Mercy's Fall

Chapter 2: Pierce

The darkness called to him; the blackness a partner to the fury embedded in his soul--if that is what you can call the thin wisp of smoke his body encased. He was a dark angel who possessed a deceptive beauty. His pretty silver eyes were sparked with intelligence, yet unspeakable sadness and terror and evil shined through. His natural black hair fell onto his forehead, complimenting his pale, flawless skin, skin that should be marked with age. He walked on this earth, yet he belonged in a different dimension--a dimension where fires rage and souls burn. No, Pierce did not look like he came from Hell.

Yet there he was. A beautiful gem in a sea of ugly, distorted demons all around him. He, himself, was something of a demon, but something more...something important.

Important, he thought to himself with wonder. Must be something important. What else could it possibly be? If it wasn’t important, why would He send Pierce up to earth?

Pierce wasn’t the type of evil that played around with his meat. He never did possess a human, nor did he ever terrorize one. The urge never did call to him like it did with the others; he was different in that aspect as well. His evil had more depth. More...importance.

Which is why He wouldn’t send Pierce up on earth to collect a corrupted soul. Pierce only took on the big jobs. He was stronger than the others, so he took on different jobs than the others--more advanced jobs than the others. And, boy, did the others hate him for it.

Pierce revelled in the envy of his fellow demons. Pierce revelled in much: his beauty, his evil, others’ envy. He lived on it; it drove him to become more beautiful and more evil and more envious. This ambition is what caused him to come on earth, a place he hadn’t been for quite some time.

“Find her,” Pierce recalled the deep voice, laced with malice. “You must find the child and bring her to me.” That was all He had said, and Pierce had to figure the rest out for himself. There were the normal questions one asked themselves when faced with a seemingly impossible task such as Pierce’s: who is this girl? Where do I find her? When will I need to find her by? How do I find her? Why do I find her? Why is she so important? What does she look like? But the only question that ran through Pierce’s mind initially was what the reward would be for finding this mystery girl. He figured he’d deal with the other crap later.

That later came sooner than Pierce expected when he found himself transported to an empty street in an unknown town. Identical houses were lined side by side all down the street, and there were cars parked in almost every driveway. The darkness of the night was cast away by dozens of lights: streetlights, lights outside houses, lights from inside houses, lights everywhere. Pierce hadn’t been up to earth in quite some time, but he was accustomed to the evolution of the human race. So the lights didn’t really surprise him, they repelled him. Pierce was a creature of the night; anything that had to do with light or brightness, Pierce simply wanted nothing to do with. That was something Pierce hated about coming up to earth: it was so damn bright all the time.

“Where to start?” Pierce asked aloud to himself, glancing around the street. Apart from crickets and human talk in a few houses, the night was silent. Pierce was still wearing his blood red cloak he’d been wearing before he was transported to earth no more than five minutes ago. He stood out like a sore thumb in the modern human world, and he knew he had to change that. Pierce reluctantly walked up to a garbage can, took off his beloved cloak and dropped it in the trash. He was left in a black t-shirt, black slacks, and black dress shoes. “Looks like I’m off to find me some new clothes,” he said, looking at himself. If he had any hope catching this mystery girl’s attention, he needed to look human.

****

The door’s bell rang out and music reached Pierce’s ears. The store was filled with racks of all types of clothing. A few customers roamed through the racks pausing every now and then to check something out, only to continue in their fruitless search. The clothing store wasn’t very busy.