It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the stairs that the sledge hammer came at my head with suspicious speed. So, they were going for immediate death. I watched the weapon go past my face, my body having already bent back to give it room to pass by. It was one of those massive hammers people used for driving axes into wood, a weapon perfect for causing one massive injury that would remove resistance after the first hit. And that was the problem, it had to hit.

I shot back up the instant her strike had opened up a path to her body. My palm came up on her elbow from an angle that didn’t bend with force comparable to the hammer. The main difference was, my palm hit. I should have ripped the limb off, but it only broke. That wasn’t surprising. I hadn’t really expected her to be a standard human being. Of course, I didn’t stop there. The key to winning at violence is to be overwhelmingly violent.

My other hand found her neck, while I circled the first hand around and drove it up under her rib cage. One hand grabbed onto her ribs from the inside, while the other drove up under her jaw. From there, it was just a matter of pulling her skull and ribs in opposite directions. I had a firm hold on both her breast plate and the underside of her skull. Add to that strength that could be laughably called superhuman, and there was only one thing that could give.

Her head went one way and her body the other, but I was already lunging at Steph by the time either hit the ground. Although, technically, the head hit the ceiling before falling to the floor. I hit her with what should have been enough force to knock her into the wall, but it wasn’t.

It felt like I had hit a creature several times larger than she appeared. Instead of crashing to the ground, she only stumbled back. I was sufficiently surprised that I failed to avoid the palm that hit my chest a hell of a lot harder than a car. At least, based on my limited experience.

It sent me flying back into a pile of assorted basement junk, something that made it pretty hard to land on my feet. I arguably managed it, but only because they had a mini-fridge down here that I used to kick off. I think I might have dented it.

This time, I didn’t assume I could move her, but rather drove my knee into her stomach. It felt like I was hitting a multi-ton wall of muscle, rather than a below average sized human. However, she still buckled around the blow, which just invited me to bring my head down on hers. There was a crack, which was probably a combination of both our skulls. However, I didn’t really need mine.

Steph, on the other hand, seemed to need hers. She collapsed to the floor, seemingly dazed. I wasn’t going to wait to find out. I kicked her head full force. It should have exploded, but I only managed to send her to the ground. Whatever she was, it was remarkably durable. In one smooth motion that I was rather proud of, I scooped up the axe sized hammer and brought it down. A few blows later, and she wasn’t a problem anymore.

I spun, searching for threats. My breath was steady, no adrenaline rush to influence my actions. I was both always and never in a physical state to commit horrendous violence. I didn’t see any other threats, so I moved over to the unnamed woman. She had started flopping, her mind trying desperately to move a body without a head or the senses of balance it provided.

I brought down the hammer a few more times. Destroying each of her limbs. Once I was sure she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, I picked up her head and repositioned it on the torn ruin of a neck I had created. She wasn’t going to be able to talk, or even move her head, for a bit, but I was only trying to get her senses back in order. I watched as the two vertebra I had carefully lined up fused together and her random twitching ceased.

Her face had been half torn of by my brute force decapitation. One eye didn’t look quite right, but the other was glaring at me. I ignored her, instead heading over to Steph’s mangled body. I lifted her up by her still perfectly intact neck, carrying her into the unnamed woman’s line of sight.

“Now, I would like to make you a deal.” I said, trusting that she could still hear me just fine. “I will give you enough blood to heal, and you will answer my questions.” She continued to glare at me, but I could tell she had heard. “Or… I could kill both of you and leave to find someone more cooperative.” I held up Steph, who was somehow still alive.

Her chest was a mangled mess, and I could see a good number of her organs. Hell, one of her lungs was just hanging out of her. I could see her heart, which seemed bigger than it should have been, beating in her torso. Her lungs continued to fill as she breathed, defying the ridiculous amount of trauma she had suffered. Did I say that she was durable? Make that really, really, durable.

I looked down at the lilin at my feet. “Blink five times fast if you agree to not give away my presence or reveal anything suspicious I have done here without my permission and answer all my questions honestly in exchange for me not killing either of you without one of you first attempting to kill me after this deal is struck.” She glared at me for a long moment. Then, finally, blinked five times in quick succession.

I swung Steph over her, dripping blood onto the ruin of her neck and face. I had expected to have to do it for a while. If Steph was a daemon, her blood would contain very little of her reserves. However, the wounds started to visibly close at a rate that was way to fast for human blood, let alone daemon.

I pulled her away, just incase she was potent enough to heal them completely, and watched as matter was pulled and reshaped into something that could pass as a head. Her neck didn’t regenerate completely, clearly lacking some of its original mass, but her windpipe and muscles did nit themselves back together. She didn’t look healthy, or even natural, but it would work. “What are you?” She hissed out as soon as she could. I raised an eyebrow at her.

“I thought I was asking the questions?” I crouched down, carefully laying Steph on the ground, making sure she wouldn’t bleed on the subject of my interrogation. Curious, I pulled free a small strip of loose flesh, before tossing it into my mouth. Holy fuck!

She tasted amazing! She was only the second person I had tasted, at least in the physical world, but this can’t have been normal. The driver had been good, but Steph was delicious. If he had been well made porridge, she was finely marinated steak cooked to perfection. I could feel the hungering void claw at my insides, demanding that I give it its due.

I wiped the drool from my mouth and sighed. I had already promised not to kill her. That meant I simply couldn’t. Of course, I couldn’t have realized just how much primordial light was in her flesh at the time, but that didn’t make a difference. I would just have to find another of… whatever she was or wait for one of them to void the agreement.

I frowned. I made sure the lilin couldn’t see my eyes, then activated my divine sight. I still didn’t know if that changed my eyes, but knew it was likely. Actually, I wasn’t sure what color my eyes were normally, not that it really mattered.

I honestly wasn’t surprised to see that her soul was just like the possibly woman that I followed to the restaurant in the first place. It was rather obvious, seeing as I didn’t recognize the qualities of either. The odd thing about it wasn’t actually her physical abilities, but rather her magical appearance itself.

Typically, a creature will have magic that, on the surface, looks like the one it comes from. That means that all daemons look alike, because they all come from the same creature. The same goes for nephilim, who are all combinations of humans and elohim. The same goes for the elohim, we all look the same. Or, rather, we all did.

Of course, there was some room for interpretation. The dragons are strictly elohim, but they were the older generation and shouldn’t really count for this example. Either way, a creature was usually obviously derived from another. The only time a completely new form of soul appeared was when mother had a new generation or a member of the previous generations fell. I doubted the first, and the second was no simple matter.

“What are you doing?” I turned back to my conscious captive, divine sight already gone.

“Just confused. What is she?” I could see her try to resist the deal, but it didn’t help.

“She is a shifter.” I could tell that she thought the answer was obvious, which it wasn’t.

“And what is that?” There were types of fey that could change their form, quite a lot honestly. However, I was pretty positive that wasn’t what she meant.

She looked at me like I was an idiot, which wasn’t surprising. “They’re shapeshifters, what else do you want?” She was clearly trying to waste time, but it didn’t help that my question was vague.

“Tell me how they work. What can they do? Where do they come from? How do you kill one?” I watched the daemonic compulsion to uphold a deal force her to respond.

Finally, she gave in. “They can alter their bodies as they wish. They work like lilin. New ones come from a standard human swapping bodily fluids. You… kill… brain.” She tried hard not to say the last bit, but still did.

I frowned. “Lilin don’t work like that. The soul has to separate from the body for the curse to take hold. Do you mean that a human with shapeshifter blood in them when they die becomes one?” That would be the reasonable way for it to work, sense the way she seemed to be describing it would indicate that a shapeshifter’s magic was aggressive to the extreme.

She shook her head. “No, they only need to get blood or saliva into the persons bloodstream. They are a lot more contagious than us.” I doubted it had anything to do with contagiousness. It sounded like a completely different process. Lilin work because the sin in their souls gave the magic a heavenly right to make them a daemon. This seemed more like a spiritual infection that invaded the host soul and either completely changed or completely consumed it. One that was so strong that it could overwhelm a normal human soul.

“Where did they come from, originally?” She only shrugged.

“I don’t know, maybe Zeus cursed them for feeding him people. How am I supposed to know that? They’ve just always been here.” I scoffed.

“Trust me, lightning for brains isn’t this creative. They’re more of the smash it and zap it kind of problem solver.” She was looking at me oddly, so I decided to change the subject.

“Why did you try to kill me?” I watched her expression, knowing that her answer might not be as telling as her expression when she gave it.

“The face you are wearing was messing with something we don’t want to be part of.” Well, that cleared up any question of her still thinking I was Marcus.

“But, you are already part of it, correct?” She nodded, clearly not happy. “And this something involves the fallen ones?” I was already pretty sure, considering how strongly they responded to my reference to silver eyes.

“Yes, demons.” I nodded, knowing that she wasn’t talking about unclean spirits, daemons. No, she was talking about the fallen ones, the Lightbringer’s progeny.

“So, what was Marcus doing with demons?” It was starting to look like Marcus had been making some rather dangerous bedfellows, which might explain how his body had ended up so conveniently soulless. Of course, that had probably been a bad idea on their part. You shouldn’t just leave an empty body lying around, who knows what might take advantage. It might even be something with a grudge against your progenitor.

I laid my hand on my side, over the place a corrupted divine blade had skewered me. I had gotten them back for that before the end, though I had no misconception that I had killed my murderer. But, yeah, what was the point of being undead if you don’t get to kill the treacherous bastard who killed you? The face my captive was making indicated that my expression was rather… disturbing.

I decided I should probably change the subject again. “So, what are they doing?” I had clearly creeped her out, but that didn’t stop her from answering.

“We don’t really know.” there was a long pause, indicating that she was trying to leave it at that. Of course, the strain on her face told me there was more she was trying to hold in.

“I’m not a demon.” I added. I noticed her eyes widen with shock, which was enough to disrupt her concentration.

“But, we do know that they are in an old prison compound outside town. Marcus and some people he said were friends he met out of town have been going up there. They are all casters.” It all came out as one burst, the backlash of her attempt to half lie. As soon as she finished, her brows wrinkled in confusion. “You aren’t a demon?” Now, you might expect her not to believe me. But, as she almost certainly knew, the fallen ones can’t lie, at all.

Daemons can technically say untruths, but are compelled to uphold a deal, something that was deliberately built in. The fallen, on the other hand, are completely incapable of saying anything that isn’t strictly true or even attempting to break the exact wording of a deal. Of course, the exact wording part is quite important. Therefore, a fallen one wouldn’t ever be able to say they weren’t.

“Not in the way you seem to mean it, no. But, it’s interesting that you assumed I was. Why are you so positive that there are fallen at this admittedly sketchy sounding building? Have you seen them?” I had to assume she had some reason, but humans don’t always have very good ones.

“People have been disappearing. Most of them aren’t from here, but enough are.” I raised a questioning eyebrow.

“And that equals fallen, how? People can disappear on mass for almost any reason.” It was true. What she was basically telling me was that something bad had happened and they had immediately assumed that the closest person who looked suspicious was responsible.

I was more than familiar with the idea of a witch… pursuit... thingy. I paused, waiting for my blood knowledge to give me the modern term. Nothing happened. Okay, apparently, I was going to have to use witch pursuit thingy. I’ve heard worse names.

“Well, you… uh, Marcus did this before.” I twirled my hammer, silently pointing out that I had only promised not to kill her. Lilin are resistant to pain, not immune to it. “He was found summoning demons and trading the homeless to them a few years ago. The Guild arrested him, but he showed up here again a few months back.” I considered asking what The Guild was, but felt like it would be off topic.

“What is The Guild?” I asked anyway. She gave me that what is wrong with you look again.

“It’s The Guild. How do you not know what it is?” I watched for a moment, but she didn’t seem compelled to give a more detailed explanation. That meant she considered that an answer.

“I’ve been otherwise disposed for a while. Assume that I missed a fair amount of the more recent world events.” She stared at me.

“You missed shapeshifters?” I got the impression that she considered that to be impossible.

“They’re after my time. But, that’s not the point. What does The Guild do?” I could tell she wanted to ask more, but she was interrupted by my arm being cut off.