Finding myself in an unfamiliar room I collapsed to the ground. The room was brightly colored and smelled new. “Good to be home…”

I panted feeling blood seep between my fingers. I was bleeding from my side meaning the gash that my sister inflicted on me, was deeper than I had originally thought.

I was too focused on trying to heal myself that I never noticed a worker come in. She stood letting her mouth drop open with shock.

“My lady?” She half-whispered. I whipped my head in her direction and took note of my crest tattooed on her right cheek. “My lady, what? How? When?” Her voice was growing shrill and I flinched at both her voice and the stabbing pain.

“Get in here and lock the door,” I ordered. The woman did as told and with fashionable time. She kneeled down by my side and pulled my bloodied hands away trying to tend to it.

“Lay down Miss.” She started, “Relax, I will apply pressure. You focus on healing.” I followed her chain of commands feeling silly but happy to feel the relief. Her pressure was sharp and direct but I could now focus on what I needed to do.

Minutes passed and I slowly regained energy. My servant was silent though I could hear the questions scratching inside her head. Her delicate purple soul flickered brightly inside her chest. The wavelength echoed softly. I sighed and began to tell her the story of what happened. I kept my eyes closed, still focusing, and she sat there listening.

“Then afterward I came here without thinking, I just had to get out and I couldn’t let Crowe see me in such a way. Besides, I must contact Gretchen and tell her-”

“Gretchen? She has passed Mistress.” Said the servant girl cutting in. My eyes opened and I bolted upward to look her in the eyes.

“Excuse me?” I growled feeling my rage boil inside. “When?”

“A few hours ago. Her body was found after her neighbors saw the explosion. My Lady, Gretchen Aguilliar, is dead.” Her eyes held a saddened look but nothing beat the horror on Crowe's face as he appeared in the room during her last few words. He fell to the ground biting into his hands. Rage, Sorrow, and Disappointment flashed through his face. He didn’t cry, he didn’t scream. Instead, he sat on the floor biting into his fists holding in anything that wanted to come pouring out.

My wound had healed and I erased any evidence of blood by quickly hovering my hand over the tainted spots and making them disappear with a simple thought. The servant arose bowing her head and staying quiet until I spoke.

“What do you know of the crime?” I questioned.

“Reports are that Eve, Youngest Daughter of Death entered her home and caused some kind of explosion. Witness accounts claim they heard screams and glass shattering. Nothing else has been noted and the scene is still left as it was. Investigators refuse to do anything until the new title of Death has been announced.”

“Understood. I will go and look around then, see if I can find any last-minute evidence. What is your name?” I asked, taking a stand and clasping onto the servant's shoulders.

“Ruby, Your highness.” She answered smiling. Her short brown hair cupped her face and her red eyes shone brightly into mine.

“Thank you, Ruby, for the information, keep everything that has happened here unspoken. Say a word to anyone and you won’t live to see another day.” My tone grew aggressive and Ruby shivered underneath my grasp.

“Yes, Ma'am.”

“Crowe,” I said turning to the demon crouching on the floor. “I need you to come.” He still hadn’t spoken and simply nodded in a shallow way. I touched his arm and brought us to Gretchen’s home. The place was destroyed and just as Ruby had said, glass fragments were everywhere. Layered into the wooden beams of the home, dotting the ceilings and nothing was left without being riddled with the sharp and jagged pieces. Crowe was still crouching low but he had stopped biting his hands.

I waved my hand across the room and chanted a simple spell.

“et restituet te iterum erant. monstrate furta apparuistis”

Pots and pans clattered and objects began to lift from the ground. The glass pulled itself from its new home and returned to its original space. Two forms took place beside the flipping table. They were hollogramic and muffled.

Gretchen stood within a door frame. She looked back and I recalled the action. She was looking at me at that time. Meaning the time of her death was no more than moments after me leaving.

“Ah miss Eve, It’s so good to see you…” the rest of her words were drowned out as she crossed the room.

A small figure entered. Eve. I scowled at her image. A fragile-looking beauty with curled horns atop her satanic head. She was pale and had her long white hair gently laying over her shoulders. The blue eyes scanning the room eerily.

“I’ve come for information,” Eve said, crossing the room and passing Gretchen. She was outwardly rude but did so with grace. Gretchen was noticeably nervous yet knew that this was her domain. Her home.

“What is it you would like to know?” She asked. The holographic memory glitching momentarily.

“... Location of Death...Dawn is planning” Her words were lost but reading between the lines it was easy to figure out what she wanted.

“Word on the street is….. And you sist..… bomb….” Gretchen responded.

I was taken aback by her words. “My sister had a bomb?”

At this Crowe stood and answered my question. “A man we captured worked for Dawn. Said he was some kind of explosive scientist. He used chemicals found in the human realm and deadly chemicals found here. When pushing them together, they would create a bomb bigger than anything a human could create.” The information stunned me. Dawn had this up her sleeve. With the bomb and killing Death, she could come back to life as the new Death.

“And Shadow? What…. She… it?” Asked Eve. Both Crowe and I were confused by the disconnected words but we watched as Gretchen started passing the room.

“I can’t.” She said. She covered her mouth and started shaking her head. “I can't, I can’t” She repeated this phrase over and over until Eve grew impatient. Slamming her foot down making my recreation glitch. Gretchen had fallen to the floor and the room was in disarray by the action.

“Crowe, we need to find that bomb,” I said, giving him a serious look. “If it goes off killing Death, Dawn wins.”

“Don’t worry about it, The poor guy lost his marbles and helped us out. He was so upset after realizing he was brainwashed by your sister. He couldn’t think of hurting his own kind. So, he went with a little bit of the group to diffuse the bomb.” Crowe said, not tearing his eyes away from Gretchen.

“Where is he!” Where’s Temno!” Crowe gulped and I watched as she raised Gretchen off the ground without touching her. Their conversation had suddenly taken a twisted turn and Eve had lost her temper. Though, visibly, she was smiling with a peaceful look in her eyes.

“Please! Please don’t hurt me! I’m just a messenger.” Cried Gretchen choking on the force around her throat. I watched as the two argued and the words lined up exactly with the ones I had previously overheard before.

“I don’t care …. ife. This i… My fath… ricky bastard and I will be the one to take this game. I am the one who...ined to win. Not …. sisters, not my brother, no one ...me!” Eve giggled and I couldn’t help but smile at the cruelty. “And sadly, if I want to make this my destiny, I need …. rid of you.” The image started to cut and I watched as Crowe grew distressed.

“No,” said Crowe stepping toward the false Eve. “No! Shadow do something! Why are you just standing there? React! Do something!”

“Please! I won’t say anything to anyone, I’ll disappear!” Begged the demon.

“Gretchen! No!” Crowe screamed as he clawed through the figures. I stood by and remained still. I didn’t have it in me to feel sympathy for him. I was instead, numb.

Eve smiled at the image of Gretchen and began closing her fist knowing that the action was closing Gretchen’s throat. “Evil will do…. evil does.”

Within seconds a white light flashed and the room was suddenly brought to its previous form. Tables flipped, cupboards blown open, and glass. Glass everywhere. My image spell slowly wore off and we stood once again in the destroyed home.

“Let’s go back to the room and recap on our information.” I outstretched my hand to Crowe. His face was blank and I searched within his chest to still see a calm purple soul. He grabbed my hand and together we appeared back into the hotel room.

Crowe let out a long breath and sat at the edge of the room's bed. I walked around the room taking note of its size. It was fairly large and had beautiful tinted windows to peer at the outside world. Instead of curtains like in the old one, I now had long swinging blinds. Across the room, over by Crowe was a desk with a small lamp on top of it. An oil painting hung above it and about 90 degrees from the desk was the closet. It was deep and had tall sliding doors. The bathroom was past it and had all the essentials but the shower was very well designed. I told myself that I had to give whoever did the planning should receive a raise of some sort. The room was carpeted and only the bathroom had tile. The room also had a phone, a TV and an air conditioning set. But more pressing matters had to be pondered upon so I summoned Ruby before me. She was slightly shocked but happy to retrieve the things I ordered.

“Crowe, We need to discuss our next step,” I said going over things in my head. Crowe was silent but stood beside me as I lined things up and started to redraw out our plan. “First things first. What happened to the Remains and other groups?” I turned to Crowe and he smiled.

“The Remains have officially dismembered. After the war, they found no reason to fight anymore. I mean, you're dead, and Dawn’s hotel has crumbled. They got their revenge. The Night Prowlers also Disbanded due to no leadership and the massive loss of members during the war.”

I nodded slowly taking in the information. “And for sure the bomb has been defused?”

“Yes ma'am,” Crowe said. “I went with the group myself and saw him diffuse the bomb.” His smile grew with pride.

“Yes well, there’s nothing wrong with double-checking. You never know who will lie in these kinds of situations.”

“Of course.”

“What about Hellen?” I said recalling the name. “Wasn’t that one of the reasons they helped us out to begin with? For her?”

“Ah… Yes.” Crowe's eyes shifted and danced around the room. “She may have been killed.”

“Crowe?” I pushed.

He let out a short sigh and shoved his palms into his pockets kicking the ground looking foolish. “She had taken Dawn’s side. I tried to reason with her but out of the loss of her family or something she… Begged me to kill her.”

I frowned imagining the scene. “Pathetic.”

“Come now, don’t be so harsh. I’m sure any other demon would want to die after losing their family.”

“Do you?” I asked turning in my chair to face him in a more direct way.

“... no.” He said quietly.

“She’s pathetic,” I stated, turning back and continuing writing things out. “Next is, we have lost our main source of information. Gretchen was the only person I trusted enough to give me real facts. Besides you of course. Now that she’s dead we hit a wall.” I folded my arms on my small chest and closed my eyes in frustration. “ Eve knows something. The faster we take her out the better.”

“What’s your plan of attack? We can’t do the same thing as we did with Dawn. The army we had is gone and from what we saw with Gretchen…. She’s strong. Besides, you aren’t very strong anymore.”

“Excuse me?” I said, raising my voice in annoyance. “What do you mean by weak?”

“I didn’t say you were weak!” Crowe said, raising his arms in defense. “I just said that you're not as strong as you used to be. What’s with that anyway? You talk to yourself, then lose yourself. Your power glitches. What happened to the badass snapping thing?”

I took in a deep breath letting it fill my lungs. “My power is just fine. I’m just having a little bit of a hard time because…” My sentence faded and Crowe looked at me with a crooked stare.

“Because…” He said dragging out the word.

“It’s none of your business. My hotel is being rebuilt quickly so my power will be back to full capacity. Even now, I’m almost to full power.”

Crowe shook his head but accepted the answer unwillingly. “How far along is your hotel? I mean this place was burned down what? A little over 24 hours?”

I nodded shortly. “My hotel is almost back to its original form. I have hundreds of workers working non-stop. Even to this point, I have monsters checking in for the night. But we don’t have time for that. We need to discuss Eve.”

Crowe stepped forward now standing directly behind my left shoulder. Fitting for a demon.

“What’s her story? Was she human too?” He asked picking up the photo of her. Ruby had brought in “She’s kind of cute. For a bitch that is.”

“Yes well, unlike Dawn she wasn’t human. Eve was born into a human family yet she was a witch.”

“A witch? In a human family? How?” Crowe asked, respectably confused.

“ You know anything about the Witch Trials Of Salem?”

Crowe grew astonished but stayed quiet. The look gave me confirmation that he knew enough.

“1692, Salem had a little over a year of executions, persecutions and mysterious deaths. Eve, a child during those times was born cursed. She was born inhuman and at the age of 9 forced to be hung after being caught performing witchcraft.”

“So she hung,” Crowe said understandingly.

“No,” I said, correcting him.

“But I thought all those who were persecuted were forced to hang?”

“Indeed, but Eve escaped the day of her execution. She ran with dogs and men chasing her. She crossed a frozen lake but unfortunately, she fell through the ice and drowned. While falling to the bottom of the lake she made a deal with Death.”

“Just like Dawn did,” Crowe said, setting Eve’s picture down. “What was the deal?”

“To let the trials end and let her become the next angel of Death. Death agreed and she was brought to this domain as his youngest daughter. The witch trials ended shortly after, sometime in May of 1693.”

“So she wanted to be an angel of Death… That’s new.” Crowe said piecing things together.

“Yes. After her new life began she went on to become the most powerful witch anyone has ever seen. She controls the earth and the domain itself. She can change the weather in a split second. She can cause earthquakes by slamming her foot down.”

“How are we going to kill her?”

I smiled slyly. “Take her off the ground.” Ruby suddenly entered the room and was carrying blueprints and a basic map of our small world “Wonderful! Let me see” I said reaching for the papers. Crowe backed away and we spent the next few hours talking about the plan and figuring out places Death could be hiding. In the early morning, we would take our chance to strike Eve by using me as bait.