For over an hour, Issac stood there watching as the mansion in front of him spewed black smoke. The barrier over the house kept the noxious gas from dissipating causing it to build up until it eventually engulfed the entire property in a black haze.

After waiting for thirty minutes Issac finally let the barrier down, positive that no one was left alive. Thankfully the fire didn’t consume too much of the house, the lack of oxygen killed it before it could affect the house's stability.

And now, with no one else alive left to stop him, Issac decided to take a final stroll through the house, maybe he could find something thing that could save this evening before he left.

Normally he would have performed the spell on everybody else, giving the victims some kind of peace, but right now he didn't feel like it. He should have felt something for finishing the hunt but instead, it felt as if his entire night was ruined. Nothing ruined his mood more than a wasted life.

Stopping at the front door Issac began to wonder if he shouldnt just scrapp the rest of the night. Nothing felt right, right now. He came here to have some fun but instead, all he got was disappointment.

With one last disappointed look behind him, Issac shook his head, sighed, and walked through the front door.

The inside itself, like the outside, was surprisingly modern for what was supposed to be a safe house meant to protect its inhabitants against danger.

To the immediate right was the living room, complete with expensive-looking leather couches atop a large white Persian rug. The walls were built up with an uneven pattern made of gray and black stones that clashed with the wooden walls branching off out of it.

Right above the fireplace sat a plasma TV that practically stretched from wall to wall. And to the back, over the marble countertops, the kitchen could be seen covered in former pristine white tiles with state-of-the-art kitchen equipment that would feel right at home in a five-star restaurant.

Over to the left, a set of stairs rose above a hallway leading towards further rooms near the back. The stairs themself led to a second floor with a balcony that went around the entire perimeter of the main area of the house. Throughout the entire house were expensive paintings, statues, and other such items, all of which were just thrown together with no rhyme or reason.

Everything together looked just so mismatched, like a two-year-old putting together his first puzzle. The whole scheme of the house just brought on a feeling of discomfort and disorganization with it, hurting Isaac's eyes just by looking at it.

Of course, this was after the fire touched here so he was hoping for that to be the main reason for the house's ugliness,

The first few rooms on the bottom floor were the basic rooms that you would find in any house, sitting rooms to entertain their guests, restrooms, closets, and a few spare bedrooms for some reason.

‘Seriously’ Issac thought, these rooms obviously weren't for the guards, no one had ever even slept in them, ‘Who in the hell were they wanting to entertain in a SAFE HOUSE.’

The last room seemed to have been their son’s room, inside was a room the size of a whole modern-day apartment. Posters on the walls, clothes on the floor, and what looked like an expensive gaming system attached to what could only be described as an orb with a chair inside. Breaking the stock image representation of a teenage boy's room was the face-down body of said teen reaching for the door.

Ignoring the corpse, Issac continued searching through the house looking for anything that might interest him before heading towards the office at the top of the stairs. Really these people were just the worst, because even forgetting their lack of taste they still didn't have anything of any real value.

Not finding anything else, Issac finally decided to head up the stairs toward Manuel's office.

Like everything else the door to the office was as pretentious as one could get, trying so hard to show authority and wealth but it just came off as fake, and sad. Mismatched from the rest of the house the door was colored white with golden accents around the trim. This thing was so glaringly out of place that it drew your eyes from anywhere in the house.

With a sigh, Issac turned the ornate golden egg of a doorknob and entered the office of the now-former head of the largest cartel in South America. Walking in the first thing that he felt was the intense heat radiating from the fireplace, even though the fire had died out, the heat that lingered was still so intense, intense enough to leave blisters on the skin.

Like the rest of the house, the office was a mix of old-style rocks and wood combined with a more modern aesthetic and large floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The room itself was chock full of useless shit, trophies stinging on pillars, Stupid plants crowding the corners, and a rug that looked at least two inches thick.

Thankfully the office at least had a library along its back wall. Even if Manuel himself never touched a single course page off that shelf his vanity would have demanded that only the best would grace his shelves.

Rushing towards his only hope of salvaging this night with no spare glace to the still burning corpse to the right, Issac yanked the first book off the shelf with renewed vigor.

Just by looking at the book Issac could feel his hopes rising, it was covered in an old green leather and stylized with golden paint on the front and back. The front showed a forest path while the back had a picture of some kind of city. However as soon as he flipped the first page he learned that it was a fake, the whole book was just full of blank pages.

Of course, it was then, in the blistering heat of a house fire’s aftermath, that Issac remembered that this room was ground zero of a house fire.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Every last goddam one of these books was burnt. Not only that, looking past some of the burnt bits, it didn't even seem as if most of them had any writing to begin with. Almost all of the books were fake!

Of course, they were, why would you waste money on priceless books when all you want is to impress people with them? If you're never gonna read them then why would you have real books, just the covers are enough.

A waste, that's what this was. A whole fucking waste of his Fucking time!

First, the damn bastard gets poisoned so easily, not even giving Issac the courtesy of staying alive long enough to look him in the eye. But then not only do the guards die off way too fast but then the only goddamn magical person that he had ever met then decides to fucking off himself in the most sorry-ass fashion.

And then, the cherry on top, these bastards don't even have anything that he could loot off of. No great stores of wealth, no first edition novel or a stolen painting, nothing to show for his time wasted searching and waiting and fucking planning!

Blood was rushing so fast through his head that Issac was forced to sit down. He couldn’t take it anymore, nothing was going his way, it hadn't for years.

Falling limply back into Manuel's chair Issac just couldn't believe it, this could be where his life had led him. Was there nothing on this goddamn earth that would make him happy?

He didn’t ask for much all he wanted was endless joy. You know, something to take his mind off of his endless boredom. He thought his hunts would be something for him to find some fun in but instead, they started to become increasingly stale.

While he had his crisis inside of his mind a distant tune started echoing throughout the office. Cutting past his mind’s fog Issac realized that the noise was coming from his pocket.

It was the phone that Cutter had been talking into before. Issac had looted it off his dead body along with his rings just before stepping into this disappointment of a house. But because he was already done with today he decided that answering it just wasn't worth his time.

So he let it ring.

And ring, and ring.

Even after letting it go to voicemail three times it never stopped. Right after the phone would go to voicemail it would just go straight back to ringing.

Not willing to stand it anymore Issac decided to just answer the damn thing. Really, it couldn't be any worse than this disappointment of a day.

Pinching it between his fingers Issac pulled the phone out, and, making sure to have it away from his face, he answered it.

“YOU BETTER HAVE A GODDAMN GOOD REASON FOR NOT ANSWERING RIGHT AWAY!! YOU LITTLE BASTARD DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IS AT STAKE HERE? YOU BETTER NOT BE WASTING MY TIME!….WELL!! ANSWER ME!!”

Immediately a blast of sound slammed into his ear as screams poured out from the phone.

As he stared off into the distance Issac realized that this must have been the brother that Cutter had been talking to earlier. Of course, due to his continued silence more and more profanities kept being thrown at him from the phone. Each one followed by a demand for Cutter to answer.

Issac’s initial dismissal of the phone started to creep back. So what if the brother still lived, so what if he was probably just as magical as Cutter? That just meant that he would be that much more of a disappointment when he finally died.

After a while, Issac began wondering if he should just hang up the damn phone. He had already stopped paying attention to whatever was being shouted at him. Closing off his mind to the endless tirade of insults and demands and screaming only to again be followed by insults.

But just as his finger hovered over the end call button something new came out of the phone. For the first time since he had opened the phone, there was silence. No screams of anger or curses directed at the now-dead Cutter, everything was quiet.

Then after a minute or two of both of them just sitting in silence, the voice began to talk again, this time in a much more even tone.

“If Cutter hasn't said anything by now that means that he’s dead, isn't he? Then is this the Hunter that Manuel was so worried about?” The voice this time was nothing like it was before. Behind all that screaming and shouting was actually a smooth and gentle voice. It was a strong and deep voice that carried weight wherever it went.

“That's okay you don't have to say anything, your silence means the world. Well since he’s dead that means that Manuel is dead as well, truthfully I don't really care enough about that brat, but Manuel, well we needed him.” Here Issac could hear the anger begin to return as the voice continued talking to its quiet listener. “Replacing him is going to cause us to spend more time and money than we would want so here's the deal, you are going to take his place. Manuel performed many deeds for my family, most importantly was the tribute of cash, and now he is gone.”

It was at this point that Issac began to wonder what was the point of telling him all of this. Was it to show him” how much he messed up” maybe it was the crazy ramblings of a defeated man. Or maybe it was something else.

“ So this is what is going to happen we need somebody to replace him, that tribute was something that was very important to us, something that you never should have touched. And now to fix your little mistake you gonna come to me and take over for Manuel. You do this and the little child that was caught spying on us the last few days will continue to live. I’ll be waiting for you back at the factory.”

The phone hung up on the other end leaving Issac alone in the silence.

“Ha..he.ha..hahaha..Ha,.. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”

Lucy

Issac couldn't believe it, he had forgotten all about little Lucy.

This was something Issac had not prepared for, mainly because he had felt like he didn't need to. Really, who would go after a little brat just because they were spying on you? If you really kept your business secret then no child should have any way of finding out your dirty little secrets.

And now for the first time in a long time, Issac was thrown off. For over five years Issac had been alone, all by himself while he played his games against crime. And in all that time he had forgotten what it had felt like to worry over someone else.

He had assumed that since he was able to thrive in the dark then so should Lucy, but unfortunately, Issac had forgotten that she wasn't him. Issac would have never gotten caught, he would have killed anyone who tried and escaped if he ever was.

But Lucy wasn't Issac, no matter how smart she was she couldn't fight her way out like he could.

Slamming his hands onto the armrest Issac launched himself up, not even stopping to give Manuel the proper cleansing. Issac just walked straight out of the house, leaving behind a house of corpses behind him.

Every step he took seemed to shake the empty mansion, his anger seeped into every wall joice and beam bending it around his anger.

Then fire consumed it all.

Everything, walls, furniture, even the granite and stone inside, all lit up as he walked past. Fire roaring to life once filling the house in red glory. Power radiated off of him as he wrenched the front door off its hinges, stalking into the woods and heading straight for Brazil.

By the time Issac had completely disappeared into the forest nothing had remained of the house by the cliff.

There was nothing but ashes on the ground and smoke in the air.