The Midnight Murder Series: Pieces
Chapter 8

Adán was kneeling on a dirt-covered hill in the middle of the forest. He is covered with blood with decimated body parts of human and beast surrounding him. His breathing was shallow, and his eyes were focusing on his blood-soaked hands. His face was mixed with shock and fear with tear stains on his cheeks. “Oh, Dios. Qué he hecho...” Adán whispered.

“Adán?!” The vampire closed his eyes and clutched his fists as Rufus’ voice echoed his name in the air. “Adán, where are you?!”

“H-H-Here!” he finally spoke with a cracking voice. “I’m over here!” Adán could hear Rufus landing behind him.

Rufus had a horrified look on his face as he looked at the slaughter around his friend. He ran towards him and hit his knees in front of Adán. “Adán? Hey, tell me,” he grasped the vampire’s face in his hands and forced him to look up at him. Rufus saw his chin covered in blood. “Tell me you didn’t drink any human blood. Tell me you were wolfing down strawberry-filled donuts.”

Adán glanced at Rufus, his eyes glistening with fright. “I-I-I,” he couldn’t give him an answer. He focused his eyes back on his hands.

“Tell me you didn’t!” Rufus yelled with tears in his eyes, fearing that Adán actually did drink human blood. “Adán X, tell me!”

“I didn’t!” screamed Adán while looking up at Rufus with fresh tears rolling down his cheeks. “It’s deer, okay?! It’s deer.”

Rufus pulled him to him, and the vampire buried his face in the werewolf’s chest. He wrapped his arms around him and exhaled with relief. Rufus closed his eyes, letting a tear slipped down his face. “The body parts?”

Adán closed his eyes, reminiscing where the body parts came from.

Adán was sitting on a bench in the park and trying to get the human’s blood off of his hands with some alcohol wipes. He got some of the dried blood off, but not all of it. The vampire groaned before throwing the wipes in the dirt.

“Somebody, please help me!” a female voice screamed in Adán’s ears. “Help!”

The vampire jumped out of his seat and raced towards the trails. He ran up a small dirt-cover hill and saw that he was too late to save her. Crouched before him was a chupacabra feasting on the deceased female jogger’s torso. Adán pulled out his scythe and slowly advanced towards the hideous coyote. He stopped short when the fiend whipped its head around towards him at the last minute.

“Oh, fucking fuck,” Adán murmured as the chupacabra snarled its yellow and bloodied fangs at the knight. Its white, large eyes fixed on him as it spun completely around and stood on its muscular hind legs. “Oh, aren’t you a big one? How tall are you? Ten feet? Twelve?”

The chupacabra swung a four-fingered claw at him, but Adán deftly evaded.

“Then it used its other claw to swing at me,” Adán spoke while standing up with Rufus. Rufus watched him as the vampire stared at the body parts, telling his tale. “It hit me, and I flew to the tree behind us. I lost my scythe.”

Rufus spun around and searched for the weapon. He finally found it by some withering bushes. “Found it,” he picked it up and headed back towards the other knight’s side to give it to him. “Here you go.”

“Thank you,” Adán took it back and continued. “When I was down, the fiend went back to feeding on the human. It was tearing into her, that’s why you see human body parts, her head went rolling somewhere.” His body stiffened when he paused.

“Adán?” Rufus put a hand on his shoulder.

The vampire just swallowed the lump in his throat.

Red eyes replaced Adán’s natural violet ones as he stood up. He hissed while his fangs extending. His fingernails elongated into long, pointed, black claws as his face wrinkled. Adán sped towards the chupacabra and dug his nails into the side of the fiend. The monster shrieked in torment as the vampire hurled it towards some trees on the right. Adán lazily approached the chupacabra.

A doe walked on top of the hill in search of some grass to eat but stopped dead in her tracks when she surveyed the situation. The deer watched in paralyzing fear as Adán ripped the chupacabra into pieces, some of the fiend’s blood spattering onto her fur.

Adán stood up straight while huffing, a massive amount of blood staining his clothing. The knight caught a whiff of new blood in the air. He turned and spotted the deer. A low growl escaped his throat as he bared his fangs at the helpless animal. Adán listened to its heartbeat quickening for a minute before attacking it.

“I had deer for lunch,” the vampire told Rufus. “I ate it and its unborn child.”

“Were they delicious?” Rufus questioned.

Adán shrugged. “A little dry, but they were good.”

Rufus hummed. “Now, my wolf wants some pregnant doe,” he sighed. “All right, I’ll help you clean up this mess. Adán, we really need to talk to King Thanatos about this. You’re usually not like this. Something is setting you off.”

Adán took a few steps away and stared miserably into the distance. “Rufus, promise me something.”

Rufus looked confused. “Like what?”

“Promise me something,” he repeated. “Just promise.”

“Okay, I will,” Rufus frowned, starting to catch on that something’s wrong. “What is it, little buddy?”

Adán paused before facing the werewolf. “Behead me if I drink one drop of human blood, no mercy.”

A look of concern came across Rufus’ face.

Thousands of shards of glass hovered over the wounded female church member. She watched in horror as the fresh-bloodied Beyond lifted her arms over her head in an X form and threw them down. “No!!” she screamed as the shower of glass penetrated through her body, blood splattering on the parking lot.

Beyond gazed at the pool of blood, glass, and body parts, and at the female church member’s head rolling away. She twisted round to face the male. “What kind of fiend are you?” she inquired with blood flowing down from a gash across her forehead and into her left eye. The knight closed that eye and continued glaring at the horrified fiend, waiting for an answer.

The man held his bleeding shoulder and spat out some blood. “Chamaeleo chamaeleon,” he replied. “You must be stupid not to figure that out.”

“Your kind isn’t the only ones with long tongues,” stated Beyond as a fireball formed in her hand.

“Master Dany told us that wings hold most of the holder’s strength,” he smirked. “Since your wings are destroyed and missing, you’re pretty weak.”

“Adán, I-” Rufus shook his head, unbelieving what he’s saying.

“Rufus, you swore when you became a knight that you will kill any fiend who harms any human,” Adán reminded him.

“I’m not killing you!” yelled Rufus. “What about me, huh? Will you kill me if I eat a human’s heart?”

“Rufus, please,” Adán fought back the tears as well as Rufus.

Beyond hid safely behind a parked silver minivan in the far corner of the parking lot. She grunted in pain as the ground underneath and around her shook. The female poked out her head to see the male fiend transforming into a giant version of a Mediterranean chameleon. “Shit,” she quickly removed her phone from her pocket and hit the sped dial button.

Rufus’ phone rang as he fished for it in his pockets. “I’m not doing it,” he told Adán as he found it and answered it. “Hello?”

“Rufus?” spoke Beyond’s voice on the other end.

“Beyond, hey, what’s up?”

“Rufus, can you hear me?” her voice was staticky and fading in and out. “You and Adán need to come to the church, immediately.”

Rufus put a hand over his other ear to hear Beyond more clearly. “Be, you’re breaking up. What about a hook?”

“Church!” she yelled, making her voice more audible. “Get to the church! I have a – AHH!” her scream was heard by Adán, whose eyes widen.

“Beyond? Be-Beyond?” Rufus listened to the dead air before hanging up. He looked at Adán in a state of surprise.

Beyond is pulled to the ground violently by the fiend’s tongue that was wrapped around her neck. Her fingers crawled at her neck, struggling to it get off and gasping for air. It began dragging her to its owner before lifting her off the ground, about ten feet, and slamming her back on it.

“H-Help!” Beyond choked out as the tongue tightened its grip on her. She felt her eyes rolling back as her body was losing consciousness.

A bellow of agony left the fiend’s throat. The grip from the tongue loosened as Beyond gasped weakly for air. “You son of a bitch,” Beyond could hear the fiend’s voice guttural then ringing in her ears.

A blurry figure scrambled back over to her and pulled the knight to sit upright. She could only make out some blonde hair on the mystery figure as they unraveled the tongue from around her neck. Beyond inhaled chucks of air before speaking. “O-O-Oliver?” The person pulled her into a fierce hug. Beyond sensed the figure’s aura was like Oliver’s, but something was different about it that she couldn’t put her finger on it. She felt a kiss on her head.

“Step away from her,” Beyond heard Rufus’ voice on her right. She turned to look, but could only see two, blurry figures as well. “Take off that mask and no funny business.”

“Rufus?” she spoke while still inhaled air. “Adán?”

Adán aimed his scythe at the male wearing a raven skull mask figure. “Listen to the werewolf,” he ordered.

The male figure released her and slowly stood up. The man put his hands up and took a step back as Adán stepped carefully towards Beyond. “The fiend is dead,” he spoke before snapping his fingers and disappearing into purple smoke.

Adán helped Beyond up to her feet and turned back to Rufus with incredulous. “Another knight?”

Rufus shook his head and muttered. “Didn’t smell like one.”

Beyond’s blurry vision finally cleared and let a cough while rubbing her throat. “Wh-Who was that?”

Good question.

Oliver was typing on his laptop at the kitchen table with a piece of toast in his mouth. His screen had ten tabs open with different topics: Sucking monsters from around the world, local e-newspapers, a Supernatural wiki page, and a Destiel fanfic. He swallowed his food and lifted his eyebrows. “Hmm! Jamie Campbell Bower will guest star in an episode of Supernatural. Go, Brits, go,” Oliver switched over to one of the e-newspapers tabs and read. He scoffed while scrolling through an article. “I’ll be damned.”

“You’ll be damned about what, baby brother?” asked Alvin while he and Arvel walked into the kitchen in their pj’s.

Oliver handed one of the twins his laptop. “Months before the kidnappings, local cemeteries were grave-robbed. According to the article, each graveyard had at least twenty corpses missing from their graves.”

“Sounds like zombies, right?” asked Arvel while pouring himself a bowl of cereal.

“Or ghouls,” stated Alvin while reading the article. “To be honest, it does make sense. You know, if we are dealing with both,” he smiled. “Aim for the head, baby.”

“The problem is, where are they?” Oliver looked at his brothers. The twins shrugged, and Oliver let out a sigh. “Hey, do you guys know what’s in our bodies that’s a blue light and smokey-looking?”

“A soul,” answered Arvel as he sat down in a kitchen chair and began eating his cereal. “Alvin, dad, Sister Isabella, Father Ajay, and I found demons stealing souls and trying to use them to open the gates of hell in Winchester, some years back. I think we saved over a hundred souls. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” Oliver paused while Alvin gave him a WTF face then back to the screen.

“This does not look like a just wondering, Oliver,” said Alvin as he showed Arvel the tabs on the laptop. “Sucking monsters from around the world? Mate, what happened last night? Did a monster attacked you in your sleep?”

Oliver didn’t answer. He wrestled with himself to not think about the woman that he loves sucking out his soul from him. The hunter shook his head and lied again. “I haven’t been hunting for a while, so I’m giving myself some quick lessons.”

“Here’s a free one: Reapers eat souls to heal themselves when they’re seriously injured,” Arvel spoke with a full mouth. “We saw that while visiting Pompeii, last June.”

“Do their eyes glow green or something like that?” questioned Oliver.

“The reaper that we saw did have green eyes,” Alvin said while setting the laptop back on the table and typed something. “I think it depends on their eye color. So sad a demon killed him. ” He walked on over to the coffee maker to pour himself a cup.

Oliver gazed steadily at his laptop screen that had a page about reapers.