Edwin watched the bodies on the ground, or better said, the charred husks left behind, with mute horror. Had he done this? Why? He could barely remember anything after the point Orion had kissed his corpse.
Orion…
Oh, Edwin had always known that Orion was a snowstorm of a man. Sweet like the first snowflakes falling on the tongues of children trying to catch them, daydreaming about a make belief adventure. Cold like the winds which would catch a person out in the woods, all alone and lost, and rob him of any and all feeling of warmth, safety, and peace.
But did Orion killing him excuse what Edwin had done? The fire was still raging in the city. He could see as runes were being activated, as water was uselessly wasted.
How could water ever hope to dose off the birth fires of a Lich?
Edwin knew what he had been turned to. Had known as soon as he saw the angel and found him a little too late. After all, if the angel had come right after Edwin had died, could he not have saved him as well? And why, if angels were these silent guardians who watched over humanity, had the being allowed for Edwin to start this massacre?
Edwin looked at his corpse, spared from the flames, his lips blue and his fingers having traces of frostbite.
Orion was a snowstorm; Edwin was an inferno.
He hated it.
Hated every single second of it. Felt the rage which made him think about raising the corpses which were in a good enough condition back to life.
He took a deep breath, even though he did not need it. If he stayed in ghost form, he knew that he would soon lose all control.
If he went back into his body, he would need to go down a road of self-destruction. For a Lich to have a body, the Lich would need to feed off souls.
Edwin hated himself for thinking that eating the soul of an animal was no different from eating a steak or a rib. The poor animal was never going to get the chance to be reborn. For all Edwin knew, it might have been a tree, once, or a human, or even some long-forgotten deity.
Edwin shook his head, and he touched the hand of his corpse. So cold, as if Orion had marked him. So stiff. Was it not too late? What if he just moved to an uninhabited island, and tried to live life, or his afterlife, in peace? In ghost form, not harming anyone, and…
Edwin heard the police sirens in the distance. No, there was no mistaking the flames of a Lich. Edwin would surely be found out, and then put in a mana generator.
All Lich were evil, the wizards liked to claim, and so, all Lich had to be put to work. To atone for the sin of their birth. For the fires fed by souls.
The strongest of Lich were put into entire reactors, but that never ended well. Just last year one of them had broken out, and now the world was at war.
No one wanted to take the blame, no one wanted to admit that the Lich who had minded his own business and long since had done his time in jail, was supposed to be free.
A rune around his neck, which made him no better than a human.
The power was going to corrupt him, Edwin knew, if he did not get away. As a ghost, he had no chance to go about unnoticed. Who was he going to trick? He was see-through, for crying out loud!
Edwin twitched, as he heard the intruder alarm of the apartment building sounded. The police had not waited to be let in.
And Edwin knew for whom they have come.
It was strange, to go back into something as cold as a corpse. Revolting. Every instinct in Edwin's soul screamed for him to just go outside, and feed on the feast his birth fires had prepared for him.
A gift from the Grim Reaper for his newest son.
Edwin heaved, glad that he had not eaten anything. With shaky hands, he activated the rune which made him appear healthy.
Just in time, too, for his door was broken down just seconds later. The police stormed in, rage in their eyes. They were there to deliver justice, and Edwin could even tell himself that he deserved it.
That he deserved for his soul to be sucked dry of its mana, for him to be placed in a place he could recharge, and then forced back into the reactor.
Again and again, until he lost his mind. Just like that poor man who had been a poet, in life, and had ended up using poetry to create war and grief for the world.
"Officers?" Edwin hoped, beyond hope, that no one was going to notice that his voice was too quiet for it to be normal. His neck hurt from being strangled. The air which entered his lungs was like icicles piercing the organ with each breath he took.
"Wait… this is no Lich. The man is alive!" A young officer exclaimed, rushing to Edwin's side. The older officers narrowed their eyes, for they knew that only this building was spared. If this man, who was found in the apartment from which the black miasma had streamed out of, was not the Lich, then they would need to storm other apartments.
"What happened to you? Did the Lich try to eat you?" the young officer asked, gently feeling up Edwin's neck. Not knowing that Edwin was trying to ignore the scent of the man's soul. A scent which reminded him of pancakes with syrup in the mornings, cartoons with heroes in the lazy afternoons.
Of purity, of his own childhood.
Like a cake, but that cake was not a creation of flour, sugar, eggs, or butter and milk. No, this cake had hopes and dreams, and Edwin did his hardest to will the claws which were trying to grow in the place of his short-clipped nails, to not extend.
He realized at that moment that he would never be free of this curse. That he could not live among people.
"I did not see any strangers," which was even the truth. He was the Lich, and he was no stranger to himself. "There was this man. This loan shark. He tried to make me sign a loan, but I…"
Edwin coughed, as the scent of the young officer got stronger and stronger. A voice in his mind, a voice which reminded him of the tone Orion had held with him earlier, as the man had still tried to play nice, told him that five to one were no good odds.
For the policemen.
"We can't spare manpower. Call him an ambulance and let us move," one elderly officer growled, and then just turned his back on the scene.
"An ambulance?" The young man was still not gripped from the monotony of not being able to protect everyone. He had sworn to be the sword and shield of the people. Actually believed in the vow. "How is that going to drive through these streets? Officer Hans, the man needs help!"
"If the Lich does not get captured soon, we are the ones who will need help," the officer in command said, not turning to look at his younger colleague. "Call him an ambulance, and if he dies, he dies."
"Officer? Please, I am scared," Edwin did not even have to lie about that, but he was not scared about what the young officer believed he should be scared of. No, he feared the old and cold officer, who was looking around with a critical eye.
What if he noticed something? How many years of experience did the man have?
"Hey, no, no, don't speak. Let me just," as the officer looked around for something that could be used as a stretch, Edwin took a hold of his arm. He did not have to force his breathing to become erratic. The older officer was looking at the ruin left from the melted camera.
Edwin could practically hear the gears in the man's head turning.
"I am scared, officer. The Lich. Is the Lich here? Is that what the fire outside is?"
It pays to act stupid sometimes, his onetime friend had told him, as they were smoking a joint behind his house.
The boy had grown up to be a hacker. Edwin did not know what had become of Adam, but he did know that if anyone had found out that the boy had managed to change the records of a serial killer and have the man set free because of a police error, only for him to kill another woman just hours after being released, then his name would have been all over the news.
It pays to act stupid, Edwin repeated in his head like a mantra. It pays to act scared; it pays to look like a weakling.
After all, the police thought all civilians as these worker ants, who minded their own business and paid their taxes.
And the ones who strayed from that beaten path, well, those were the ones the police had to deal with.
Edwin had to appear as a working ant. As someone who might grumble because of the rise of the taxes, but nothing more.
"Do you know when the fires started, sir?" the young officer asked, unknowingly digging Edwin's grave. "It might help us with finding the Lich. Please, any help is appreciated!"
"The fires," Edwin started, bile rising in his throat. Oh, what a wretch he was, to still think about himself, when so many had died for his rebirth?
"We have wasted enough time in here!" Another officer, a middle-aged man with a beard and a scar across his nose said, pushing pass the commander, and rushing down the corridor.
"I will report him, one of these days," the elderly policeman said, as he turned towards Edwin. His blue eyes were narrowed, as he pointed towards the remains of the camera. "What is this… sir?"
The fact that the man was not certain how to address Edwin spoke volumes on its own. Edwin gulped, and then decided that it would not hurt to say a half-truth.
After all, Orion was probably back in Hell by now, and the chances the policemen could catch the demon were close to none.
"He had wings," Edwin said, his feverish eyes dancing wildly from a face to a face. Carved from stone, bar one. Like a drowning man, he latched at the hand of the young police officer and got as close to the man's face as he dared. The lovely scent of the man making him lose his mind. "And claws. And his eyes are like a snowstorm!"
The elderly police officer cursed, as he took out a device from his pocket. The rune went off, the air around them all changed to smoky gray.
Edwin's lips lost all their color and looked just like when Orion had broken their kiss, that robbery of his, which Edwin had watched with mute horror. Ice blue. The lips of a dead man.
"He kissed me!" Edwin yelled, as he started to shake. "I didn't want to kiss him, but he said he will snap my neck!"
Edwin's mother had told him once, after she had gotten a visit from his homeroom teacher one late September evening, that he could make it big as an actor.
After all, it took great talent to convince the school psychiatrist that no, he was not hording all of the stars the entire class was supposed to be getting. That the children were giving him their stars, just small pieces of yellow paper because they liked him.
It had worked, his mother had told him, disappointed, and amused in equal measures because he had wanted for it to be true.
So much, that he had first lied to himself.
Edwin did not want to believe he had died, or that his killer had kissed his corpse. His brain allowed him a compromise.
And the police officers started to search for a demon, instead of a Lich. With Edwin sipping hot cocoa wrapped in a blanket, and not being able to taste it at all.
The souls of the dead knew the truth. They screamed, ran, prayed.
But Edwin had no control over his powers. And so, every time he sipped from the chocolaty drink to put the blinds on the eyes of the young police officer who had been told to stay by his side, he sucked in another soul into himself.
Growing stronger.