Vermilion Ascendant
Chapter One
The sky and earth, each day, the same. A glare of eye-numbing white. Featureless and without variation, it never changed. Four walls sprung up from and supported them, made of the same unflinching glare. The light that defined the room in a shadowless way radiated from the walls themselves, seemingly.
A shadow sat in the middle, suspended in the merciless light. There were no windows, showing the clear blue sky outside. No door, promising the possibility of a change in this bleak scene. Unchanging as this place was, the shadow within was well suited for it. For those who were custodians of this damned locale could not remember a time when it had moved. Nearly two years ago, no vast span of time, the shadow had been imprisoned in this place. Few remembered more than that, besides the impressive cell that was made specifically for the prisoner, and transported there whole, it's occupant already within. A marvel of magical construction and warding, the construct was the child of many great magicians. All contributing a little of themselves to safeguard and contain that which was within.
All this, for a young woman, who never moved. Never stood from her huddle. Whom had not shifted an inch in nearly two years since the Cataclysm passed.
The house of this odd cell, Arkham Asylum perched above the Gotham bay, looming despite the clear sky and bright sun. It was a gruesome, stately monument to the horrors humans persisted on visiting on each other. It was also a reminder that humans were not alone in that. Over the last few years less and less of the population of Arkham had been human, as the powers that be had declared. Metahumans, as the law declared them, were a different kind of creature, in the public eye these dire days. Not all were wicked or cruel, just as not all humans were. Each heart had that choice, but too much sorrow, too much pain had been sown by those few who had darkness within them.
Then there were those who wore darkness as a shroud.
OoO
She stood there, the cold wind ripping through her clothing easily as she idled on the broken shell of a once-proud tower. In the distance she could see it's counter, still glowing with the light of hope and justice out within the calm grasp of the Bay. The husk she rested on was the remnant of a long dead war, a battle she lost in the not-so distant past. Wicked gusts pulled at her slight frame, and she winced as the first stinging shards of sleet bit at her exposed face.
The tower she currently stood upon meant nothing, now. One of the many structures still being scoured for all traces of clues to the Brotherhood, Slade, the Night Parade or some other of the myriad forces that seemed ever ready to move against the great city, so central to the West Coast.
No one knew why. It was just natural, in it's irregularity for such things to happen. Like Gotham, Metropolis – perhaps the sheer density of habitation was too high. The law of averages demanded that for so many, such had to happen.
She grinned ruefully as the idle thoughts wandered through her mind, while the wind snapped her pale hair into her face. Her gaze wandered about the city lights far below, picking out through long memory locations and landmarks of her life. Warehouse districts along the shore. The industrial zone, rife with factories and foundries. Scene after scene of her defeats, her failures.
All her weakest moments. The smile faded as her memory replayed the worst of those – the months after the Titans had defeated the Hive and by some fluke they returned. Returned vindictive and full of hate. Something had loosed them on the world again, and as one they had sought out the one person whom all could focus on, a cause for their lost time and possibilities.
Jinx.
She knew it was her own fault, the gravity of her actions finding her out and balancing her. To a degree she had welcomed those hate-filled words and glances. For so long, guilt had rent her, twisted up her insides and made her sick to the soul, for all those friends and the lost time spent for her own future, like so much coin. She welcomed it knowing that finally something was taking her actions and setting the record back to zero, in her mind.
Nothing had seemed fair though, with how things ended. She looked down at her ruined arm, the glint of metal showing through the gap between her shirt and trousers as the wind pulled the garments roughly. Listened to the rasp of her breath, hollow and unnatural through the synthetics that kept her alive, and the faded glint of coral that was her hair.
The ruin of her had been discovered, and her erstwhile enemies, the Titans, took pity on her. Victor pieced her together with some of his own technology, lending her frame strength with a body made of plastic and futuristic steel. Irony, she mused, that the man she'd once found such a kindred spirit would be the template upon which she would survive. Yet, some things could not be replaced.
Aaron being one of those.
"I was ready," her voice, oddly echoing and alien still in her ears, whispered against the wind. "Chance won't even let me end cleanly, it seems." Her eye, the remaining one that functioned, dilated to a near black pit in the darkness. The other was lost long ago, to someone's hate.
Vengeance. She was sick to death of the idea. Always someone, something sought it, worked it, spread it like a plague and it did nothing but build and curl around people and drag the life from them. It never ended. Her lip quirked. "It never does end. Always, there will be one wronged. One left with a heart full of hate and bile.
"And so I offer the last thing I have, wholly mine. For vengeance." Her voice went quiet, as she bent down and dug sharply with her metal fingers into the dirt in the trough at her feet. Her hands worked a small ball of clay, dry and crumbling, as she twisted her numb fingers ineptly while her still-flesh hand sought out the imperfections. Jinx spat upon the work, reflecting on all the faces she knew, all the voices and names. Each time she had one clearly, she lent her spittle to the thing. Those whom she wished to know balance, now. Satisfied with the shape she'd formed, a dry, rough sphere, she picked up a silvered knife from her small collection of tools and pressed it's triangle tip repeatedly into the surface, her voice murmuring a chant quietly as she worked.
Blood of mine, to seek out thine
For thy heart, for thy heart
who has wronged me.
Three times she said this, as the sphere took final form. The last repetition of three, and she split the thing in half, staring at the coarse interior. Slashing her finger savagely with a twist of the knife, she bloodied the halves of the sphere, letting the vermilion soak into the formed dust of either hemisphere.
Taking the blooded knife, she reached up and cut free a lock of hair, and placed it, the center of the sphere marking where the hair would originate, as she mated the halves again. The silvered knife worked again as the chant changed, taking on a different verse.
Sorrow wrought, lacking thought
For thy life, for thy life
I am calling
Now she kindled a fire, low and hot, adding to it dust from bones shed dredged from the Bay. Shadowthings danced about, in the demon-bone fed blaze, nearly tangible at the light's edges. Such things didn't concern her. As she worked the blaze, she let the glinting blade settle in the embers. Melting ever so slightly, the molten silver working into the sphere, making the facets more and more defined. Her trance deepened as she worked, the palm-sized focus of her ritual now looking less a ball of rough mud, and more a dull gray thing of many, many small facets.
She looked over her work, feeling lightheaded and faint. Her reserves of energy were nothing compared to what she could muster, a year before. Before she'd become this ruin. The next part of the ritual would be difficult, if not prohibitive to most. Her mirthless smirk settled, as for the next half-dozen minutes she held the sphere into the blaze, her hand cradling, rotating it slowly. Her metal, lifeless hand.
Again, the chant changed, as did the focus. The flames licked at her hair and devoured it, far too slowly, leading back to the heart of the thing. The surface seemed to go molten, the heat intense and withering. Slowly, she knew the conduit of her hair burned, leading the fire to the core. All that she needed was for it to ignite...
Form of shade, I have bade
For my soul, for my soul
I am offering
The final verse, said thrice as those before, was over just as the perfectly faceted, ruby sphere now resting in her hand caught alight from it's core. Her lips peeled back slowly from a mouth half full of perfect ceramic and the remnants of her own teeth. A grim smile indeed, to welcome the pool of shadow that rose up from a gloom that dominated the rooftop, the sphere pulsing slowly like a heartbeat in her outstretched palm.
She held it, level to her own heart as the shadow rose and engulfed her hand. Finally rising up fully, the shadow-thing shifted and took form, as Jinx's remaining eye widened in shock.
OoO
Those within the prison, her jailers, knew she still existed. This was a surety, but nothing she could know told her those beyond these walls shared that knowledge. Despite the mage-dead walls, the runic-spell wards encasing the perfectly equilateral cube that had been her home since the Cataclysm. They knew she still abided. She could taste their fear. Drink in the nightmares of often-napping orderlies and lazing guards. This place was a buffet of suffering, something she'd come to understand, appreciate more clearly than in her naïve youth.
This was the poor thanks she'd received. Saving the world must have been meant less when it was done by the daughter of the one trying to end it. Her time had finally, after so many years of waiting, come and in the wake of it all, she'd been prepared. She'd ripped the power from her father, left him a shell of the demon he'd been. But in doing so, she'd become a power to eclipse even him.
Those who considered themselves the guardians of this world had feared her newly-realized power. Her mother had worked with the host of her damned home of Azarath and sealed her, still reeling from the heady rush of victory. Those were sacrificed, to bind her power back into something manageable, ripping from her the new mantle of Trigon's might.
Betrayal would not stop there. The League had built this place, a safe haven for her in her crisis, a shelter from the wrath of Trigon. A trap.
In the end, those she counted friend had played the part of trapper, leading her, promising sweet peace and silence after the maelstrom. Something she desperately needed to find her focus, and center again. She needed them as well, her only anchors in that storm, her friends and allies for so long.
She's found her center, after nearly two years of dwelling within her own skull, her only company being her own thoughts and the fractured, maddening whirl of her personified emotions. Oh yes, Raven had found that center. Within her quiet, seeming comatose shell she raged. Cold and calculating, waiting.
After waiting eighteen years to know the freedom of either death or triumph, and tasting the millennia-old memories of her long-banished father, she'd grown easy in her patience. Two years so far had been a very little thing to tolerate. What she had difficulty bearing was the knowledge that while she abided here, in this luminescent hell, those that put her here, for the greater good, for the greater good... still lived and walked free.
The greater good. She had worked her whole life for this ideal. Sacrificing of herself. Vanquishing evil. Undoing wrong. Doling justice. A lifetime of good, and one act saw her balanced. An act she never committed. Evil she had never done.
Yet... in her unchanging horizon, so numbing for so long, a day came where an unfamiliar call breached her seemingly impenetrable prison. It was sweet. The tune sang inside her veins slow and pretty, stretching from toe to the tip of each hair. It sang like her name, whispered by a lover never known.
Something in her answered. She couldn't help but answer.
OoO
"Raven."
The shadow coalesced around the faintly pulsing gem, solidifying, crowned by a cold smile. "You called?"
Jinx reeled back, her hand resisting the motion still as it was thrust wrist-deep into Raven's breast. Her flinching fall dislodged it, trailing a wisp of shadowstuff behind. The glinting gem was no longer grasped in those metal digits, as she braced upon it from her graceless fall. "Why... why are you here?"
Blinking preternaturally pearlescent eyes, Raven gathered the stuff of her soul about her more solidly. Those same four eyes, arranged in a slight slant below the red Anja Chakra gem regarded her once enemy and ally Jinx, still and calculating. "You called. I came. I assume you didn't perform such a complex ritual as the Bloodmoon by accident?"
"Of course not," the Thief retorted, shuffling stiffly as she righted herself, the irony of her position not lost to her. She, the summoner kneeling before the demon she'd summoned. "I just didn't expect you. I was expecting..." She didn't know what she had expected, so much as hoped for. The ritual she had done was an ancient, yet common thing. Small variations, bastardizations had been used and torn from it for long centuries, and she honestly doubted that the one she'd used was the true one, really. What she did know, was that it would work, as the young sorceress had lost a mentor to it's use during her early years. The ceremony was a last act, a benediction and epitaph, written in blood and focused only on enacting one's vengeance, warranted or not, on parties that summoner decreed. The cost, though, was high. One's soul, food for the beast you summoned, once your deed was done. Raven though... she was not what Jinx had expected. She had expected-
Raven's lip rose fractionally. "A real demon?"
"Well, that was the plan, you know."
Shifting her head slightly in acknowledgment, the half-demon glanced down to the pale skin still exposed from the parting of her shrouding cloak. Three facets of the Bloodmoon gem glinted there faintly, pulsing in time to Jinx's heartbeat as it nestled over where one's heart should be. "So. You invoked me, with a ritual of sacrificial vengeance. Your soul, for their deaths?"
Pale lips thinned to a line. "We both know the nature of the ceremony, Raven."
"Indeed. Color me curious that you, of all people, would take such drastic measures." In fact many things piqued Raven's curiosity. She had been absent soon after Jinx's conversion to the side of angels, so this new young woman before her, a remade Jinx, roused her interest. "What happened to you?"
Looking away quickly, her good eye still in the light, Jinx seemed to go very, very still. "The Hive found me. Shortly after they closed the lock on you, someone unlocked them," her voice was quiet, but Raven's ears had no problems picking out her words, as well as the thick layer of pain in them. "I turned. Betrayed them, as I'm sure they saw it. Despite doing it wholly for myself, I was there when the Titans made the final move. So-"
"So when they thawed, they came for you first."
"I was, obviously, a good target," the former Thief said between clenched teeth. "My reasons were my own. I didn't move to betray them, only make a life for myself."
Laughing mirthless, quietly once, the half-demon simply held Jinx's now monoptic gaze with her own for long moments. "It doesn't matter. Vengeance... as you know has nothing to do with justice."
Jinx spat on the ground and sneered, "As if you need to educate me on this." Tilting her head up, the coral eye narrowed to a slit, "So. You answered. Do we have a deal?" Mild surprise registered on Jinx's face, as Raven seemed to waver, blinking openly at the question. Impatience grew to overwhelm it, as she waited long moments for the former Titan to answer. Finally her impatience won, and Jinx hissed her annoyance, "well?"
"Your soul," Raven replied woodenly. "I have never taken a soul." Her hand shifted up to the exposed facets of the Bloodmoon, and she winced as the warm hardness slid under her fingers. "Past my father I've never even taken a life..." a thought, vile and persistent that had screeched and crowed in her mind for long months came to the fore, and the demoness stilled, even the wind's lifting of her hair faltering a moment. "They are still here, aren't they?"
Jinx wasn't stupid. She could nearly hear the thoughts that raged inside the young... woman, she had summoned. "If you mean the Titans... yes. They saved me after the Hive left me for dead."
"You owe them, then," it was more statement than question, and Raven practically shook as the howl of anger in her mind rocked the core her mind.
Venom dripping from her words, Jinx smiled slowly as she answered, "No. I owe them nothing," Rising unsteadily, she wheezed a rattling breath and closed her eye, her head turning to reveal the bandage that still covered the side of her face where the other should be. "I didn't want to be alive, after that. I lost too much. I'm not me anymore, Raven. I'm just a container. A vessel holding the one thing I can use to give my mind peace after all this."
The intensity of the sheer hate in her words would have shocked the former hero if not for the rising keen that echoed in her ears. A thousand voices inside her clamored for attention, all calling for one thing, the same thing. "And so... lets speak on terms, then."
"Terms?" Jinx practically screamed as the word ripped from her lips, a suspicious glare leveled at the demon. "I don't think so. My soul, their death, within one month of the ritual. That's the contract. Do you accept?"
"There's always room for negotiation," the half-demon practically purred, slipping a darkness shrouded hand to the broken woman's shoulder.
OoO
Day One: William Madsen
Some thing in this world do not change, no matter how much time passes. "Why do you insist on eating things that have a mind, can think and feel? Doesn't that bother you at all?" Garfield Logan stilled in his rant as he came into the kitchen, and leaned on a counter, massaging a temple as he tried to block the smell from his mind. Meat.
The stink of it was all over the room.
Only then did he realize, that Cyborg was not in the kitchen where he'd expected him to be. Instead, there was Megan. The Martian girl had settled at the table, and was looking at him quizzically, a fork full of pancake halfway to her lips. Blushing his embarrassment, the changeling looked about quickly and saw no trace of the usual target for his rancor, Cyborg. "Sorry?" the young woman, the only other green hero in residence, mumbled as she eyed her food for a moment, eyebrow raised.
"Sorry Megan, I just thought... nevermind." Still embarrassed, the smell forgotten for the time being, Garfield went to the living room to join the other Titans in watching the news and chatting. Mornings had become less stressful in the last year, as most of the heroes and villains of the city matured. Schemes and plans were longer, more intricately set upon, and the effort to undo them had risen as well.
The common factor was time. Rather than the hectic bustle that was the usual in the Bay area, now it was steady, heavy pulse of work. Sure, there were always small-timers out there, looking to make a name, or prove themselves. Those were often either taken down by a single Titan, or some other vigilante that was trying to do the same thing.
It was a simple balance, and they were settling into it nicely. It was nice to have a such an easy time of things, after so many years of constant battles and vendettas. On top of it all, it was a beautiful day outside, as October was just beginning. Robin was leaning on the windows, his back to the room as he smiled out at the waters lapping gently against the Tower's shore. "Cy, anything on the reads today?"
Scanning his temporary memory quickly, Cyborg grunted a negative. "Seems quiet, nothing in the news or underground." Over the last two years, as his knowledge had grown and blossomed, the cybernetic Teen had gained a greater understanding of himself, and his 'hobby'. The formerly glaring shell of his body's support systems seemed less artificial, using new pliable metals and more streamlined systems, carbon fibers and nanotech. He could pass for human, with a little work now. "Only thing seems to do today, is the usual weekly fan mail."
Starfire chuckled, but looked to Robin, as he stood haloed by the morning sun, "Why do they send us so many letters?"
"Gratitude, I think," he replied, turning and stretching stiffly, his morning routine barely begun. His mind was already two hours forward, thinking about the practice room and working all the wrinkles out of his mind by hammering them down with his fists on the bags. "But we're also just high profile. Well, lets get to it."
The collected Titans, their numbers as always in flux but currently less so, since the last year, sat about the common room easily, relaxing as they could during a quiet day. Robin, Beast-Boy – who now went by Changeling since turning twenty, Starfire and Cyborg were the constant, veteran core of the group. New faces were there as well. Megan, the female Martian, still sat in the kitchen, pondering the ecology of pancakes. Impulse was doing sudoku puzzles with a stopwatch dangling from his wrist, his pencil moving just below the speed that would ignite the paper through friction. Superboy and Wondergirl, Kon-el and Cassie respectively, sat to the side on a two-seater, enjoying a quiet morning and each other's company as they helped deal with the small mountain of mail.
Stacks were sorted, and each had their own small bundle to deal with as they would. There was a general agreement that no one would criticize how the others handled their own fans, so as Robin hauled his small sheaf of letters to a garbage chute, Garfield cackled at a joke one of his pen-pals had sent him. Regardless, the usual ceremony of mail had one constant: group packages.
In the middle of the table, a medium size box, maybe a foot and a half square, stamped and stickered as if having ventured many customs ports, sat along with it's other company. These were the sometimes awkward gifts, sent to the heroes either by grateful citizens or rabid fans. As a rule, these were handled last, as sometimes they needed to be analyzed for potential threats or the contents passed out.
Garfield again wrinkled his nose, glaring at Cyborg. His thoughts turned sour, despite the witty letter in his hand, as the smell reached him again. "Cy, what did you have for breakfast? Did you open the vents when you cooked?"
"Why the third degree this morning? You already jumped Megs, why not just let it go?"
"Because! Something here stinks like-"
Cassie's scream halted the quarrel almost before it began, as she fell back away from the package on the table, her hands up over her mouth. Turning away, she ran to Superboy who was watching her with wide eyes. "Cass, what is it? Another prank?"
"Guys, get the containment kits," Robin called, taking control of things before they could get more out of hand. His face was grim as he pulled a set of gloves from his belt and slipped them on, the Titans moving carefully, slowly to inspect the contents that would send Wonder Girl screaming and clinging to her lover so. The sight that greeted them wasn't pleasant, and Garfield found himself kneeling over a trash bin, knowing now why he had been assaulted with that carrion stench earlier.
Fingers. What had to be over a hundred of them. All various kinds, from index to thumb, but one thing similar between them all.
They had been forcefully ripped, broken free and torn loose of their moorings with great violence. No delicate surgeries, no less humane sawing. It looked as is half had the bones either neglected in their removal, or had taken the knuckles and deeper bones with them occasionally.
Starfire visibly greened at the sight, something she'd never seen quite the carnage of before. She was about to ask a question, wonder what could posses one to do something so horrible when another thought struck her. "Robin. Would not fingers from so many people be... well different?"
"I was thinking the same thing, Kori," the detective replied, waving the others back so as not contaminate the evidence. "Cy, lets get this to the lab. We need to figure out what's up here."
Nodding, the metal Titan gingerly lifted the table, not trusting himself to the box directly.
OoO
"William Madsen," Robin grimly stated, as he slipped a photo sheet onto the lightboard in the meeting room.
Superboy's brows furrowed, as he tried to identify the blonde in the picture. "Why does he look familiar?"
Cyborg just shook his head with an expansive sigh, his expression dire, "You wouldn't know him as well as us. We used to deal with him quite a lot, back in the day." Pulling up a file for the main screen, the cyborg thumbed through a number of files and finally pulled up an inactive folder and pulled the proper record. "He used to go by the moniker 'Billy Numerous', but went clean about three months ago, and has been on probation. He'd even signed up for a new treatment to minimize his powers, letting him lead a more normal life."
Megan's eyes widened slightly, at the mention of the victim's call name, "Billy? Wasn't he the multiplier? The guy who could duplicate himself?"
"Twelve times. Stably, he could do it twelve times, before things got odd, he would say," Robin replied, a new series of photos being placed up on the lightboard. "We have one-hundred and twenty digits here. Someone knew his limits.
"The worst thing, is that Billy's power was unique among the few duplicators on record," Robin continued, running a hand through his hair as he imagined the things his once enemy had gone through, leading to this meeting. "Billy's clones all could understand, see, hear and feel the things that went on with one another."
"Oh my god," Cassie darted from the room, looking nearly a shade to match Megan. Kon-el looked to want to go after, but Robin motioned for him to sit.
The young detective sat heavily, and shook his head. "This is bad. We haven't had a killer in this area, in a long time. Nothing like this at least." He pulled up a list of probable suspects, all people that had suffered at the Hive's hands during Billy's time with the organization. The list was huge, and despite the filters that Robin applied to narrow the field, the possibilities were daunting. "Assuming it was a revenge hit, these are the recorded victims of the Hive while it was active. As you can see..."
Garfield shook his head, still scrolling through the list on his personal screen, "There's no way we can check all these."
"Agreed, but what about the package, Robin?" Starfire seemed to be taking things better than the rest, but she was still shaken. Proof of this being that she had walked to the meeting, rather than her usual glide. "Would not the box have some clues?"
Looking disgusted a moment, he tossed a clipboard on the table and shook his head, "Nothing. It was clean. Like it had been in a sterile room before it arrived here, in fact."
"How is that possible," Cyborg knew how hard it was to transport material in a sterile environment, and this just didn't match up with how things had appeared. "How could they have gotten it to the Tower, by mail, and it be sterile like that? Completely clean!"
"I don't know," Robin admitted after a moment. That one comment cost him as well, knowing full well they had a mystery that would not be easily solved on their hands. There was one more thing that he had to share though, that was weighing on him. The worst of bad news, and he was having problems settling his stomach to do so. "There's one more thing. I did some tissue tests on the... evidence," his hand straying to his eyes, Robin just let his words come, shaking his head slowly. "From what I could tell, by the trauma to the tissue, the spread of necrosis in cells and the residual blood flow, these were taken why Billy was alive."
Garfield closed his eyes and looked away, as his mind tried to cope with the news. "Could he still be alive," he asked finally, taking a long moment to still his gorge. Nausea had been creeping up on him all morning, and this meeting was doing nothing to contain it.
Shrugging, their leader only looked back up at the smugly smiling blonde in the photograph. "I don't know. And I don't know if we should hope for it either," he admitted grimly. "There's no way to trace the box. No clues on the evidence, nothing. We have nothing, except those fingers."
"So there's nothing, no way to figure out where he could be held? Where he is?" Garfield threw the small printout he'd been looking over away, shaken at the violence of the act, and his own sense of helplessness. Not since Slade had they dealt with so little to work with, and then they at least had motive and a face.
Cyborg's eye narrowed, as his mind settled on what was bothering him about this situation. He hoped he was wrong... "Robin, this stinks like... Why would they send those to us? Why Billy?"
"Because this won't be the last of these. They – whoever did this to Billy, knew him. Knew of him. And us.
"This is only just beginning."
OoO
Not so far away, Raven perched on a familiar building, her lips slightly crooked in a grin. The expression didn't reach her eyes, still locked into their demonic semblance. The pearly orbs turned to look behind her, at the figure sitting against one of the ruined structure's walls. The wind picked up, as the light clouds, little more than a dusting of deeper blackness in the night, crept over the stars.
She breathed deep. The air, clean and cold stilled the turmoil in her. The voices were quieting, after her... atrocity. "Was he to your satisfaction?" she asked simply, not bothering to look at the woman there. The wind, crisp as it was, didn't stir her cloak, as the shroud seemed weighted. A passing plane, it's lights still bright despite the distance cast her in a brief glow, and the deeper black lining the tattered trail of the garment's edge seemed to darken the rubble wetly as she glided over it toward her... employer.
Jinx was still looking at her hand. Her whole, human hand. She held it up and compared the pale digits to the others, something bubbling up inside her.
Laughing, she nodded. "Very much so. Very much so," she crooned, her eye damp with things she couldn't name, emotions she wasn't sure of. She had her hands back!
And yet, Billy was dead. There was no long or short about it. She'd insisted Raven let her watch, as the smug, filthy bastard screamed and begged.
All twelve of him.
Jinx had been surprised at the meticulous nature Raven had taken. The demon hadn't been gentle. Jinx would have been shocked, had she not been witness to her own ruining. He had been held up by magics she couldn't imagine, separated forcefully like peeling an onion.
And then the screaming began in earnest. It didn't end for a long, long time. Long enough for Jinx to fall into a contented, dreamless sleep. She'd woken to the sounds of dripping, and looked with bleary eyes at Raven's work, from the old, ratty couch she'd fallen asleep on.
Billys adorned the walls, strung up by wire and hooks as they swayed slightly, from the moorings adjusting to the ever-changing weight of them, as fluids and blood leaked and settled. Staring, she took the scene in woodenly.
She was reminded of something, that as a small girl she'd done. The first time she'd been given paint, and a canvas. She's plied at it inexpertly, finding out how the brush worked. How not to stroke the canvas. How to properly load the bristles with pigment. She had that same feeling, looking at one Billy, then another, then another. Each one seemed more... finished.
Complete.
Jinx knew, somewhere deep inside her, that the abject inhumanity that had been visited on the former Hive student should have shocked her. Her lip quirked at the memory of that fleeting itch. She'd stilled it by screaming her own memories in it's face. A ruined body. A dead child. Empty eyes of a lover. Herself used, broken, then discarded. It quieted quickly. Those same things though, her justifications and stains, also quieted as the blood dripped down off the walls. It cleansed her, she realized. Washed some of the hate and cancer that had been eating at her from her soul.
What it was leaving, clean, she could care less. What was done, was done. And there was so much more to do.
Looking at her hand once more, she giggled and worked those new digits again. It felt new, real and perfect. There was even the small scar from when she'd fallen on a sharp stone, so long ago. "How did you do this?"
A grin split Raven's lips, as she curled in against herself, resting against the wall beside her employer. She'd stopped bothering to manifest limbs unless she needed them. She was content to be a shadow, a face within it, now, until more was needed. Regardless she still let the Bloodmoon glint against her darkness, a reminder. "Lets just say, I'm learning many things about myself these days."
Jinx purred and cradled her new flesh, nodding, eager for the coming day. For more screams and another night of peaceful sleep without nightmares.
Beside her, Raven's mind swam in a sea of blood and death and flesh turned into so much meat, and she mirrored some of her company's thoughts. A new day, brought new prey. She took a deep breath, and smiled.
-
A/N: Small credits to Saberhagen for part of the chant. I realized that I used some of it from memory, once I decided on a cadence. I think two lines. I forget the source, sadly.
Oh, and for those that read other of my works, there will be updates. I'm back from home, finally, with a head full of noise to still.
