Chapter Text
BABY
Death had been too good an answer, too lucky a break for somebody like him.
Still, he’d dreamed. While in the space between; forbidden from reentering Gwi-Ma’s realm, locked out of the real world he’d managed to experience for a few sweet weeks. Wishing, through the haze of it all, to stay gone. Like eventually he’d slip away for good.
It would’ve been easy that way, and nothing in Baby’s life had ever been easy.
When he came back it was wholly, alive and uninjured, though something had changed. Fate had dropped him someplace he couldn’t recognize, a rainy street alley illuminated by fluorescent lights. But the inkling of change woke up with him. He sat up best he could, then fell onto all fours as a wave of nausea rolled over him. Nausea. Not the distant, permanent ache of shame and guilt, not the onslaught of hatred pumped into his system from a master. A real, authentic stomachache.
Baby pushed his soaked sleeve up over his elbow, examined carefully the place where the deep purple patterns should’ve been. In their place were faint white and pink smudges, like scars.
He looked upwards into the night sky. Here, in Seoul he assumed, few stars were on display.
“I’m—” He’d meant to think it, but the words slipped out, fighting to prove that the universe could hear him. That this wasn’t another trick meant to torment him. “I’m human.”
MIRA
Two weeks on the couch and a terrible guest had joined them in the apartment: boredom.
“Not to be, like, insensitive—” Mira raised her head just enough to guarantee Zoey was listening, then rolled herself over the arm of the couch as if to crack her back. “But I miss demons. Made things fun.”
Zoey shot a look from her corner of the couch. She’d picked up scrapbooking during their hiatus, and was currently putting together a ‘honmoon memory book’. “You shouldn’t say that. A lot of people—” Suddenly she glanced upwards at nothing and whispered a few fervent words under her breath. “—died.” Zoey wasn’t religious (how could she be after realizing she was the thing standing between demonic destruction and the world?) but she’d taken to praying recently, just quiet whispers directed at nothing. Mira hadn’t asked, but she recalled from some past conversation that her family back in the states were catholic.
Losing a life’s purpose, completing a mission sooner than later… It was weirding them all out.
Mira scooted further off the couch, only a few centimeters from slipping off entirely and hitting the floor. “Want to hit something.”
“We could spar again, I guess—”
“Want to hit something for real,” Mira snapped back. Zoey was the wrong recipient of her frustration, she knew that, but she was the only person around. “Want to rip something up and kick it back to demon-world.”
“They’re not all bad.” Zoe changed her voice just slightly, slipped effortlessly into her Rumi impression. “They have feelings too.”
Mira suppressed a laugh. “I liked it better when they didn’t have feelings.”
“And I liked it better when Rumi hung out with us.”
And that ended it, because what could Mira say to that? Going two weeks without seeing a friend was probably normal for some people, but the Huntrix brand of codependency really didn’t allow for breaks. It was unprecedented, unheard of, and unfair. This wasn’t the time to avoid one another, no matter how deeply Rumi was aching over her million year old dead demon boyfriend, or whatever he was.
Mira hit the floor, tucked her head, and rolled backwards into a crouch. “We gotta find something to do, Zo. This is pathetic.”
“Like laser tag?”
“No, like a fight. There’s gotta be something else out there, right? Something bad?”
“Criminals?”
Mira groaned, began to pace beside the floor to ceiling windows. “We’re not cops, be serious here. Something meaningful, supernatural. What else is there? Ghosts? Zombies? Think.”
Zoey snickered behind a hand. “Zombies?”
“Just think. I mean—”
The intercom buzzed.
The two of them stilled. Bobby didn’t buzz, Rumi had a key. No one else should know where they lived, and even if they did, the doorman wouldn’t let a fan get all the way to the intercom.
Zoey pulled her scrapbook in close to her chest, clutched it so she was just a pair of wide eyes staring up above it. “Who?”
“No idea.”
“Should..?”
“Someone’s gotta.” Mira was getting her hopes up, she knew it, but a little flutter of anticipation had awoken in her gut. A new mission, maybe. Something to do, someone to hunt. She vaulted over the sectional, skidded across the marble and punched a knuckle into the button. “Yeah?”
“Someone here for you, miss.”
She shot a look back to Zoey. “Who?”
“Won’t say,” the doorman said. There was a tinge of hesitation to his tone. “One guy, real messed up looking. Stumbled in here looking for one of you three.”
“Send him up.”
“Mira!” Zoey squeaked.
But Mira knew there wasn’t much the two of them had to be scared of, especially not after two weeks of rest and with a full fledged honmoon in place. They’d hit a plateau, yes, but it’d stagnated at the height of their abilities. Maybe that was it, then; the root of her frustration. She’d finally reached a point where she felt ready for anything, ready to fight, and for the first time in her life there was no enemy.
Her arm twitched, itching to summon her gok-do and swing.
She took a few steps back, hands clenching into fists, eyes glued to the number at the top of the elevator door. 1…2…3…. Had it always moved this slow?
“There’s nothing wrong with resting,” Zoey was saying. “You’ve always said that before, it’s couch time, right?”
8…9…10…
“We should start writing for when we have our comeback, we should—”
Ding.
Mira bent her knees just barely, hands out before her, for once hoping something terrible would burst from the elevator doors. But when they slid open, the figure on the other side took two shaking steps into the apartment before crumbling to his knees, coughing violently.
“What?” Zoey whispered.
“You!” Mira pounced, pinned her knees into his shoulders, drove his head into the floor hard with one hand. But it was too easy, over too quickly. The Saja Boy did not fight her. Why wouldn’t he fight her? He hadn’t resisted, had barely even flinched as she’d tackled. Slowly, she removed her hand, took a good look at the demon she’d sworn they’d killed last month.
The word that came to mind was small. Twitching slightly, eyes unfocused and glazed over. His skin had taken on an ashen tone, and his patterns stood out white, like Rumi’s.
“Baby?” Zoey stepped closer, her spirit knives summoned and in one hand.
“Crawled out of the gutter,” Mira mumbled. She looked up. “Well? Throw.”
“He looks awful.”
Mira couldn’t care less how he’d looked. He’d tried to destroy them, he’d tried to kill them. “Come on, before he fights back.”
But Zoey let her knives dissipate into the air, instead knelt to join them on the floor. She used one hand to push the dirty, dull blue hair off his forehead. “He’s just a boy, Mira.”
“He’s a demon.”
“Is he? We sealed him in here, I think. Somehow.”
“So put his ancient ass out of his misery, then. Come on.” Baby stirred, his eyes fluttered slightly, his pupils were dilated like crazy. Mira raised a hand, preparing to summon her weapon. If Zoey was going soft like Rumi, then it had to be her.
“Mira…”
Baby jolted upwards against Mira’s weight. “I—” His eyes bugged, shot from side to side. “Help—” And then it poured out of him: vile black blood bubbling up past his lips, dripping from his nose and the corners of his eyes.
Mira scrambled away from him, her fears scattered at the sight. It’d gotten on her hands, on the knees of her jeans. She brushed at it, as if it might go away, and let out a screech.
Baby rolled onto his stomach, clenched up and then heaved out another wave. It pooled across the marble, looking impossibly dark and somehow alive. Zoey had retreated to the couch, stood up on the cushions and stared the same way she might’ve if a large spider had crawled across the floor.
The two of them thought they’d seen everything, done everything, but now they could only watch. Because why was a Saja boy in their apartment vomiting his brains out? What the fuck?
At last he stilled, collapsed onto his side straight into the mess, his chest heaving as he fought for air. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. The previous spark he’d had, the glimmer of cruelty and want, was gone. It really was just a boy, and a horribly damaged one at that. “I can’t find Abby.”
A few feet behind him the blue tiger slipped away into the floor.
///
“No answer.” Zoey slowly set her cellphone back onto the coffee table. “Any ideas?”
Mira racked a hand through her hair, the pigtails she’d done earlier that day now reduced to mere suggestions. “Oh my god. It’s fine. Really.” She forced herself to straighten, to stop pacing. Rumi wasn’t their leader, she wasn’t the boss. The three of them were on equal terms, which meant she and Zoey were just as equipped to deal with this situation. “We’ll question him, then kill him, then hunt down the others. Okay?”
“Nice try.” It’d been an hour since Baby Saja passed out on their floor, and the death idea was still not something Zoey was willing to agree to. “I like the first part, though. And the third part.” She stood, crossed over to where Mira stood trembling, and set a hand on her back, rubbed gently. “We’ll figure this all out, okay?”
“And when we can’t?”
“Haven’t gotten there yet. Stay in the right now. Remember—”
A cough stopped them both.
Baby, now bound to one of their dining chairs, raised his head slowly. His chin was coated in dried, flaking blood, his eyes stained from his tainted tears. “Where am I?”
Zoey went to him, knelt beside his chair. “It’s okay.” Her voice was feather light, cautious and calm.
Maybe something in Mira was broken. Maybe something she was supposed to develop in childhood had never quite clicked into place. Because she saw something like this, something broken and suffering, and all she could think was how much easier it’d be to slaughter. Empathy, even curiosity, was the furthest thing from her mind.
Or, if she didn’t want to get weepy about it, maybe she was just effective in a way Zoey never could be. Because Baby had entranced them, lured them, plotted to kill every person they held dear. Why shouldn’t she want him dead?
There. Her grit was back, and the sliver of guilty longing shied away in its presence.
“How are you alive?” she demanded.
Baby glanced at her, then down at the thick rope around his chest, arms, and legs. “This really isn’t—”
“How are you alive.”
Baby let out a sigh. “No clue.”
“It’s okay, Baby.” Zoey reached out a hand, as if to touch his face. Mira snatched her back by the shoulder before she could. “Hey—”
“And what’s your real name? I’m not calling you baby.”
“Don’t have one.” His gaze drooped, a practiced expression of tasteful vulnerability transforming him into something sweet, adorable, and fake. “Demons don’t get to keep names, not after a while.”
“So you admit you’re a demon?” She shot a look to Zoey, who rolled her eyes. “Well then, I hereby sentence you to death.” In one smooth motion she summoned her gok-do, slung the blade back over one shoulder, and prepared to swing.
“Nice try, Mira.” Zoey stood, zero urgency in her movements, and strode off into the kitchen. She returned a moment later, a damp dishtowel in her hand. As instructed, Mira stayed poised, weapon cocked, knowing she couldn’t go against Zoey’s wants.
That was the problem with Zoey. She had a way of weaseling her way into you, making you want things you shouldn’t. Like second chances, like patience, like bath houses.
Carefully, Zoey dabbed at the gore on Baby’s chin, beneath his eyes. “Tell me what’s going on.” She just barely mumbled it, the way someone would talk to an actual baby.
“I woke up.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. And I’m,” he paused, and Mira could practically feel him waiting for the fangirls to swoon. Oh the angst. Oh the charm. Boo-hoo. “I’m different. Something is different.”
“Oh?” Zoey stared up at him. Gazing, wondering. “What feels different?”
He stared back. His hair pressed to his forehead, his eyes big and watery. He was too pretty, too needy, and too pathetic. Three things Zoey was weak to.“I’m feeling things, real things.”
Mira felt her face twitch.
“Help me find the others.” He blinked, and a single, mournful tear slipped down his cheek. “Please.”
Zoey looked back at Mira, eyebrows raised. She wanted to. Clearly, she wanted to. She loved broken things, she loved tragic boys. That was what made them different. Mira created broken things, she created tragic boys.
“Mira?” Zoey rested a hand on Baby’s knee. “Can we help him?”
Every fiber in Mira’s body screamed no. Every minute of training she’d endured, every hard earned lesson. But this was Zoey, and Zoey was like light incarnate. “Fine.” Mira turned away, disgusted with herself. “We find them. We kill them. Got it?”
“Good.” But it was Baby’s voice, and it was dead fucking serious. “We deserve it.”