Rodrigo was sitting on a bed in his room. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t the room he had been living in for the past several months, but the one he had lived in for sixteen years prior. The one that had gone up in flames.
“So, bro, are you a good guy or a bad guy?” a voice asked from his right.
Rodrigo turned to the source sitting next to him, and shuddered. With tan skin a shade lighter than his own, those bright green eyes, and his mop of curly black hair, Carlito was as he remembered him.
Rodrigo was lucid enough to realize this was a dream. One of the many memories of his last days with his brother that his subconscious enjoyed tormenting him with. At the time, Rodrigo had just gotten into a scuffle with two older teens, during which Resent had taken control of his body for the first time. It was the prince’s excessive use of force that had frightened Carlito into asking such a question.
Still, Rodrigo tilted his head back, looking up at the old house’s plaster ceiling, stained with water from when his mother had flooded her bathroom on the third floor. He pondered the question as if it had been meant for the current him. “I honestly don’t know anymore. At first, I fought the demons out of disgust for their cruelty. The pointlessness of it. That I was helping people and getting stronger at the same time were bonuses. But with every demon I kill, not watch as Resent uses my hands...well, hand, to kill, but that I personally kill myself, it feels like a small part of me slips away with them.”
Rodrigo hadn’t been able to bring himself to confide in anyone about this. Adena and Resent were hardened killers, with body counts in the hundreds and thousands respectively. He imagined they would either laugh at or not even comprehend such doubts. Like most people, Jett considered human life precious, but viewed demons as little more than monsters to be destroyed. And Leila had been scared off by his single violent outburst when they were children. If she knew of the coldness growing within him, she’d be terrified. He might consider therapy if it didn’t mean he would need to reveal his identity.
Rodrigo swallowed in a throat that felt like it was filled with sandpaper. “And the craziest part is, even though I’m murdering intelligent life, some of which look almost exactly like humans except for their eyes, the average person is so bitter and broken, they don’t just praise me for it, they act like I...Karma’s the second coming of Christ.”
He admired and respected Caity Wright. But he wasn’t a fan of the name her faux pas had saddled him with. How holier-than-thou it made him sound. Plenty of names he would’ve preferred had come out in the days after the invasion. Eclipse, Strikeback, and Shadow Boy to name a few, but by that point, Karma had stuck.
“Part of me understands. I’d probably feel the same in their shoes. But I can’t help but be somewhat...disappointed, I guess. That all these billions of people, who encourage a teenager to kill for their sake or die trying, survived while you, who I’ve seen go to the trouble of catching insects just to release them outside, didn’t.”
Finally, he turned to Carlito, expecting to see a skull, or maybe the demoness, Jezebeth’s red eyes staring back at him, reminding him that the ten-year-old was dead and gone. Instead, his brother had his brows raised. He let out a nervous chuckle. “Are you okay, bro? Do you want an aspirin or something?”
When he heard those words, words that Carlito had never actually spoken, Rodrigo’s eyes widened. He allowed hope to rear its ugly head, yearning for this to be real. He needed it to be. All the events that followed this moment could have been a figment of an overactive imagination, and he’d be okay with that. Rodrigo pulled his brother in for a crushing hug.
It was seconds later, when he felt something warm and damp trickle down his neck, that the fantasy was shattered. Pushing away, he saw the blood leaking out of Carlito’s eyes, nostrils, mouth, and ears. The consequence of him resisting Jezebeth’s control over him. Rodrigo shot up and turned away, refusing to be subjected to this sight for the hundredth time.
But the nightmare had its hooks in him now, and a second Carlito was in front of him, muttering something too quiet to be heard, as his senses died. Rodrigo shut his eyes as if those thin folds of skin could protect him from the truth, but the flickering orange glow piercing the darkness forced his eyelids open. A third Carlito was burning now, showing the final way in which Rodrigo had failed him. Being too much of a coward to even grant his little brother a proper farewell.
“Enough!” Rodrigo screamed, his right arm, flesh and blood until now, decaying to reveal the pitch-black replacement of reality, thrust for Carlito’s throat within the flames. His clawed fingertips stopped short. Even in his imagination he couldn’t bring himself to hurt his brother.
Rodrigo wrapped his arms around Carlito, hugging him tight. Combusting alongside him, numb to the physical pain of his blistering skin, his eyes welled with tears as he whispered into his brother’s dissolving ear, “I’m sorry...I’m sorry...I’m so sorry.”
#
When the nightmare ended, Rodrigo was in a fouler mood than he’d been in for a while. Other than Adena, who had been an insomniac for years, horrible dreams plagued his entire group following the invasion. In the first week, the dreams had been so intense that to avoid them, everyone pushed themselves to stay awake for as long as humanly possible, and no one was comfortable sleeping in a room alone. The dreams where Rodrigo recalled the massacre and destruction were upsetting, but the more personal ones, ones that reflected his weakness and poor judgment, tore at his guts like a pack of rabid dogs.
As Rodrigo tried to put his past failures out of mind, his attention turned toward what was happening in the present. There were a half-dozen men lying on the ground of an outdoor basketball court with knives and makeshift weapons littered around them. Their bodies were bloodied, broken, and contorted. Resent was seated on a nearby bench and digging through a stack of wallets.
“What the hell have you done now?” Rodrigo asked.
“Calm yourself. They struck first and I generously left them breathing. After your incessant objections to all my more lucrative suggestions, you’ve forced me to lower myself to a common brigand. If it assuages your conscience, consider it their payment for infringing upon my time.”
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Since coming to the realization that they needed to keep a low-profile and therefore, he couldn’t just take whatever he wanted by force, Resent had become mildly obsessed with obtaining money. Not wanting to owe Adena any more than he already did, Resent refused to accept anything beyond shelter from the young multimillionaire.
At first, after watching one UFC rerun too many, Resent wanted to partake in underground fighting, but abandoned the idea when he learned he’d need to wear little clothing and wouldn’t be able to hide the nebulous arm. Then after doing some research using “the Google”, he was convinced of having put together a master plan for robbing a bank. Though Rodrigo had talked the prince out of it at the time, he still expected to stumble into a large sum of stolen bills one of these days.
“So, I guess accepting that job offer from the D.N.F is still out of the question, huh?” Rodrigo asked.
Resent scoffed as he rose, pocketing his ill-gotten gains. “Slaying my fellow demons for insubordination is one thing. Being paid by the humans to do their dirty work for them is another.”
“Point taken.” Even if Resent wasn’t in the picture, Rodrigo would have had his own reservations about being a military asset. Sure, they’d be satisfied with him focusing his efforts on the demons, at first. Until the government got a better handle on dealing with them, and decided to send him after the rogue states that had withdrawn from the United Nations, uninterested in joining the Negation Force. “Anyway, what about Jett? Don’t tell me you let him go after the demons on his own.”
“When I reach the end of my hour, you’re free to seek him out.”
“Is it my birthday yet?”
“Irrelevant.”
On Geo’s thirteenth birthday in January, Resent, ray of sunshine as usual, had shared that in Hell, all a birthday entitled you to was coming one year closer to the end of your lifespan. Apparently, the closest thing demons had to a holiday was the annual tournament held in the capital on the date of the current ruler’s appointment. The winner attained the title of conqueror, a rank that mostly granted them independence from the hierarchy of Hell’s legions. Only the high lord of a conqueror’s city and the ruler themselves had any sway over them.
“Look, Resent, I don’t care if it’s you or me, but someone needs to meet up with Jett. I’m not gonna leave him out there on his own because you want to make a couple hundred bucks.”
“By my estimate, I’ve procured a few thousand today.”
Before Rodrigo could ask how he managed that, Resent passed by a tinted car window and his reflection provided the answer. He was aware Resent had purchased his own wardrobe of high-end clothing, but this was the most flamboyant Rodrigo had ever seen him. Strolling through sketchy neighborhoods in the dead of night, while wearing a black silk shirt with diamond cufflinks and a gold studded belt, was like sticking a neon “mug me” sign on his back. It was predatory behavior, luring people in that way, but as someone who couldn’t have defended themselves half as well would’ve been targeted otherwise, Rodrigo had a hard time dredging up sympathy for Resent’s victims.
Resent removed his right glove and placed his index finger to the keyhole on the door of a black-and-gold Mercedes-Benz. The nebulae entered the lock, molding themselves into the bit of a key, and unlocking the door with a twist.
“Uh, what are you doing?” Rodrigo asked.
“Going to the twig’s rescue as requested.”
“I mean with the car. This isn’t one of Adena’s. Don’t tell me you’re not only stealing money, but cars, too. Can you not turn my life into a Grand Theft Auto game?”
“I’m merely borrowing it.” Resent slid into the driver’s seat, putting his right hand to the ignition and the nebulae started the car. He had learned how to drive by observing Jett and Adena, but unlike them, paid alarmingly little attention to speed-limits or traffic signals. The only reason Rodrigo could see for Resent not having been pulled over yet was the overwhelming amount of far worse crimes being perpetrated.
“Can you at least try not to get us arrested?” Rodrigo asked.
“Do you actually think I would permit that? Now, stop pestering me, mongrel, before I decide to carry on with my business.”
Rodrigo left it at that. Although he never had anything resembling control over Resent, the prince had gotten progressively worse as his skill with possession grew and it became harder for Rodrigo to mentally overcome him. They really needed to go back to Hell and gather more information on these absent angels who could supposedly restore Resent’s original body. However, the few portals Adena knew of were all under military guard 24/7. With just seven months left until Resent was passed over for the throne, the unsettling possibility of the two of them sharing Rodrigo’s body indefinitely became more likely each day.
Resent came to an abrupt stop about an hour later, allowing his spiky hair to drop down into Rodrigo’s Caesar style. Unfortunately, he was still unable to keep his irises from turning purple and pupils from reshaping into slits, and had to rely on contact lenses. In the backpack next to him, under wads of small bills, were Rodrigo’s clothes. Resent glanced at the black and purple threads, the color scheme alone now synonymous with Karma. He seemed to mull something over, then got out of the car.
“Aren’t you gonna change clothes?” Rodrigo asked.
“There’s no time. A multitude of demons are headed our way. Strange. For all your military’s faults, they are not lacking in persistence. I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t engage a group so large.”
Resent was using a sixth sense that all demons were born with, as natural as sight was for humans. It allowed him to perceive the location and species of nearby living things via their life energy. Rodrigo’s own energy sense was still a work in progress, so it certainly didn’t give him room to doubt Resent’s. But they should be able to see a horde like that. Not to mention, while the mere sight of a demon or two wasn’t enough to send most people into a panic anymore, a mob like he was suggesting was another story. It was past midnight, so there were few people outside their homes, shelters, or camps, though none of them looked particularly frightened.
All of a sudden, Rodrigo registered the demons in question, like a prickling of cold on his skin. Two, five, ten...too many for him to count. And yet still, there were no other signs of them.
“Are they traveling underground?” Rodrigo asked. Through the historical texts pertaining to demons that Adena had lent him, he had educated himself on the most prominent demonic races, beyond what Resent was willing to share. There were so few books based on factual information that had been translated into English, but several referenced the fur-covered kincree, small creatures who burrowed through the ground in groups as large as a thousand.
“Not quite.” Resent’s gaze was downcast, sweeping all around.
Within the next second, a slew of demons belonging to various races sprouted up from the asphalt, encircling him. Tires screeched as all at once, multiple surrounding vehicles crashed. Then the screaming began.