She was bleeding, and it was bad. Riley’s first thought was that her near-pristine bloody hand-print, placed as if with care on the pavement, would seem overwrought and cliche in a horror movie. Cheap environmental storytelling; she’d die in the opening level of someone’s low-effort Unity game, with the smell of chaat in the air. A statistic. At best, she’d make it to a top ten most strangest disappearances video on a terrible Youtube channel, mispronouncing her name and going in-depth about her ‘lasciviousness.’
Heading to a new part of town had been a way to escape the stresses of a life lived waiting, anticipating the next attempt upon it. Otherwise good men and women, determined to earn their demon hunter wings on an easy target. They didn’t even have the decency of perspective opposition, either; Riley agreed with them. She was, by letter of the law they all followed, an abomination. Funny what thoughts came to mind with mortality’s clarity.
Legs, so terribly overworked, could go no further, finding the lip of pavement to toss the cambion against rain-slick cobblestone. Impossible to say if she’d outrun her pursuer, but it’d take a while to get up from here. Nothing left to do but pray, reaching out into the aether for whatever aid she could possibly find. “God, please,” she caught herself whispering, pressing against a doormould, “–anyone, help me.”
