Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Director Webber reclined in his leather chair as the CRT flicked through news channels, his beat up old hat looking like it was about to slide off the back of his bald head any second.  

“ ...hospitals across the country are past capacity after tens of thousands of people suffered hand injuries, as well as severe jaw and ear pain, the cause is unknown but it’s been theorized that the event is related to the incident in New York…”

Flick.

“...countries across Europe, Asia and North Africa are on full alert after two unidentified objects traveling at hypersonic speeds violated international air space. The objects are believed to have landed somewhere in Japan…”

Flick.

“...declined any further questions. Tokyo is under a complete media black out, though refugees fleeing affected areas have reported the cause to be a mass transformation of civilians into fiends as well as a fight between the Chainsa…”

Flick.

“...demand answers for why the Department was using one of our national monuments to store a devil of such power! The statue's proximity to the most densely populated city in America…”   

Flick.

“...in the city was directly killed before the air force detachment from McGuire dispatched the devil. The shockwave shattered glass and collapsed buildings along the coastline with fatalities estimated to be in the hundreds. Cities as far from the blast as Miami reported hearing…”

Flick.

“...𝅘𝅥𝅮For the sun that rises in the sky. For the rhythm of the falling rain. For all life, great or small For all that's true, For all𝅘𝅥𝅮…”

Flick.

“...Make no mistake, a great king of terror walks among us, folks! A monster spawns from Lady Liberty and our president lies under oath! The internet and rock music sell our kids satanism and sodomy! Anno Domini 1999! Flip that number upside down, we are in the end ti…”

The remote clicked as Webber shut off the TV before he threw the remote onto a side table, he groaned as he buried his face in his palms. 

“I’m not gonna lie, son,” He swiveled the chair to face Azura and tented his hands in front of his face as he looked deep into her eyes. “You chose a bad time to become a devil hunter.”

Chapter Text

Webbers personal lounge was one fit for a national director. Solid oak furniture, a wall of floor to ceiling picture windows and a wide view of the DC skyline. Azura and Webber sat in two leather recliners arranged in front of an old television.

“If it’s not an overstep to ask, s-sir,” Azura stuttered as she held the mug up to her lips, wafts of steam coming off the hot chocolate. She sat in the recliner curled in on herself, shoes laying on the floor so she could have her legs on the cushion. “W-why was there a devil in the Statue of Liberty? Sir.”

She was still wearing the wedding tuxedo from when she was apprehended, the bow around her neck was untied and the jacket looked like it had been run through an industrial paper shredder. Her hair was mostly cut short and done in a way that made it seem as if a hairstyling student had used her to practice a James Dean and was found lacking.

“No harm there,” Director Webber said as he reached over to grab a bottle of bourbon from the side table, he poured it out into a glass. “That’s going to be public information by tomorrow. Drop the formalities, we're getting plastered.”

He hadn't been in the field for years, but Webber had the look of a storied hunter. Scars upon scars. Acid burns, claw marks, bites, healed gunshot wounds and marks of violence who’s sources were less identifiable. A mustache thick enough to use as a broom grew from his upper lip, a bald strip where a vertical scar bisected the right side of his mouth. The pinky and ring fingers on his left hand were missing.

He wore a field uniform despite the office environment. Durable denim trousers with patches of even thicker fabric over the knees, Steel toed boots, a leather belt with an American Department of Public Safety badge hanging from the side, a white shirt with a black tie, a black jacket with department patches on the side and a wide hat that hadn’t been in fashion since the 60’s.

“I don’t drink, si-Webber,” Azura corrected herself before letting out another ‘sir’.

“Your loss,” Webber took a deep sip from the glass. “The barrel this was aged in was nailed shut during the civil war.”

Webber visibly grimaced as the concoction burned its way through his throat. He didn’t seem to enjoy it, but finished off the glass anyway.

“Each devil comes into this world with a concept as their name,” Webber spoke as he screwed the cap back onto the bourbon bottle, that one glass was enough and he had no intention of finishing what he started. “Devils don’t just drink our blood, they feast on our fear and grow from it. Devils named after harmless things can’t grow too strong, some schools even keep lesser devils as pets. When I was in third grade, my teacher kept a spinach devil as a class pet. Devils named after dangerous concepts, or that consume the flesh of stronger devils, are the ones us hunters exist to kill. The one that just popped out of Lady Liberty was the Sniper Devil.”

Webber reached for the remote as he turned the TV back on, he quickly changed the channel from the televangelist to New York local. The screen showed a live camera feed from a helicopter, the Sniper Devils slurry of a corpse splayed out over the bombed ruins of Liberty Island. The screen was covered in so many black bars for censoring the gore that Azura wondered why the channel even bothered showing the footage. What was left of the statue looked like a copper tree stump after a hurricane.

“When the Sniper Devil first appeared in the late 1880’s, rifling technology had only just become widespread enough for sniping to be practical. Enough fear was tied up with the concept in the minds of civil war veterans for it to be quite deadly, but still new enough that the department was able to take it alive.”

“The power gained from contracting with it was subtle, but invaluable nonetheless.” Webber held up his hand and used his fingers to form a ring around one of his eyes. “She could give humans the power to use her telescope, to see things hidden from humans by distance and matter. Now, around this same time, the US government was getting paranoid as a second immigration boom came from Europe and Asia.”

“Yeah I know,” Webber said, as Azura nodded her head while pretending to know what he was talking about. “Same story, different decade. The Haymarket Affair was still in recent memory, so there was a huge anti-immigrant sentiment among robber barons and the politicians they kept in their pocket. The devil was handed over to immigration and stored in the Statue of Liberty so officials on Ellis Island would have ready access. I doubt the mass surveillance actually changed anything, but it kept the higher ups appeased .”

“The first cracks came in the 10’s and 50’s,” Webber continued to speak as a pair of jet fighters passed in front of the camera. “All those Great War and Korean War veterans came back shell shocked and shared their horror stories with their friends and family. The Indochina Wars took guerilla tactics to whole nother level. The Sniper Devil grew in strength, but my precursors didn’t want to lose the asset so they just reinforced the containment cell. It all came to a head in ‘63.”

“What happened in the 60’s?” Azura held the mug up to her lips as she asked.

“What didn’t happen in the 60’s?” Webber said jokingly, he had the far away look of someone remembering something funny. “Did they even let you read a history book in your fathers compound?”

“Depends on how loose your definition of history is,” Azura’s eyes looked to the floor.

“The whole country watched a former marine blow the president's brains out. We should have killed the Sniper Devil on the spot, nipped it in the bud before this happened. It was too powerful by then and the people contracting it only got more power in turn so we just closed the statue to tourists and posted 24/7 guards.”

Webber stopped talking as a cue for Azura to respond.

Azura did not pick on this and continued to be silent as she waited for Webber to finish talking.

The two of them sat in awkward silence as each one waited for the other to talk. The reporter on the TV interviewed a witness.

“So,” Webber sniffed the air, just to fill the void with another sound. “Ford and Arroyo told me you already had a contract lined up by the time they got you out of that massacre. House Devil, right? I heard Tokyo's Public Safety had a rough time with that one a few years ago.”

“Not the House Devil,” Azura took one last sip of the hot chocolate as she finished it off. “The Home Devil.”

“Well,” Webber moved the unfinished bourbon bottle into a drawer before taking his seat out of the reclining position. “We’ll have to get you a second contract from a stronger devil, I can’t imagine why someone would fear a home?”

From the moment she had met him, Azura felt like there was some insurmountable gulf between her and Webber. That last rhetorical made it grow just a little wider.

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Drip

“Do you think humans exist to make devils, Ford?”

Drip
“I don’t remember making one myself, Arroyo.”

Drip

“I mean collectively. You got your Stone Devils, your Weather Devils and Sun Devils. Those are all things that just exist and have always existed.”

Drip

“They sure do. I got a sunburn on my ass fighting the Sun Devil once.”

Drip

“Why did you have your ass out while fighting the Sun Devil?”

Drip

“Keep going.”

Drip

“Then you work your way up to your plant and animal devils. Life has existed for billions of years, but that's just a small fraction of the universe's life span and any actual complex organization is even more recent.”

Drip

“And?”

Drip

“Then you got devils based on things humans made. Car Devils, Factory Devils and Gun Devils. None of those occur in nature, a human has to forge those things in order for them to exist.”

Drip

“So you're asking if devils are chickens or eggs. Do devils come into existence in response to concepts existing or is it the other way around? Are we creating new devils by making new concepts or are we only able to bring those concepts into existence because a devil based on them already did?”

Drip

“Yeah.”

The corpse of the dead cow continued to drip blood onto the barn floor, only the upper half visible from where it hung, half lodged in the hole in the ceiling. Ford pulled his aviator glasses back on before turning to walk out of the barn, throwing a half eaten burger over his shoulder. Arroyo’s own glasses rested on her hat's brim as she followed behind him.

“Fuck if I know, Arroyo. If someone higher up the ladder knows, he’ll just speak in vague riddles and koans until you stop asking. Assuming he answers at all.”

Ford hooked his hands in his belt as he surveyed the rest of the farm. About ten cows had survived the devastation and wandered about aimlessly as the blood and shredded remains of the fellows steamed in the cold morning air of rural Kansas.

“My first guess was an animal devil,” Arroyo said. “Most devils just break the bodies enough to kill and drink the blood before moving on, but animal devils will just keep tearing and eating till nothing is left.”

“Doesn’t match the psychological profile,” Ford raised his hand and folded into the shape of a gun, he slowly moved his arm as he swept his surroundings. “Target seems to have prioritized building and infrastructural damage. When animal devils destroy a building it's usually because it was between it and a human, collateral rather than directed damage. Some of the animals and humans present during the attack were spared at random. Behavior consistent with natural or man made disaster devils. The Gun Devil also had a similar attack pattern, just on a much larger scale”

“Either way,” Arroyo unfolded a map, towns marked in red and connected by a red line. “We’ll be there to meet it at its next attack.”

Chapter Text

The torrent of rain splattered on the windshield as the armored patrol car plowed through the storm. The wipers did their best to give the driver a clear view of the road while sending dirty waves off the left hand side.

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Ford?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Yes, Arroyo.”

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“Did you ever hear about the Ghost Riders?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“You mean like the comic books?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“I meant the song. I didn’t take you for a comic book fan?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“I was reading Batman comics before your grandpa stopped getting hard. What song are you talking about?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“You know, that one with Johnny Cash. ‘Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, their shirts all soaked with sweat.’ I think the Cash one might’ve been a cover, he did a lot of those.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Never got into country music.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“...you didn’t?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“The hat’s dress code, I don’t dress like this outside work.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Well in the song, this cowboy is out in the wilderness when he sees a herd of bulls thunder across the sky. Not regular bulls either, ones with steel hooves and flames in their eyes…”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“...and chasing this herd are the spirits of dead cowboys, stuck to the backs of flaming hell horses. The ghost riders tell him that he needs to change his ways or he will be forced to drive hells cattle for all eternity.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“What are you trying to get at here, Arroyo?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“When devils die on earth, their souls are reborn in hell. When they die in hell, they are reborn on earth…”

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“...What do you think happens to a devil hunter when they die, Ford?”

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“...”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“...”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Most devil hunters die before thirty, Arroyo. I turn seventy next month. Do you wanna know the secret to living long in this field?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“...Yes.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Don’t ask questions, never do more than you're paid for and don’t try to climb the ladder. Stay where you are. Us rank and file are frogs jumping on lily pads and swimming in the shallows, look down too long and you quickly realize what you're really in.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

A surge of white froth splattered the side of the patrol vehicle as one of the all-terrain tires went through a flooded ditch.

“This isn’t a pond, Arroyo. It’s a deep dark ocean and diving deep is how you catch the attention of sharks.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“...How did the forensics team's interrogations go, Ford?”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Half of them are hysterical, screaming about giant eyeballs in the clouds.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Devils are weird, I wouldn’t dismiss them out of pocket.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“There was another commonality. At each town, they talked about a runaway that would show up suddenly and then get the hell out of dodge minutes before the attack happened…”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“...a girl with purple hair and green eyes. She was wearing a black choker with a little ring on it.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“A fiend, probably.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“The way they described her though, it was like she was running from something.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Some of the more intelligent devils can develop personal grudges or act out of a need for vengeance rather than killing instinct, but I can only imagine what someone would have to do for a devil to chase them halfway across the country.”

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

Vrrrrr-thuk-rrrrrrv

Chapter Text

The councilor's face was covered by a floating rectangle of black pixels. The meeting room was spacious with a vaulted ceiling that made every sound echo. Five podiums were arranged around the room in a circular pattern. Near the back of the room, two fiends reclined in deck chairs.

“I think Japan's public safety wants to have their cake and eat it too.” The councilor's voice came out distorted and sounded as if it was being fed through an audio filter. “The actions of the chainsaw church have given the Chainsaw hybrid a massive boost in power, with the media blackout ensuring that news doesn't spread fast enough to create a global panic.”

“This could be used to our advantage,” Webber said from behind his own rectangle. “The smokescreen prevents any outside confirmation of the Sniper Devils' intended targets. We can use that uncertainty to shift blame away from our own department . At least long enough for us to spin this in our favor.”

“We have more pressing concerns than our reputation” Another nameless counselor said. “The Library of True History, the Malleus Sanctae Barbara and Cannon Woman have confirmed suspicions of recent reality alterations. Ears disappeared briefly before being restored. This was followed immediately by the erasure of mouths, snow, bitterness and octopus. Octopi. Octopuses, Whatever. Ears, snow, mouth and bitterness have all been restored since.”

“This situation could get out of hand fast.” The one woman in the room said. Her hands were covered in thick winter gloves, her finger tips making metallic clicks as she stamped out a cigarette in an ashtray. “My sources have confirmed that a War Devil fiend, the Justice Devil and the Fire Devil are present in Japan. The Tank Devil and our own fragments of the Gun Devil are unaccounted for. We also don’t know where the Control Devil incarnated after Makimas death. If they can get Chainsaw Man under control, well, I don’t think I need to explain to any of you the danger of our overseas rivals being able to selectively edit reality itself. There is an American Devil, after all.”

“Then we need to get our own pieces on the board, before they can make the first move,” A man in a striped bathrobe said, face hidden behind his own censorship bar. A half empty glass of scotch rested on his podium. “The United States and Japanese Departments of Public Safety have previously traded hunters and devils during large scale disasters or periods of political tension. We can use the destruction in New York and Tokyo as a cover to plant a mole among their ranks.”

“Of course,” A puff of smoke went up as the woman crushed the cigarette into cinders. “We have our own homegrown problems to tend to. The Eighth Star millenarist cult experienced a surge in membership after the global earthquakes caused by the Falling Devils fight with Chainsaw Man, and the cult has only got more brazen as their so-called ‘Wild Hunt’ approaches. Director Webber himself recently authorized a raid on one of their compounds and apparently picked up a stray.”

“I wouldn’t call it a success,” Webber said. “It was no Waco, thank god, but the compound leader got away. We got his son though. Joseph, also goes by Azura. The hostage rescue team broke in during a wedding, poor kid got set up for an arranged marriage. He must’ve been grateful, because he was already asking to join us before the smoke settled.”

“Does he have potential,” The bathrobe counselor said. “You said he already had a contract with the Home Devil arranged by the cult.”

“Fuck no,” Webber almost laughed. “I knew the kid was a pansy the moment I laid eyes on him. The Canary Fiend and Aldo are taking him to the devil containment level as we speak, he’ll quit this job the second he gets put in a room with a real devil. I plan to keep him around though, we can use Joseph as a bargaining chip if his father starts to stir shit up again.”

“Hm,” The bathrobe councilor raised his head as if to say something in objection, but seemingly stopped himself. “I’ll be watching. Camilla!”

“Yes,” The woman said.

“I’ll get you a list of potential moles,” The bathrobe councilor finished his scotch. “Meeting adjourned. Leaving Devil!”

The bathrobe councilor snapped his fingers as a pair of three doors appeared behind him and the two nameless councilors. They each left through their respective doors, a bathtub briefly visible through the bathrobe councilors door, before all three slammed shut.

Webber let out a sigh of relief as Camilla walked up to him, the censor bars vanishing from their faces. She held out a box of cigarettes to him as an unlit one dangled from between her own lips.

“No thanks,” Webber said. “I’m dying fast enough as it is.”

“Suit yourself,” Camilla put the box away. She held a finger up and the cigarette ignited on its own. “So who do you think old bathrobe is getting rid of when it's time for me to plant our mole. My money is on Aldo. We already sent him on a mission to Japan back when he was still in the private sector.”

Camilla was wearing a more office oriented version of the public safety uniform, the denim jeans and steel toes were swapped out for black slacks and leather loafers. Her dark hair was long, but done up in a way that made it look as if she had tried to put it into a bun and gave up halfway.

“I doubt it,” Webber searched for something in his coat pockets. “As much as I would like to see him gone. Both his brothers died over there, and he had to plead insanity by pretending to be a halloweener to get back to the US. How about that intern, the one from Kyoto?”

“Ren Higashiyama?” Camilla asked. As she continued smoking, she pulled off her right glove. She still had a thumb, but the rest of her hand was a complex prosthetic made of aluminum.

“Yeah, Ren,” Webber pulled out an opaque plastic case, a plastic rod with a suction cup was inside. “His sister used to work for Tokyo Public Safety to get him through college. Go-beany, I think that's what her name is.”

“Bad idea,” Camilla tilted her head back as she took a long exhale. “Loyalties to home, as well as the fear of losing it, are not so easily broken. Biting the hand and all that. ”

“Yeah,” Webber took the rod out of its case and twirled it in his hand, he seemed lost in thought. “So would you say the fear of home is a strong one? That fear might even make someone loyal to an abusive one?”

“I’ve seen it before,” Camilla looked at the ceiling as she remembered something. “A lot of cults and abusive spouses use this tactic called love bombing. The abuser starts out showering you with attention and gifts to take you off guard and make you reliant upon them. Before you know it, she’ll have taken your ability to say no to her, because she’ll have convinced you that you’re her lesser.”

“...” Webber wasn’t comfortable with how personal this was getting. “I’ll see myself out. Good luck on your mole, Camilla.”

“Thanks,” There was a metallic clink as she snapped her fingers. “Censorship! Lying! We're leaving.”

The two fiends near the back of the room sat up and moved to follow.

The Censorship Fiend had no face, his head was enveloped in a black cloud of dead pixels with the word ‘CENSORED’ floating in front of him in big red letters. He held an unlit cigarette in his left hand, he occasionally raised it to his cloud as if to smoke. The Lying Fiend had two smaller mouths in place of her eyes and a singular oversized eye in the center of her forehead. Everytime the Censorship Fiend raised his cigarette to his face, smoke spilled from the Lying Fiends mouths.

“Leaving Devil!” Webber barked before entering his office through the provided door. With a sigh he sank back into his desk chair. He seemed to consider something before reaching over his desk to pull a small bowl of water in front of himself. He held up the suction to his face, there was a pop and a small splash as his glass eye dropped into the bowl of water. “Surveillance Devil.”

The ripples in the water resolved into a reflection of a giant eyeball, the sclera light blue with clouds floating in it.

“Show me Joseph.”

The eye in the water looked back and forth, it rippled before resolving into a question mark.

“Joseph,” Webber leaned closer to the bowl. “The cult leader's son.”

The water rippled as the question marks tripled.

“Joseph! I don’t think he even has a last name.”

The water rippled and resolved into words. WRONG NAME TRY AGAIN.

“...Azura.” The eye reappeared before rippling again, resolving into a view of the elevator that led down into the devil containment level. “That’s interesting.”

Chapter Text

“I’ve been going over the transcripts you sent me,” Sister Ozoro of the Malleus Sanctae Barbara said. Webber could practically smell the gunpowder on her breath from the phone's receiver. “If I were to hazard a guess, you left a loophole in your contract with the Surveillance Devil.”

“What type of loop hole?” Webber asked as he wrapped the phone cord around a finger, he watched Azura through the water bowl on his desk.

“Looking at it again,” Webber heard the shuffling of papers, the phone's receiver also picking up faint gunshots in the distance. “You lacked specificity. You both agreed that the Surveillance Devil would show you the person whose name you spoke aloud, on the condition that they were within the specified area, but ‘name’ has a lot of leeway. Legal name, nickname, descriptor. You weren’t specific enough, so the Devil seems to have defaulted to the subject's preferred name over his legal or given one.”

“Alright,” Webber rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What about the name, is there anything we can glean from that?”

“Azura is where we derive the word azure,” Sister Ozoro said. “But you probably guessed that yourself. The name itself comes from the Persian word lazward, meaning gem, which is where English gets lapis lazuli. Cult leaders love their biblical names so I looked in that direction as well.”

“Genesis 4:17,” Ozoro cleared her throat as she began to recite from memory. “And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son: Enoch.’ Now this one line used to cause a lot of controversy in theologian circles. If Cain and Abel were the first humans to be born, where did they get wives? Later, apocryphal, religious texts answered this question by introducing Azura and Aclima, twin sisters and mates of Cain and Abel.”

“Gross,” Webber muttered.

“As for Joseph,” Webber heard Ozoro closing a book. “That ones easy, but could be referring to three different people. Either option says alot about his fathers ego.”

“Yeah,” Webber said. “I met Joseph's dad before he went off the deep end and he was still deranged. Even if he was just a regional leader, the fucker talked about himself like he was the second coming. What about the cult itself, what's the ‘Eighth star’ referring to?”

“An astrological discrepancy,” Ozoro said. “In star charts dated to before 200 AD, the big dipper is always depicted with an extra eighth star that contradicts modern records. There’s a lot of theories about it, but all we have to go off of are some papyrus scrolls in the Library of True History, vague ramblings about the star being ‘the one Nut used to scour the minds of her children and curse Ra with senility’.”

“And his cult believes in the coming of the Wild Hunt?” Ozoro asked as Webber heard her open another book.

“Yeah,” Webber. “Is that also a biblical thing?”

“No.” Ozoro said. “It’s pagan. It was a hunting party of horse mounted spirits that would stampede across the sky in the later months, killing or dragging to hell anyone caught in their way. The exact motivation and line up varies from region to region. Fairies, norse gods, ghosts, devils and damned souls. From the sermon transcripts you faxed me, it seems like the Eighth Star has syncretized the Wild Hunt with the Four Horsemen, giving it a new role as an omen of judgement day.”

“Who would dumb enough to believe in a bunch of b-,” Webber went silent as he watched Azura through the Surveillance Devils water bowl. She was reaching for a containment cell door labeled ‘HORSE DEVIL’. “Shit!”

Chapter Text

YESTERDAY

Azura kept eye contact with the backstage dressing rooms mirror, trying not to look at the rest of her face or the outfit she was wearing. Her father stood behind her, his head just above the top of the mirror. His broad frame and dark clothes filled so much of the reflection that Azura looked as if she might sink into him.

Father had an arm around her shoulder, Father knew she didn’t like that and she knew that’s why he was doing it anyways.

“Are you nervous?” Father asked. “It’s understandable. Even I felt that way on my first few wedding days.”

“I feel li-,” Azura gagged a little as Father adjusted the bow tie around her neck. “Like this is different. I’ve never even met this girl and-”

Azura felt the amount of weight Father was putting on her shoulder increase. A touch not meant to comfort, but threaten.

“And what?” Her Fathers fingernails dug into her shoulder through the jackets fabric. “If you don’t think you’ll like the girl, she'll only be your first. Once it’s over, I'll let you take any girl you want for your second.”

“It’s not that,” Azura closed her eyes, what she was waiting for never came. She took that as permission to keep talking. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a father or a husband. You’ve put so much weight upon this, I'd just let you down.”

“Joseph,” Azura felt the weight lighten. “God wouldn’t have given you to me if you couldn’t be the man we needed. The safety of our home rests upon this marriage alliance. You don’t want to lose your home, do you?”

Azura didn't feel like this was a home. To Azura, home was nothing to her but a source of pain and fear, her contract with the Home Devil only confirming her beliefs. But what did she have without it? No work experience, no money, no ID, no records, no education, no friends, no family. Father had always told her she wouldn’t make it in the outside world and she had come to believe him.

“Don’t worry,” The weight increased again. “The marriage won’t even go through.”

“...” Azura felt a weird combination of fear and relief, Father had been building this up for years, he had to have some ulterior motive, he always did. “Why?”

“Because I have far bigger plans,” Father said. “I gave an ‘anonymous tip’ to Public Safety and notified an old friend of mine that some of our members have unregistered devil contracts.”

“But, you,” Father clapped her on the shoulders to emphasize the word, she jumped a little from the unexpected contact. “You are going to be picked up by Public Safety. You are going to have a private meeting with Director Webber, because he doesn’t want to admit he needs me. You are going to want to be a devil hunter. You are going to make a contract with the Horse Devil.”

“Father,” Was it normal for a son to not know her fathers name when he had been in her life since the beginning? She hadn’t been exposed to too much media from the outside world, but she had seen enough to intuit that her family dynamics were not normal. To Azura, Father was just Father. Everyone called him that after all, Azura didn’t know which of the women in this cult was her mom, but at least three-fourths of the children in this compound were Azura’s half-siblings. “Why?”

“That’s enough questions Joseph,” Father moved his arms from her shoulders and wrapped them around her waist before resting his chin on top of Azura’s head. She felt her skin crawl. “Answers only come to those with the patience to wait for them. You don’t need to know why you have to do these things, you just have to do them. You trust me, right, Joseph?”

“Yes,” Azura knew her fathers questions were never actually questions. They had correct answers and that answer was whatever he wanted to hear, even when it was wrong. Especially when it was wrong.

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“♪There is nothing fair in this world, girl. There is nothing safe in this world and there’s nothing sure in this world and there’s nothing pure in the world-.♪”

Azura couldn’t help but wonder if the wedding organizer checked the lyrics of this song ahead of time, or if they just put it on because it had the word ‘wedding’ in the title. It was probably the latter.

She stood at the terminus of the meeting hall, an arc of flowers above her head and a sheet metal ceiling held up by a wooden scaffold. There was a rusted spot in the corner where rain leaked through. Azura looked to her right, she made eye contact with a dubiously ordained minister muttering something about ‘Moloch’ as he used a bubble level to place his bible on the altar. He smiled at Azura, his grin the twitching grimace of someone exploring the depths of emotional anguish. Azura forced herself to smile back.

She needed to at least look happy.

She looked to her left, the whole congregation were arranged in rows of folding chairs on either side of the aisle. There were smiling faces all through the crowd, they all looked happy.

“‘...Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family…’” The minister continued to mutter to himself.

Azura looked down the aisle. Azura had never met this girl in person, she didn’t even know her name, but some selfish part of her hoped the bride felt the same way. If they were both miserable then they could at least confide in each other, then there would be no disappointment when she inevitably couldn’t cut it as a husband.

On a level deeper than that, Azura wished that the roles could have been reversed. Azura hated herself for thinking this way, she never voiced this wish out loud, her many brothers already thought she was a freak and whispered behind her back. Their fathers iron fist over all his children the only barrier keeping verbal violence from escalating to physical violence.

After all, Azura didn’t believe she had any right to want to be a girl, when she had spent her whole life refusing to lift a finger as her father abused every woman in their shared lives, all culminating in the day she would repeat the cycle. She truly was a son of her father, what better name to take than that of the incestious bride of Cain?

The staticy recording of Billy Idol was replaced by a somehow even more staticy recording of church organs. Azura stood straight at attention, a bead of sweat developing at her hairline as she kept an eye on the door, hoping that the Public Safety raid would put a stop to this.

Azura stood still as the doors on the other side of the hall were smashed open…

“Sleep-Paralysis!”

…and then Azura couldn’t move at all.

Her eyes darted back forth in their sockets and her breathing quickened as she realized she was frozen in place. Her feet rooted to the floor, her arms hanging limply at their sides, her heck locked in place and unable to move her head.

From the corner of her eye, she could see the congregation. Most were rooted to their seats or propped standing up, an unlucky few had been frozen with their knees bent as they had tried to shift between the poses. One man was laying on his side in the aisle with his arm raised and his ankle twisted like a toppled mannequin. A few people had been talking as they were frozen and stuck with drooling open mouths and arched tongues.

The minister seemed immune for some reason and was backing away from his podium as he fished for something in his pocket.

“Looks like we have a straggler,” The voice that had summoned the Sleep-Paralysis Devil spoke from outside Azura’s field of vision. She sounded like a woman, her voice was strained as if she was holding in laughter. “Some contractors seem to be immune to the Sleep-Paralysis Devil. Not sure what the pattern is.”

There was a sound like ripping paper as the minister pressed his hand against something in his pocket. He raised his arm to his face and smeared a bloody staurogram across his forehead.

“Rapture Devil!” The minister yelled. “The Desolation of Abomination has tread upo-”

“Fee!” The minister was interrupted as the voice of an old man echoed through the hall, a rotten-nailed finger the size of a bus bursting through the curtains and slamming the minister flat against the ground.

“Ra-.” The minister tried to speak as the finger ground him into the floor.

“Fau!” The old man yelled as a second finger burst through the ceiling and stretched all forty-feet down to shatter the minister's leg with a sound like burning logs. Any attempt to invoke his contract was stalled as the minister started coughing blood. “I can use one more Giant Devil finger before he starts eating my bone marrow. Surrender and we’ll let you leave in an ambulance, invoke a contract and we’ll be power washing you out of the floorboards.”

The minister pushed his arms forwards, and spread his finger with palms against the ground.

“I didn’t think there was a Rapture Devil,” Two women walked onto the stage and into Azura's field of vision, the hand of one cuffed to the hand of the other by a thin chain. The one who spoke was wearing a Public Safety uniform with her curly hair pulled back into a ponytail while her uniform's sunglasses rested on the brim of her hat.

The woman she was pulling behind her looked odd to Azura. She wasn’t wearing a uniform, just a jumpsuit of gray fabric and a pair of fluffy white bedroom slippers. In place of eyes, the empty sockets were rimmed with gray lips and tiny molars, the left one grinned while the mouth on the right sobbed/drooled on the cheek below it. Framed by two locks of hair, a single massive eye rested in the center of her forehead, unblinking and staring upwards.

“Alright, Lying Fiend.” The devil hunter cleared her throat. “What color is the sky?”

“Blue!” The left mouth chuckled.

“Doesn’t matter, the sky will be the death of you all.” Cried the right mouth.

“Look like it's the left mouth this time.” The hunter yelled down to the two hunters out of view. “Where is Adam, the compound leader?”

Adam, was that fathers name?

“Escaped through a tunnel in the basement,” The left mouth laughed. “Already fucked off thirty miles east.”

“He walks amongst you, but is just beyond your reach.” The right mouth choked back a sab.

“And who is this?” The woman with the ponytail asked as she pointed at Azura.

“A beloved child of Adam,” The laughing mouth turned into a frown. “Molded in his Image.”

“Azura,” The sobbing mouth licked its lips clean and split into a wide grin. “Her fathers pawn.”

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NOW

Blast doors made from two feet of steel grinded open on unoiled gears as Webber walked out of the elevator.

The room he entered took up the entire seventh floor, walls coated in metal plating thick enough to withstand nuclear bombardment, but was empty except for a single iron monolith in the center, held shut by lengths of chain and padlock the size of a fist.

The fiend contained within the monolith was rarely utilized or released despite the high security of its containment. It could bring no harm to devils, fiends or animals, even the flowers trampled beneath its feet would spring back to life with its passing. In the few cases Public Safety needed a human deader than dead though, there was no better ally.

Webber pulled a key the size of his thumb from his jacket pocket, twisting it in the lock as the chains fell to the ground. The monolith creaked open along a vertical seam, the sulfuric acid that filled its volume spilling into drains in the floor with a smell like boiled piss.

A fiend within fell to his hands and knees. He looked more like a living action figure than a person, every inch of his skin pulled so taut across his muscles that he looked like he might burst like a microwaved hot dog. As he stood and rose to his full height, he towered over Webber by a full five feet, his shoulders broad enough that a pick truck could park on his back and not touch the ground. His upper body was bare and his lower body was covered by nothing but a knee-length skirt of human skin and belts woven from bones, all still dripping with an impossible amount of blood. The fiend had no face, his head covered chin to crown in shining silver that left Webber staring into his own eyes.

“Homicide Fiend,” Webber greeted the giant. He held up a ceramic mug, the same one Azura had drank out of earlier. “I was a fool to think Adam would spare his children from his own machinations, I should have known better after training him for all those years. Now, I've allowed him to plant a serpent in my garden.”

The Homicide Fiend, with surprisingly gentle movements took the mug from Webber's hands, clutching the ceramic between two of his bratwurst sized fingers without shattering it. He dragged a finger along the rim before pressing that same finger against the area a mouth should’ve been.

“Kill Joseph, kill his bastard father and we will grant you the mercy of death.”

The Homicide Fiend silently nodded in agreement, daintily placing the mug back in Webber's outstretched hand.