Chapter 3: The Blue Devil and Someone to Blame a Bombing On

Azrael's home was cold as she stepped inside, but that was expected considering she didn't generate body heat nor did Keep, being a creature of living void and hellfire.

Still it was a strong reminder that only ghosts lived there in her home.

The large Hellhound drifted out of the shadows inside like a ghost and pressed his head into her chest in his silent hello. Azrael smiled as she stroked his head and tried to shake off the loneliness that usually overtook her when she got home. I am not alone, she told herself; her little family, something she'd thought she lost when she escaped Hell, lived just on the other side of town and Keep, along with any other of the pack of Hellhounds she'd created all those years ago, would always be at her side. I need only to call and I'll never be by myself.

And yet I still feel so alone.

Azrael leaned down to wrap her arms around Keep's neck.

It wasn't all that long ago that she'd moved back to England and her home in the woods, though overgrown and widely considered haunted by the locals, still stood after all that time away. She let go of Keep, running her fingers along the old stone wall as she walked towards the kitchen, about to make herself a cup of tea before she sat down to collect the events of the day on the next blank section of her most recent journal. A few minutes later, Azrael sat in her study staring at the page, trying to think of anything even remotely interesting that happened that day beyond the early morning explosion but she was coming up blank. She set her fountain pen aside in the stand and picked a case up from on top of her piano.

Music had always helped her collect her thoughts and as she played her violin, Azrael felt the tension ease from her nerves and her thoughts become less clouded.

But of course, her tranquility couldn't last and the violin made an unhappy sound as someone knocked on the door downstairs and she was wrenched back into reality.

Her gaze narrowed as she approached the door, not even bothering to set her violin aside to answer it. The man she found on her doorstep wore the uniform of the Metropolitan Police Service and the sight of it made her liquid mercury gaze turn to icy steel.

"What can I do for you?" She did, to her credit, refrain from using any slang for the time being.

"Miss Alixsandra McÁed?" Azrael—or Alixsandra "Alix" McÁed as she'd been called for almost a decade now—nodded slightly in admission. "I'm here to escort you to the station concerning your involvement with the Lancashire bombing on the 14th of this month." Alix raised an eyebrow at him.

"My involvement?" Yes, she had been there, but it was to deal with a Puck who was particularly upset, and rightfully so considering his mistress had absconded with their newborn baby. "I'm not entirely sure how I can assist you." The officer seemed to visibly gather up his courage before speaking again.

"We have witnesses that placed you at the barracks before they blew." Alix breathed a heavy sigh.

"Fine, but I was honestly just passing by the place on my way to the train station." The officer seemed to disregard her words entirely as soon as she agreed to go with him, but she doubted he would've taken her word for it even if he had still been listening.

"Follow me, please." With those last words, the officer began walking down the overgrown track back into town, leaving her to follow. For a moment, she stood there in the doorway listening to the sound of his footsteps in the mud while she debated the temptation to simply close the door. Finally, she breathed another sigh and set her violin aside before shrugging on her coat as she followed after the officer's fading footsteps.

#

Alix stood against the wall of the station's waiting area doing exactly that. In the meantime she'd managed to lift a case file from another passing officer and stood reading through it, particularly interested in the manner of death. None of the victims had eyes, as if they'd been neatly plucked from their heads, but that wasn't the particularly macabre part of the Modis Operandi. Each victim had been split open to expose their entrails on an altar as if to read fortunes in them except that there was evidence pieces had been consumed, too. There was a weird grey area with cannibalism where whether this counted would depend entirely on whether or not the killer could be considered human still, as in the case of Ghouls.

This all was familiar in a vaguely nostalgic sort of way so Alix already knew the killer wasn't human and therefore fell under her reign.

"You can't be reading that!" The officer returned, quite red in the face at the sight of her holding the case file, "Where did you get it?!" He snatched it from her loose grip, causing the paper to slice shallow cuts in her hands, though she barely noticed them and they healed in a matter of seconds.

"It was on the desk," Alix lied flawlessly when she answered his question, very calm compared to his outraged state.

"You can't tell anyone about what you read." He muttered the words, his voice gruff as she leaned back against the wall again.

"I shall try my very best," she spoke, her voice mocking and thick with sarcasm; honestly, who did he think she would tell? "You wanted to ask me about the 14th?" She changed the subject, too tired to be at the station longer than she had to be; although it wasn't just the station, she was simply tired, she'd lived for far too long in her opinion.

"Yes," the officer regained his composure enough, at least, to turn and retrieve a notepad from the top of his desk. "Could you relay everything you did while in Lancashire?" She raised an eyebrow at him before shrugging.

"Well, I arrived early the morning of the 13th and went to meet an… acquaintance of mine in the area, his… mistress had recently given birth to a baby girl, and a few days prior to my trip, she'd absconded with the baby." The officer looked up at Alix like he wasn't sure whether to believe any part of her story despite her being completely honest for once in her very, very long life.

"Why did he contact you and not the local station?" She shrugged.

"I didn't ask." She knew technically she'd received the letter before Robin knew Helen was going to leave with the baby, but she wasn't going to share that information with the man in front of her, she knew full well that it wouldn't get them anywhere.

"And does this acquaintance of yours have a name?" The officer returned his gaze to the notepad in his hands.

"Robin Goodfellow." His gaze snapped back to Alix at her blunt statement. Eventually, he seemed to decide she was being serious, that it had to be just some cruel joke on the part of the fellow's parents. He wrote the name quickly on the paper before looking up again with his next question.

"And why were you at the military barracks the day of the bombing?"

"I already told you, I was on my way home, I had to pass the place to get to the station." She spoke what was essentially the truth, though she left out the bit about her being caught in the blast as well or that she'd known someone was going to die there before it happened. "Look, I live where I do for a reason, I don't want anything to do with any revolutions or movements or wars anymore. I'm tired; I just want to be left alone." The officer stared at her as if he could feel just how honest that last part was, but he took long enough to respond that Alix just sighed and shook her head. "Unless you need anything else—"

"No, you can't leave yet," he moved to block her exit, but she grabbed him with one hand by the front of his shirt and lifted him so that his toes barely brushed against the floor. There was a cold, predatory curve to her lips and hellfire flickered in her eyes when she spoke again, her voice low.

"I don't give a damn if you're a Blue Devil or a member of bloody parliament, I'm done being civil. I told you what I know and now I am going home, so you can just sod off." He nodded frantically, the instinctual fear Alix had earlier watched him shove aside returning with a vengeance as her presence began to overflow. She let go of him, letting him fall back to the floor before slipping out the door.