“Your Kingdom needs you,” Sloth stated, confirming my suspicions that they heard a calling of sorts that my human ears weren’t privy to.
There was a hesitant pause on Eclipse’s part. He looked conflicted about going to take care of whatever was happening in his Kingdom. He didn’t want to leave me alone with his brother.
“Go. It’ll only take a moment,” Sloth encouraged, reading the uncertain expression on Eclipse’s face. “I’ll watch her.”
“Do not overstep your boundaries and do not scare her,” Eclipse warned sternly.
Sloth smirked. Though it was supposed to be reassuring, his smirk offered me no comfort. It actually scared the living daylights out of me.
“I won’t hurt your new favorite toy.”
“I’ll be back shortly, Gracie,” Eclipse assured. He then whispered something only I could hear before he materialized out of the room. “Be careful with him.”
"Darkness will reign . . ."
27: Guardian Demon
I felt so uncomfortable sitting in a crack-den-like dorm room with the Demon of Sloth, who had the physical appearance of a lazy college freshman and the demeanor of an all-powerful Demon who could kill me with the snap of a finger.
It didn’t help that Eclipse had made me feel so much better with his cryptic parting words. I suddenly regretted choosing to wear all pink today. For whatever reason, my choice in color coordination truly offended Sloth. I didn’t understand why he appeared to be so annoyed with my existence, but, as if hearing my unspoken question, the Demon wasted no time in enlightening me.
“Out of all the Demons to seek you out, you should count your blessings that it is Eclipse who is your Guardian Demon,” he began at once.
“W-why is that?” I uttered, trying to control the fear veering through me. Without Eclipse, I had never felt more vulnerable to be at the mercy of another Demon.
“Because if it were me or any of my other brothers, we would have never risked our entire existence for you.” He regarded me with nonchalance. “You’re simply too much trouble, even if you may be worth it.”
I swallowed past my apprehension and my emerging irritation with Sloth. “Why did Eclipse bother with me then?”
He grinned, leaning forward with his hands bound together and his bronze eyes growing more potent. He looked less like a human and was beginning to look more feral and animalistic.
“My baby brother is a Demon who is very ambitious,” he began slowly, never taking his cold eyes off of me. “Once he sets his eyes on something, he will go to great lengths to attain it. This trait has made him both very popular and very unpopular in our monarchy. He seeks glory and he likes his pretty little trophies. And you, Grace, are the shiniest and most sought after trophy in our world. You come at a very big price tag that Eclipse has paid.” His eyes grew more severe. “He’s not going to give up on you, and unfortunately for him, this is a tenacity he needs to keep in order to successfully maintain you and maintain his own existence.” He released a breath, taking note of my appearance again before his diabolical eyes found mine. Tilting his head, he carelessly said, “I do find it interesting that you still want to be human, considering your possible fate and all. Eclipse has informed you, I presume?”
I knew then why my appearance offended him so much. It wasn’t so much the fact that I was wearing pink; it was more so because I was “foolish” enough to keep my soul (or what was left of it) in light of all that was being offered to me. Eclipse, as charming as he was to me, was an elitist at best. I was positive that his older brothers shared this trait. They did not take kindly to lower creatures rejecting the gift of becoming one of them.
I nodded, conviction set in my mind that I wouldn’t allow myself to be intimidated by Sloth. I wasn’t going to give Eclipse my soul—not now, not ever. I knew my fate, and I accepted it. End of story. No matter how fearful I was of Sloth, I was still brave enough to keep my soul and defend it.
“I already know that I’m going to contract a virus and die after I turn twenty-one,” I shared with him in a matter-of-fact tone. I had hoped the bravery in my voice would tell him that my mind could not be changed, yet his reaction left me staggered.
“That measly death?” Sloth threw his head back and laughed, sending me spiraling into a vortex of confusion. “You think I was talking about that?”
My insides chilled at his ominous words. “What are you talking about?”
His white teeth flashed in the only way the son of the Devil could smile. It was a cunning smile, it was a diabolical smile, and it was a terrifying smile.
“Ah, I see Eclipse neglected to mention it to you.”
“Neglected to mention what?”
Before Sloth could answer, the topic of our conversation appeared just in the nick of time to stop him.
“Thank you for watching her.” Eclipse’s voice suffused into the room before his body materialized in soon after. He was standing beside me, his face unsatisfied and looking slightly pissed off. He stared at his brother, his eyes soft but accusing. “Funny thing. When I arrived at my throne, my Arch-Demons said that they didn’t call for me. Very odd, don’t you think, Elder?”
“You know how the reception is at times,” Sloth replied loftily, playing off the fact that somehow, he was able to send off a fake call from his Kingdom so that Eclipse would leave. He grinned craftily, unmistakably pleased with himself that he was able to have his time alone to interrogate me. “And I’m surprised with you, Junior. You failed to mention to her the one big catalyst that would aid in convincing her to be a Demon.”
“What is he talking about?” I gazed at Eclipse. My mind was running in circles. “What’s he talking about, Eclipse? What didn’t you tell me?”
“The faster you tell her, the faster she’ll agree, the faster you can start the conversion, and the faster you can return to power,” Sloth interjected, his severe eyes on Eclipse. “Stop fucking around, baby brother. What’s happening now isn’t a joke. Time is of the essence for you.”
“Thank you for your concern, Elder,” Eclipse dismissed his brother with a polite smile, “but I know what I’m doing. Thank you for all your help tonight. I think I can handle it from here.”
Sloth shook his head as he watched Eclipse stroll over to me, grab me, and pull me out with him. Even with me attempting to pull out of his grasp, Eclipse was unyielding. His thoughts were single-minded; he wanted to get me out of there before Sloth revealed whatever secret Eclipse had been keeping from me.
Eclipse’s endeavor was successful—until Sloth whispered something that had every cell in my body rising up in utter terror.
“He is your Guardian Demon, Grace,” I could hear him whisper from his doorway while we hurried into the elevator. His last blood-chilling words came over me just as the elevator doors slid shut, searing into my already petrified mind with its ominous warning.
“With that said, what the hell do you think he’s guarding you from?”
●●●
“Eclipse, tell me what he was talking about,” I demanded for the hundredth time after we entered my apartment. I had been asking him this same question over and over the whole way back, and Eclipse had been giving me the same answer over and over without fail.
“Nothing,” he assured me just as OinkOink, who had been waiting at the door, bounced over to us in excitement. Eclipse chuckled distractedly, taking a moment to scratch OinkOink’s head before he closed the door behind me. He gave me another reassuring smile that essentially told me to stop worrying over useless things. “My Elder is looking out for me, Teacup. Unfortunately, if that means scaring you into giving your soul to me, then it’s not beneath him to do so.”
Sloth’s ominous words replayed in my mind and I couldn’t shake them away as a baseless threat.
“But his voice was authentic when he said it. It sounded so real.” Then, I slowly added, “And his eyes were really scary. I don’t think he was lying to me. The feeling I got was too potent. I think there migh
t be something to what he was trying to tell me—”
“Okay, Gracie, in all honesty,” Eclipse reasoned logically, interrupting me while OinkOink continued to paw at our heels, begging for our attention. “If, by some random chance, I knew something that would help me convince you to give me your soul, thereby allowing me the opportunity to turn you into a Demon, do you not think I would have used it already to persuade you?”
“But you kept the truth about me dying at twenty-one from me for a while,” I reasoned out loud, growing tired of OinkOink twitching on the floor like a maggot. I bent down to scoop him up into my arms. The little oversized rat barked in happiness at this gesture, ceased with his annoying convulsing, and lovingly nuzzled against my chest. Once OinkOink stilled in my arms, I averted my full attention to Eclipse. I stood up and harshly added, “And you’re a habitual liar. I wouldn’t trust you as far as I can throw you, and I doubt I can even lift you.”
He frowned, offended by the last comment I made about not trusting him. Instead of commenting on that, he decided to respond to my previous statement.
“I kept your impending death from you only because I was under the impression that I could still convince you with persuasion tactics as opposed to scaring you into submission. After a couple of days of you refusing, I would’ve brought out the big guns and told you about your death sooner or later. That said, you shouldn’t attach any ‘honorable’ accolades to that.”
I remained unconvinced.
He laughed at the uncertainty on my face. His eyes scrutinized me for a second before he asked, “Teacup, do you in all honesty believe that I’m considerate enough to put you before me, that your well-being supersedes mine? Do you really think I have the temperament to be selfless and considerate to someone else’s needs instead of my own?”
He got me there.
“That’s true,” I agreed thoughtfully. “You’re a habitual liar, but you’re also pretty selfish too. You wouldn’t protect me from the truth, especially if it meant that scaring me into submission would only benefit you.” I blew out a breath, shaking my head when Sloth and his bullshit “ominous” words replayed in my mind. “That big jerk,” I muttered, unknowingly pinching OinkOink in anger. I was so pissed off at that skinny, bronze-eyed Demon that I didn’t realize I was hurting my own puppy until OinkOink whined in pain. I stopped pinching him immediately and then commented, “I can’t believe he lied to me.”
“Did you expect any less from a Demon who is my older brother?” Eclipse remarked, playfully kissing OinkOink in the area where I accidentally pinched him. He sighed, straightening up. “Do not be too bitter with him. He was just looking out for me.”
“That still doesn’t mean what he did was right,” I told him before a more important thought came across my mind. “So what do we do about my soul then?”
Screw shit-talking about Sloth. I still had a missing piece of my soul that I needed to find.
I peered at Eclipse with uncertainty. The enormity of something stealing a piece of my soul sent chills to spread over my body. “H-how are we going to find the one who stole it?”
I could feel the trepidation creep up my spine as I thought about who might be powerful enough to steal a part of my soul. I couldn’t imagine what had happened when I was six. As Sloth mentioned, only an extremely powerful entity could do something like that. It couldn’t be an accident that it was my soul that was stolen and that my particular memory from that night was darkened. Whatever we were dealing with, I knew it was something big. Who would only want a part of my soul?
“We have to find out what happened that night,” Eclipse answered, confirming what I had already deduced when we were with Sloth.
My eyes enlarged. “You want to go to Serenity right now?”
“We will go to Serenity soon enough,” he answered, cooling my engines, “but before we go, there is another place they took you to that night.”
My blood froze when I grasped what he was referring to. I shook inwardly, terrified of his unspoken suggestion.
No.
I did not want to go back there.
I swallowed tightly, staring at him with the color draining from my face. “Do we really have to go there?”
His gaze on me was gentle. “We need answers, Gracie. Your hometown and this place are the only two places that will give us the answers we’re looking for.” He tilted his head at me. “Can you really risk not finding something that could be crucial towards finding a piece of your missing soul just because you’re afraid?”
I bit my lips, dreading everything. And because I dreaded it so much, I knew that it must mean that there was something crucial that we would find at this godforsaken place. The only way to know for sure was to combat my fears and confront everything that made me so afraid.
So with my heart in my throat, I slowly nodded at Eclipse, agreeing to return to the one place that continued to give me nightmares well into my adult years.
The police station.
I was heading back to Seoul’s Police Station.
"And Heaven's mighty walls will begin its collapse."
28: Grace Hwang
Growing up, there were few things in life that fazed me.
I had always been a self-sufficient child. I did not require pampering, nor did I require supervision of any kind. Apart from a fear of heights, I was never afraid of spiders, ghosts, monsters, or any of the typical things that children usually feared when they closed their eyes and attempted to fall asleep at night. I wasn’t fazed by much growing up, but that didn’t mean I was completely fearless.
The attack that took place at Seoul’s Police Station a little over fifteen years ago had done its job in traumatizing me indefinitely. You never forget the night where a police officer wrapped his hands around your neck—the night when your six-year-old self thought she was going to die. I still remember the terror I experienced and that trauma translated well into my adult years. It goes without saying that I was more than scared for my life the following night after we broke into the police station . . .
I had just finished up school earlier in the evening, and though I had been dreading our visit to the police station the whole day, I knew this place was unavoidable for me. If I really wanted my soul back, then I was going to have to suck it up. And that was exactly what I did when Eclipse picked me up from school to begin our exploration.
Just like me, he was dressed in all black to blend in with the night. He resembled a thief in the darkness and sadly, with my all black attire, so did I. Cold sweat formed on my forehead as we inched closer to the intimidating and brightly lit police station. All my muscles were tense with anxiety. I was tempted to make a run for it and call it a night, but Eclipse caught me in time and dragged me into the police station with him, assuring me that he would handle everything.
True to his words, he did handle everything.
Utilizing his demonic powers, Eclipse hypnotized the guards up front. He told them that we were only figments of their imagination and that once we left, they would never remember us again. After he did this, he also deactivated the surveillance cameras so that we would be completely invisible to anyone monitoring the station.
Admittedly, I was very freaked out to see Eclipse use his powers of mind-control. It made me think of all the possible things he could mind-control me into doing. It already took monumental effort to resist him when he was just using his natural persuasion skills. I didn’t think I would have the mental capacity to resist if he ever chose to use his powers on me.
“You don’t have to worry, Gracie,” he assured me once he saw me inching away from him in apprehension. He gave out an amused chuckle while the smoke flowed from his cigarette. “This power is something I rarely use because it takes up too much energy to mess with someone’s memories. It only works on weak-willed individuals so it’s not always a guarantee that it would work. We just got lucky tonight, but because it took so much power out of me, we’re going to have to do everything manually from thi
s point on.”
“Y-you’ve never mind-controlled me, have you?” I stammered, gaping at him wide-eyed.
A quirk of a smile graced his lips as we walked down the corridor of the brightly lit station.
“It’s no fun to mind-control a girl,” he murmured, his eyes teasing before he kicked open the door to a backroom with ease. He smirked darkly, inclining his head for me to go in first. “It’s more fun to see them lose control on their own accord,” was all that he whispered into my ear as I made a move to get past him.
My eyes expanded exponentially at what was being insinuated. Attempting to ignore the sexual innuendo behind his statement, I vigilantly backed away from the sexy Demon and dashed down the stairs like a spooked little mouse. After I ordered an amused Eclipse to stop hitting on me and to concentrate on the task at hand, we began our search in the dark room.
According to Eclipse, we were only looking for one thing: the video recording of my interrogation from that night.
“You know, you could just ask me what took place that night. I may not remember much about my entire past, but I have a surprisingly good memory of what happened in that interrogation room,” I told him moments later, my nose getting stuffy from all the dust. We had been rifling through the video archives for what felt like hours and hadn’t found anything. I was beginning to get restless. I was already afraid of simply being here. I didn’t appreciate elongating my time here because of a damn videotape.
“I appreciate the offer, Gracie,” Eclipse declined, his eyes inspecting the labels of every dusty videotape that he came across. His cigarette hung from his mouth while he spoke to me. “But it is crucial that we find the videotape. Once we find it, you’ll understand why we need the physical recording of the tape.”
“You can’t just use your demonic powers to make the tape appear?”