It was faint at first. He had almost mistaken it for something else when they had first arrived a week before. The murder was still close but he had started to leave them at night. He knew that something had drawn him here and now he thought he had found what it was: evil. He could have gone anywhere in the world... anywhere but Rome... but he had found himself on a continent he didn’t like, in a place he had never wanted to know. This city dripped with corruption. The sprawl of it beneath him was daunting; somewhere in this mess was that smell, that unmistakable scent of death that did not decay. Beneath that though, there was something more, something that he had not felt in a long time. 

Being this high wasn’t going to help him figure it all out. He needed to be street level. He cringed at the thought the instant he’d stumbled upon it. The smell of it would saturate his skin and he’d become more accustomed to feathers instead of the form of a man. He felt so out of place. What man would perch atop the highest building and dread the simple act of standing on the ground? The stink of the city around him was so foul it had almost completely concealed that there was someone dead hiding in its depths... someone far younger than he was and twice as bad. Why? Why would such a demon choose the city of Angels? He changed, preferring the feathered form to his own elegant limbs, and flew to a better vantage.

Now it was all but gone again. He knew that somewhere, somewhere close, hidden in the shadows, what eluded him waited. Even here that creature could not escape the stench that had haunted it since it had been reborn: the taint of blood and pain shelled in a body that was almost human. He twitched his wings tighter onto his back as he crouched low in the darkness, peering into the shadows, knowing that what he had been waiting for would soon appear and reveal itself to him. He may not be able to end all the evil of his brother's blood... but he was going to enjoy slowly destroying this one pawn once he flushed it out.

He had almost flown to a new vantage, unfolded soft wings the color of sackcloth and abandoned his darkened perch, but had to pause. Now there was something different on the wind. There was that familiar smell that he could not place, it had haunted him as the last angel he could recall from when he had been human, and it pinned him to the scaffolding where he remained. What stepped from the shadows was not who he had been expecting to find. They were like a little black cat with how they moved, young and distinctly human, a person that was so beautiful they were nearly androgynous, that slinked along the street as though it belonged only under those long striding feet and had been made only to bear them. 

Something wasn’t right. Some part of him began to scream and he fought the urge to change back into the man that he really was. That person shouldn’t be there. There was nothing he could do but watch and hope... somehow those long clean strides would carry them past all the shadows and away from this place. Dallieh was too old to believe he would get his wish. He knew the moment before he saw those easy strides slow, the moment long before he saw anything but long dark hair and clothes that did nothing to hide so many dark intentions, that this was going to go differently than he had wished. He heard their voices but not the words as now, they moved out of his sight and were escorted away, down an alley, close by but obscured. Dallieh would have to move to see if what had lured them from their safe easy slink was what he wanted to break... or just another demon that had been tainted by a city that was so misnamed it hurt.

The alley was so narrow that he had to hop through a fire escape before swooping out and up, well above the expanse that opened before him.  He wouldn’t be noticed now, as even a small presence in the play that unfolded below, at least until he wanted to be. The man who had spoken and escorted them was nothing... just a lot of nothing. The men who waited for him to arrive with the prey he had secured were equally as vapid, but they were all alive. There was an uneasiness to it all. He could feel the pull. That person that they had led into their midst was… then he balked. There was too much nothing here, far too much nothing for this little adventure to be anything but planned and these men to be more than mindless.  He had to find who held their strings. Who would orchestrate such a thing and why pick, of all people, that person, that one? That was when he saw his face in the light, his reaction. It wasn’t the look of someone who was surprised, or even the moment of panic that any normal person might experience... but almost a sense of relief that this was all it was. It was acceptance.

The men descended like vultures upon their easy target and Dallieh fought his instincts. He was struck by an image so vivid it forced him to transform and he reeled on the edge of the roof, an easy perch for a raven, but not a man. His eyes were wide and staring. The air was so thick with the scent of blood he fought to keep his focus. Chains... he heard chains. He shook his head wishing it all away, closing his eyes only to be haunted by things far worse than what they’d been opened to. He nearly fell.

One voice. One voice and the men parted. Dallieh’s eyes snapped open. His fingers braced on the edge of the cold stone and metal beneath him, clenched like claws as he snarled. He recognized the tenor of the man who now emerged from the shadows and flared his nostrils, breathing in the scent of death that would have been lost to anyone but him. It was just enough to break the image of his memory... but what was before him, what was left of the dark haired beauty who felt somehow so familiar, brought it crashing back in a flood that once more made him nearly lose his balance.

He was on his knees. His shirt was ripped and his body was covered in his own blood. His dark hair cascaded around him in damp clumps like ebon bits of straw. When his gaze rose to the man who walked to him, who had spoken, there was nothing in those eyes that fled from purple and red to nearly black, then blue, nothing but the quiet acceptance of pain and death.

Dallieh didn’t know that he had changed and was flying until he’d circled the opening and came up behind the one who was on his knees, that dark child who looked like an angel, though perhaps only one he would know. He folded his wings in a dive, extending them as he passed, allowing his flights to touch the cheek of the man who had fallen. It was resounding... and satisfying, the crunch beneath his feet as he erupted from the sky and landed on top of the one who stood closest, the first of his attackers. His lust consumed him as blood erupted from a gash created by a broken bone and now that crunch was followed by another, but it was his teeth ripping the softer parts that were the meat of someone’s arm before moving on to the underside of another’s neck while he used himself to break any part of them he could get a hold of. His hands glistened with it; the sound of breaking, and his head spun as he became lost to the hum of their blood as it called to him. He loved the sensation of how their skin parted beneath his claws, so easily, as if it had been a locked door and his hands held the key. Before he even realized he’d drained the first, ten men lay at his feet as he licked the better parts of the eleventh clean and dropped what was left with a dull fleshy splat onto the pile he had made around him. He had been a full head shorter than any single one of them but in less time than it took to blink, he had destroyed them for their transgression against the one who remained on his knees just behind where Dallieh stood. He was already running hot. He could feel it building in him as he stretched, allowed himself to hunger and consume, opened a door he normally kept tightly locked in his own mind. Now there was only one man left alive and that one, that one was behind him on his knees. He had kept himself between the one who had captured his attention, and everything else.

He squared his shoulders. He was ready for whatever might happen. This was what he wanted: to break something, to break this thing that stood before him like a statue in the half light of the city’s pervasive gloom.

“You...” It spoke.

“You were expecting someone else to crash your party?” His voice was a rich purr that escaped his lips and he rolled his shoulders as if he had been adjusting the wings that had been there only moments before. 

“I was expecting you to be locked away in a cold dark hole just as you’ve always been.” Now a cocky smile crossed the lips of the one who had spoken and really did make Dallieh want to break them. There was something else at play here though. This was more than just another one of Gray’s cold perversions.

“They don’t make a hell deep enough to keep me locked in it.”

“Shame... I suppose that means that this is over then, just before it got started.”

“I suppose that you are right. This is the last time that I see you... do you understand, Gray?”

“Oh I understand. This is the last time. You will kill him quickly then?” There was a pause as Dallieh turned his face but not his eyes, took a shaky breath and then exhaled without saying a word. 

“No...” 

One of Gray’s eyebrows rose suspiciously as he eyed Dallieh. This was not the reaction he had expected. This was not the person he remembered at all. He had no choice but to cave. Some part of him recognized that there was a thin thread that was holding Dallieh back. All that was caging that rage was the heartbeat in the crumpled figure that he stood in front of protectively. Gray squinted. He did not understand the connection between the men before him but it somehow felt so familiar. Slowly he turned and stepped into the darkness, leaving Dallieh to do what he wished with the waste of the man just behind him.

Dallieh didn’t turn, not at first. He closed his eyes and wished there was a way to become clean. He felt hot... he was burning through what blood he couldn’t possibly use and it was turning him into a furnace. Now he was madly self conscious. He fought the urge to turn into something that could lick itself clean. That wouldn’t do either of them any good. He picked a loose piece of cloth up from one of the less dismembered bodies before him and tried to wipe the crimson from his skin. It smeared to rust and then left him a ragged edged stain of pink and rouge, not clean, but not gory. He discarded the cloth and used it as an excuse to pick up something else that had been just underneath it. Even then, he could barely bring himself to turn.

How could someone have taken so much and still be alive. He wouldn’t be able to walk. Something still felt different. He dared a glance and had to fight not to shake. Even soaked in blood, even on his knees.... there was something there.

Dallieh shook his head as the sound of chains filtered into his memory. The feel of ropes binding him and the cold of biting metal. The taste of his own blood. He licked his lips, fighting to find what it was he couldn’t bring to the surface because of the memories that haunted him. What was it? It felt like he had been waiting so long to stand before the one who gazed down at his feet with unseeing eyes. He couldn’t fight it and his hands began to shake even though he clenched them at his sides. It was that feeling, that all too familiar pain... that expression. He looked like an angel in the darkness, purified by all that blood and perfect. 

“You might be an Angel but I’m the one with wings. This... isn’t happening tonight, not to you, not again. Get your scrawny ass up. We’re going home. If you can’t walk... I’ll carry you.”

The man before him lifted his face and stared through him with eyes so dark he could not make out what swirled in them. He tried. He tried to get up on his own but when he did, he began to fall and Dallieh was there to catch him.