Episode 9
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"Leave me alone!" Came the feeble cries from the elderly woman.
The figure strode closer, hesitated, feeding off his victim's fear.
"What do you want?" She cried painfully, pathetically, her heart racing inside her frail chest.
"To say 'Goodbye'," was the taunting answer. He reached out a hand touching the old woman's shoulder. Instantly she shrank into herself. The lines carved into her face became more pronounced, her frailty gladdened him. She seemed to age a decade a second, the moisture evaporating from her skin, leaving her nothing but a dried up husk which soon crumpled into dust.
The demon wiped his hands against each other, "Ashes to ashes…" as the wind carried her away.
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Chris slapped the morning paper onto the table in front of his brother Wyatt.
"Did you see this?" He asked then continued without waiting for an answer, "This is the fourth disappearance this week." He raked his fingers wildly through his hair. "These are young woman…like our cousins or our sister."
"I have read the paper, the sensible online version, why do you want to mess with having to fold and unfold…never mind." The brothers had a long established argument about the benefits of a newspaper vs. reading the same articles online. Each stood firm and wouldn't bend to the other's will. Chris was old fashioned at heart; he liked classic cars and newspaper ink. Wyatt was all in favor of progress; he favored reading online and drove an electric car. "Those women are all missing from areas that our sister and cousins know better than to be in."
"So that makes it ok?" Chris asked hotly, fury sparking his green eyes.
"No. That's not what I meant. I meant it's fairly common for the neighborhood. Which still doesn't make it ok, but it also doesn't make it demonic. Regular human type bad guys doing bad guy type things."
"So, we do nothing?"
"We can't vanquish humans, Chris." Wyatt reminded his little brother sadly.
The ringing of the video phone interrupted the brothers.
"Answer," called Chris.
"Hey, are you boys up for a little demon hunting?" Parker asked.
"Absolutely," Chris answered without pause.
"Wait. Isn't there a story?" Wyatt asked his cousin.
"There always is," Parker sighed. "Palmer had a premonition…about those missing girls."
"Be right up," Wyatt said as he grabbed Chris. Wyatt had learned how to tk himself somewhere other than where he was. It wasn't orbing, shimmering, blinking or beating but so far the brothers weren't sure what to call it, and Wyatt had shot down Chris' suggestion of calling his new power 'beaming', as in 'Beam me up, Scotty' from the ancient sci-fi Star Trek. Sometimes Chris' trivia knowledge was amazing.
The two appeared inside Parker and Pace's loft two floors above their own. Chris shook off Wyatt's hand with a glare. He still didn't know how Wyatt did his trick and having to resort to 'holding hands' a la Victoria and Samantha irritated him to no end, but he did admit that it sure beat the stairs.
Parker grinned, "And yet you pay for a gym membership." He shook his head. "Palmer saw one of those girls age before his eyes and crumble to dust."
"'Regular bad guys'?" Chris asked his brother, "Now can we get our vanquish on?"
"Absolutely," Wyatt agreed.
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