Light from the fireplace cast soft shadows as he moved through the home he'd known for over a decade. An oven in the kitchen still emitted the delicious smell of chocolate chip cookies. It was Christmas Eve, after all. Santa would be expecting his treats.

He chuckled darkly at his thought as he walked down stairs adorned with pictures. His best friend's smile glowed in each one, accompanied by his wife and seventeen year old son. He remembered the angsty teenager as a child and, where a smile may have once been, a sharp toothed scowl now replaced it.

Reaching the last step, he scrunched his nose as his sensitive nasal cavity picked up the smell akin to iron. He hadn't expected it to be that bad, that messy. But here he was, flicking his claws against his pants in an effort to clean them and walking to the kitchen sink to wash what remained. As the water ran red, chocolate in the oven burned, the overseer quite literally chilling on the nearby kitchen tiles.

His hands trembled in the water, though it wasn't out of guilt or fear of what he'd done. For only the briefest of moments, he imagined her disappointed frown and sea green eyes similar to his own that usually shone with respect dulled with disapproval. He vigorously shook his head of the thought. She had been foolish to relinquish her power, to step into the realm of humanity.

It wouldn't have been this way if the man he had come to know as a friend had raised his offspring properly. It wouldn't have been this way if the foolish boy had just gone home after the party. If he hadn't broken the rules of consent. If she hadn't slipped whilst trying to get away from him. If the bridge had been a hundred yards lower. If she hadn't already given up her abilities. If his plea of innocence hadn't been accepted by the courts...

As if his subconscious needed him to revel in what he'd done, why he'd done it, the teenager entered his vision once more. An hour ago, he'd been apologizing with large, warm tears. He'd sworn it was an accident, said he couldn't be more sorry for what had happened. And now, those eyes that had shed tears were nonexistent, burned out with dried blood telling how long he'd sat there as his assailant made quick work of his mother and found his way upstairs to his father.

“Roger,” the man said, his voice hoarse, “you've earned my forgiveness. For killing my daughter. For taking away my world, my only reason to shed my horns.” If there had been lids to close, he would have done it. But, alas, Roger's lids had been burned with the rest of his small, human eyes. Instead, the man left the boy sitting slumped at the edge of the bed.

In the shadow cast by the low light of the room, horns grew from the man's head, curling around his face with the point resting next to his high cheekbones. His claws grew longer, more curved and deadly and a split tail drooped from his lower back. It gently grazed the wood floors in a sweeping motion as he made his into the foyer. Blood still slowly spread out onto the kitchen tiles from the gaping wound in Linda's neck.

With only a moments hesitation, the demon walked into the kitchen, slitted eyes zooming in on the oven where blackening cookies continued to grow darker. He opened the oven and picked each of the six off of the tray, only a mild tingle where the heat met his scaled hands. As he stepped over Linda's body for the last time, he nodded a quiet thanks to her for the food. Not entirely a necessary move on his part, but one he felt may help ease his burden if only by a fraction of what he felt.

Red and blue lights were already reflecting off of ornaments strung across a slowly dying blue spruce. The demon shook his head in disappointment as he was made to scarf the remaining four morsels down, allowing his large wings to fully take shape before opening the doors. They didn't ask what had happened or who he was, what he was. They didn't ask for him to put his hands in the air. They never did as bullets rained down upon frosted blue scales. The shells connected with the ground only a split second before the bullets did, unable to punch through the demon's armor.

He could see his daughter now, begging him to stop. Humans were not the enemy, she would often say. It is our own kind that wreak havoc and destruction. Yet, the demon had yet to truly understand that. Humans didn't need demons to bring chaos. They were perfectly adept in doing so themselves, so corrupted were their own hearts. Even a man whom the demon had befriended, had accepted with warm arms, deserted him after his daughter's death. Had plead with the criminal. Had refused to speak with her suffering father to try and make him see any sort of reason to the chaos they created.

He could fly now, away from the humans them looked upon him with fear and confusion, glints of awe in a few. But that would not end their cruelty. Surely, among them, there were those who had been corrupted. With conflicting emotions raging within his head, the demon set to work, dying the snow around him a crimson hue, knowing but no longer caring that he was going against his dead daughter's wishes.