Quite often, demons were too stupid to be afraid. This trigger proved no different. Wailing its fury at her interference, deceived by her slim stature and the blank stare of her hollow eyes, the aged apparition crashed toward her.
Like great globs of brain tissue exposed to the elements, the excess flesh swung around the face. Pale eyes watery with age or tears displayed a bone-deep hatred. Parted on a fierce cry, wrinkled lips exposed toothless gums.
One bony limb lifted, creating an arc of blistering red and smoldering gray, intent on striking her.
Perfect.
In a straight, well-aimed strike, Gaby slashed with her knife, using the momentum of the attack to aid her. The finely honed edge penetrated the chest wall with ease. Gaby stuck her knife long and deep through loose, buttery flesh, until it deflected off a brittle rib.
The demon staggered, bent—and Gaby severed the windpipe, turning the shriek of pain and surprise into a repugnant gurgle.
She could have stopped there.
She should have stopped; it would have been less messy.
But when in the zone, Gaby lacked control. And when it came to the abuse of children, she considered mere death a feeble cop-out. For as long as the creature gasped for air, for as long as it could feel the slashing of her wrath. Gaby would administer her own fitting punishment.
Teeth bared in the grisly semblance of a smile, she hacked again, sinking deep into a blackened heart that accepted her blade like a stick through a marshmallow, soft and squishy.
Easy.
Satisfying.
Determined to give as much as she could, Gaby twisted the blade and wrenched it back out, doing as much damage on her exit as she'd done on the thrust.
Uncaring of the writhing, incoherent pleas and the chubby, dwarfed hands that batted at her in futile defense, Gaby gouged into wet, twisted guts, into those awful, bulbous growths on the head.
The body stilled, all movement ceasing, and still she used both hands, her breath coming in grunts as she sawed through organs and muscle.
Even in the afterlife, this malevolence would never again menace a child. When the coppery taste of blood polluted her mouth, Gaby finally stopped. She smelled the tang of the blood, felt the sting of it in her eyes.
The blood and gore was… everywhere. Bits and pieces of flesh, skin and bone, splattered and spilled on the ground, on the remains of the body… and on her.
Gasping, Gaby took a hasty, appalled step backward. She gagged, spat, and swiped an arm across her eyes and mouth.
Silenced by the violence of her own acts, she waited for the ease that followed a kill. Nothing moved but her rapidly pumping heartbeat and the bellowing of her chest as she sucked in stale, hot air. Anxious for the return of sanity, she closed her eyes.
But the relief didn't come.
Alarm clung to her; pain prodded and pulled.
What the hell was happening ?
Abruptly, she whiffed it in the air, the rancid scent of immorality. Accepting the prickling of fresh alarm, Gaby tried to prepare her depleted body.
Somewhere near to her, a presence lurked. The colors flowing in and around the area shifted with ominous overtones, all shades faded and greasy in deceptive connation, moving with the speed of a turbulent river, too fast for her to decipher. She sensed another's gleeful satisfaction and dawning perception, a perception that perhaps matched her own.
Blinding pain ripped a groan from her soul that she couldn't silence.
The knife, now slick with blood, almost slipped from her numbed fingers. She clung to it, bracing her feet apart to stay upright, to stay alert.
Whatever stalked her, she had to defend herself.
No one else would.
Thankfully, no sooner did Gaby have the thought than the alarm began receding, sliding away until only her thrumming grief remained.
She searched the area, searched her own senses, but could detect nothing. Slowly, through a lessening of misery that told her all was now well. Gaby came back to herself.
Whatever had plagued her, whatever had watched her, was now gone.
Nausea rolled over her. Her vision cleared and the brilliance faded, dissolving into the air until only the drab, washed-out colors of patchy grass, scorched trees and hazy sky remained. They were a dull contrast to the rich hues of auras.
They were the real world. If only she never again had to leave it.
A breeze tickled over her, reviving her.
Gaby didn't want to look. She hated looking, but facing the destruction had become an inexorable tangibility for her, a penance she forced herself to pay, no matter the cost.
Eyes burning, body taut with trepidation, she lifted her lashes.
Her knees buckled and she dropped down hard.
The man whose head barely remained attached to his neck, lying in a dark pool of his own body secretions, in no way resembled the demon she'd just destroyed.
Deformed yes, although now, thanks to her, most of the deformities were gone, hacked off, no longer a part of his body. He looked…
He looked like someone's grandpa. Someone's murdered, mutilated grandpa.
All but decapitated.
Hand shaking, Gaby reached out to smooth his gray, disheveled hair, clumpy with blood, gore, and the remnants of chunky flesh and displaced muscle. She nudged his skull over, putting it more in line with his shoulders. Grizzled eyebrows framed soulless eyes, frozen with the horror she had delivered so skillfully.
She guessed his age somewhere in the mid-seventies.
His destroyed body was so gaunt as to be cadaverous. Had his deformities affected him mentally, turning him into a monster, robbing his body of strength, his mind of conscience?
No. She remembered her certainty of his past misdeeds. Perhaps the body had caught up to the soul. Life would be so much easier if all monsters looked like monsters.
But she knew that would never be.
Gaby looked at his hands, now red with his own blood. His fingers were short and blunt. There were no nails. Just discoid tips.
By accident, or had some disease eaten away at him?
An invisible fist squeezed at Gaby's heart and she wanted to howl, to deny that she, Gabrielle Cody, had butchered him in so many places that meat hung from his body, and only bones held him together.
He would never hurt anyone again.
No one, except her.
Regardless of what she knew him to be, despite the fact that she'd saved a child, probably many children, she would never be able to forget him.
She never forgot any of them.
They became part of her, in some ways adding to her strength, in other ways tearing her down until she felt like nothing at all.
As she did now.
Only moments ago, rage had guided her; now a pervasive weakness sent quivers rippling up and down her spine. She gagged, still tasting the blood, identifying the scent as it baked on the hot asphalt beneath the blistering sun. A fly buzzed close, landing on the man's exposed intestines.
Gaby heaved—and lost control. Hot loamy spew regurgitated out her nose and mouth.
Ah, shit.
Swallowing convulsively, she fought back the last of the bile until the spasms receded. She hated puking, and not just because it left evidence behind. Hands braced on the rusted metal of the Dumpster, she drew deep, slow breaths, calming her mind with thoughts of other things, quieter times, until her belly quit trying to crawl up her throat and out of her nose.
When she could breathe again, she straightened and curled her hands around her aching middle.
Fucking eggs Morty had forced on her didn't want to stay down. She might never eat eggs again.