The quiet, residential neighborhood of Imp City sat squalidly in its back street, distant from the more bustling squalor of its downtown.
Once The Full Moon Mirror revealed the latest televised victims to her, a pair of ten-year-old twin girls, the Guardian Demon deduced their location from local landmarks. Now, she crept through the narrow backyard alley that parted a dark block of shabby row houses, hunting for the incriminating building.
Finding it, her gaze swept across the other backyards that neighbored it, wary of family queefs or larger species of whatever Hell deemed pets, let out for the night or guarding their masters' rough homes. She didn't need to alert them.
Another block distant, she heard sounds akin to croaking barks and breathed relievedly. No other creatures were close enough to give the game away as she climbed over the corroding, low-slung, wrought-iron fence and into the poorly maintained yard.
Passing a rusted swing set, the Guardian approached the home's rear screen door.
Flexing one hand, she ran her claws gently along the weather-beaten screen mesh, quietly shredding it like a cat's paw over tissue paper. When a sufficient hole was made, she reached her hand through and unlocked the door from the other side. Then, she slipped in.
In the dark, Guardian stepped into the cramped space of the kitchen and waited for her glowing eyes to adjust while ignoring the pong of moldy air.
Scanning the room, she spotted bowls of half-eaten cereal sitting on a small table, being taken advantage of by cockroaches. The low hum of a refrigerator caught her attention, and she went to it. More food meant more people she could run into, by her reasoning.
Its insides were spartan; two cartons of milk and a large juice bottle.
She opened a nearby cabinet and found the cereal boxes. On the counter beneath it was a small, worn hammer, its head coated with fine grit. Beside it sat a bottle of pills.
She brought the container up to squint at the label. Sleeping pills.
Leaving the kitchen, Guardian entered the dark, littered hallway. The doors of the immediate rooms were opened, so she peered into each one methodically.
The master bedroom was a musty chamber of dated wallpaper, and no furnishings save cobwebs. Across the hall, the bathroom was equally empty, its walls and cracked floor tiles losing their battle with mildew.
Ahead was one more bedroom before she could proceed into the living room. She saw a soft, blue light flicker across its walls and heard the faint rhythm of a conversation followed by chuckles.
Canned laughter. A television was on. As good a distraction as any, Guardian skulked into the other room.
Gliding in, Guardian saw the most evidence that night that she had found the right house from the ambient light of the room's dingy window.
Several children's sleeping mats were laid on the dusty, wooden floor amid the flakes of peeling wall paint.
A stained, tattered plush toy of a horned, big-nosed creature called a Thing sat in a corner. A tiny, forgotten cup of juice was on its side, its sweet contents seeping into the floorboards.
Turning back to the doorway, she noticed one last thing that convinced her about the room's purpose. It was the only room in the house with a padlock hasp on its doorframe.
Although the room was empty, the twins had to have passed through, along with who knew how many other children. This was either a holding house for the kidnappers or some pedophile's anonymous lair. In any event, this was where The Mirror had led her, and she couldn't leave.
Slipping a hand into her jacket pocket, the Guardian took out her hellphone.
The male Sinner in the dark blue, pin-striped suit and red necktie looked far too dapper for the drab environs he sat in.
While his present company slept on the dusty, threadbare couch, his mind was not on the portable tv on the floor or the front door that was still opened a crack.
Money was foremost in his callous thoughts, not as a ransom for the sleeping siblings but for their bounty.
A sharp tap snatched him from his haze, and he perked to alertness.
Slipping from his stool, he glanced at the children, took a well-worn sap from his pocket, and crept into the main hall. It was vacant, and he decided to venture further to check the rooms on his way toward the kitchen.
The male approached the children's room, its door still opened as he remembered it, yet caution demanded that he inspect it, all the same.
After opening it wider, a clawed hand reached from the gloom and mauled the side of his face with a single swipe.
Seeing stars and feeling his skin surrender to the talons that ripped into it, he yelped and stumbled back into the hallway, bouncing half-blind against a far wall.
"Ever walk into a room and forget why you did it? God, I hate that," Guardian's voice mocked.
Dazed, the kidnapper stood on unbalanced feet, his sap blearily raised to challenge the intruder.
The silhouette of a masked, fedora-clad woman sauntered out, now wreathed in a ruby glow. Eager to take advantage of his lethargy, she raised a clawed hand and delivered a quick slap against the side of the criminal's head again, releasing a brain-rocking jolt.
The kidnapper howled from the blow, dropping the sap, and staggered in retreat back to the living room.
Guardian followed, looking almost amused in the dark at his pained flight, took another step to pursue, and then turned to stone when she spotted the children on the couch.
"What the hell, fuckin' bitch!" the Sinner growled, recovering on one side of the living room.
"No, here the hell,'" she corrected, approaching the twins. "You're lucky the kids are just drugged. If you hurt them, I'm gonna need a new outfit."
"How come?"
"Because I don't know how to get out blood stains," she said, placing a hand gently on their bellies and feeling their chests rise and fall with sleep. "I called the cops, by the way, so if you're a nice psycho, I'll put in a good word so they'll eventually use due process when they pick you up."
"Someone's pretty sure of themselves," the kidnapper declared bitterly. "But, the word's out on you. We're almost done, and you can't save 'em all, can ya?"
That struck her. "Who's 'we'?"
She didn't have time to consider that before Guardian felt a tap on her shoulder that made her skin freeze.
Knowing the first kidnapper was too far from her, she turned to the newcomer, and her breath came out in a shocked wail from a hard blow to the gut.
She staggered back from the still-aching blow. But, it wasn't until she looked down, slack-jawed, at the blade hilt extending from her belly that the cold truth dawned on her.
With the color in her face and her demonic light draining, Guardian stared at the grinning second kidnapper, who slipped in through the front door, his eyes glowing like dying coals in the dim room.
While her afterlife left her body by half-ounces, she contemplated how poorly she handled all of this. Stupid! Why didn't she check her surroundings better?
Guardian crashed to her knees, black blood darkening her suit and the already filthy floor.
As if to commiserate, the first kidnapper patted her shoulder before meeting his partner by the couch.
"You can keep the knife," the other criminal offered politely.
"And the tv," the first kidnapper added. "I'll tell the twins you said, 'Hi,' when they wake up." Then, the two carefully scooped the insensate children from the couch and marched out of the front door.
With gritted teeth, Guardian yanked the knife free, then lurched dizzily to the open doorway. She was in time to see the rear lights of a car receding into the night, too far and dark to make out a license plate.
Her sticky hand pressed against the flowing wound. Wheezing in short gasps, she closed her eyes to try to rest and focus on her body, but a sound from up the street, which would have been welcome mere moments earlier, only complicated things by order of magnitude.
A police cruiser slowed to a stop in front of the house, painting it and the rest of the street in psychedelic strobes of red and blue, prompting the vigilante to stumble back inside.
"Thanks, guys," she groused through her teeth, closing the door. "A...day late and a...doughnut short."
She made for the hall's darkness, hoping the officers would try the front door first and buy her time to escape.
Her convertible was parked near one of the alley's mouths. Jogging as fast as her sore, tired body could, she beelined to it while still gripping her slick stomach, praying that the blade missed an artery.
She reached the car and leaned against it for support, smearing black handprints on the finish.
"Real...smooth, May," she murmured, fumbling for her keys with her free hand while her limbs felt distressingly cool and tingly. "You'd think I'd get...better at this by now."
Flopping into the driver's seat, she risked a moment to catch her breath in the dark. A breeze suddenly blew by with enough force to knock her hat into the back seat.
Looking alert, May saw nothing and thought it odd since it wasn't windy earlier that night.
A female police demon stepped from the backyard door, led by the fresh blood trail. Her high-powered flashlight illuminated almost half the block before its ambient light displayed a pattern of ebon on the lawn.
Moving into the alley, she swept the light down one end of its path. It soon uncovered a parked vehicle and the suspicious driver behind its wheel.
"Get out of the car, now!" the cop commanded. At the same time, she cautiously approached with the flashlight in one hand and a raised service revolver in the other.
With a frantic start of the ignition, May threw the car blindly into gear...and shot backward from the block and into the artery of the neighborhood.
"Fuck me!" she hissed, wincing from the inertia. "Reverse?"
"Around the corner! Around the corner!" the officer yelled to her partner over her radio. "Take the car!"
The rearguard officer hopped back into the cruiser, squealed into a tight turn, and left.
May's car had a swaying head-start, but the police car was eating distance by the second, giving her no time to right her course. Plus, its driver didn't have to contend with the effort of driving backward at full speed.
When the cop drew close enough for a possible facial ID, she decided it was too close for comfort and switched on her high beams.
Harsh light exploded into the officer's eyes, giving an ache, like driven icepicks, in his brain. Still, he raised a hand to shield himself from the glare, blinking and keeping his quarry in sight.
May, hoof planted on the gas and leaning back to view the road, soon saw its exit, the sparse intersection of the neighborhood's main street.
As she rushed onto it, she killed the headlights. Hoping the cop was still too dazzled to recover in time, she used her car's momentum to veer away into a reverse turn onto the boulevard.
The police cruiser flew followed, and, incredibly, her strategy bore fruit. The officer, still blinking spots from his eyes, kept going and slammed into the facade of a convenience store across the street.
The cruiser's engine leaked and sputtered before he killed the ignition, and when he leaned out of the window for his suspect, the nighttime streets were quiet again.
A desperate, eight-minute lead later, Mayberry flew from the city, thankful that no other cruisers had created cordons to pin her down.
On the expressway that led back to Pentagram City, she did her best to work out what went wrong while constantly glancing at the rearview mirror between abdominal pain spasms.
Heartbeat growing thready, the driver's seat was now black with gore. She didn't have time to notice during her flight, but now, with adrenaline waning, her body was making it its business to alert her and shut down all at once.
Immortality, she remembered groggily. It was the one thing in Hell that she was ironically blessed with. The only thing she could count on now. Although holy weapons could lay her low for good, a vigorous enough mundane attack could temporarily bring her down.
Based on what she heard, she would rise like a Phoenix. However, her resurrection would be incredibly painful as a consequence.
"Wonderful," she slurred.
Her head weakly tilted to one side, the expressway lights looking like hazy starshine, as her grip on the steering wheel and her consciousness threatened to slip.
She could crash, she considered, as the car weaved slightly and temporarily bleed out. But, the twin children were Hellborn. Immortality was denied to them, Imps and Hell Hounds. Where did they go? What would happen to them now? Would the kidnappers, wanting revenge for May's interference, take it out on them?
Why were demonic children being taken?
Dread for them made her heart sicken. She wished she had taken their place and knew what she was doing besides going on some half-thought-out, moral crusade that felt so hollow and dangerously self-righteous now.
All she knew for sure, as clarity died around her, was that she failed and, somewhere, two little girls were probably paying for that failure.
May had enough presence of mind to sneer into the self-hatred rising in her ruined guts and want to bite into the steering wheel until her teeth broke.
But, all she could do was finally slump behind the wheel and drift in the silent, endless black.