Chapter forty five

       It had been nearly a month since the death of Marina and I had just finished watching the latest episode of wing the magical penguin with Sergei and Delilah. The two of them had decided to bury the hatchet on what had happened after our midnight snack run to the Chinese restaurant and had quickly become friends, the problem with that was that they now often teamed up to tease me instead of bickering with each other.

        For example the day after the whole kidnapping thing which was three weeks ago, I was questioning Delilah on her nature as a succubus. Sergei was on the mainframe playing Modern warfare even though Kazimir had repeatedly told him not to download games on his computer. I ordered Delilah not to lie to me and started my questioning,

        "What superhuman abilities do you posses."

        "Besides the pheromones and hypnotism you already know about , I could shift my appearance to look like anybody I want although the more I shift the more energy it consumes. Other than that I have retractable claws , my tail is pretty strong, and I can fly for short distances."

          "Do you have any , how do I put this delicately...do you have any special dietary needs."

           Her face was expressionless even though I could see a twinkle in her eyes as she answered, "I'm a vegetarian so I try not to eat meat."

           I thought Sergei was too busy with his game to be listening to us but apparently he was more interested in our conversation and he burst into laughter, "Are you talking about dietary needs that you need to know about because she is your responsibility or because you would only be too happy to assist her with her 'needs' ."

          "Look this is a serious question. I know that Japanese anime isn't the best place to get my information but they all seem to agree that succubi need to you know..satisfy their needs or they die."

           Sergei immediately latched on to the least important part of my statement, " You watch anime about succubi? You know that means you are watching hentai right?"

           I was grinding my teeth in frustration as the two tittered together , " This is not about me ! And shut up Sergei , I'm having a serious conversation here. Now I repeat do you need to have sex to survive?"

           "Not really, although I wouldn't say no if you offered. I can simply feed off people's lust."

           "So do we need to take you to strip clubs or something?"

            She gave me a lascivious look and winked at me before saying, "I can get all the lust I need right here."

            For some reason that made me blush like a virgin which caused Sergei to laugh even harder.

            This was the kind of harassment I've been getting from the annoying duo for three whole weeks, from the way they acted you would have thought that they had been best friends for years. But with the stress of taking care of my father , visiting the hospitals several times under my nun guise and just going around town randomly checking to see if I might spot any remaining Atelli that haven't left St Petersburg, I was always very tired and had very little patience for their annoying antics. The only thing that saved them from a very bloody end was the fact that father had recently started seeing someone again. She wasn't as pretty as Marina but on the other hand she wasn't a twisted creature of nightmare either so that evens things out a little. Galina was actually one of the nurses at the hospital and she spent a lot of time with father anyways. One night dad was feeling sad and she had attempted to comfort him , the rest ,as they say, is history. 

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             She was a nice enough person even though she was a little young. She cared about the same things as dad and they really seem to be getting along but most importantly she had pulled dad out of the slump he had been in. She made him smile again and the old spring in his step had returned and in the end that was all that really mattered to me. I kept a close eye on her but everything seemed to be going fine so my stress level had decreased greatly , thanks to that I hadn't snapped and strangled the two idiots.

             But my resolution to not murder them was about to come under serious pressure. As the episode of wing ended we started to surf the internet looking for the next thing to see when Sergei noticed that there was a new video trending on YouTube and strangely enough it was a news report done by CNN but what really caught our attention was the header which read  'Persephone the black raven' . I quickly clicked on it and the video started to play.

             It was a report done by a Pulitzer prize winning reporter named Lois Kent who became famous after her report on a Texan highschool swim team coach who was waterboarding his students to increase their lung capacity. Apparently she had been investigating the mysterious case of Mr Grekov, the suspected serial killer who was found catatonic near a garbage can. She had managed to get her hands on a blurry picture of me from a convenience store parking lot camera as I followed Grekov. The picture was pixelated and not very clear but it was obvious that I was wearing a mask with black feathers. She had also offered a cash reward for anybody that was willing to give her information on the mysterious Persephone who she dubbed the raven because of the mask. One of Vladimir's men must have talked because she was able to link me to the raids on the docks , my mother's murder and even the chandelier incident. She kept throwing words around like queen of the sharpshooters, the princess of assassins and most frequently just referred to me as the raven of death and madness, or just raven.

          The annoying part was that people were listening to her and now everybody was calling me the raven on the internet. The two idiots beside me wouldn't stop making fun of me . They kept playing the video again and again while laughing like hyenas. I was so annoyed that I finally snapped and ordered Delilah to whip Sergei with her tail.

          For a second I just enjoyed watching her chase him around and whip him until he started to beg for my forgiveness. 

          That managed to cheer me up a little.

A.N. there have been some comments asking if Sophia has been shredding the Atelli she has been sniping and the answer is yes. Her powers do get harder to use at a distance if she is fighting the natural order like if she is manipulating probability or healing people but when she is shredding Atelli she is not bending any rules because they are not part of the natural order meaning she can do whatever she wants with them at any distance as long as they are not infecting another soul. I'm sorry if things feel a little rushed but I need to end this arc quickly because there is a lot of adventure and mischief coming up as Sophia goes around the world fighting Atelli.