Chapter 5

Malaya’s head spun a little as she struggled to adjust to the tilt and spin of the earth beneath her feet. The soul lands didn’t move like this, and it was a phenomena she didn’t quite understand, but had to deal with nonetheless. She closed her eyes and let herself synchronize with the pulse of the world around her before looking up to see where her report spot was for this mission.

It was dark all around, and she seemed to be sitting in a box made of plastic. Light leaked through the material above, illuminating into a blue hue, and a bright crack shone where the box was sealed at the top. Malaya tested around the crack with a little push before discovering it was a lid that could be lifted.

Bright sunshine flooded into her senses as Malaya removed the covering of her cell and she blinked, at first in surprise, before her eyes quickly adjusted. A little alleyway evolved before her, rather generically, in between two brick buildings. She saw that she was standing in a dumpster with two cover flaps and no lock. The sun greeted her from the east with a bit of an orange hue, indicating the morning hour.

Malaya reached her hand into her pocket and pulled out the packed she knew would be there. She sat down in the safety of the dumpster, pulled off the waterproof wrapping, and opened the small file of papers.

There was a card with the identification of a girl; long red hair and soft eyes, looking to be in her early twenties, as well as a map that Malaya unfolded and glanced over long enough to see that she was in the United States in the Northwest corner. She’d have to make sure to find time for a little excursion to Seattle while she was in the area. Malaya loved Seattle, and just might have considered it to be her favorite place on earth. She folded the map back up and tucked it into the folds of her tunic so that she could refer to it later. Well, she tried to fold it up. It was after all a map and thereby the ruination of all travelers' image everywhere. Needless to say, after a few minutes in combat with the creases of the monster, she folded the map and tucked it back in her tunic.

Then Malaya pulled out the remaining papers: a collection of pictures. She flipped through the photos and zeroed in on three of them:

A girl with her head buried in her arms, sitting on the floor of a muted room. However, the shadow that was cast over her face could not conceal the blood dripping from her nose. The maroon drops shone on the floor, tattooing the area forever with the pain of the memory. A man hovered over her with his arms wrapped protectively around her slight form. He caressed his hand lovingly across her hair. However, as opposed to leaning into the comfort, she seemed to shy away. The light caught a dull melancholy look in her eyes.

Now the man holding the girl close to him, head lowered and nuzzling her neck. Hand stroking along her bare arm, with a look of bliss upon his face, tainted alone by a fragment of triumph. Her face was turned away and her breath held. A dark mark crawled its way along the bare side of her ribs; purple and black and in a sort of odd shape. It struck Malaya that the bruise looked a bit like a lizard, with its nose and tail poking out at opposite ends.

Lastly, the image of the girl sitting at the edge of a bluff, looking out into what appeared to be the morning light. Her face was different in this picture, not as stony as the others. The circles under her eyes had lifted a little, and she looked up at the sky as opposed to down at her feet. A golden eagle circled in the distance everything about the photo represented serenity and peace.

Malaya put the pictures down and crawled out of the dumpster. Her bare feet hit the ground softly, making practically no noise, and she began walking while she analyzed the assignment.

It seemed to be a standard abuse case and it seemed to have a happy ending. And that’s why they sent her here. She was in the business of making happy endings morbid. It was her job to turn lives around and to be the proverbial devil on the shoulder. She whispered secrets in the night to those who were vulnerable. She specialized in being that exclusive friend when the days were long and lonely. She was an expert lover, a chameleon to whatever the individual needed. Malaya showed them the way to live in the darkest corners of their world before taking them to a new kind of wonderland.

Malaya rounded the corner of the alley and stepped onto the humming street. A rainbow of cars, jackets and faces moved past each other, paying little attention to her. Her delicate form gracefully moved in and out of the dance of the city. To some, she was a flicker in the corner of their eye, to others a mere whisper that was gone as soon as they turned their heads to look; a shadow in a corner or reflection in a window.

Relaxing into the rhythm of the scene around her, intuition lead Malaya where it would. She knew from her short experience that her natural instincts would find the target surprisingly quickly, and so she trusted them down to every nudge and turn she felt directing her path. Malaya’s feet before long roamed to a quaint little coffeehouse with a sign that said “Black Grounds” and a trickle of jazz leaking through the cracks in the window.

But suddenly, her eye was caught by the gossamer shade of an opalescent form. She looked around. The people on the street seemed no wiser to the sudden movement of the figure that caught her attention than they were to Malaya herself.

Malaya focused her attention slowly back to the apparition. He was pleasing to look at and exuded a sort of calm confidence as he walked along; eyes steady on a point in the road where a human was crossing in a break in traffic (a man with a business coat and laptop bag, yammering distractedly into a cell phone). She felt a familiar ominous tingle of danger to come and closed her eyes.

She could feel the heartbeat of the man in the street, elevated in the stress and anger of his work. She sniffed the air and could smell the warm blood that throbbed through his veins. She could taste the soul of the human animal as it’s pulse quickened.

The ground rumbled slightly beneath her feet and as Malaya opened her eyes, she saw the flash of a car moving towards the victim, on a path set to converge with the human's in a matter of seconds. The man’s heartrate remained steady and she could feel the cold calm in his breath, as he was unaware of the impending danger. Malaya’s hunter instincts were on fire. “Calm down now.” She whispered to herself. “He’s not your objective.”

Then, as if on a swift breath of wind, the translucent form that originally called her attention was by the mortal, between him and the car. The being knocked the phone from the man's hand, causing him to stop suddenly and look back to where the device had dropped instead of taking the additional fatal step. The car had time to swerve, narrowly missing the man. And as quickly as the situation had transpired, it was over, with the man left looking slightly dazed and the feathery figure already halfway down the street, ghostly whisps trailing from his shoulders.

Malaya tended to see the guardian angels more than most demons, supposedly because of her small size and slight physique. Not only was she overlooked by the ignorant mortals, but by many other spiritual beings as well. However, guardian angels they were unmistakable once you saw them: humanoids as translucent as they were intrepid, and surrounded by a sanguine aura. The bane of a hellions existence, as they always seemed to show up at the most vulnerable and inopportune of times.

But, unlike most demons, Malaya did not hate them. She was almost intrigued and in awe of them when she spotted one. They moved so gracefully and honorably. And Malaya always thought their job, though contradictory to her won, rather fulfilling.

She wouldn’t mind being an angel.

Malaya shook her head to free it of the thoughts. She was not an angel, she was a succubus. And she was good at her job. It was blasphemy to think such thoughts as these. The angels served a different tyrant and had different values. They stood against everything Malaya believed in, everything she had heard about the other land; the one above hell and earth, where the air was thin, the beings whipped, and the freedoms gone.

The pungent stench of coffee drew Malaya back to the task at hand and turned and entered the shop where the whole scene had taken place. 

Peering around, she did not see the redhead, just some men discussing in muted tones, a barista, and a student studying in the corner. And a little girl, who proceeded to look up, meet Malaya’s eye, and give a curious smile at the creature she beheld. Malaya smirked before making her way to the young one. Oh how useful and tender was the open mind of a child.