"You killed her."
She had been a pretty girl, a young girl, couldn't have been older than twelve years old. She had big blue eyes, the color of the sky after a bout of summer's rain. Laying there in the dirt, her blonde pigtails were matted with grime, guts, and gore - a porcelain doll, thrown away by her master. She had once been vibrant when she waltzed amongst the living, and easily — ever so easily, the flame of her life had been extinguished, like a candle in the wind.
Salazar balled his hands into fists at his side, reining back his anger, to no avail. "You killed her," he repeated, and spun around to face his brother, looking on at his sibling, waiting for anything — an excuse, a promise of repentance. Something, anything, to make up for his loss of time.
His brother put away the butterfly knife - back away in its holster, staining his sides red with the blood of the human girl. He took out a small packet from his side, shook it down, took a cigarette from the fray. "You've got this bad habit, Sal," he started, his eyes glazed over from boredom. "of stating what should be obvious."
"I put twelve years into her," Salazar went on, unrelenting. "Twelve years of getting her used to High Demons, of making sure she kept her mouth shut about what she saw... Twelve years of carefully constructed brainwashing... She was my perfect Offering, Bal."
Balthazar — bored and unrepentant — tapped the end of his cigarette, set the tip on fire. "She was asking for it," was his only excuse. "She looked at me - with these huge blue eyes. Tempting me, the seductress." He smiled a little for the first time, as if he were recalling a fond memory. "You know how little girls are."
She had been strangled around her neck, but the rest of her body had been badly battered. Those wide eyes of hers looked broken in more ways than one. Salazar growled, low and feral, under his breath. "...Twelve years, Bal."
"What is a year?" Balthazar asked, groaning. He had been ready to put his cigarette in his mouth, but he couldn't, not with Sal hounding him. "A year is nothing, just as a decade is nothing, just as a century is nothing. Blink, and a year passes."
Salazar stepped up to his brother, blinked rapidly, making a show out of the act. "Ah? And what am I doing now? I'm blinking, Bal. And a year. Is. Not. Passing."
Balthazar looked his brother over, staring at him for a good, long minute. His eyes were blazed with anger, a green fire burning in this darkened midnight hour. Ironically, Bal thought, as he pushed past his brother, and leaned down near his kill, it was the only light to grace this forest. The other light, of course, had come from the girl — from her coquettish smile, dripping sickeningly with sweetness. He bent down, meaning to close her eyes, to have one final touch, only to have Sal hold him back, glaring daggers into him.
"Don't touch the body," Sal spat. "As usual, I'll clean up after your mess."
He pushed his brother back, crouching down next to the little girl's corpse, barely noticing when Balthazar disappeared into the darkness. Like a ghost, he was gone, just like his little girl. A slow, sad smile painted itself onto Salazar's features as he, the High Demon, placed his hand on the child's forehead. He hummed a low tune — dark, brooding, a demon's lullaby — and as he did so, a slew of bugs began to crawl out from under the sleeves of his robe. They crept and crawled towards the girl, skittering over her dead flesh, slowly devouring the rest of her remains. Soon, she'd be gone — without a trace of her left to remember.
Sal leaned back against the gnarled oak tree, sighing, watching his twelve year plan be devoured along with his girl. Unless he could find another human — or even some other dark being — to go along with his charade, he'd be damned, forced to start from scratch. But ah, despite his despair, he could hear something— creep, creep, creeping...
"Just as the bugs crawl," he muttered allowed, running his hand through his hair. "Other deviants wander— creeping through this wretched forest, on the most wretched of nights." On this night, of all nights, with all his plans, foiled.
"Know well where you wander, stranger."
