"WHAT?!" The Earl and his Butler shouted.

"They're sleeping," Inky smiled. "Sleeping soundly. Just like you were, angel."

Ciel shook his head. "But the doctor told us that the children were found dead."

"No, no, no, they were found almost dead. Those particular children he spoke of have actually been dead for a very long time, but I have since made new friends. As I'm sure you know, Devil, humans miss such obvious signs of life."

Sebastian smiled. "That they do."

"But how did you manage to pull off such a hoax?" asked Ciel.

"Poison," Inky simply said. "Conium. You may know it as hemlock. In small doses it can mock the symptoms of death without actually causing it, making it the perfect tool. I had the children stage their own deaths to avoid murder investigations, then I visited them in the morgue with the poison."

"That is actually quite clever," the Butler mused with a faraway grin.

"Sebastian!" Ciel scolded. "Then, I presume, you resurrected them and shacked them all up in a place where you could keep them in perpetual slumber."

"Oh, no!" Inky laughed. The sound was difficult to describe. It was like a pair of latex gloves rubbing against each other. "That would have been much too tiring! And they would have grown old eventually. Old people are just no fun at all and displeasing to look at besides."

"What then did you do?" Ciel asked.

"..." Inky remained silent. Its large eyeballs refused to stay fixated on any one thing for too long.

"Oh, dear g-d." Ciel's stomach turned as the realisation crept out at him. "You left them in the ground to die."

Inky shrugged. It showed not a drop of remorse. "They're human. They wind up there in time anyway."

"When that time should be is not for you to decide!" Ciel's voice rose considerably. "Burying people alive for the sake of a playdate. Hideous."

"What's it to you?" Inky sneered. "They're not your friends. They're mine."

"The children I saw," Ciel said, choosing to ignore Inky's last speech, "are they still alive?"

"They are indeed. Otherwise you would not have had the pleasure of meeting them."

"Show me to them."

Inky glared at him. "I am not doing anything else for you, you stupid, selfish little boy!"

Sebastian shook it again, even rougher than he had before, but Inky only crossed its arms and did not respond. The Butler looked to his Master. The Master shrugged.

"Well then," Sebastian said, "I suppose I have no choice but to rip your heart out."

"No!" Inky looked up at its captor with desperation. "If I lead you to them, you have to let me go. I swear that if you do, I will quit following you."

Ciel thought for a moment. "Hmm. Can I trust the word of my murderer?"

"Oh, I am sure that Inky will keep its promise." Sebastian lifted up the little demon so that they were looking into each other's eyes. "If it knows what is good for it." Inky's eyes then turned to Ciel to silently plead with him.

"Very well," Ciel consented out of curiosity. "But you are to remain restrained and will give us verbal directions to the grave site. We would not want to see you running off now, would we?"

"No, sir," said Inky- partly being sarcastic, partly still begging for its life. "This way then. We can cut through the woods. There's no path, it's not meant for traveling, but you'll have more shelter from the rain this way."

As predicted the trip was tiresome- stepping over fallen branches, being poked between the ribs by sticks, faces being scratched, clothing being pulled. Inky's directions didn't make things anymore comfortable either. They were riddled with twists and turns. Ciel could have sworn that they were being led in circles until the trees began to thin out and the rocky ground gave way to clipped grass. The three had come into a small village, not unlike the one in Ciel's dreams. Except the artisans of that particular town carted about various types of breads and cheeses instead of fish.

"So this is your current plague-ridden playground?" Sebastian asked.

"This one and others," Inky answered lightly. "I've learnt over the years not to take out too many too quickly- especially not in the same spot. As stupid as humans can be, with all of their new medical tools my methods are becoming more curable."

"Poor you," said Ciel.

Inky glowered. "The graveyard is this way. We should avoid being seen."

"That won't be a problem." Ciel and the Butler exchanged dark smiles. "We are very used to concealing ourselves in the shadows."

The odd trio skillfully navigated themselves through back alleys, ducking behind rubbish bins and hiding in doorways. There eventually came into their sight a sad looking graveyard on a slightly sloped hill. They looked around first for any residents before darting through the open entrance gate.

The stones were thin and crooked with many names, dates and blessings worn off from weather. The ones that were flat against the ground were sinking into the earth and mostly covered with dirt and dried grass. Shiny black insects scuttled in and out of the cracks in the stones. As they walked up the path that parted through the middle of the cemetery, Ciel noticed that many of the stones belonged to children.

"I assume that this graveyard used to belong to the fishing port," Ciel said.

Inky smiled snidely. "How did you guess?"

They came onto a row of five fresh graves. They all shared two surnames, Jones and Murphy.

"This village was impossibly easy," Inky proudly said. "The doctors chalked it up to be some kind of genetic predisposition to madness! HA! Oh, humans and their fascination with psychology. Isn't that right, Sebastian?"

"Just because I admire your morbid methods, do not expect to make a friend of me, imp," said the Butler. Inky looked disappointed.

Ciel stepped forward and kneeled to look at the headstones. The one right before him belonged to a Mary Anne Jones, aged seven years. There was a small lamb laying atop of her stone, a figure that adorned many of the others in the cemetery. After further inspection, Ciel bowed his head. She, and the others, had been six feet under for almost one month. Even if he had felt the desire to free them, which maybe he did or maybe he did not, how much life had they left in them? Going that long without sustenance or sufficient oxygen... And if life they had left, what of their sanity? What becomes of a human that spent a month of their childhood buried alive? They had another day of life at the most. Ciel shuddered. He had been about a hair's width distance away from joining them.

"They are quite doomed," Inky said with faux sentiment. "I honestly don't know why you wanted to come here."

"I suppose I needed to see it for myself," Ciel said quietly.

"Did you intend to save them?" The Butler asked. Surprisingly, he did not sound at all smug about it- only curious.

Ciel hesitated with his answer. "Truthfully? I am not sure. If it were possible... I suppose I would have. Nothing would please me more at this moment than to steal away the company of my new friend. However, I do not see the purpose of reawakening these lost souls." He stood and brushed away the yellowed grass that stuck to his damp knees. "The only thing to deal with now-" Ciel turned to see that Sebastian had hidden Inky behind his back. The two were faced with a married couple. The woman was crying raggedly into a soiled white handkerchief and the man's face was drawn and grey. He had his right arm around his wife's shoulders. As he noticed the Earl and his Butler standing by the new graves, his expression switched from anguish to wretched anger.

"Can I help you with something?" His tone was harsh, though his voice noticeably shook with emotion.

For a moment, Ciel deliberated telling them that their child was alive still. That, if they hurry, they could hold him or her in their arms once more, stroke their hair, kiss their cheeks. Plead for their forgiveness, which would most definitely be necessary. What a cruel and foolish thing that would have been to do.

"No," Ciel said. "No. We are merely tourists. Extremely lost."

"You should not be out in the rain, my boy." The woman had looked up to Ciel and spoke in a whimper. She gazed longingly at him. She could not help her mothering instinct as she reached out to touch his face. "You look so ill. This weather cannot be good for your health. Please, sir." She turned to appeal to Sebastian. "Take good care of your son. You don't realise how precious he is-" She slapped her hand over her mouth as she again broke down in convulsive sobs. The husband hugged her close and rubbed her back, whispered her name over and over. Ciel excused himself lamely and the three left the couple to mourn. "Take care of him!" The woman cried after them. Ciel could not help but feel a twang of sympathy for her. But it was best that she did not know. Ciel, Sebastian and Inky hid themselves in the trees once more.

"Now." Ciel collected himself before he continued with what he was saying prior to being interrupted by the couple. "We are faced with the question of how to deal with this pest."

"'How to deal with this pest?'" Inky swung itself back and forth. "We agreed that if I showed you to the graves you would let me go!"

Ciel shrugged. "I suppose seeing it with my own eyes, both the children and their kin, has changed my mind. There is really no point in allowing you to continue this chain."

Inky scoffed at him. "Well, aren't you the little martyr."

"Hardly." Ciel bent down to Inky's level again. "A martyr would justify his reasons by insisting that he is only acting on behalf of the Greater Good. I do no such thing. I simply do not like you and cannot suffer having to share this world with you after you attempted to kill me for the sake of momentarily relieving your own pathetic loneliness. You're not much better than a human in that way, are you?" Inky gasped with shock and offense. Ciel looked up at the Butler. "What did you say you were going to do, Sebastian? Rip its heart out?"

Inky's eyes bulged as it looked at Sebastian from upside down. "You wouldn't do that, would you?" It implored. "Come now. You may have a contract with this human, but we are practically family! Really! I swear to Our God that I will not bother either of you ever again." It smiled broadly and drew an X over its chest. "Cross my heart- which shouldn't be ripped out."

The Earl and the Butler looked at each other. Slowly, they shook their heads.

"You are a liar, Inky," the Butler said. "And frankly, there are enough monsters after my Young Master. He does not need another headache to deal with. You should not have tested us." With that, Sebastian plunged his pointer and middle fingers into Inky's chest. The imp cried out a forced, strangled sound- a cross between something like a newborn baby and a pig being slaughtered. Ciel heard its bones crack like thin ice. Its blood was a dark, sinful red, nearly black. As it poured from the wound, Inky's body shriveled up automatically like the only thing that supported its internal structure was its blood. Its face shrunk away from its bones until its skull was almost completely visible through its near transparent skin, its teeth made to look longer due to the absence of its flesh. Sebastian pulled out its tiny grey heart. It was bound by ropy veins of blue and pink that at first pulled tight and then sprang loose like elastic when they were ripped from their connecting valves. After inspecting the heart like a jeweler would a diamond, Sebastian crushed the thing like an overripe fig in the palm of his hand, staining his bone white satin gloves with reddish black. Ciel did not know whether he felt horrified or wildly intrigued. He expected that he was experiencing a healthy combination of both emotions, which was normally the case when with the Butler. So there they were. In the rain, Ciel feverish and clammy, the Butler holding a dead demon in his bloody hands.

"I suppose that I should dispose of this." Sebastian began looking around the forest ground for a spot to deposit the remains when Ciel stopped him.

"Wait a minute. I think it would be best to pay our respects and make it feel more at home in its final resting place."

-%-

The two found themselves back on the beach by the little cottage. Sebastian drew back his arm and flung Inky's corpse out into the ocean. It had soared so far away that Ciel neither heard nor saw a splash of water.

"And now it's done," he said. It had stopped raining while they were trekking back to the beach and the sun was beginning to sink down towards the bottom of the sky again, colouring the atmosphere with pale pastel shades that announce the closure of another day. Though most of the bulky rain clouds had dissipated, it was still cold. Ciel put up his collar to shield his neck from the chill. There was silence.

"We could stay here now, my Lord," Sebastian said. "Now that the nasty little beast is gone, you can have some peace and quiet at last."

Ciel shook his head. "No, thank you. I do not think that I could relax here after that particular run-in. Besides, we already packed to leave."

"Speaking of which," Sebastian said as he removed his sullied gloves, "we need to find our way back to the carriage and our trunks. Not to mention locate the horse."

Ciel waved his hand. "Forget the horse. I am sure someone has already found her by now. I grow weary of playing games here. I want to go home, dry off and go to bed. You can manage to get us there without the aid of trains and carriages and all of that nonsense, can you not?"

Sebastian smiled. "I am the butler of the Phatomhive family. It goes without saying that I can manage that much."

Oh my goodness. I can't believe the next chapter is the last one. It almost makes me a little sad, for some strange reason. :(