Justice

A mild rain that falls past the spot light above the Emergency Room entrance, but the drops don't seem to do much to the ground. It's like the air is wet and fuzzy rather than filled with precipitation. It leaves the air humid and loud, a liquid cotton fuzz that hides everything in obscurity. The wetness on the sidewalk and the asphalt gives it a latex shine, as if all is made of textured ice. I have the time to admire the finer qualities of this miserable drizzle as I huddle up within my hoodie and lean back against the wall, some forty feet away from the sliding double doors into which rush EMTs with their charges. No one tells me to move away, in spite of this cigarette I'm smoking and in spite of the fact that I don't work at this place. Maybe it's some sense of charity from the staff, or maybe they simply aren't paid enough to care about me.

Either way, I know for a fact that the wall just beneath the spotlight is the best place for me to feed. I can feel it. There's something about the room on the other side - it must be where they bring the very worst cases, the ones that survived car crashes or assaults or suicide attempts. The pain radiating out from this one spot is stronger than anywhere else I can get to, and it's reliably occupied every night. The perks of living in a big city, I guess.

With a sigh of relief, I shift my back against the concrete, the thick, musty material of my hoodie catching on something rough for a moment. The hood is down because I can't wear it up, and I leave my head bowed just a little, just so that I don't scrape the points of my horns on the brick. Those fine, curved adornments, as well as the points of my ears, can all be seen in my shadow - that is something my glamor can't fix - but luckily the hard light from the spotlight breaks it up and casts more shadows to obscure my truth. The illusion fools even my eyes; when I pull my hand out of my pocket to check my phone, I only see fair, human-colored skin. I've got black nails in this guise, but they aren't pointed and curved to look at. Functionally? Using a smartphone is a huge pain in the dick, and my talons click on the face plate all the time. Downside of being a demon - modern tech is hard to use.

The green light is blinking lazily in the upper left, so I turn my phone on and unlock it, scrolling through my messages. Some are email notifications I can ignore, some are updates, and one is a text from a number I neither recognize nor ever saved.

-        I was told to text this number if I needed help.

I wrinkle my nose and hold my phone closer to my face, as if that message will make any more sense if I can make out every pixel in it. Clearly not, and I sigh, dreading the effort of trying to type with the side of my thumb. It takes a few attempts, but I manage to make it coherent.

-        How can I help you?

The response comes quickly.

-        Belial says to meet at his place.

A heat lifts on the back of my neck, and I glance up at my surroundings, just to make sure no one's watching me. Just reading that name makes me paranoid.

-        When?

I don't get a response from that conversation, but a new conversation opens up. This one is from Belial himself.

-        Now.

I feel my skin prickle over even more, and I shut down my phone and pocket it again. Belial knows that I'm on my way; disobeying a summons just doesn't happen. Just at that moment an ambulance comes screaming in, the brakes squealing as the vehicle steams in the rain. The crew jumps out the back and pulls out a trundle cart with a pile of... something strapped to it. Blood soaks even the white sheet it's covered in, and a wet, continuous moan of agony jiggles with every bump the cart wheels bounce over, pushing past the oxygen mask strapped to what seems like half a burned face. The pain coming off of this one is tangible from here, and I look down, trying to hide how my pupils dilate. Shouting and yelling digs further into the ER, until without fail I can feel that agony start radiating out from my wall. My hand rests on my phone, my temptation to beg for just a moment almost strong enough, but then suddenly the pain stops radiating entirely. Whatever they had brought in on that cart just died, which is probably for the best.

I'm agitated at the death, my body wanting to feed more on that intense suffering, and my anger lifts up, my blood pressure rising. In spite of all that I walk calmly away from the wall and take a last drag off my cigarette, flicking it free of ash as a nervous tic before tossing it to the ground. The trail of smoke coils up until it hisses out and dies in a paper coffee cup already half-filled with rain, the sound covered up by the screeching halt of a new ambulance.

---

It takes one subway ride and a walk of a few blocks to get to Belial's place, and by the time I pull down the metal fire escape ladder I'm more than a little damp from rain. The iron rattles and booms as it comes to rest, and I scale it, pulling the ladder back up after myself. Some three stories up I pause by a window with a red curtain and a soft glow further in and knock on the glass three times. There's a pause of twenty seconds or so, and then the entire fire escape slithers with red sigils. The rain hisses off of the metal, and a thrumming unease lifts off the metal all around me as I crouch there, waiting. After another moment or two I notice the latch unfasten itself, the window lifting up without help from anyone. It's big enough for me to slip into, so I do so carefully, my wet sneakers squeaking on the flooring. Before I head further in I pull the window back down and fasten the latch, pulling the curtains back in place. I'm in what looks like a kitchen, but the flooring is entirely covered in textured black rubber matting, and here and there it's possible to see indents, as if sharp edges have been pressed into it over and over again, gouging it here and there.

The doorway to the rest of the apartment is closed, and I'm just about to reach for the knob when I see writing lift up from the white paint at eye height:

ILLUSIONS ARE FORBIDDEN.

The knob refuses to turn in my hand. This is new. I'm not about to show my true form to some stranger, and so I back away from the door and fold my arms over my flattish chest, narrowing my eyes at the door. I flick my left ear and start pacing in agitation, to the point that I can feel my tail uncoil from around my waist and sway behind me in the manner of an angry cat.

Very slowly the letters on the doorway fade only to be replaced by new ones:

TRUST ME, TALIQ.

My pacing stops, and I flush, looking nervously at the door. I suppose this is going to go nowhere until I comply, and with a hand that only shakes a little do I remove the bracelet from my right wrist. My coloration changes from fair and freckled to almost entirely, featurelessly black, my fingers thicker and tipped with long, glossy black talons. My tail's reflection can be seen in the face of the oven to my left, the appendage some four feet long, muscular, and tapered to a prehensile point with a ridge of black hair running all the way down the top of it. I can't see my face, but I know that there's now a single stripe of white bisecting it, tendrils of the color coiling up along my spiraled horns and along the tops of my pointed ears.  I lift my all black eyes to the door, and again the letters fade from it as it opens on its own just a crack, leaving itself ajar in silent invitation.

Despite having been in this space many times before, entering it is intimidating. I open the door and walk in slowly, closing the portal behind me before lifting my eyes to the room, which is illuminated in blood-colored light. Drapings hang from the ceilings and the walls, obscuring the size of it, cordoning off different areas, and providing privacy. Lit candles glow within red glass lanterns here and there, and once again the floor is covered in that thick rubber matting. The scent of sandalwood floats thickly on the warm, comfortable air, and music plays from somewhere unseen deeper within, some light piano concerto that's completely at odds with the atmosphere of this space.

"Come in, Taliq," rumbles a deep male voice towards the back of the room, this impossibly large room for being a New York apartment in this part of Manhattan, and I walk further in, nudging aside sheer drapings as I go. At last I see a tall figure seated on a pile of black cushions, his four curved horns sweeping back from his goatlike head. Golden eyes with horizontal pupils focus on me and narrow with pleasure, and his slender, seated, black-furred swimmer's body remains in meditative repose as he nods gently to the figure sitting on a cushion near to him.

The person looks like a college-aged girl who is beyond her limit, her eyes wide and seeing nothing, her face pale with panic. An ugly bruise swells on the side of her face, and she seems unwilling to engage with me or anything else. I look back at Belial, sitting there so serenely, and he takes in a long, slow breath through his slitted nostrils. "This one comes to me, asking for succor. She says she has been raped. Can you verify the truth of her pain?"

I fold my ears back and look back down at her, and only now does she look at me. I know what she sees scares her, but when she looks down it's in shame. It's like she's humiliated for bothering us, humiliated to ask for help. My tension leaves me as I slowly take to one knee in front of her, keeping all movements safe and non-threatening. "I will not touch you," I say softly. "I don't need to." She nods and swallows, clutching her hands, and I close my eyes. There is pain from her face, which I had expected, but there is far more from between her legs. And there is, horribly, pain in her mind, an agony that scars her thinking and won't ever leave. Some call it the wound that causes future PTSD, and that burns fresh like a hot iron to my senses. I can feel the sensations of the pain involved as if I had been there, as if I am there, and I can feel how I'm roughly held down by many hands, how I beg them to stop, how my clothing rubs me raw as it's pulled away, and the unbearable ache of the sin itself, from so many. To Belial I say, "It is..." my voice catches, and I try again, "It is verified." It's hard to open my senses for verification without reliving it with the victim, especially when the attack is so recent.

Neither Belial nor the young woman say anything as I get to my feet and walk quickly to the  bathroom and shut myself in it, heaving into the toilet. I could feel everything she did, like I was there. I shared in it. I didn't want that to happen to me tonight. I wasn't ready for it. But then neither was she. She needs help, and Belial chose me. It's so hard to let go of the toilet and stand up straight. It's so hard to turn on the sink and splash water on my face and sip it from my cupped palms to rinse out the taste of bile. It's hard not to weep and sit in the corner, but I force myself to breathe and remember that this didn't happen to me, no matter how fresh the feelings are. I merely absorbed them, testing them to see if they were real or if the girl was lying. I always want them to be lying, but they never are.  Reluctantly I leave the bathroom and come back to where the two sit, and I try my best to regain my composure in front of them.

Belial inclines his head to me, and gestures for me to sit on a cushion near him. As I settle down onto it, he folds his hands into his lap. "My guest has requested that her attackers be punished. She has told me that she reported her attack to the police, but was laughed at, mocked, and escorted back to the street. The law is not going to provide her with the justice she needs, and so we will." Carefully then he rises from his cushion, his long, jointed legs unfolding to reveal split, cervine hooves. They sink slightly into the rubber matting, creaking a little with every step as he walks over to me and looks down at me. "Taliq of the Oubliette, Blade of my Blood, I call upon you to carry out justice for the evil done to Mary Jacobs on this night. She has provided me with a list of names..." His hand moves towards me, his fingertips touching at my brow lightly. A pressure fills my awareness and abates, and he pulls his hand away, "...which I pass unto you. You will punish each as is fitting, and when you are finished you will come back to me with proof of your success."

---

 It took four nights to accomplish, but through me Mary Jacobs had her justice.

And I fed well.