101 - A Perfect Sky; A Storm

1

City of London. 2007.

A grateful sigh dampens the pulse in my ears. Before my next step, I take a longer look at the ground below me, my fingers curling then loosening, as if tension were bags weighing in my grasp.

Of all the ways I imagine meeting inevitable death, being pulled by a musty-dusty vampire into their musty-dusty grave has never cracked my Top 100.

But stranger things...

Thank Sineya that I get to live another moment, I tell myself flatly. How lovely it is to be left to continue to wonder what my quick fate as a Slayer will be.

Not a fresh plot with a fresh sire clawing for its first taste of fresh blood. Not tonight, at least.

No. Fate has a different plan for the evening.

And it involves a rabbit hole hidden in the flattened grass, the secretions of the recently deceased some-type-of-slug demon I'd just killed with my last stake, and the soiling of my stylish-yet-affordable heeled combat boot.

I grit my teeth at the slimy liquid encasing my boot up to the toe and remind myself again how grateful I should be that I'm not dead yet. That this mistake isn't the stupid, fatal, final one. Stepping in shit like this is just part of the job.

Predictable—and disappointing. I have never made the mistake of walking onto disturbed ground, so why would I now? Not like this, in a boring cemetery that I frequent weekly, slaying yet another boring group of boring demons. Each step I take in a graveyard is always with intention, and I've been doing this for so long that it's become second nature. The smell of fresh dirt is one I've come to scent quite well, steering clear when unnecessary and heading straight for it when it matters.

That is how I was trained.

Still, my four years of slaying have also taught me one certainty: Arrogance kills slayers.

A thick sea of clouds veils the full moon, silvering the weathered gravestones and carved monuments as I weave between the tightly packed rows and columns. This part of the cemetery is too old and has too many large trees for the hazy lampposts to be useful for what I do here—here doesn't even have a clear path, covered in ivy, traveling from one headstone to another. Much more neglected, unlike the section to the south.

Despite my slayer abilities granting me near-vampiric night vision, at this angle, with my own shadow swallowing my feet and the thick grass beneath me, I can only feel that I've stepped into the sluggy secretions; the demon—a jaundice-skinned masculine thing with green-black horns wearing a ratty tee-shirt and jeans—is sprawled on the ground to my left, his lower half smooshing a patch of wildflowers. Dead.

I raise my boot. The slime stretches as it clings to both surfaces—and suddenly, I'm wondering if I should expect my leather to start melting sometime soon due to some acidic attribute.

A few seconds go by, and my boot remains intact. Still, I'm careful not to let it touch my gloves, my exposed fingertips—that's just asking to be infected with something, like an aspect of the demon itself.

Easing into a crouch, I pull the hood of my sweatshirt up, tucking my long, onyx braid within it to avoid dragging through the residue, then lean back to spill some moonlight on my feet. Though the change is minimal, I still try to examine the substance and the creature, taking in every detail.

I can safely rule out Chaos demon, having encountered them before; I'll describe tonight's demons as their bull-horned cousins, then leave the rest up to Moira and her books.