James Dillinger looked at his watch and saw that it was just past midnight. His dear wife Betty was now soundly asleep in their bedroom, and so were their two daughters. With a soft sigh, he stood up and turned off the TV and then calmly walked towards his garage, where he started getting all of his fishing rods and bait ready inside of his Oldsmobile. He enjoyed fishing and had a small boat in Lake Mead, and every Friday night he liked to go there to spend some time in peace and serenity. Back in the day before he met Betty he used to fish every time that he had the occasion, spending entire evenings and nights floating in the calm waters of the Colorado River and nearby water bodies. He wasn't especially good at it, and many times returned with empty hands, and if he ever caught anything it was never big or impressive catches, average at best, but he did it because he simply enjoyed it.

Once in the car, he turned on the engine and headed off into the desert. It was a dark and cloudless night, the storm of the century had finally dissipated, Las Vegas didn't flood or burn to the ground, most of the hoodlums and rioters were now behind bars and several reconstruction works had already begun. Luckily for him, he lived far away from the city to not be affected personally. His wife had asked him to stay home these days, to stay home in case more riots happen, to please protect them if anyone dangerous pretends to break into their home, but he assured her that they were safe, and she with fear on her body, ended taking his word for it.

The furniture shop James worked at closed on Saturdays and Sundays, so he didn't have any rush to come back home. It wouldn't be the first time that he returns late, sometimes after lunchtime even. His dear wife always asked him to come home before she woke up, she simply felt comfortable waking up next to him, but she had no real power over him, and if she woke up and he was nowhere nearby, she simply accepted it with a sense of silent defeat. Some days she believed that he might have an affair, a lover, but every time that she thought of that she ended shrugging it off and feeling bad afterward. James was a good man, he would never do that to her.

But he did.

It was true that James had a love for fishing, and sometimes he truly went to the lake to relax and be alone. But most of the nights he instead met with Veronica, his old high school fling, his mistress. The two had been having a secret relationship for years already. They dated for a while and after high school, each one of them took their own path, and eventually got married. Years later they reunited by pure chance, they both talked about their current lives, how both were married and with children, and so on. They didn't need to talk it, the moment they meet there was an intense chemical reaction between them, the attraction was still there, the love they once had, still aflame. The same day that they reunited, they made passionate sex and cheated on their respective partners.

Five years later, and they were still doing it at every chance that they had and without any hint of shame or remorse.

They usually met on small motels along the road, she liked to use fake names and dress up to not be recognized, he wasn't as paranoid or careful. After driving for an hour he finally reached their meeting point, the motel was now visible in the distance. Tonight's meeting point was the Western Belle Motel & Diner. They had already been there a couple of times already. Not a bad place, nice beds, and the food was pretty decent for its price. James relaxed and smiled, he hadn't crossed anyone that could blow the whistle about him, tonight would be another night of torrid and steamy guiltless sex.

As he was about to turn the corner to enter into the parking zone he saw something weird, a strange figure crouched between two cars. Since it was late night and there weren't many light sources around it was hard to discern what it was. It looked like a man but was too big.

"Is that...a bear?" James muttered to himself. "Can't be..."

The moment the car lights shined upon the beast, he instantly wished it had been a bear.

A hairless creature of flesh and bone feasted in front of him. His naked skin was covered in blood from head to toes, both old and fresh. His entire body was a weird mass of impossible angled and twisted muscles covered in hard bone protrusions and spikes. When the creature noticed James it instantly turned around, moving with surprising agility and speed for a creature of its sheer size. From the monster's bloated and swollen face four horns suddenly erupted, all made of black crystalline bone that was curved outwards. It then winked at him and laughed with an inhuman guffaw that froze James' blood and paralyzed him with fear.

He tried reversing the car and driving away but the monster grabbed the poor soul that it was chewing upon and threw its corpse directly onto his windshield. The impact was instantaneous and brutal, the thick glass shattered in a thousand pieces, and the body heavily smashed against him. James closed his eyes from pure instinct, and felt a sudden wave of pain, like a hundred punches simultaneously falling upon his body and chest. He had several ribs broken along with his collarbone and many others. Pained and terrified he slowly opened his eyes and then saw Veronica's mangled face only mere inches away from him. She was dead, it had killed her.

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Was it a demon? Was it a vengeance from the Lord above for their sins? Last Sunday the preacher talked about carnal sins and the virtues of being faithful. About not being influenced by the nearby dens of decadence that the city enforced upon us. He of course didn't listen to any of that and was instead remembering his last encounter with her. God's patience had run thin. He had finally come for them.

The car's engine was still working. James tried pushing her body away and continuing reversing into safety. But once more the demon caught up with him. He didn't have a chance, even if he had managed to dodge him and get back on the road the creature would have caught him. It wasn't a fair fight. With a powerful jump, the demon smashed into the car, bending its frame inwards and trapping James in a steel coffin. As the demon pressed against the car more pieces of glass and steel bent and lodged inside of his already broken body, dozens of cuts and holes all at once, making him cry harder than he had ever cried.

With a single arm and as if it were a flimsy can of tuna the demon ripped open the car and pulled him out of it. James was now bleeding profusely, pieces of glass and metal continued stabbed on his body, and his arms and legs were now broken and bent in impossible angles.

Thanks to the moonlight the demon's appearance became clear to him. Its face was bloated and swollen as if someone had punched him countless of times. It had a very big and fat hanging belly, one covered in pulsating veins and a massive vertical scar that crossed him from the crotch to the chest. Despite being so fat it somehow had a strong and muscular body, its legs and arms were fit and covered in bulging muscles that looked as if they were about to burst at any time. It was grabbing him with its left arm, the right one was not ended in a fist, but instead in a massive bone blade, one that was as long as James was tall. That wasn't the only bone that came out of it, osseal spikes covered his entire frame, razor-sharp bones that had grown from inside of it and shredded his muscles and skin him every time it moved.

With a cruel smile, the demon's belly scar started to open, revealing under it a gaping maw full of shark-like teeth. Inside of it, there were more remains of Veronica, along with the half-digested pieces of many others. James did not continue alive for much longer, but he had been unfortunate enough to feel his body being devoured alive, cut and torn into pieces by hundreds of serrated teeth, and melted into nothingness by its infernal stomach acid. His execution and final torture only lasted for a few seconds, but to him, it felt like a lifetime.

The demon had been free for a few days already, it had been released into a strange and unknown world. Ever since his release it had felt a strange and powerful hunger. A relentless sensation that churned inside of it and tortured its soul. It knew that there was someone that it had to kill and devour, only a single person could sate its hunger, and if it had to kill every single person on this world to find it, then so be it.

With a monstrous roar the creature headed back into the desert. There were no more people around. He would need to change his hunting grounds.

Hours passed and the desecrated motel continued in silence. The motel itself was not very popular, and it was located in a pretty far away location, and to its owners and workers spending entire days without any client was a commonplace occurrence. Every now and then a car passed by, a distant coyote howled or a dog meowed, but the usual buzzing of human voices was completely absent. Inside its walls, only things that could be heard were the sound of a half-broken radio that emitted more static than music, the tapping of scurrying rats that were now feasting on the human remains, and the swarms of flies that had made of the gory remain their breeding grounds. There wasn't any living person inside, the demon had been thorough with its massacre.

It wasn't until dawn that two figures finally appeared, a policeman and greasers. They got in and ignored all of the corpses and blood and head directly into the diner, where they seated in a booth. Back in the kitchen a half mangled corpse burned above the stove, it had been doing so for the last six hours, and its flesh was now close to a burnt crisp.

"We have a problem." The greaser said.

"We clearly do." Answered the policeman, looking the grizzly scene around them.

"It's clearly one of yours."

"Perhaps. We think that as well. But we have not brought him here. We have contacted our people in California, Arizona and Utah, and none of them have opened a gateway to Hell. We doubt that some fools humans might have done it, surely the Fifth Column did not do it."

"So, what are you saying, that the Knights of Dawn are involved, the Crimson Sisterhood perhaps, maybe another group we don't know about?"

"Another group and we don't know about...that for sure." The policeman says, removing his aviator sunglasses and revealing a couple of blood-red eyes.

"This is your mess, you better clean it up." The greaser answered, smashing his fist on the table, splintering the wood and metal in a thousand pieces.

"Is it little angel? Is it?" The demon guffawed in a mocking tone.

"There's a war coming, perhaps not the Apocalypse, but Las Vegas will burn. There are too many demons in such a small city."

With that said the angel left the building and got into his car. The demon instead simply laughed in silence and waited for his leaving.

"Well, since I'm all alone I might as well take a snack." He muttered, getting up and heading into the kitchen, ready to devour the burnt remains of the cook.