Under a blood red sky

Phaedra thought that, after three hundred years mostly alone, she could return to her state of solitude and being thought of as nothing more than a killer with some degree of ease.

She was wrong.

Harry and Lindsey were gone. Gone somewhere she could not even feel their minds, and she didn't like that. It likely meant dead.

She had cried, briefly. Violently sobbed, more like. And she'd broken several things in what had been Harry's house. A door was ripped off the hinges in her rage, upstairs, and the bathroom mirror was shattered.

She'd gone to Lindsey's motel room and had been sleeping there during the days, not allowing the maid to change the sheets on the bed. They smelled like him. She didn't touch anything. Some of his things were still there. She'd taken to wearing a discarded flannel shirt. A cowboy hat was on the bedside table.

She couldn't feel Saerian, either, but was counting her blessings for that, in the moments when she didn't feel gutted.

Tonight, Phaedra was leaving Lindsey's and returning to Harry's, walking at a human pace the entire distance. She was going to check her messages with the firm. Halfway there, a giant wall of a demon jumped out in front of her, clearly looking for a fight. Feral.

When Phaedra heard the footsteps approaching, she was silently flaying it alive, her face utterly cold. Gone.