Elan watched in horror as the flame towered over the roof of the burning building. Below, she could see people running out of the place in panic as everything was quickly covered by the fire.
There's something wrong. Fires could never spread this much in such a short amount of time.
The sound of guns firing snapped Elan out of her daze as she quickly positioned her weapon and looked through the scope.
"Fuck, I lost the target! The smoke's getting to thick!" she heard Peter cussing through their headpiece.
"Stop cussing, birdbrain! Left the perimeter! I saw some of the lackeys running towards the south exit!" Madeline said.
"Peter, head to the exit and follow the target. Clover, Madeline, you run over to the side, try cutting off their escape. Elan's on the south side so coordinate with her. Elan, keep your eye on the exit door and make sure no one comes and goes. Shoot anyone that tries to come close."
Elan sucked a breath after hearing the order but she replied 'affirmative!' along with the others, eyes locked on her scope. She took a calming breath to ease up the palpitations of her heart.
She didn't receive the honor of being the top of her class for nothing. Even with the fiery orange glow and thick smoke of the building in front of her, she remained still and calm, her breath soft and controlled, focus narrowed to the small peek of the scope. When she saw the exit door opened, her fingers moved towards the trigger, ready to shoot.
The people, three of them, were all wearing some sort of heavy cloaks over them, making it hard to see their faces. Elan aimed to where she could generally thought would be the head of the one moving ahead of the little group, when the target suddenly stopped and looked directly at her.
She sucked in a breath as that blood-red eyes was directed at her. Even at this distance she could feel the oppressing power from the tall man; like he can easily crush an entire street or block with a single flick of his wrist. Her fingers started to shake slightly, and the voices of her teammates started to fade somewhat.
She can't help but feel as if her life was about to flash in her eyes.
A figure seemingly dropped in front of the man in a crouching position, but their arrival had taken the demon's gaze from Elan, making her breath a little easier. She can't hear any of their conversations but the way their acting and the slight change of the man's expression indicated that it's not a happy one.
The figure looked like it bowed slightly before standing up and adjusting their hood, sending Elan into another shock when it showed the face of the girl she met in the alley earlier, the one who kicked those harassers.
The cloaked man moved his head slightly to the side, and one of his escorts move and handed a black-red pearl to the waiting palm. He rolled the small pearl with his thumb and index finger and looked at Elan's direction again, this time giving her a sinister smirk that rattled her down her core.
'I should shoot. I should shoot.' She kept saying it in her mind, but the man's gave and smile has all but froze her fingers stiff from pulling the trigger. After standing there for almost a minute and making the raven-haired girl look at the man in confusion, the pearl dropped from his hand and smoke erupted, covering them from sight. When the smoke dissipated, the four of them were already gone.
It was also by that time that Peter and the rest came rounding from the side, but no matter how much they search for any clues left, they couldn't find anything that might help them track the demons.
Elan wasn't sure how much time it took for them to make a clean sweep around the burning area and made sure that there's no casualty from the incident.
When they returned to the headquarters, Madeline was on a rage mode even as all of them felt weary and tired.
"That girl's useless! She didn't even tried to stop the demons from escaping and just let them vanished even as she sees them!"
"Mads, the child's a new recruit, it's expected to not have everything right down pat. Give her some berth to breath," Clover said in a soothing voice, trying to calm down their teammate.
"This is a high-ranked order! From the Pope himself! How can we just hand over an empty report, with nothing to show?!"
"It is what it is," Brendon said in such a finality that everyone just ended up quite and watched the guy eating some sort of sandwich he made for himself. Elan wasn't sure what it was, but she thought she saw the man putting some anchovies sauce in that bread earlier.
"How did those demons knew we were there, anyway?" Peter asked after some time. "Even it this is more of a secret reconnaissance than of an attack, they shouldn't have been that prepared to welcome us like that. I mean, who the fuck--" Isabel glared at him at that but he paid it no mind "--plants explosives to their business building and the the place into bloody fire just so he can escape from the church?"
"Maybe they had something they want to hide there?" Madeline said with a shrug.
"But they are demons. Who knows how they think," Clover then added as she twirled some strands of her hair on her fingers.
"Nevertheless, it's a blessing that no one died tonight, and the number of serious injuries are low," Isabel said as she put some papers down the table. Peter peered at said papers. "This is?"
"Copies of the police force report about the incident earlier," the High Priest answered. "They've just delivered it." The police force does not have that much good of a relationship with the church. Or, more specifically, they're do not have that much fondness with the church's priesthood. They see them more as a competition than anything, and it doesn't help that most of the civilians always favor the priests than the police.
From the look on Isabel's face, they're quite sure that the police force was reluctant when they gave them a copy of the report. "I thought we can write some details that might help us identity who the demon was and send it to the church so they could plan the next step." She swatted Peter as the man yelled 'That's our genius High Priest!'
"It's not like they can do anything," Madeline said with a sweep of an arm. "This incident was directly caused by a demon, so they had to give some sort of assistance for us, especially since it has a high chance of having casualties because they're too scared to even check if the place was run by humans or demons."
Peter laughed at that while Isabel just shook her head. She walked towards where Elan was sitting. "Hey. Are you alright?" The girl hasn't said anything after they arrived and it's worrying her a bit. "Are you injured somewhere?"
Elan's attentiveness seemed to return some. "I'm sorry, High Priest. But I'm fine, really." She gave her a smile to assure the older girl but the furrowed brow and concerned gaze told her she's not really selling it well.
"I'm... just a little shaken, is all," she said honestly. The room's attention seemed to zone in on her and she felt embarrassed, but she continued to add, "It's taken me some surprise, feeling that pressure from that demon." The overwhelming presence, the dark aura that seemed to cloak him and his escorts, at that red eyes and creepy knowing smile that promised pain if they weren't so pressed on escaping.
Elan was not one to be scared easily, but it was the first time she found out that fear can be so crippling in their intensity, like an icy tentacle that burrows under your skin and grips your heart and limbs into stone and filling your head with dark, static noise you can't decipher.
She felt a hand touch her shoulders lightly, and after a few seconds she realized that she's already hugging her legs to her chest and that she's been shaking. She looked at the worried look from the High Priest.
"I'm sorry. We should have warned you about that earlier." Isabel took a seat beside her. "Even as they have already fallen from grace, a demon still had their divine presence, tainted by darkness, yes, but still there. And those of the high circle had quite a pressuring presence on them that usually takes novices by surprise. Many of them fell down their knees or on the ground with only a gaze from a demon. I never thought that it could still reach you even from your distance, so whoever it was must have really been from the First Hierarchy."
Elan nodded and took a shakey breath. "I didn't exactly saw well who the demon was as they had their hood up, but they seemed to sense where I am, their red eyes looking directly at me. One of his escorts handed him a red-blackish pearl, I think that's how they got away."
"Red eyes?"
Elan nodded. She watched as everyone in the room looked at her with wide shocked eyes before looking at each other. "Is something wrong?"
"Are you sure that the demon's eyes were red of color?" When she nodded again, excitement seemed to grow amongst each of them, as well as a foreboding feeling.
"Amongst all the fallen angels, only two were known to have red eyes," Isabel explained to the surprised girl. "One of them was the leader of the demons themselves. Lucifer, the bright morning star. Legend says that his eyes turned to such color because of the blood that he shed from his brethren.
"The other one was the great dragon, Leviathan. He was amongst the demons of the First Hierarchy and one of the fallen seraphs. From what you mentioned about a red-black pearl, I would assume that the cloaked figure you met was Leviathan."
"Lucifer rarely visits the human world himself," Peter added. "And from the handful of times he did, towns and cities were sent to fire."
"Even so, Leviathan was still a really strong demon. And is also known to be ruthless even amongst the top circle." Clover looked at Elan with a serious expression. "Being able to stay alive after he saw you is a small miracle of itself. You're quite lucky."
Elan gulped down the knot forming on her throat. She watched as Isabel stood up and walked towards the table. "Now that we have the name of the demon, we shall finish this report before the morning to be send to the pope and the council. With everything that happened today, I suspecting that there's something deeper happening."
Seeing that she's still shaken, Isabel told her to return back to her home to rest, telling her that she'll send her a letter for any more instructions. Peter slung his arm on her shoulder, cheerfully thanked her for identifying the demon and told her that he's hoping to have her permanently on their team. Clover clapped her hands enthusiastically at that while Madeline just scoffed. Brendon only continued on his meal, pausing only to wave her goodbye as she left.
Her apartment wasn't that far so she managed to get back quick. From her window, she noticed that it's just a quarter past one, but it felt that the night has stretched for hours. The fatigue and weariness started to creep up and she flopped face-first on the bed with a groan.
She turned her head to the side and noticed the rosary Caesar gifted her on her graduation, made from light silver with a small sapphire stone at the center of the cross.
Her mind turned back to that girl she saw on that alley, the one that kneeled down the demon as if he was her master. All demons--well, aside from Leviathan and Lucifer--had golden eyes, a characteristic they retained from being angels in the past, but the girl she met that time had electric blue eyes. Uncommon, but it was far from a demon's. Unless they knew some spell that could alter one's appearance or eye color. Maybe it's a technique to help them blend with the mortals?
She didn't feel anything malicious or dark about her when they first met. She had helped a human girl being harassed without asking for anything, and she seemed to have some sense of humor from the limited sentences they exchanged. In fact, despite being slightly pale, she could even say that the girl was also pretty, especially with her eye color.
'I wonder what her name was. I never really got to ask her,' she thought as she absentmindedly looked at the rosary. Then her eyes moved to where the extra magazines she can't crammed inside her satchel for her rifle were, placed above the desk.
Right. She had a job to do. Even if she's still unsure of the identity of that girl, or even if she seemed quite an interesting one, the fact that she was with the demon Leviathan was indisputable. The next time she sees her, she'll have to shoot her on the spot.