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A coppery smell tinged the air, and the ghoul standing in the middle of the chaos grinned.
Blood was splattered all over the wall, dark red liquid dripping down and over the skirting board. He was surprised it had gone that far if he was honest; but arterial spray was always impressive. It was spread in a huge pool around his feet too. The carpet squelched as he moved, blood rising up through the fibres as he put his foot down and pushed. It welled around the pressure. Oh, the maintenance ghouls were going to be so mad with him.
He stared at the source, dead for a good fifteen minutes now. Sent on a fool’s errand to try and assassinate Papa Emeritus the Fourth. Climbing in the window as quietly as she could, muttering as her soft feet landed in an empty storage room on the second floor. All the stealth in the world couldn’t save you when the smell of your fear was so strong it could rouse even the laziest hellbeast. He’d already been in the room when she’d gotten there.
He walked forward, dress shoes sinking into the wet carpet. His joints clicked as he moved, knees cracking as they moved backwards and forwards, inverting farther back than any human’s legs could have without serious injury. His crooked spine and broken horns cast a satisfyingly horrific shadow in the light of the moon.
She might have been pretty, for a human. He didn’t understand their strange ideals of beauty. Long blonde hair that was now tangled, starting to matt as the blood dried. Delicate features frozen in a state of fear, of agony. He guessed she had probably planned on masquerading as a Sibling, judging by the crudely made grucifix around her neck. A fake from a mile away, it would never have worked. Really, he had done her a favour. And what was a little pain to go along with it? Payback, as it were. For what she had planned to do.
He nudged her arm. The one no longer attached to her body. Hyperextended elbows were something he possessed, but apparently with humans it caused dislocated bones and, with enough force, and a little back-and-forth, the skin and muscle could tear and the lower arm would just pop right off. Well, now he knew. It was her own fault anyway, trying to run like she had. Her arm had been the closest thing to grab.
She had blue eyes. Nowhere near as nice as Mist’s or Rain’s, though. He crouched down and reached out, trailing a claw over her face, over her cheek and nose, in a circle around her left eye. She wouldn’t miss it.
He pulled back her eyelid with one hand, admiring the white around the iris with a tilted head. He paused for a moment and then moved quickly, digging his claws into her eye socket around her eye. It made a wet squelching noise, and blood started to pour out around his claws. He got them to the back of the eye and pulled, popping it out of the socket and watching as it dangled down her face. Still attached by the optic nerve, but that was easily fixed. With a swipe of a claw the nerve was severed, and he caught it before it rolled down her face to the floor. No point in getting his food dirty, after all.
He stuck it into his mouth and bit down, pressing it between his long forked tongue and the flat teeth on the roof of his mouth. There was a moment of still as he put pressure on it with his tongue before it popped. Juice spilled out and filled his mouth, some of it dribbling out and down his chin. He swirled it round in his mouth, thoroughly enjoying the taste and the texture of the jelly-like substance, before catching the cornea between his sharp front teeth and crunching down. He chewed up the attached part of the severed optic nerve before swallowing, licking the juice from his lips as he stared back down at the woman.
Sister Imperator had once called him cruel. Even for a demon , she’d said. You have a real mean streak in you. He thought she couldn’t have known very many honest demons. And anyway, he didn’t agree. If he really was cruel, he’d have taken his midnight snack while she was still alive.
He sighed. He really should move the body. That would be the nice thing to do. Last time he had… forgotten … and a young Sibling had found it. Screamed the abbey down. And Terzo had been so disappointed in him.
He almost had the corpse gathered in his arms when there was a strange buzzing sound. He stared in mild confusion before realising it was coming from one of her pockets. He scrambled for it and pulled out a phone, buzzing away as someone tried to reach her. He crouched down next to her corpse as curiosity took over and he pressed the accept button, spine cracking as he moved. He had been told there was only one, but…
“Maria? Where the fuck are you? I thought we were meeting in the chapel?”
How interesting.
“Hello? Maria? I swear to God you better not have bailed on me.”
He tilted his head. Considered his options. Then opened his mouth and her voice squirmed out, filling his throat and tasting foul on his tongue like tobacco.
“I’m just coming. Stay where you are.”
The man on the other end huffed.
“Well, hurry the fuck up. This place gives me the creeps. I want to get this done and then get the hell out of here.”
He stared at the phone as it clicked to silence. He growled and chucked it down next to the corpse. Just when he’d thought he could go back to his den soon. He turned on his heel and strode out of the room, carpet squelching beneath his feet. He’d deal with the woman’s body later.
Bloody footprints followed him as he stalked down the empty corridors. He almost melted into the shadows as he walked, the darkness shrouding him. He always preferred the abbey at night. It was so much quieter, so much more peaceful. No humans to bother him, with their shrill voices and silly ideas. Ideas of freedom. Ideas that their worship might get them somewhere. He knew that if their Lord truly listened, he wouldn’t still be here like this. Joints put together the wrong way, bones that split and cracked when he moved, no voice for his own. The wretched results of a summoning ritual gone wrong. The Lord abandoned him a long time ago.
Finding the man wasn’t difficult. He was sitting on one of the front pews, oozing arrogance. He didn’t hear as the ghoul walked down the aisle, trailing the blood of his friend. The ghoul wondered how long he could stand like this, right behind the man, without him noticing. If he hadn’t already had a cleanup job to do, maybe he’d have found out.
As it was, he had to be quick. He grabbed the man’s hair and yanked his head backwards. The look of shock and fear on his face soon turned to panicked agony as the ghoul brought up a claw and sliced it neatly across the front of his throat, cutting through the trachea and severing the vocal cords. The man gasped for breath and brought his hands up to his throat, trying to stem the blood that suddenly leaked copiously from the gash.
The ghoul shoved the man forward and he fell unceremoniously, staining the cobbles in a quickly-spreading pool of scarlet. He tried to scrabble backwards to the marble steps, one hand still on his throat. The fear on his face was delightful. The ghoul knew he must have looked quite the sight, all disjointed and truly covered in blood. The man didn’t have long, but the ghoul couldn’t help a final dig. He strode forward and placed a bloodied shoe on the man’s chest to keep him there. The stolen voice of a corpse oozed past his lips.
“Going somewhere?”
The shock and realisation on the man’s face was beautiful. He didn’t have a chance to react any more than that. The ghoul grabbed his hair again and yanked his head up, slamming it backwards and cracking it off a marble step. It painted the white with red and the man fell down, unmoving.
The ghoul watched for a moment before remembering the other body he had to clean up. He growled low in the back of his throat and bent to lift the man.
The next day after Mass the ghoul slipped along a corridor, clothes and face free from the mess of the night before. The maintenance ghouls had done a marvellous job in the chapel; the marble was white once again, and nobody really looked that closely at the cobblestones anyway. He hadn’t checked the storage room yet, but it wasn’t really his problem. He just had one last task to do.
The siblings never noticed as he moved through the shadows, slinking from room to room. They’d shiver as he passed, and comment how cold it was for a summer’s day, but then push it from their minds as he left. He liked it that way.
He reached the office of Papa Emeritus the First and knocked, then entered when called on. The old man had built himself a reputation of stern but kind, the one everyone could rely on. Most of the abbey would never know of the dark magic that lay in his books, the rituals that happened in the dead of night under his watchful eye.
The man sat behind his desk, and straightened when he saw the ghoul. “Yes?” he said sharply. Nobody liked it when the ghoul came to see them. It was normally unpleasant news. Not today, though.
“There are two bodies in the basement for you,” he said. Not his voice; never his voice. A voice that belonged to a man who lay in a dark basement and would soon be used as a conduit. For what? None of the ghoul’s business.
Primo nodded. “Thank you, ghoul. Your services to the church do not go understated. You are… talented.”
The ghoul nodded, taking his cue to leave. He allowed himself a grin as he stood in the corridor and watched the siblings go by. None of them ever knew there was a monster so close, lurking in the shadows. He was glad the old man thought he was useful. He deserved a little praise now and then for all his hard work. After all, he was a very Special ghoul.