Zero may have been out of his mind and out of control, but he sure was clever. Sakura and Ren had spent hours bouncing around back and forth, zigzagging, and going around in circles time and time again. The devil had pulled Ivy’s scent through a dizzying maze that they couldn’t find their way out of.

Ren was impressed. Of course, he would never utter those words out loud. That would be foolish. The mere suggestion would undoubtedly set the fox demon off into a belligerent rage that would leave them both battered and bloody. It was best to just continue muttering words of comfort and encouragement and keep his deeper thoughts to himself.

But his fascination swelled the further they traveled, the more dead ends they ran into, the more loose ends that couldn’t be tied together.

By all means, Zero shouldn’t have been able to create such an elaborate goose chase. Not in the state he was in. A devil gone mad was only pure, unfiltered destruction. Once they reached that breaking point, any ability to think beyond their unattainable thirst to destroy was impossible. If a devil didn’t end up being killed by someone who could take easy advantage of their disarray, then they would only end up terminating their own lives when there was nothing left in the ruins.

But that wasn’t Zero. The boy had been able to defend against Ren’s attacks calmly as he predicted his moves and acted accordingly, just as the man had taught him. He was still plotting and observing, setting traps, and creating ample time in order to not be found.

Zero didn’t want destruction.

He wanted Ivy.

Alone.

And that was a whole other concern.

Ren was worried about Ivy, but not in the same way that Sakura was. He had no fear over finding the girl torn and mangled, her life stripped violently from her body. There wasn’t so much as a shadow of a doubt in his mind that they would find the girl with every hair still on her perfect head. He fully believed in the boy, confident that his feelings would keep him from killing the girl that he followed so closely.

But feelings were also the problem. Ren wanted to have absolute faith, but he wasn’t ignorant, the what ifs nagging at his conscience, reminding him that the boy wasn’t in his normal state of mind.

He thought of Zero’s mother; an angel forced to birth a devil’s child.

Death wasn’t the only way to destroy a person.

The man pushed the tiny smidgen of reservation from his mind.

That wouldn’t happen.

Mad or not, one way or another, the boy would pull himself out of it.

The rain refused to let up and Sakura struggled to continue following a scent that was mostly washed away. Ren could feel the weariness in her muscles, her body becoming more limp the longer their efforts came up empty, teetering closer on the verge of giving up.

This wasn’t working.

Zero wanted to be alone.

So they needed to stop searching out in the open.

Raven wings beat down and launched the two away from the rain soaked ground and higher towards the dark gloom of clouds above before leaning sharply to the left, turning them almost completely around.

“Where are you going?” Sakura shouted above the whooshing of the wind as they got further from their original path. “Her scent goes the other way!”

“They’re not going to be that way,” he told her, his eyes on the distance. “Look around. There’s nothing out here. If someone doesn’t want to be found then they’re not going to sit out in the open with absolutely no cover. We keep going around in circles and away from that canyon. We need to look there.”

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“What if they’re not there? What if he took her further away?”

Then they were shit out of luck.

“We’ll find them.” The angel tucked his wings and shot down towards the deep canyon that had been carved into the land. He beat the black feathers forward, pushing the air away and his body straight, and dropped to the ground of stone.

Sakura was pulling away before her feet even touched the earth, smelling the wet air and walking around slowly through the labyrinth of narrow pathways. “There!” And she was gone, her legs pumping madly after the scent.

Ren followed the fox as she ran through puddles and over and around the rocks and brush, her nose tilted up as the aroma got stronger. The woman nearly crashed around a tight corner before coming to a stop, her eyes wild and burning, a snarl growing on her lips. Ren slowed to a stop behind her and looked down at the mouth of the cave hidden in the rock wall where Ivy was scurrying to stand up while Zero sat there, horns gone and eyes clear. The girl stood in front of the devil, her blood-stained arms extended, shielding the boy from what she knew was to come.

“He’s fine now!” She panicked, her words spilling too quickly. “He’s not a devil anymore. It’s not my blood. Everything’s…”

There was no time to finish as the demon stormed up and snatched the girl by the scruff of her cloak and threw her back into the angel. Her right foot slung out, swiftly connecting under Zero’s chin, whipping his head back and slamming it into the ground behind him. She was on him then, clutching his hair in her left hand and smashing her right fist into his face. She paused and then hit him again, paused and hit him again, over and over, observing the damage and regeneration of the boy’s features.

“Sakura!” Ivy pleaded, trying to pull away from the man. “Stop!”

Wings closed in around the girl, enshrouding her in their darkness as her body was turned and pressed against Rens, large hands covering her ears and protecting her from witnessing the fox’s brutality. The man watched the beating in silence, listening to Ivy’s cries and the continuous crunching of bone of Zero’s skull. It wasn’t what he wanted, to sit back and do nothing as the boy he’d practically raised for the last three years was bludgeoned and disfigured. However, intentional or not, this was the bed that Zero had made and only he could lie in it.

Sometimes we pay for our sins sooner rather than later.

And it wasn’t like the woman would be able to kill him, anyhow.

Zero took every blow, only moving to blink his eyes now and again as he stared up into Sakura’s furious emerald irises. “I’m sorry.” He’d say softly at every one of the demon’s pauses before another hit crushed into his cheeks, eyes, nose.

With time, the woman’s breathing began to slow, and the pauses became longer and longer as her rampage came closer to an end. However, another burst of rage surged through her as she began to scream and pummel his face with both fists, spraying his blood around her and splitting the bone. She came to a sudden stop and watched closely while his busted face twisted and cracked back to place.

“I’m sorry,” the devil apologized again, looking ashamed of himself.

She grabbed the bottom of his torn shirt and yanked it up, placing her hand where he had been stabbed through. The tips of her sharp nails tapped on the solid surface before she fell back and sat just above his knees. “Why don’t you die?” Sakura asked calmly, her anger completely spent.

Zero sat up, using his arms to brace his body at an angle. “I don’t know.” His voice quiet and contrite. “I’m sorry that you can’t kill me like you said you would.”

The woman looked at him, annoyed, and smacked his forehead with the flat of her palm. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I didn’t protect Ivy.”

“No. You didn’t,” she sighed. “But you obviously didn’t hurt her either. Why not?”

He looked at the girl who was now free from Ren’s protective cover. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

Sakura nodded slowly, trying to put all the pieces that shouldn’t fit together. He was a devil who had been inflicted by the madness, and yet, still had enough control to stop fighting against Ren and take Ivy all the way out into the middle of nowhere and not cause her any harm. “Do you remember what was going through your mind? What were you thinking at that time when you took Ivy?” She noticed his eyes slightly widen before he looked down, an ever so light tinge of pink on the tips of his ears.

The boy gulped uncomfortably. “Mine,” he mumbled just loud enough for the woman to hear.

“Oh really?” Sakura glanced at the sniffling girl and raised a brow at the brighter shade of pink raising on her face before turning back to the boy. “Well, isn’t that cute. Anything else?”

Zero shook his head, still looking down.

The fox poked where his horns had been. “Why aren’t you a devil now?”

“Ivy held me, and it just… went away.”

The devil’s flustered behavior would have been humorous if the reason behind it wasn’t so remarkable. “It went away?” she repeated. “Just cause Ivy held you? Just like that?”

He nodded.

“Nothing else?”

A shake of his head.

The demon chewed her cheek, the gears in her mind turning and she got to her feet, extending a hand to the devil. “Alright then, if you want my forgiveness you need to do something for me.” Her words almost a demand.

“What?” The devil took the offering and was pulled to his feet.

The angel wasn’t the only one intrigued by the boy’s unusual devil behavior.

So was she.

Sakura’s eyes were crazed, and a strange, almost psychotic smile spread across her lips. “Let me kill you.”