The storm tore through the night sky in flashes of purple and white. The rain flooded the streets and vicious winds lifted the corrugated roofs off of warehouses and shacks. Roots broke through the surface of soil like tentacled beasts crawling up from the underworld. Lightning pumped through the clouds like blood through veins and thunder echoed through the storm’s domain and the worlds bound to it.

“D’Angel!” a yell was silenced by the storm’s terran growls and windy howls, “Come out!”

Dominic flickered through static and his various visions as he ploughed through the muddy forest ground. Heat vision was useless when the rain froze everything it touched. The world was dead in his eyes. Night vision was a Picasso with the rain. The best he could do was use the vision that nature gave him, and a flashlight.

“We both want this over! Don’t let him hold you back!”

Wringing the deep gash crossing his shoulder and bordering his heart, D’Angel hid in the high forest canopy with feet dangling over both sides of a branch. He leaned back and stared up through the leaves at the sky. As long as he resisted, he felt like he was at the edge of nauseating and at the brink of collapsing. The cold rain running down his face and body, soaking his torn shirt and jeans, the shivering, the fear, the pain, was all putting him to sleep. It all scared his timid soul out of his body. He couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Gripping the wound shut, he felt his pacing heart slow. An icy feeling, so cold it burnt, crept up his neck. It pierced into his temples. A black essence consumed his vision. It felt like dying... all over again.

Dominic’s hand tightened around the shard. He was vulnerable and he could barely see. The flashlight turned the streaks of rain into white stripes on the black night. Each time lightning struck, his eyes captured the fleeting moment and searched for anything that looked even slightly human.

A heavy wafting sound fell down behind him. He felt the subtle gust that brushed the back of his neck. Dominic twisted around and aimed his beam of light. The monstrous figure stood face-down, fists at its side, and wings flared - one of feathers, one of scale.

D’Angel gazed up at him, shadows evanescing from his eyes. “Shit,” Dominic muttered. The beast fell forward, beat his wings and blasted at Dominic with hands of flame. Dominic grounded himself in the mud up to his ankles and threw his upper body forward with both hands on the shard, dropping his flashlight. A fist struck Dominic in the diaphragm; the shard pierced D’Angel in the back. D’Angel fell to his knees and clawed for the lodged shard as Dominic slammed against a tree trunk with a grunt. D’Angel grasped the shard, tore it and a chunk of back flesh out painlessly and fed it to the mud.

“I’LL TEAR YOU APART!” the demon’s voice cut through the thunder, “LIMB--FROM--LIMB!”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

His blazing hands illuminated his monstrous figure. Rain hissed in his fists’ flame. Dominic fumbled for his guns as the demon marched at him with the determination to kill. Dominic pulled out the guns and fired at D’Angel’s knees. One bullet struck his shin and pulled his foot out from under him. The demon fell down to a knee. Dominic got back to his feet and watched as the heat in D’Angel’s mouth grew like a star. D’Angel roared and let the flames of hell leave his throat to purge Dominic.

Dominic dived to the side and rolled, his forearms sinking into the mud on landing. He stopped on one knee and as the tunnel of flame turned to follow him, he pulled the trigger of each gun twice. The shots were loud, but the sound wouldn’t get far.

The four bullets hit both shoulders, the sternum and the neck. D’Angel fell to the dirt like he was struck by a hammer. The light of the flame glinted on the shard. Dominic bolted for it as D’Angel recovered. He grabbed the shard and holstered it in place of his gun. If he lost it again, he might not get another chance to retrieve it. D’Angel got up to one foot, and Dominic shot him back down with his guns and dashed towards him. The guns were only for impact in this fight. The bullets could never penetrate the skin of somebody like this. Dominic threw both guns down, took out the shard and jumped onto the downed demon. He jabbed the shard at D’Angel’s chest, but the demon caught his arms and pressed back. They wrestled for their lives.

D’Angel used both hands to hold back the shard, his dying flames doing no harm to Dominic. D’Angel opened his mouth to burn him, but Dominic threw a hard hook to D’Angel’s lower jaw and stopped him. The punch knocked him out for a split second; a split second was all Dominic needed to press his weight down and penetrate D’Angel’s skin. The shard struck through muscle, scraped bone and pierced into D’Angel’s beating heart.

D’Angel made no screams, or grunts, or any expression of pain. His face only lost its rage and he looked at Dominic with a blank face as the black of his eyes dissipated.

D’Angel’s eyes filled with tears as the white of it turned red, but Dominic couldn’t see that. He pressed the shard deeper. Blood slowly pumped out, mixing with the rain and mud, running against his fingers. Dominic could feel D’Angel’s heart thud against the shard. He might as well have been holding it. “How many more times?!” Dominic yelled, “How many more times do I have to do this before that black-eyed fucker stays dead!?”

The storm silenced.

The rain continued to strike the ground, the wind continued to moan, the lightning continued to flash and the thunder continued to groan, but their small part of the universe, with just the two of them, fell quiet once again. D’Angel looked down at the shard that he couldn’t see and raised his hand, holding up one finger. “Just… Just one,” he whispered breathlessly.

He slowly lowered his head and hand to rest in the mud. Each time this happened, Dominic gained that sense of death. Every time, he got closer to feeling the soul leave the body. He was Death’s accomplice. There was no one more familiar.

Dominic slipped the shard out of his heart and stood up. He turned around and tread through the mud, with a hand over his scorched abdomen, and the feeling of loss, a heavy emptiness, weighing him down again. He crouched to pick up the flashlight and then kept walking. He didn’t know if the body would be there when he turned around, but he knew that it would be somewhere if he kept moving forward.

One more time, he thought.

One more time...