Instead came a familiar feeling. Oh, she never thought she’d be so happy about it. If she still had a face, she would have smiled.

  The demon stood over Alice, preparing to shove her tea bag into her stomach. He was considering whether to skip the mouth and throat, but it wasn’t an easy choice. Suddenly, he saw that the massacred girl was trying to smile. This irritated him. He had finished her. She should be begging for her life, not rejoicing. Maybe something in her head had switched. He didn’t like it when victims escaped into madness. He hated it. Hundreds of voices howled in anger, and when their damned wailing ceased, a sound reached the demon’s ears that he hadn’t expected at all.

  Someone was clapping.

  The sound came from the armchair behind his back. He turned immediately. In the armchair sat a tall, black-haired man with a cold gaze. He was smiling. The girl behind him made an indescribable sound. The demon looked at her and realized she was laughing. Suddenly, he felt a prick of unease, which quickly disappeared, drowned out by anger. He was furious because he had no damn clue what was happening, and he didn’t like it one bit.

  “Who the fuck are you?” snarled the possessed girl, preparing to attack.

  “You disappointed me,” a melodious voice sounded in Alice’s head.

  “I know,” she replied, not losing her good humor. “I could have prepared better. I lost.”

  She heard a quiet sigh in her head.

  “You disappointed me with your resignation, Alice.”

  She didn’t understand at first what he meant. Resignation? Did she have even the shadow of a chance of getting out of this alive? Did she have any chance, since… Then it hit her. Yes, she did. She always did.

  “I’d rather die than rely on you,” she replied, and smiled maliciously somewhere deep inside her ruined body.

  The man laughed at these words. Yes, that’s exactly what he wanted to hear. Precisely that.

  The demon launched his attack. The possessed girl’s body moved lightning fast. In a fraction of a second, it was half a meter from the black-haired man and stopped.

  “I’ll give you a lesson,” Not-a-Doctor said, smiling widely. “I don’t know why, since you’ll die soon anyway, but what’s the harm? Barriers work on matter too, you son of a bitch.”

  The possessed body began to literally disintegrate from the inside. Blood flowed from every available orifice, even seeping from the pores in the skin, and the pain that followed was unbearable. The demon recoiled, howling monstrously. For the first time in years, he felt fear.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he snarled, but it sounded more like a pathetic whine.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “It will be a sad day when I start explaining myself to trash like you.”

  A stream of energy, sharp as a razor, cut through the air. The girl was decapitated, but before her head could hit the floor, further waves of energy quartered her into small pieces. The demon fled his material shell at the last moment. Without thinking, he entered Alice’s body, instinctively sensing that the man had appeared because of her.

  “You are one of us,” the demon snarled through the witch’s mouth.

  A spasm of disgust crossed Not-a-Doctor’s face.

  “Don’t even try to compare me to carrion like you.”

  “You can’t fool me. You’re not human.”

  At these words, laughter rang out. But it wasn’t Not-a-Doctor’s laughter. The demon looked around the room nervously, but it was just them, so he understood. It was the bitch laughing. But how? He’d possessed her so easily.

  “He is not human,” Alice said, effortlessly taking control of her own mouth. “He’s not a demon like you either. You saw what he can do, and that’s not even a fraction of his power. Compared to him, we are both pathetic worms who deserve nothing more than to be crushed.”

  As she said this, she looked into Not-a-Doctor’s eyes. The man returned the gaze without a hint of embarrassment. He stared back with cold eyes, and the demon lurking inside that mutilated body was certain the black-haired man saw the soul itself. All the filth. All the sins. Even life’s failures. The demon hated that he couldn’t escape it, but he hated it even more when the moment stretched on and suddenly it all became so crudely filled with desire.

  “Pain becomes you,” Not-a-Doctor said.

  “Indifference becomes you,” Alice wheezed, fighting her failing body.

  “Enough of this!” the demon screamed, shoving Alice’s consciousness into the background. “The bitch is mine, so…”

  Not-a-Doctor smiled coldly and cut him off mid-sentence. “She is mine, to be precise, and I will kill her. You only have her body. Temporarily. If I were you, I’d quickly look for other lodgings.”

  Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. He’d had enough. Nothing was going his way today. That clown in the suit had been spouting crap to lure him out of his asylum, but he wasn’t that stupid. He cared about the girl, and she needed a body to live, so as long as she was alive, he wouldn’t move an inch. He wasn’t an idiot. He just had to get rid of this strange feeling…

  He howled. He howled like he had never howled in his life. He tried to tear himself free, but had no chance. He tried to fight, but didn’t know how. Finally, he tried to escape, but it was too late. The disintegration was progressing too fast.

  “It will stop hurting soon.” The witch’s voice sounded somewhere in his consciousness, and he had a strange certainty she was telling the truth. He was also aware that he wasn’t the first, and that others… and then he was gone.

  Alice lay on the floor, assimilating the immense power her executioner had possessed. It had been too easy, she knew it. She had been weakened, mauled, barely had a face. Half the damn room had been plowed through with her. And on top of it all, for the first time in her life, she had been possessed. The disintegration of the soul of an entity so much more powerful than her shouldn’t have gone so smoothly under these circumstances. But she was alive, and that was all that mattered. Screw the details, she thought, savoring the moment. It was an incredible sensation. Pain immediately lost its significance. The mutilated body ceased to matter. Only the power mattered. The immense energy she was trying to contain, hide from others, keep for herself like the most precious treasure in the world. No words could describe it. To lie on the ground knowing you’re about to die, and then suddenly to become so… so… omnipotent. She felt like destroying something. Like smashing something big to pieces, just to show the whole world that she could. That it was within her power. That no one could stop her.

  “You are dying,” Not-a-Doctor said flatly.