Grey II - Ghosts

Chapter 13 - Mors Returns

Just stay a little longer, so you can show me how to move.
And take it further. Make me into someone like you.

Colours - Monster

"I'm going to Jevin tonight."

The table was quiet after my announcement. It was my second day out of captivity with Chi's Clan and I already felt stir-crazy. They hardly did anything, no training, no sparring, no jaunts out into the city. They really did lie low, though from what I wasn't sure. I just knew I had to get out, even if it was just to hunt the streets like I had when Jevin didn't have any assignments for me.

A part of me knew deep down even if I tried to just prowl the streets I would end up at his door. I hated him too much to not go back to him, to let him live even one more night. The thought that he might have fled the city crossed my mind, but I hoped he hadn't. I hoped he wasn't the coward I thought he was, the kind of man to run away just because one of his pets had escaped. I hoped his arrogance would keep him in the city. That he would remember me as the broken thing that had come to him so many weeks ago, not the furious woman with a vendetta I was now, but I doubted that. His paranoia was boundless. Even if he was gone, even if he had run, I would find him, hunt him down, I promised myself that.

Chimarah glanced down at her plate, sliding cold Chinese across it with her plastic fork. Syn was avoiding my eyes too. Spade was the one that finally broke the silence.

"Jevin is dead. Someone killed him weeks ago. Slit his throat, and cut out his heart and burned it...and cut off his head, killed four of his servants too. It was a real scene."

My mind couldn't even comprehend Spade's words at first. Someone had killed my master? Someone had killed the man who had owned me for weeks? Someone had taken that small pleasure from me? Even though I had told myself I would do it quickly, kill him without any of the sick creativity I wanted, I still knew I would have enjoyed it. Just to see the shock on his face, the light leave his eyes, his frozen skin to be cold from death, not from what he was. But someone had taken that from me. Someone had stolen even that tiny happiness from me. He was mine to kill, just like I had been his.

"Who?"

I could barely get the word out evenly, the anger in me made my hands shake in my lap. Chi swallowed hard before answering. Her mind screaming her deceit even before her mouth formed the words.

"No one knows, probably one of his enemies. He had many. Maybe someone traced one of your kills back ta him and decided ta pay him back. It was definitely personal...what with the heart n' head n' all."

"You're lying."

The words hissed from behind my teeth as I tried to fight the urge to let them sharpen.

Someone has continued what you began, taken up your place in your absence. But where you killed quickly, this one kills slowly, where you tried to not enjoy the process, this one revels in it. Jev was just the start, there has been a kill almost every night, gruesome kills; Darklings, Demons, criminals of every species, it doesn't seem to matter.

Some tried to say it was still you, still Mors, that you had gone insane, but no one really believes that. He's the opposite of you. The city is terrified, at least our kind is, the humans just think of it as gang crimes, it's never in the nice parts of the city and they only hear of a fraction of the kills for obvious reasons.

He keeps his victims alive as long as he can too, torturing them until their bodies give out, then bringing them back just to do it again. The city is whispering of a Fallen, maybe one that's lost his mind, that has no reasons, only his urges, his nature driving his actions.