Re: demon/hood to the rescue
He felt a flare of bare fucking rage at the zealots using women and children to protect themselves, but it was productive. He'd never been a big fan of God's chosen people. They said a lot about helping people, but he'd seen more of them violate their God's supposed word than he could count. Anybody who made you trade a mass for a goddamn meal, let you go hungry and cold if you wouldn't say a prayer, they weren't the good christian souls they said they were.
There was always someone at the top manipulating the weaker people at the bottom, and corruption could spread like a contagion. Not crushing it at the source was letting it spread. That wasn't going to happen. He didn't even verbally acknowledge the order to kill the man at the heart of the farmhouse cult. Hearing it made it so, like it had already happened.
The trees were dark and quiet, even as the snow crunched softly underfoot. The farmhouse resolved out of the darkness first as an interruption against darker trees, then lit faintly by a low, thin moon. He came to a halt beside the Demon, straightening into a tall, indistinct black silhouette.
The girl. He stared into the farmhouse and began to read it - top to bottom, side to side. He felt the pull he'd learned in his training to identify as another Gifted, another mind reaching out blindly.
Connecting his own mind with others was the part of his late-in-life training he struggled with the most. Maybe it was because he'd felt it when he was younger, a little, connecting with people he didn't want to be connected to, just enough for a flash of something ugly to come through. He had always been a closed circuit since then, without really knowing why.
Luckily, anger provided a good focus. He remembered the people in the house, the way they'd tortured the girl, and he cut through sleeping figures, stone walls, cold hallways and find her. There, at the center, blasting fear and pain in every direction.
We're coming for you. Don't be afraid.
The connection drifted, and he felt the girl's mind reach out to grab at him, to pull him back, even as he let her go. She dragged at him - just for a second, but it was enough to make him shake his head, once, when he came back to himself.