The Subtle Taste of Midnight

Of Mortal Ethereal and Monsters Divine

"Aoide!"

Melete's voice cracked the air, splitting the heavens wide open with grating croak as it clawed out of her throat. No. It cannot be. Not my Aoide! Tears, hot and torturously heavy things, leaked from her and carved crooked paths down her cheeks. She sank to the ground, body too weak to hold any strength in it, legs buried almost to the thighs in the slurry of mud and mortal blood.

Her eyes were fixed on the creature stalking the horizon.

A Monster Divine. An abomination of Heaven and Hell, born of an angel's seed taking root in Lucifer's womb.

The Beast.

And even from this distance she could hear the brute crack bones between its jagged teeth. Bones that once held Aoide's wiry frame upright.

Above, an angry tornado of unnatural things twisted: shifting wraiths and fleeting shadows that seemed to swallow up anything they happened to fall upon, yapping demons with blood-stained talons, and howling angels with fiery swords and flaming tongues. Gods of every shape and shade snarled at each, the knife-like, golden feathers of the angels slicing against the pounding beats of the demons' inky bat-wings in the air, Heaven and Hell relentlessly hammering out the rhythm of war and the call for Armageddon as bolts of lightning and rolls of thunder churned the celestial cesspool. Melete stared up at them all, bewildered by the fact that they hadn't taken notice of the going-ons of us mere beings down here on earth. Mortals ethereal in a world gone fucked up. Then again, the gods were always too busy killing each other to care about the death of one, insignificant little human.

Oh sweet Aoide. Melete watched The Beast root through her sister's entrails, its forked tongue flicking at the soft flesh like a snake, tasting the air for scent of something delicious. And when it found what it was looking for, it flashed a winsome smile and stuck a crooked talon deep into Aoide's innards, tugging and tugging until...

A tiny, psychedelic glob of light popped out.

What was left of Melete's undigested lunch came up to her lips.

For a moment, The Beast seemed hypnotized by the light. The abyssal blackness that lay where his eyes should be danced with life and something else. Something that made the brute almost seem to be more than what he was, more than just a writhing mass of fangs, talons, and wings, more than just the gaping, hungry maw of a demon. More than just the first-born son of Lucifer.

Three giant gargoyles, misshapen and grotesque in their form and purpose, swirled around The Beast's head. They chirped the call and answering echoes of dark, soulless things at the monster. In response, The Beast yipped happily, fangs flashing like jagged pearls in the dying light of the sun. And then, in two shakes of a demon's tail, the brute grasped the light of Aoide's dying soul and swallowed it whole, a crocodile chomping down the chunky bits of its prey on the banks of a river of blood.

Lightning flashed. Demons laughed. Angels screamed.

Armageddon stirred in the quiet corners of the universe as Melete cried out for her sweet Aoide.

And when the last of Aoide's light vanished between teeth and tongue, The Beast straightened from her broken body to stand tall and proud on its thick columns of legs, its weight shifting slightly as it bounced atop the hinges of its reptilian ankles; its tail, a counterbalance of ropes of muscles, his bat-like wings, spread wide to greet Death. Unruly coils of thick hair stuck out in odd shapes that, from this distance, looked like misshapen horns matted from all the blood that flowed along the ground,

Innocent mortal blood. So drenched it was in all that blood and death, that The Beast practically glowed red. The gore clung like sweat to the skin of this red devil, weighty with the stink of fear and as sickly sweet as rotting fruit simmering in the hot summer sun. It seeped into him, burrowing through every pore and every ill-placed scratch until it had settled deep within, the festering death becoming as much a part of the brute as it was a part of death.