After the demons had remained in the alleyway, Kai was hopeful, he already knew this was far from over; he had finally acknowledged their presence, but he had retained hope that they would at least leave him alone for the time being.
He huffed and heaved, leaning on a utility post and gasping for air after running in the opposite direction of his home until his lungs gave out and his blood felt like fire under his skin, dripping through his veins with a sensation he could barely describe any further than painful.
"What do I do now, I've ignored them for ten years, and they've allowed me to live normally for those ten, but the moment I acknowlledged them... Hél... Vessel, what were they talking about?" Kai started walking again, passing two couples who looked at him weirdly because of the dried splashes of blood on his white uniform shirt.
"The Red One, Hél's Master, Deals, Hél; I thought that if I just stayed still then this would just pass over and ignore me somehow... how do I get away from the end of the world when it seems to want to chase me?" He wondered aloud leaning on a random mailbox and swallowing to appease the desert that was his throat.
Kai took another deep breath and looked down at himself shaking his head. " They have been following me all my life, all the wile trying to communicate with me," He started unbuttoning his shirt. "Will they follow me home, should I risk going back to Susana like this?" He wondered while he began walking again. "The last thing I want is that woman getting involved in anything dangerous, she has been so kind to me; she's all I hav-"
"KYAAAA!!"
A wrenching scream erupted from one of the women that had walked past Kai earlier when he was catching his breath, and he spun out of reaction, eyes widening in horror and feet in the motion of adjusting for a sprint after his vision locked on to the two bloody men from before.
One of them had his hand deep in the torso of one of the two men that had walked past him, while the other one snapped the neck of the woman who screamed and grabbed the other one, breaking her arm and laughing while his accomplice pulled a knife and stabbed the other man who tried to help several times in his neck and head leaving him to flutter like a fish as he fell to the ground.
"Don't make it easy, Kai Mora, run like a bitch so I can play catch up before I kill you!" The one with a mouth looked around at him, squeezing the jaw of the woman who was crying in his clutches and repeating the same scene from before as he tore her mouth open and released her lower jaw to the ground, stepping in her head and leaving it a bloody pulp for good measure.
"It's them...!" Kai's eyes continued widening before he indeed spun on his heels and took off, this time though he was at the forefront of a chase, with a walkthrough department store being nearby with entry and exit points on either side, he turned in that direction, thinking of using the people there as cover to get away,
To his shock though, these possessed corpses were as flexible as putty, while he had to swerve around the people passing through, the creatures simply used them as footholds, sprinting across them and diving at him through the door.
"Hey, isn't that Kai Mora?"
One of his schoolmates squinted his eyes and fixed his glasses when he saw Kai get tackled to the ground, kick the man who held him in his shoulder and spin as he went low in a sprint releasing grunting noises of desperation as he sped away.
"Fuck, that little shit is agile!" One of the two flipped to his feet, holding the wrapping on his face to not reveal that he was already a corpse.
"You there," A security officer approached the two of them with his partner close by. "Hold on, I'm calling the co- ggurglrur!!" The mans words devolved into the sounds of choking and drowning when the one with his head tied took out his knife and stabbed him in his chest and then left the knife bedded in his eye, staring at him with an annoyed glare as he sunk to the ground clinging to his body and panicking.
"I'll see you in Hél," The corpse looked up when his partner started running again.
"They kill anyone who gets between us, if I stay in a crowded place, it'll be a massacre!" Kai hissed from the cut left on his hand while his arms pumped and his feet slapped against the ground echoing. "But I can also get away if I run into another crowd!"
"Come on Kai Mora, I'm catching up again!" He heard a shrill cry right behind him and the sound of his own heart thumping echoed through his head right as the same burning sensation from before doubled throughout his body causing him to falter for a second before a sudden surge of desperate strength injected itself into him.
The ground, the trees, the buildings, everything turned to blurs of black, grey and green mixed with the painted twilight night as his speed almost tripled.
He turned off the main roads and onto a bridge, zooming past several people and then a familiar figure which had haunted his days at school for the last week, he kept running, but something he had not expected compelled him to stop, so he eased his legs forward and angled himself in an arch coming to a halt at the end of the overhead bridge and punching his shoulder, shaking his head and then looking around.
He saw the possessed corpses about to enter the bridge, mercilessly, they cackled in the process of killing the three people he had run past earlier.
"This girl," He cursed himself and her terrible timing, furrowing his brows as a bout of anxiety crashed into his burning lungs. "She's looking right at me; she doesn't even know, she has no idea that she's about to die!" Kai shook his head once more and stepped onto the brifge again.
He cupped his a hands around his mouth and in a panic yelled. "Run!"
She started walking in his direction, but the two had already entered the pass, any second now she, was dead... Kai took another step in her direction, his heart thudding so violently that he could feel the grains of gravel under his feet through his shoes like a map he was seeing with his eyes.
He stepped forward once more and leaned, drawing deep within himself and calling out with everything he had as urgently as he could, extending his hand towards her.
"Ava, Run!"