His eyes fell against his will on the High Inquisitor's lips, full, sinfully passionate cherry blossoms, perfectly shaped like Cupid's bow. Now they were tightly squeezed, as always before the operation. I wonder if they ever have a smile on them? Has the High Inquisitor ever kissed anyone, or does he still live in one mode of a fighter without flaws and weaknesses?
The High Inquisitor, his squad of commissioners, and Penny herself stood on the hill, with an old mansion below. A nest of vampires, a routine mission. The main difficulty was to prevent the alpha from leaving.
"Let's begin," the High Inquisitor said.
Penny exhaled as usual, straightened her shoulders, and stepped forward. She had no wings, like all fallen angels, although the vertical scars on both shoulder blades indicated that she had once been able to fly. Penny didn't remember the moment she fell, she didn't remember what happened before—none of the angels remembered. People said that it was with the fall of the angels that the end of the world began. But most likely, it happened earlier, when the gates of hell opened. Or when the creatures of old fairy tales—vampires, werewolves, ghosts, even trolls—suddenly turned into reality.
To fight them, the Inquisition was created. The commissars were mainly engaged in dirty field work: the destruction of evil spirits, any that they could only reach. The highest ranks sat in their offices outside the city walls, all except the High Inquisitor, who was always on the front lines, as if it depended on him and him alone whether peace would come to the tormented land.
Perhaps the High Inquisitor even had a name, like the rest of the fighters, but no one knew it. He was like an angel, an angel of death. And something inside Penny trembled like a broken mechanism every time their eyes met. If it were different, if Penny were someone else, like a person like Corinne, the girl from the High Inquisitor's squad, if they met somehow wrong... sinful thoughts. Get out, Satan.
The High Inquisitor was the first Penny met after she fell. I just lifted my eyelids, lying on my back, and saw bright blue eyes framed by long eyelashes, a dusty face with light grooves of wrinkles, a white-brown arafat hiding her nose and lips. Large palms, one of them clutching the hilt of a machete - this time the squad was hunting desert djinn, which could be killed by simply cutting off their heads. That's how they came across Penny.
Then she stood up and tried to look behind her shoulders - she was sure that there must be wings, but she was mistaken, although her back hurt.
"Alive," the High Inquisitor said, as it turned out later. "Come with us." Angel.
The last word was uttered with indescribable snideness, and it was only later that Penny realized why: people did not like angels. Or rather, they loved, but only those who were in heaven – they loved them as the Lord. But those angels who fell, people could not stand and considered to be heralds of trouble. Nothing surprising, because any evil spirits, from higher demons to stupid zombies, wanted to eat the fallen one. They imbued with power in a way that a hundred people would not have nourished. The evil spirits could smell the fallen from a mile away, and as she walked toward the mansion, Penny knew that the vampires inside already knew she was there. Outwardly, the fallen were almost indistinguishable from humans, except for the scars on their shoulder blades and the iris of their eyes: gray as mercury.
And the fallen angels were very stupid, otherwise how to explain what Penny was thinking about the High Inquisitor now, and not about preventing the vampires from devouring her.
It was the High Inquisitor who gave her her name.
Penny.
At the time, the word seemed beautiful to her, like the dance of the sun's rays on the water, but Corin giggled.
"As simple as a penny!"
Her horse face, as it turned out later, on the day of their meeting, was also hidden by Arafat.
A gust of wind touched her hair, but Penny forced herself to go forward. The rustling around her grew louder, the wind grew stronger, swirling around Penny, and the mist crept down her legs. Bats squeaked and circled nearby, every now and then touching their clothes and hair with their claws. There was a smell of metal, blood, as it always did when vampires got close.
They were rather stupid evil spirits, unlike the same demons. They hunted in packs, like wild animals, attacked, without hesitation, if someone weak enough was nearby. Penny now fell into this category: behind her smell, vampires could not physically smell the commissars. A lonely traveler who is going to spend the night in an abandoned house. Easy prey.
Penny walked forward, noticing the shadows moving at breakneck speed out of the corner of her eye. Suddenly, a vampire stood in her way: pale, tall, with glowing red eyes and hungry bared fangs. Alpha. Who else will be allowed to go out to meet the angel and bite first?
Penny froze.
"Lie down!"