The cry of the young woman made me pause as finished the gruesome work on her friend. My tentacle quivered as her voice made my thoughts stopped. Her annoying scream stilled my desire to continue. To violate the flesh before me.

I stopped and stared into her bright blue eyes. Well, one was blue, the other was red. She didn’t say anything so I shrugged and my tentacles moved forward.

The girl watched as her friend was eviscerated from head to groin and she began to once again shriek and tear apart her vocal cords.

I wrung my tentacle clean and then proceeded to do the same to her.

The silence was welcome.

Holy crap did I embrace this silence.

The screaming was annoying and my heightened flesh could literally feel the vibration of their vocal cords. Young girls in particular could hit a magical high note.

My flesh quivered in pain.

Holy crap did I embrace this silence.

I knew I should have felt bad. I did just murder six teenage girls, but you reaped what you sowed.

Dabbling in the demonic arts, no matter how cute, was never safe.

The fact that they had succeeded and bound their very flesh with the taint of demonic energy didn’t help your screams of innocence.

You don’t make a pact with Wenshen, the bringer of pestilence, and say you did no wrong. You reaped what you sowed, whether you knew what it meant or not.

My tentacles retracted, reforming a human arm and I used it to pick up a frilly pink book. Modern Diets of 2018. Written by Moria Deville.

It was probably a cover name for a cult. The book was professional enough, but not New York's best seller professional. There was a local source here, and I would have to dig it out.

I frowned as I leafed through the pages. Most of it was real diet stuff. I would have panicked a few years ago, but I was wiser now. They were getting much cleverer.

There, page 66, the meditation of weight loss. Or the minor incantation of infusion. Which would bind chaotic energy into the flesh. The central symbol was of Wenshen itself.

Step 1. Infuse the flesh with chaotic energy.

Step 2. Refine chaotic energy into demonic energy.

Step 3. Bind the profound thoughts of a god of pestilence into your body.

Step 4. Become a demon.

Step 5. Eat your family and neighbors. Or infect them with something that does the same.

Step 6. Repeat on a larger scale.

Step 7. Profit.

Yeah. Wenshen was a great god. You just needed enough sacrifice to gain its favor. Bask in its power. Until you lost favor with it. Then you just withered and died.

There was the sound of bubbling and I watched as their bodies liquefied and then began to flow towards me. My pores around my legs opened up and I drank hungrily.

Say what you will. Tainted flesh was sweet and sour. Young girls were savory. Sure I cursed myself when I was young and stupid. I learned quickly, however.

You don’t just get better.

You need to either convert to a proper god and endure decades of “purification” and then died. Or you get killed quickly, and then die.

I did mess up a little here though. Turns out they were using the lesser rituals of summoning. Less demonic infusion, more chaotic taint.

Damn. I could have just decapitated them and be done with it. They didn’t have hellspawn shit bound to their very soul. Like me.

I could never go back. I knew I would die a violent death. I also knew I would go down kicking and screaming.

The sounds of the ceiling caving in were noisy. Luckily it wasn’t six screaming girls noisy.

I looked up, and there they were. The Allies of Justice.

Superion floated at the front. His gold and white uniform glinted in the evening sun. His skin-tight suit showcased his incredible physique.

Miss Justice floated beside her. She rocked a much more awesome gold and black uniform. I leered at her long legs and exposed torso. Damn was she tasty. My senses could taste the sweat particles off her. Damn, I wanted to lick her clean.

Thankfully. the Beast landed with a thud, his massive gorilla-like frame cracked the cemented foundation. His scarred face glared at me. I welcomed the change with a soft smile.

The rest was probably outside, waiting for me when I tried to run.

“Give yourself up,” Superion demanded calmly. He knew the answer already.

This was what? Our twelfth meeting?

“You know the drill,” I replied as I threw the book at him. His superior senses already deemed the book as safe and he caught it without breaking eye contact. “Page 66. Tell the world to stop dabbling in this shit.”

I was tired.

I enjoyed their screams. Their pain and suffering. And I was tired of expecting more from myself. Expecting me to be human.

I am a monster and this will never change.

“We could have saved them!” the beast roared and I stopped and sighed as I dragged my hands down my face. I then raked them through my dreads. Or ‘dreads’ as the tentacle-like follicles wiggled at my agitation.

“Look. You are one of the smartest people around Henry. You know what happens when you try to save demonic dabblers. Brandon Branderson was not an accident until you put him in a regular prison,” I berated the hulking scientist. Henry was smart, famous, and moonlighted as a hero.

“We could have saved these young women,” Miss Justice followed up. Her voice was melodic and my body quivered to devour her.

“Yeah, and those three hundred inmates wanted to die by being eating. A host of Limos herself was what they wanted most in life. Then that community also wanted to say hi as she almost made it to what? Six meters of the first house?” I snarled back.

I could have stopped it properly, but noooo. We are the justice morons.

Instead, the Allies of Justice fought the monster for two hours and wrecked three communities. Luckily no one died and I desperately wanted to throw that in their faces.

I help evacuate families too! I could have done it better than them.

My arms separated into two mass of tentacles as the stress overcame my subconscious.

The three tensed and that was enough to grab my attention. I growled as I stared at my arms and they lashed around the area. Claws dug into the concrete like it was warm butter and my simple unadorned tentacles simply drilled into it.

My agitation agitated them.

Miss Justice bounced and I locked onto her flush figure. I flushed and it was Superion who coughed to get my attention.

A tentacle drilled into my thigh and broke me of my hunger. Goddess I wanted her. I wonder if my flesh of Lilith was driving me, or I was driving it.

The three stilled as wrestled me back to control.

“You stop the everyday bad guys, I kill the tainted and possessed. Trust me on this. You could not have saved these girls. Holy water would have hit them like acid. This wasn’t their first ritual,” I explained as my arms reformed.

My tentacles were hungry, however. They slithered underneath my skin as my eyes kept roving over Miss Justice. Goddess just one taste…

“So holy water would work on you then?” Henry the Beast asked calmly. He was intrigued.

“Yeah. Superion has a flask of it, right?” I asked as I centered my vision on the mighty Hero.

He nodded at me as he hovered between me and Miss Justice.

I gave him a thankful nod. Which lasted for all of three seconds before Miss Justice hovered to the side and I glared at her for annoying me again. A glare that turned hungry in two seconds.

I growled as I wrench my eyes to the side. This was dumb.

“If you want to save people, look into that. Because if you don’t then I will find them,” I promised as I turned around and faced the other side of the basement.

“We will stop you,” Miss Justice said. I shuddered. Shut up, woman!

“Only death will stop me. I will happily let you kill me… After I kill the Sliver Coven!” I ended with a growl as my arms transformed and carved a ring of destruction around me. The accursed people who led me astray.

“It won’t come to that,” Superion stated as he stared into my back.

I turned my head. It was an unnatural twist as my body was no longer human. My smile however was human. “Thank you, for treating me like a man.”

My features then clenched into a monster. My eyes turned red and my lower jaw unhinged as my mouth expanded into fangs and tongues. “But I am no longer a man. I am a demon and you will kill me!”

Miss Justice and the Beast tensed but Superion rolled his eyes.

My features wriggled back together as I gave them a toothy grin. I turned my head around and stepped into a patch of shadows and sank into the darkness. Time to go home and take a nap.

The three members of the Allies of Justice shared glances and Suprion held up the book. It looked so innocent, with its soft pink cover and doily like ridges.

His grip tightened as he knew why the girls had to die. There was a surge of this demonic wave and he hated being slow and helpless like this.

If this book was their first big clue, then he wouldn’t sit on his hands.

He met the eyes of his allies, his friends, and companions. They nodded back.

It seems that there was more work to be done.