When he was fourteen, an Angel of the Lord came to Pucci in the dead of night. The room filled with light and woke the sleeping teen. Pucci took one look at the Holy Being before feeling a burning sensation throughout his body and shielding his eyes. Startled and horrified by the Angel, his heart was beating so fast Pucci felt like it could explode. The Angel had four different animalistic faces. Its core body had wings and was surrounded by five rotating rings. Its entire body was covered in eyes.
"Be not afraid, Enrico Pucci," the Angel said.
It spoke with a hundred voices. Pucci peaked out from behind his fingers, then quickly covered his eyes again. He found it very hard not to be afraid.
"The Lord has a calling for you. You will join the church as a priest, and you will devote your life to serving Him."
Pucci couldn't respond. Try as he might, he couldn't get a thank you from his lips or get his brain to form a more coherent response. The Angel didn't wait around for him. It tucked its wings around itself, the rings began to spin faster, and then it disappeared, leaving young Enrico Pucci alone.
The next morning, when he told his parents and sister what had happened last night, they were overjoyed. Perla told him how excited she was to see him in a cassock. It was to be expected. Pucci's family was devoutly religious. There was a Pope on their family tree, and Pucci had also shown an interest in the church as long as he could remember. His Bible was filled with bookmarks. Every Sunday, he absorbed the sermon like a sponge. He would do well.
The Pucci's were a wealthy family, and while their relatives in Italy were more powerful than their American counterparts, they were still influential. If his own intelligence and faith wasn't enough, his last name alone was enough to guarantee him a good spot in the Catholic Church.
When he was fifteen, Pucci accidentally heard a secret that would change his life.
He was helping clean the church when a woman came in, desperate for a confession, and she confessed before Pucci could stop her. She told him she had given birth to a stillborn. She had swapped the dead infant with Pucci's biological brother. The Pucci's thought their other son was dead while the woman got to raise him.
Her son's name was Wes.
It was the same name as Perla's boyfriend.
He was bound by his faith to keep her secret, yet he could not turn his head the other way and let the couple commit incest. Pucci did the only thing he could think of doing. He paid a man to break them up.
It went horribly. Wes was hung and his house was burned with his parents inside. Perla jumped off a cliff, taking a part of Pucci with him. Pucci held her dead body, screamed, and wanted to yell at God for letting his sister die. He wondered, why? There were countless possibilities that brought him to where he was. He had been sent an Angel to announce his call to priesthood, but why didn't He give the two lovers a sign that they were related? Why was Wes taken and not him? Perhaps if he had been born with a lighter skin tone or a normal foot he would have been taken, and Pucci had no interest in romance or lust, so the problem would have never occurred. There were thousands of coincidences that led to the tragedy, and changing anyone of them could have prevent Perla's death.
Pucci would never be able to look at the world in the same way.
Wes was sent to a hospital. Pucci was there when he awoke. Bolder, willing to bend rules and forever more lacking something vital inside, Pucci told him everything. He wondered if that sin would damn him in the future.
It never would.
He offered to let his long lost brother kill him if he thought it was his just punishment. Instead, Wes screamed and sobbed into Pucci's chest, unable to hurt someone Perla loved dearly.
Wes had nothing left. His parents had been murdered. His home was burned down. His girlfriend was taken from him, as was his peace of mind. Wes was diagnosed with PTSD, and one quiet night before Pucci left for seminary school he'd confess that he never stopped reliving that day.
With nowhere else to go, Wes went home with the Pucci's when he left the hospital. His parents were mourning the lost of their daughter, and the news that they had a long lost son was a welcomed distraction. Wes struggled to settle into his new life. The family cared for him like he was their own. They couldn't blame him for what happened. One night he left the house with the intent to kill the man member who killed Perla, but Pucci stopped him. When words weren't enough, he barred the door with his body.
Wes flipped him off, but he went back to sleep.
The murderer was executed, but it didn't sate Wes's anger. Pucci often heard him screaming in his sleep. He would pray for his brother, but his prayers went unanswered.
Wes would move out the day he turned eighteen. He didn't leave them his new address.
When he was twenty-five, Pucci entered priesthood. His parents attended the ceremony.
Perla had wanted to see this, Pucci thought. He cried later that night.
Pucci was twenty-six when he killed his first demon.
Deep down, Pucci took some delight in the ridding the world his wickedness. Seeing demons in all their wickedness and filthiness reminded him how good of a man he was. While there was a local paladin, Pucci only called him if it was too much for him to handle.
Paladins were on an entirely different level than other clergymen when it came to taking care of demons. They had devoted their life to it. In exchange, the Lord had blessed them with being able to manifest their soul in the form of a Stand. They used it to fight the Stands of the witches and vampires.
Pucci received a call at three in the morning. He was still half-asleep when he answered, but after hearing Wes's voice on the other side, he was wide awake.
His brother had returned home to find a demon in his house. He had done the natural thing and called his priest bother. This did not surprise Pucci. Wes lived in Hell. All that anger and misery was like honey for demons.
Wes gave Pucci his address. He arrived there thirty minutes later. Wes unlcoked the door. His apartment was filled with trash, and smelled like sulfur. In his living room was a red figure roughly the size of a small dog. It had the lower body of goat, the upper body of a human, and three different horned, rotating heads. Upon seeing Pucci, it let out a horrible, unearthly screech, then darted towards the lighter of the two twins. Wes knelt down and clutched his ears. Pucci aimed his gun and the demon and pulled the trigger. It disintegrated into smoke.
It was not the last time Wes called. Every time, it was from a different number.