The sad part was that Dion didn't hear the news until a week later when he went to the plaza, the street, the stall and realized she wasn't there. Even sadder still, he didn't know where she lived or what her phone number was or really what had even happened.

Dion learned about Stefanie, late into the week, on a cold morning, reading a five-day-old newspaper. His sleepless nights were well-reasoned, vindicated in a way. And it was sad news, hearing the paper translated through the nun. Even she was depressed about it, though she was a stranger because seeing Dion’s face fall flat as she went down the column of the news clipping invoked her a feeling of helpless drowning.

“It’s not even headline news, is it?” He looked at the paper. It was the sixth page inside. She nodded her head, she didn’t really have much to add. She had explained everything prior, this whole newspaper business was just confirmation.

“And you're telling me Apollo knew about this?” he asked.

“He didn’t want to involve you, he was worried about you.”

“Well, now I'm involved.” He stood up and went out the door and the nun chased after him. With her hands up asking, screaming at Dion as he ran through the forest, pleading in a way; “Where are you going? Come back here. I can call him!”

She didn’t try running after him, only sighed and closed the door quietly against the harsh winter winds.

•

He went to the hospital of course. To see Stefanie who he hoped was conscious, unlike what the tabloids said.

He almost had the urge to jump rooftops, to gallop across each pointy, green top. No. It was day, it was better to run at his steady fifty miles per hour pace, through the cracks and alleys of the city where no one could bother or intervene.

When he made it to the hospital, he did not pause to breath and walked up to the glass doors, past the counter and towards a stairway leading to the dormitories of the sick. Two nurses came to stop him, it was then that he had the opportunity to wipe his sweat and breath out his sticky shirt.

“I’m here to see Stefanie,” He said.

“Are you family?”

“No. I’m a close friend, real close.”

“Do you know her last name?”

He exhaled like a dying animal. “No,” It escaped him like a whine. “No, I don’t.”

The nurses looked at each other, he already knew the answer from their faces. They said it, they told him what he could do and could not. They told him, briefly, about her current health status, as a compromise. It didn’t help. She was still in a coma. The news was visibly unbearable, doctors stopped by Dion, thinking he was sick himself. It was almost as if they wanted to admit him. They would have if there was a wound to match his wincing face, his crying eyes. But his suffering was just that, abstract, real but invisible. It was the feeling of sinking. Of limb limbed drowning.

“I’m sorry,” One of the nurses came by, she had poor English. “But we can’t let you in.”

He left. Outside, to his rear, the cigarette smoke of agitated surgeons. Further beyond, police cars waiting to question the unconscious girl. A stray reporter and her satellite topped van. All of it, noise. His nose was still runny. His body, a bit weak. But he began to focus, to zero-in on something, anger. It was good to have that clear vision amongst the murky fog of his concerned imaginations.

He had to go back to settle it. To run through those same crevices and cracks and alley, this time with even less caution or care, a certain lack of inhibition that let him bump and push people aside and to turn stalls over and to run so fast that not even the police could be dialed before he was gone. It was that kind of pace, that head throbbing pace.

He slammed the door open again. He walked inside and looked for him, his eyes scanning left to right. He was there. Waiting, center in the kitchen. They both locked eyes and intuitively knew what would happen next. He grabbed Apollo by the neck.

“What the fuck is going on?” Apollo asked.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Tell you what? I haven't been in this house for more than ten minutes and you already want to rip my head off.” he reached for Dion's hand. He must have forgotten he was missing a limb because only his amputated lump moved. Dion pressed him deeper against the sink. The metal bent. It snapped. Apollo’s face tightened and he balanced himself against Dion, like bulls, butting heads.

“You didn't tell me about her. You didn’t tell me about the cult. The dead!” he felt the saliva spill out of them. “Why. Didn't. You. Tell me.”

He shook his body at even intervals. Apollo head-butted him. He kicked him back. Dion felt his feet drag across the floor, screeching, before he hit the other side. He recovered, facing up, with his knees tightened, looking at Apollo. He steadied himself, primed himself to tackle and ran. As fast as possible, saying nothing to each save for grunts and cruel glares. Their shoulders almost touched, they were a foot away from each other. Almost there, Dion thought, almost.

He felt something grab him by the back of his neck. Something that raised him high into the air and that flipped him onto the floor until his bent back was dug deep into the floorboard below. His steady breathing ceased, he gasped.

The nun walked in front of his vision, now just a blur of light and shades of the different complexions on the nun’s gaunt, crimson eyes. She hovered over him, he saw from the corner of his eyes, Apollo on the floor too. Laying there, coughing.

“Why don't you to explain yourselves?” She asked. In a tone both severe and annoyed. “I don’t want any more fights in here, do you understand me?”

He nodded as if to say, yes ma’am.

•

“That's how it is,” Apollo said. “I inspected the place, I didn’t think there was a connection with your girl until you mentioned it just now.”

Dion sat in his chair, neck curbed back at the spine of the seat. He looked at the slow moving fan above, the two dangling chords that waved around.

"I didn't know who she was or what she did or how she got hurt," Apollo said.

"So it was just chance," Dion said. "Random chance. Fate."

"No," Apollo stood up from his chair. He looked at the nun and at the outskirts of the city where the brick walls lorded over them with their wide shadows. He rubbed his strained neck. "I don't believe in coincidences."

"What are you trying to say?"

"That we should go out and investigate where she got crippled to see what we can find. A clue perhaps, on the whereabouts or identity of the perpetrator."

He rubbed his nose bridge.

"This always happens because of us," He said. "We always bring trouble here."

"Stop," Apollo said. "Evil exists with or without our consent. It’s not prejudiced, it doesn’t care. If shining a light made those cockroaches come out, then so be it. We’ll use it as a good opportunity to smite the fuckers."

Dion stood up, his shoulders slumped.

“Why are you so righteous? I thought you hated helping people.”

“I’ve changed, I can say that I think,” He looked away, staring deeply into the window with the frost covered edges. “There’s an ambition in me that wants answers. Can you understand that?”

He felt a burning sensation where his pocket bible laid, in his back pockets.

“Yeah,” Dion said. “I can’t believe this is happening though.”

"It’s been happening for a while now,” The nun said, standing by the door frame leading into the living room.

"I knew this vacation wasn’t free. I just wish the Leper would have told us ahead of time," Apollo laughed underneath his breath. "It’s not too bad at least.”

"Are you still dumb and drunk?” The nun asked.

"You don’t feel it? There’s a thrill to these kinds of hunts." He smiled.

"I don’t have a taste for these things anymore," Dion said. "I just want some peace for Stefanie."

"And I want some peace of mind too. Closure, if it even exists." Apollo looked for a jacket. Something to cover the simple cotton sweater underneath his clothes.

"We should get started," Apollo said.

"I still have questions." Dion turned to Apollo

"Like?" Apollo opened the door. The wind wafted through and blew a cold gust at them all. Small particles of snow approached the lacquered floorboards, crawling into the kitchen.

"I want to know why you didn't trust me. Why didn't you let me help you?" He rubbed his neck, it felt cold.

"Because I didn't trust you," Apollo said, rather bluntly. His face showed no remorse. "You're still fucked in the head with the last bout with Astyanax. You've only barely begun to speak and to emotionalize properly. How was I supposed to just lay all this neatly on you? Look at you, you ran across the city twice in your fury, casually even."

"I’m only this bad because you didn’t tell me earlier." He felt the rush of anger again through his veins.

"Maybe. Maybe not. You didn’t see what I saw, you can’t say that." Apollo said. "I don’t trust you right now, and you won’t change my mind. But I can’t stop you at this point, given the circumstances. So try and behave."

Dion stayed quiet. He wasn’t wrong, it hurt him to admit it. But he had to protest, even if slightly.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"How are we supposed to be partners if you don't trust me?"

"If it makes you feel better," Apollo started to walk. "I don't trust anyone."

The plainness was something Dion admired. The simplicity of his militant nature. Apollo walked forward, leading into the cold, raging wind, leading through the inches of snow sticking to their shoes, sticking to their hair and their eyebrows and their teeth. The melted, cold snow upon their tongues that broke and chapped their lips. Lips that healed, only to break again.

Their direction, simple. To the heart of the city.

•

"Hurry," Dion said. "Every second we waste is a second that thing has to run around."

"Yeah,” Apollo wafted through the yellow tape. “I get it.”

They went up the side of the building (there was a police car outside, not too close, hanging by the edge of the block) and up the emergency ladder to a closed window. Apollo stuck his nails, then fingers and broke it open. The glass cracked. The wood scratched. He set foot inside, pushing debris outside.

He touched the floor. The shrapnel of tile and wood displaced Apollo’s leg. He almost slipped but caught himself barely on the sink lip. He realized there was hair on it, long strands of it like spider web.

“Shh,” Dion said. Apollo glared at him.

“Good thing is,” Dion said. “I don’t think there’s anyone here.”

“You keep talking and someone will be.” He grunted and they went through the house, the walls were ruptured and loose plaster fell down by fistful sizes. The door hinges croaked, upon the entrance of the bathroom and the bedroom across. All across the floor, they saw the chalk outline, the specimens highlighted by special markers, white outlines and yellow tapes and little cards with numbered exhibits. Apollo went around them, into the bedroom, below more yellow tape. Inside, the profanities. Walls scribbled with red. Infantile and cruel literature littering the walls. Bedrooms broken, cabinets thrown out and embedded into the walls.

Apollo to the center of the room, beyond a collection of clothes decorating the floor into a patchwork flag of tight tank tops and black brassieres.

“What?” Diane said.

A piece of ceiling landed on Apollo’s face, more did, grey and brown like metal filings. Or ash. Dion looked up, to what Apollo watched. There was a giant hole blown open. The wood beams hung downwards.

“I’m trying to imagine,” Apollo said. “It must have used this to wander the house unnoticed. A little tunnel system.”

“It must have come down from this hole,” His finger followed the imaginary perpetrator, down the hole, to the center of the room, out the door where the footprints and chalk circles were at. “And it ran out. Presumably, to chase after the victim.”

“I think the police did most of the work for you there.”

Apollo jumped and dug his nails into the cheap plywood acting as ceiling. He held onto a beam, his fingers like fine nails in the wood. His feet dangled as he held himself.

“What are you looking for?” Dion screamed, he shouldn’t have. Apollo hushed him. He repeated again, this time in a whisper.

“I’m looking to see if there was another hole if it got here from the upper floor. I don’t see one though.”

“Then she came through the windows, like us.” He said. “The bathroom was messed up, after all.”

“But the windows weren’t. I don’t think they were even touched. I think we were the first people to crack that glass.” Apollo came down and started pacing himself up and down the hall, down and up the stairs, and through the main room where another hole appeared. One that, upon inspection, led to a small boiler room on the top floor. He nodded his head and stood in the door frame, in that same moonlight he imagined the perpetrator stood in, with that same kind of ambitious hunger and aggression. He punched his leg.

“Look at this? This is all destroyed when it chased after Stefanie,” Apollo said. “It wasn’t before. The kitchen looks fine, most of the house looks fine save for the path of destruction. Why would a demon give a shit about keeping a house as neat as possible, about preserving it? Why wouldn’t it just break the glass panes or blow up the wall or slam the doors down?”

“Who knows? Maybe she just knocked,” Dion laughed.

“Just knocked?” Apollo slanted his head and looked at the doorway. “Maybe it just came in with the key to the door.”

“How would that work?”

“You tell me, why would this thing have a key, let alone use it, let alone known how to use it.”

“There’s a lot you’re accusing. This thing had some semblance of intelligence, a key or access to the house. What are you suggesting and where is your evidence.”

“I’ve got no evidence, it’s all intuition.” He ran up again. This time ignoring the yellow tape, letting it fall below his feet. “It must have ran upstairs, walked right through the front door.”

“I remember it, it was afraid of me. Why wouldn’t it be afraid now?” He followed the imaginary perpetrator, into the first bedroom. Claudia’s. “Stefanie must have entered the house, no, she must have just been near it, just outside, maybe this thing heard the car engine or something. And it dug a hole straight up, out of fear. This demon panicked.”

“Demon’s don’t panic like this,” Dion said. "Not for a human woman, at least."

“They’re usually not smart enough to panic either unless they’re Commanders or Dominions or Princes.”

Dion gulped.

“We’re dealing with a prince? A Dominion? A Principality?” The titles reminded him of those terrible sketches in the handbooks. The dreadful pictures of plagues and wars and torture and devil, the trumpets of death that rang for those demons with those careful, dreadful titles.

“No, don’t be ridiculous. If it was anything that strong, I wouldn’t be here..” He said. “Hell, I don’t even think it’s a demon we’re dealing with.”

“Well, it’s definitely not a thief.”

“Oh, it is,” Apollo said. “It’s a kind of thief. We’re dealing with a possession, a thief of the human body. Of the soul, even.”

“Please back up these wild claims.” Dion sighed. “Of who, how?”

“Let’s find out.”

He ran up the stairs and towards.

“Hey! Say something!” Dion chased after him, his footsteps sinking into the floor. He noticed markings of nails, it made him feel sad for some reason. Angry, too. Mostly angry.

Apollo walked in front, his eyes looking over the room, scanning over the bed with the spring coils hanging out like torn muscles, with the cotton ripped out like organs. He began throwing and knocking and turning over furniture.

"This room was important. It’s the one with writing on it, the only one. It’s the one most damaged." Apollo said. Dion turned over furniture and scraps of wreckage if just to keep himself busy.

“What are we looking for?” Dion asked.

He went for the table, to the pictures laying on the surface of it. A shattered picture of Stefania, of Claudia too.

"Did she ever tell you of anyone important in your life?" Apollo asked.

"No, she didn't. She made it an issue for me to even question things, actually."

"Good," Apollo said. "That definitely means she had something wrong going on."

He raised the picture up to his face.

"There were three people living here?" Dion asked. He pointed to the grandmother behind the frame.

"I don't think so, we'd be dealing with another injured body. Probably a dead one, given her age." Apollo said. He gave the picture to Dion. "Is she older now than what she looks like in the photo?"

"Yeah, she looks like a teenager here. She has to be at least ten years older, maybe a bit more."

Apollo grabbed it back. He undid the back to see for any writing. Nothing, not a scrawl. He went more so towards the back of the room, near the closet.

"What are you looking for?"

“Evidence for a profile I’ve been ruminating over.” He threw a small teddy bear over his shoulder. “Did I tell you where I first met this monster?”

"No."

"A sex club"

"I didn't know you were into those types of things," Dion said.

"No, mindless fucking bores me. I’d rather masturbate, honestly.” Dion fake gagged at the thought. “I went there following a lead, expecting trouble, getting trouble. A whole lot of it. Fifty corpses worth of it.”

“Sad to say, and what does this have to do with our perpetrator?”

“Our perpetrator was in a sex club. it was probably a member.”

“So you think...this persons room, is the room of our perp?”

“Yeah, I’m just looking for evidence now.”

He went through the clothes of the closet, mundane things like jackets and ripped pants and a few accessories sitting in an ornate purple box, with a butterfly for a lock. He turned it around, held it against the light and threw it away. The closet was deep, it took a while for him to situated himself amongst the faux leather jackets... And he found...nothing. Nothing abnormal, nothing extreme like he saw at the club. Nothing. He took a step out his way out. Would have, but he stepped on something. Something that fidgeted when he walked over it, something unstable.

"Oh?" Apollo looked down. A neat carpet rug laid across the floor of the closet. He rolled the topographic carpet and pushed it aside.

"Well, shit." He put his face down to the floor. He felt a draft. "I can see why the police might of missed it. There's no latch."

"I don't see a secret button either-"

Apollo smiled. He dug his fist through the floor, the wood scraped his cheeks as he dug out the floorboard one by one.

"What's worth hiding down here?" His hand searched the dusty gap, the cloud passed his face. A little satchel was below, he threw the contents of it onto the floor in front of him. There was some white powder, some yellow pills, a syringe. He had an idea of what it all was. This was one half and him, hungry, almost foaming like the mad dog himself, kept digging. His whole body went into the floorboards, the upper half at least. And he came out, smiling, both hands still inside.

“What?” Dion asked. His arms stretched up like a fisherman proud of his keep. He raised his catch, a whip and what looked like a corset with the breasts portions cut out. With high, black heels. Rope. There was more, gags and other luxurious things.

"We found our freak," Apollo said.

"You're accusing someone based on their sexual expression, that's a bit of a reach, don't you think," Dion said.

"No, I'm matching the description with the person. What we know is that someone was possessed," Apollo said. "And this possessed person was a patron of sex clubs and other deviant places, whose obvious lusts and passions have expressed themselves in violence. A woman who came home from a sex club, who, startled, attacked her own sister. Not before she terrorizing her, of course. Probably hating her too, maybe loving her in a way..."

His voice withered near the end. He leaned back.

"I’m going to guess that your girlfriends sister didn’t like her that much. Or maybe she loved her too much, it’s hard to tell.” He slicked his hair back, his bang moved down his face. "Sex is the ultimate expression of all desire and fear, after all. It’s hard to tell what kind of deranged thoughts passed over a murderous nymphomaniac.”

"Why'd she do it?"

"Who knows exactly?” Apollo asked. “All I know is that she probably slammed your girlfriend. Crippled her, like the papers said.”

"She's not my girlfriend." Dion said.”But it wouldn’t matter if she was or wasn’t. I’m finishing this. Give me an address. Something, anything. Where would this thing go next.”."

"Hmm," Apollo said. "Hard to tell. There's a lot of places a possessed soul can go to. Usually, though, they haunt locations that were meaningful to them once. Like a ghost, a haunting ground.."

Apollo walked over a counter, past a little puddle of broken glass, into a picture frame. There were three girls, two young, one old. Only one face remained, the other two were cut through. The one he had taken out of the two girls and of the grandmother. He went down, looking at more pictures, rubbing his face as he did so.

"We'll be looking all across town for her. We'll never get here at this rate." Dion said.

"No," Apollo stuck his fingers through the glass and retrieved the photos. He collected them in a line, upon a table. "We can narrow it down. We know she was a deviant and a junkie. Where do junkies and deviants hang out…”

“Great, you narrowed it down to every dark alley and damp sewer.”

“Well, we can go club hopping. We might find her.,” Apollo smiled.

“Stop joking around.”

“Tell me, why does someone take up drugs? And why would that same abuser roam sex clubs?”

“Addiction? I don’t know?”

“To run away, of course.”

“From?”

“A problem, at home. Guilt, perhaps. She was trying desperately to escape something or someone.”

He picked up a picture of the grandmother, or what he presumed to be the grandmother. It was written as such behind the signed photo, and the limbs of the woman in the picture were old and discolored and saggy.

“The evidence is in the fact that she was possessed, at all, of everyone in that club. A demon yearns for kin. That’s how they form their ranks, that’s how they’ve populated Hell. Misery enjoys the company of the miserable, so on and so forth.” He said. “She was miserable. No doubt, and her possession itself is evidence of it. She was trying to escape something.” He went to the cabinets by the kitchen. Bills, mountains of them, came out like a shoot past Apollo. On it, phone bills, internet, rent, so on and so forth. He spread out the papers across the floor and table.

“It’s a funeral service,” Apollo said, a hint of joy. “Their grandmother died recently.”

He immediately began stripping the papers, looking for an address perhaps, a phone number. A name.

To the relatives of Anja Schmidt. His fingers started to fumble, his brain started to process everything like a completed film. Whether it was true or not, the machinations of his imagination had already begun to spin and turn and churn and crush every factoid into wild images. It felt like he was losing sense of time and place like he had escaped his own consciousness and very thoughts and now existed in a separate vantage, a plane higher, looking down at himself.

“Say...” He almost salivated. “People deal with tragedy different ways, don’t you think, Dion?”

Dion looked, a bit scared. “S-sure.”

“We need to find Anja Schmidt.”

“She’s dead.”

“Good job, genius,” Apollo said. “And where would you find a corpse?”

“In a jar or a tomb or…” He felt a bit of that electrical epiphany Apollo had on his wide grinning face. “A graveyard.” He said.

Apollo repeated, a graveyard.