Where It All Began

Beatrice was looking at herself in the mirror. Her hourglass shaped figure had become a flask shaped one. Her pregnancy could no longer be hidden even when she wore clothes larger than her size.

It had already been eight months. She just had to endure it for a bit longer. She could feel it. Her child would be born any day now.

But before that she had one last thing to do. She had to snuff out one more life to pay for the life of her child. She had to hurry and offer up the last sacrifice before her baby was born.

She took out a box that was hidden deep in the wall behind the mirror. She had to move the mirror out of the way before lifting the box out of the hole in the wall.

She sat on the edge of her bed and looked into the mirror in front of her. There was a terrible glint in her eyes as she opened the box.

The box contained sevens slots in total where cylindrical objects could be inserted. Six out of seven already had a bottle each inserted in it. The bottle contained a reddish liquid that had started to turn black for some reason.

She took out one of the bottles and brought it closer to her lips before kissing it.

"Soon, you will have another companion. You have to endure until then. Only then will I be able to release all of your spirits."

The bottles contained the blood of all the babies that she had killed so far. Only the last slot still remained empty.

...

As Beatrice started planning the last abduction, Dante got busy looking for the demon that was hunting the newborns. He was afraid that the demon might end up harming his nephew or niece once they were born.

To prevent a tragedy like that, Dante was going to get rid of it before it could hurt anymore innocent children. He was still not sure whether the culprit was truly a demon or someone with an extremely twisted motive and mentality, someone thoroughly entranced by demonic rituals or a part of some cult.

Dante had to start somewhere. Upon asking around he found nothing at all. It looked as if everyone was especially wary of strangers, especially the ones asking around about newborn babies. Therefore he went to the only place that always had a plenty of kids and newborns, the orphanage.

This was the same orphanage where the first incident had taken place. Dante wanted to look at the scene in order to make sure that their suspicions were in the right direction.

The caretaker who met Dante looked at him as if he was the killer demon who had been going about murdering kids. Sure he might have looked suspicious since he had begun by asking if there were any newborns in the orphanage or if there were some newborns around the cathedral that she knew of.

"I think we might have begun with a wrong step there. Before you reach any conclusion regarding me…let me introduce myself. My name is Dante. I am a demon hunter who is looking into the case that has been horrifying people around here."

The caretaker finally took a breath of relief and showed him to the room that was previously being used to hold all the newborns.

At the first look, Dante felt that the scene was not as gruesome as he had been told. The walls were smeared with blood. It was definitely demonic script that he was seeing in front of him but something was odd, really very odd.

"Things don't add up. Something is definitely not right."

The caretaker wasn't interested in his mutterings so she left while leaving behind her words to lock up the room once he was done.

"There should be some demonic residue here if there was really a demon in this place."

Dante was especially sensitive to demons and the residue that they left behind every time that they managed to cross over to the human world.

In this case there was none. Although the scene had been cleaned up quite efficiently, there was no cleaning material that could have erased the demonic smell.

That's why Dante was sure that this wasn't the work of some demon. This was definitely some heavily screwed up maniac with psychopathic and fanatic tendencies. He was surely a part of some cult interested in summoning demons or something like that.

"If this is the case then this time I have gotten myself into a huge mess. It is really difficult when the culprit is a human since I can't tell which one among the countless humans in the city is the evil one I am looking for. It would have been nice if I had a power like that. That would have been convenient."

Dante's tardiness was slowly taking over but he shrugged it off.

He locked up and went back to the caretaker in order to return the key. As he did he asked her something out of curiosity, "Hey, tell me something."

"Huh?"

"For a second imagine that the murderer is not a demon but a human. How do you think he managed to learn about the newborn kid in the orphanage? What kind of person would have information about that?"

"To know something like that you would have to be either one of the staff or someone who visits the orphanages regularly. We do accept guests on occasion after all."

"How long after did it happen…I mean how much time had passed after the child arrived at the orphanage before the…you know…?"

The caretaker was getting uncomfortable with the consistent questions but didn't shirk away from telling him the truth.

"The very next day...during our break time when no one was around. After we came back we found it in that condition."

Dante gave it some thought and came to the conclusion that it was someone from among the staff or someone who knew their work dynamics.

Dante had found out everything he wanted and was about to leave but his gut feeling raised an alarm in his mind.

Since he was having so much difficulty finding information about a newborn kid, it would definitely be the same for the killer.

"By any chance, is there another newborn at this orphanage?"