Black Butler: Book of Prejudice

Prologue

I slowly opened my eyes and found myself lying on the hospital bed at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. I looked at my stomach and found a bandage wrapped around it with my blood still seeping out of me. As I tried to make sense of what happened to me and how I ended up in the hospital, the nurse came in with a melancholic look on her face. What's she so upset about? I wondered. I obviously survived an otherwise tragic event, so what bad news is she gonna give me now?

"Anise Phantomhive?" the nurse said reluctantly as she took her cap off her blonde head.

"Yes?" I replied.

"I really do hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your parents passed away a couple hours ago," she announced. My heart stopped for a moment.

"How could that be?" I asked.

"According to the LAPD, the same perpetrators who attacked you shot your parents with an AK-47 after they had called 911. The paramedics tried to resuscitate them on the way over here, but the bullets dug into their lungs to the point where CPR was too difficult to complete successfully. I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do now."

I started crying. "Who were those monsters?" I asked, nearly yelling. "Why did they do this to me?"

"The perpetrators were three high school sophomores--two females, two males--who attacked you for having Asperger's syndrome," the nurse said. She looked at my records and the police files on her clipboard. "According to the arrest record, the sophomores targeted you for assault to due to displaying 'extraordinary dancing talent at the school dance.'" She was right on the talent part. I've been dancing all forms of dance since I was 2 years old, and I wasn't the only talented dancer at Beverly Hills High School, so the fact that those kids bullied me solely because of my mental difference made me want to jump out of my hospital bed and punch the walls. But how could I do that with all the pain throbbing in my abdominal region? "The kids have been charged with battery on a mentally disabled minor and two counts of first-degree murder," said the nurse. "You, on the other hand, are gonna be kept here overnight for observation."

While the nurse gave me a sedative, I cried so loud I wanted to scream at the whole universe for punishing me this way when I did absolutely nothing wrong. Within a minute, the medication went into effect, and I fell asleep once again.

I woke up with my eyes half open at midnight, feeling some strange presence in my hospital room. Although the lights were out, I saw a fiery red light outlining the silhouette of a man. But what kind of man was he?

"My, what a beautiful young mistress you are," he said to me in a British accent.

"Who are you?" I asked, frightened.

"My name is Sebastian Michaelis. Your cries have summoned me from the deepest pits of Hell on account of your recent misfortunes."

"So you'll help me?" I asked.

Sebastian extended his hand to me and I reached for it. As soon as I gripped it, my palm burned; I felt like I was getting branded. And branded I was, because I had a pentagram burned into my hand, and it was bleeding.

I had made a deal with the agent of the Devil.