Every bland day was the same, an endlessly looping play. Wake up late, just before afternoon came, eat whatever he had stored in the house, and observe quietly from the shadows of alleys in the night. Kill when necessary.
Azrael never bothered to keep track of the date or the day of the week so it was easy for his life to blur together. There was no real need to – there were no appointments to keep with family or friends and no important anniversaries. Not anymore. The only thing he really did to keep his days catalogued was write down a brief recap of his thoughts in cheap notebooks. Azrael had no real idea why he did it so consistently, even after all this time. Perhaps it was his desperate desire for his pitiable life to be remembered even after he was long gone.
Ridiculous.
As he put down his pen and stored his most recent journal back on the shelf in his study, the tenth in the series, Azrael stared at the neat array. For a moment, he was tempted to reach out and flick through the oldest one there, its red cover faded and dog-eared from age. A chill swept down his spine. He quickly dropped his hand to his side, unable to bring himself to read about the thoughts and emotions he had gone through all of those years ago. That book held the real reason why he wrote in a diary nowadays. Sighing, Azrael couldn't help but talk aloud, "Just throw them away, for fucks sake."
But he didn't.
He couldn't.
While he could pretend that what had happened hadn't in that time he couldn't forget, he wasn't able to get rid of the last bits of physical evidence that remained of him. The notebooks, that t-shirt, the magnet centred on his fridge. Azrael shook his head and quickly exited the study, shutting the door tightly behind him so he could continue to feign ignorance to his feelings and memories. As long as he didn't look back, none of it could hurt him. It would only affect him if he let it.
Azrael peered his head through the entranceway of his kitchen and looked at the clock on the wall. It was just past sunset now, despite being so early in the day, so he knew he had to make his move soon. After Azrael let the sun dip a little further below the horizon, he left his house.
As he did every day, he went to stand guard in those forgotten alleys and watched over the comings and goings of the Lotus. Broken windows and stretched shadows were his only companions, the muffled sounds of sex and violence an unwelcome backing track.
-
Screaming flooded the street.
His eyes opened: Azrael knew whose voice it was. While the sound was intolerably loud to his ears, it was, to the average listener, barely above the normal hum of the city. Nothing special against the regular level of background noise. Focusing his ears, disoriented from the sudden rackets after being adjusted to the near silence of the world, Azrael listened harder to figure out what he needed to know. It took him only a moment to identify what floor and, then, what room it was coming from.
Straining his hearing further, another voiced joined into the racket, almost obfuscated by Pavel's wails of agony. Quiet but harsh, cruel. Azrael couldn't hear the exact words but he knew, as he pushed off the ground and ascended into the sky silently, this was someone he would have to get rid of. After a very short bought of flight, Azrael crouched on the roof of the neighbouring building to the Lotus and peered into the open window of Pavel's room. All he needed to do was put a face to the target.
Fortunately, Pavel was out of sight, so Azrael did not need to feel like he was invading his privacy more than he had to. Through the flimsy, gauze curtains that barely hid anything, he watched the movement in the room. The glint of something metal, something sharp, cut through the dim light of the room followed by an arc of spurting blood and Azrael's eyes focused on the wielder of that unidentifiable weapon. He could, finally, see who it was that was hurting Pavel as he wailed. Azrael's gaze hardened as he took in the offender's appearance, grateful that he hadn't left his glasses in the car. They did enough work to put some details onto the figure that stood on the other side of those curtains.
Female human. Middle-aged, or thereabout. Dyed blonder hair pulled back in a tight bun. Distinctive enough that he would not make a mistake. Not that a mistake was anything he ever had to worry about.
Azrael descended, leaping back down into an alcove that was next to the Lotus – it was too close for him to spend the whole night without being noticed but good enough for a short stint of lying low. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he waited for the woman to come. out. Just out of view of the Lotus, he watched the door and listened as the crying faded into nothing. It wouldn't be long now until that animal masquerading as a human being would come out.
Minutes ticked by so slowly that it felt like years had passed by the time Azrael heard someone coming out onto the street and he checked to make sure it was his target. It wasn't a particularly busy night at the Lotus, but there was bound to be other clients entering and exiting the building, nonetheless. He didn't want to move before checking. A flash of bottle blonde hair with overgrown, dark roots and Azrael knew it was time to move.
Sticking to the shadows that stretched across the pavement, Azrael moved like a ghost, gaining ground as that woman got closer and closer to the end of the street. Barely any noise came from his footsteps. While he wasn't running, he knew his movement was conspicuous if someone happened to look at the street so he threw a glance down the road and was relieved to see that it was still empty. When Azrael looked back, he was only a few metres behind the woman.
Steeling himself, Azrael pounced, closing the gap between them, and clamping his hands around her mouth in one swift movement. Limp with shock for only a moment, the woman began to struggle as soon as she realised her situation. There was nothing she could do, a mouse caught in a glue trap. Azrael knew the street was clear but he shot up into the sky and came to rest on the roof of the building next to them anyway. It took just one person glancing out of a window, being too curious, to phone the police and cause a scene. This just made it easier.
Now hidden from prying eyes, Azrael took only a brief glimpse at the bitch's face before he snapped her neck and the violent fear in her eyes was snuffed out.
Good fucking riddance.
As he dragged her limp corpse into the rough hole he'd dug in the dirt, he came to realise that it was becoming harder and harder to find space for new graves. While Azrael had always deigned to dig small holes to contort the rigor-mortis hardened bodies into, rather than full-sized graves, it was beginning to add up. Out of the whole once-empty clearing that was about twenty square metres, less than a quarter of it remained. At least the barren land it had been was beautifully filled with flora, the nutrients from the decomposing bodies doing wonders for the environment.
Filling up the hole in the ground, Azrael thought about what he was supposed to do when he ran out of space because it wasn't a matter of if; he knew he would run out of space because Pavel was in no way going to be out of harm's way anytime soon. Azrael took one last look at the vacant expression of the woman's contorted face before covering it once and for all. Letting out a sigh, the shovel dropped from his hand before he dropped to his haunches. He let out an exasperated groan.
It would be frustrating to have to find a new, off-the-beaten track place to dispose of the bodies. This place had already taken him enough time to find as he had purposefully found a place that didn't have hiking or walking trails and wasn't very detailed on most maps. In this current year, there were practically no places in England – at least none that weren't hours and hours away from his house – that were day-trip destinations. He did not want to have to go to Dartmoor, all the way across the country, to be able to dump a body effectively. Azreal had been eternally lucky that this place remained so untouched for seven years and there was no guarantee he would have that good fortune again. It was completely stupid to leave the bodies in London or throw them in the Thames. He had no clue what to do. Frustrated, he ran his fingers through his hair before tousling it, letting it fall loosely around his horns.
I'll cross that goddamn bridge when I get to it.
-
If he hadn't gotten used to the constant looping routine his days followed, if he hadn't lived a monotonous, violent life from infancy, Azrael would have long since gone utterly mad. Leaning against the same wall he did every night; he was surprised there wasn't a perfect indent of his shoulder in it at this point. It was completely silent around him, the night becoming unbearably frigid as winter took over autumn and he realised he would have to start wearing more layers.
The last week had been quiet, since Azrael had killed that blonde woman, and it was more than welcome. The gap between the people he had to get rid of always fluctuated anywhere from a couple days to months, but Azrael was never anxious when there was no need for him to take action. It was odd, but there was no feeling of apprehension, that awful feeling of the calm before the storm. In fact, he just welcomed it completely. He would love nothing more than if every night was like this – no pain, no suffering, no need for Azrael to kill anyone. Pavel unharmed by evil people.
Life did not care for what he wanted, however, as a high, whining noise pierced through the air, stabbing into Azrael's ears. Heaving a disappointed sigh, he pushed off the ground and situated himself across from the window of the room Pavel was occupying. Azrael could only see his feet, the head of the bed pressed under the window, but he could see clearly the bloody paddle being grasped by the man kneeling above Pavel.
An older man, hair completely grey, though Azrael could hardly see it with how coated in splatter blood the man was. Seething Azrael felt like his blood was boiling in his veins; it took every single inch of his discipline to stop himself from launching right through that window and killing that bastard right there. His lips curled back, instinctively baring his fangs, swamped with the urge to rip the man's throat out. Hunkering down on the roof of the building, Azrael was glad that no one could see him – he was sure he resembled a savage, starving beast, rather than a sentient being.
Burning that man's visage into his brain, a low rumbled echoed in Azrael's chest, shaking his ribs, as that man brought that paddle down in a vicious swing, making contact with Pavel's, presumably, already wrenched open flesh. A muffled shriek drilled into him and Azrael closed his eyes, grasping his head in his hand.
Azrael didn't know how much time passed, how many times Pavel was hit or when it'd stopped, but when he looked up, the man had wash himself clean of blood and put his clothes back on. Slightly calmer now, Azrael knew it was almost time to for the next step.
After less than 10 minutes, the man was limp in the back of Azrael's car, throat torn out as blood caked Azrael's mouth and shirt. He knew he should wash it off before going anywhere, in case anyone was unfortunate enough to see him, but Azrael didn't care. A maddened glint still hung in his eyes and his chest heaved as he began driving.
Just get rid of this piece of shit. Think later.
-
Twenty days passed. A demoness, strangely young, though she could be centuries old, for all Azrael knew. It was already uncommon for non-humans to frequent this place, even more so for it to be a woman, but that didn't matter.
Laying their hand on Pavel made them fair game. Azrael had no sympathy for them, man or woman, human or not. They were all equally deserving of punishment in his eyes. Death was a level playing field.
Once he'd caught her, she'd put up a fight. It was almost fun, something different from the normal, human flailing, but once Azrael broke her leg and wrenched one of her horns from her skull, she'd lost any advantage she had. Energy sapped, all the demoness could do was stare silently, blood-soaked as Azrael wrapped his hands around her throat and broke her neck.
-
Another eight days. A man, perhaps Azreal's age, perhaps older. Aggressively handsome like a celebrity or a supermodel – he wouldn't be either of those, a wealthy person had no purpose in these slums. Whatever beauty his face had was soured as Azrael saw the vitriol in his eyes as he looked at Pavel. It didn't matter.
Azrael had been particularly vindictive when he'd caught this man, though he had no real idea why. The man was exceedingly arrogant as he attempted to fight back against the dragon that pinned him to the floor. Something about the unwavering confidence in those deep-set eyes irked Azrael, his talons digging into the man's face. He took the opportunity to peel off that handsome mask.
The man soon found a new home with the worms.
-
Eleven days. Another man. A senior citizen, it seemed. Stiff, wrinkles but wicked and disgusting.
Azrael was sick and tired of all of these scumbags. He garnered no satisfaction from getting from rid of this man, even though he knew he was protecting Pavel. With an wearied sigh, he barely looked at the old man as he exerted barely any pressure to shatter his fragile ribs. It took not effort for his heart to stop.
As he swiftly came closer to filling the final quarter of the clearing he had left, Azrael was flooded with exhaustion. His mind was muddled and everything felt wrong. Heaving a heavy breath, he wiped the dirt off his cheek and began to walk back to the car. Heart weighed down, it felt like it was skipping beats and adding extras at the same time, anxiety horribly high.
This isn't good. This is too many people.