The captain was clearly uneasy with the request that she was asking of him. "While I do not entirely agree with your reasoning; someone as traumatized as she is, shouldn't be seeing something like this. Especially due to the source of the crime." He whispered the last sentence, so that Trinity wouldn't hear. "However, you are the angel trying to hunt down this demon, so I will abide by this request just this once. But please do not request something like this from me again."
Amara nodded in agreement, before tilting her head partially to the side. "I understand your concern. However as I mentioned, this is important and is something that she needs to be aware of. I can agree to honor your request, that I shall not ask something like this from you again."
Trinity watched as Captain Renault's expression dimmed as if losing himself momentarily. She let out a sharp gasp. 'Is Amara influencing him?' she wondered.
Captain Renault stood in place for a brief moment before his eyes finally returned to normal and he extended his arm open towards Trinity, motioning to let her know that she had his permission to follow him inside. As Trinity arrived beside the captain, he called out to all of his men to clear the front area and stop gawking at Amara.
All of the men hastily retreated and went back to work immediately.
The captain escorted Trinity into the crime scene and as she looked back, she noticed that Amara was not following. Instead, she stayed outside of the police tape alone, after all the officers had fled under the captain's orders. None of them bothered to question the captain bringing the girl inside, as no one wanted to go up against the angel who had requested it.
"Now, Trinity was it?" Captain Renault asked.
Trinity nodded her head as she surveyed her surroundings. "What happened here?"
In the dim alley light overhead, she noticed that most of the back alley was painted red with blood along the building walls, while puddles of blood pooled into the divots in the concrete walkway.
Captain Renault took Trinity by the hand and led her to a pathway that avoided maximum contact with the murder evidence. "Follow my steps exactly. Step only where I step, do not go off the path I show, and do not touch anything." he commanded her as he led Trinity deeper inside.
"I promise." Trinity agreed.
The sight of all the blood was making her stomach feel queasy. Just how many people were massacred here to amass this amount of blood?
As she approached further towards the back end of the alley, a noticeable and distinct smell filled her nose. It smelled putrid and foul like burnt leather, rotten eggs, and sulfur. She swiftly flung her hand up to cover her nose and mouth. "What is that smell?" she asked while trying her best not to gag. She still couldn't see much yet around the captain, but the stench couldn't be overlooked.
Captain Renault stopped, keeping her behind him, still unable to see the scene ahead. "I know Amara asked me to show you this, but are you certain you want to see it? This isn't even something we're even willing to disclose to the public yet. You shouldn't be seeing something like this, and I do not want to be the one to force you to see it."
Trinity wasn't certain that she wanted to see it either. But if this really did involve Zyxel in some way, then she had to know what she was walking into and what to prepare herself for mentally when she was able to find him.
"I'm certain." she whispered hesitantly, before she had a chance to change her mind.
Captain Renault sighed and stepped out of her view.
What she saw laid before her was eight bodies strewn on the ground. On either side of her stood two dumpsters, which she could see the police officers still pulling yet even more bodies out of.
Each of the corpses were pale white, and they each had their shirt sliced cleanly open with a gaping hole in each of their chests. Some of the holes in the bodies were smaller than others. The bodies with a larger hole in their chest, appeared to be further decomposed than the others. Which spread much further to encompass the majority of the front torso section. The front section of the rib cage had been eaten clean through from whatever had caused the reaction in their bodies.
The weirdest thing that she noticed was that it seemed that only the skin tissue and organs surrounding the hole appeared to be rotting. While the rest of the body still seemed fine.
As the officers pulled yet another body out of the dumpster, liquid oozed out from the gaping hole in the chest, and the officers seemed to be taking extra precaution not to let it spill or drip onto them.
Inspecting the liquid that seeped out of the body, it seemed weird to her that it didn't appear to be red like blood would have been.
"How long have these bodies been out here?" Trinity forced herself to ask, even though opening her mouth to speak only made it so that she could physically taste the rotting stench. She lifted up her shirt over nose and mouth, and pressed her hand against the shirt cover. Trying to create a secondary barrier between her senses and the horrible smell.
"From what we can gather, somewhere between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. They were all found hidden in the dumpsters. The shops were closed yesterday. Also, I'm assuming that the day prior to that, the blood on the ground and walls hadn't yet been noticeable at the time when the store employees came out to dump their trash at night. It would have been too dark to notice at the time." the Captain answered.
Trinity looked up at the captain, confused. "Only a day or two? But it looks like these guys have been rotting here for weeks?"
The captain nodded. "It does indeed." He bent down and with a gloved hand, traced the air with his index finger over the gaping hole in one of the victims. "What we can understand so far is that whatever he did to these guys here, worked like some type of acid. Not just burning the skin, but also liquefying the internal organs. But for reasons I can't seem to understand, this here all seems to have been a delayed reaction, that didn't happen until after the body had already been drained of blood." He scowled as he continued to examine the body in front of him.
Trinity's mouth dropped in shock, and immediately she began to taste the rotting stench once more. She covered her mouth once more, and her eyes glanced over to the newest body that was recently pulled out, still filled with a mysterious liquid. "That liquid inside them is their organs having been liquefied?" She fought against a gag reflex that threatened to escape her.
Captain Renault nodded. "If you can put in a good word with Amara to speak with me directly, I would appreciate her knowledge in this matter. We are trying to investigate the killings of a demon after all. We could really use her help with understanding this situation further, and measures that we might possibly be able to take to prevent this from occurring deeper into the community." Captain Renault commented, but as he gazed up to look at Trinity, she was no longer there.
He stood up and walked back through the path he had taken Trinity. A little ways past the blood scene, he found Trinity kneeling down on the ground against the side of the neighboring shop's brick wall, vomiting up bile. He knelt down beside her and placed a hand against her back, trying to comfort her. He held back her hair out of her face as more bile and vomit came spewing out. "This is why I told Amara I didn't want you to see this. Are you gonna be ok?"
Trinity nodded weakly. "Yeah, I just.. need a moment... and I will be fine. Is it alright.. if I just... sit here for a moment... and catch a breather?" She found herself hyperventilating and struggling to breathe as she was attempting to speak, making her have to pause after every few words.
Captain Renault patted her on the back. He knew it must have been tough witnessing first hand what she just saw. She was still so young, not even out of high school yet. He couldn't blame her for feeling nauseous at the horror that she just observed here. "Of course you can. Sit down and rest for as long as you need. I'll let my men know not to disturb you. Call Amara over when you are ready to leave and she will escort you safely back home."
Trinity nodded and rolled over, leaning her head back against the cold brick wall behind her. Staring up at the sky, she wasn't sure how this atrocity could have been executed by the same person that she had known these past three and half weeks now.
How did a liquefied and acid rotting body have anything to do with feeding on sin? It just didn't make any sense to her.
'Do not hate Zyxel when you find him. He fought the hunger for as long as he could.' That's what Lucifer had told her before he sent her spirit back to her body. She focused on repeating Lucifer's words over and over in her mind. Trying to come to terms with everything she just witnessed, and the pain and suffering that she knew that Zyxel must have been experiencing leading up prior to succumbing to this.
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(Questions in the Author's Comments below!)
Books I am currently writing:
- The Forbidden Luna
- Divine Banishment