify myself again. But why sometimes I didn't let go of the feeling that I was deceived?