The Sinner Hunting System

"Eastern outskirts. Abandoned vehicle plant..."

The cursed objects had come from somewhere.

This address, combined with the encrypted broadcast, pointed toward one answer, a black market access point, or something adjacent to one.

The timing suggested operational hours. The brass key with its engraved passphrase suggested an entry requirement on top of that.

Three layers of verification, possibly four. That level of operational security meant something worth protecting.

"Finally."

His eyes had suffered enough. He’d gotten what he came for, and he was ready to leave.

Then he stopped.

He looked at the walls.

He pulled every photograph down. The books too, and the cushion with Elena’s drawn-on face.

He piled it all in the corner, took out a lighter, and set it burning.

Then he stood there patiently until the pile had reduced itself to ash and dying embers, put it out with the flat’s small fire extinguisher, and left with nothing but the radio.

He walked out of the complex at his own pace. Above the city, the moon was full.

---

The landlady gave him a knowing look when he passed the front desk. He ignored it and went upstairs.

He knocked. Light rapid footsteps from inside, the sound of someone running barefoot across a hard floor.

The door opened a crack. Elena peered through it, confirmed it was him, and undid the security chain.

"Good security instincts."

Elena had spent enough time around him by now that she genuinely couldn’t tell whether that was a compliment or a very dry form of criticism.

"How did it go?"

He waved a hand.

"Handled. Got what I needed."

Elena looked at the cheap radio in his hand with an expression of muted bewilderment and decided not to ask.

Raphael took out the page he’d torn from the stalker’s notebook, the wanted poster with his own photograph, annotated extreme danger, eliminate immediately, and held it out to her with a slight smile.

Elena glanced at it. Her mouth twitched.

Curiosity and revulsion arrived at approximately the same moment.

"You didn’t just find this, did you. What else was in there?"

He sat down on the couch and told her.

Elena listened and went progressively paler. She hadn’t imagined the man had gone this deep, hadn’t imagined he’d accumulated this much.

When Raphael reached the part about the hand-written books, the meal logs, the movement diaries, the comprehensive rival database, she slapped both hands over her ears, face twisted.

"Okay. Stop. I give up. I don’t want to hear any more."

Raphael shrugged in a way that suggested he’d only covered the moderate portion of what he’d found, and there was considerably more where that came from.

Elena waved her hands rapidly and changed the subject. She shifted along the couch and sat beside him, leaving about half a person’s width between them, knees drawn up.

"...Thank you. For today. Really." The words came out genuine, carrying a little weight. "If you hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened."

She looked sideways at him from where her cheek rested against her knees.

"When I brought you in from the alley I had no idea things would go like this. I didn’t know what to do with you at all. I was honestly regretting it a little."

She exhaled.

"But now I just want to say thank you. Whatever you were before, whatever you’ve done, here, you were my Hero."

Raphael looked at her eyes. Genuinely looked, for a few seconds longer than he’d intended to.

Then he pulled his gaze away.

"Mm."

He stood, putting deliberate distance between himself and whatever that moment had been.

"Get some rest."

He went to the bathroom and closed the door.

Behind him, Elena’s mouth curved into a small, quietly smug smile.

He got flustered. He absolutely got flustered just now.

In the bathroom, under hot water, Raphael was thinking about exactly one thing.

July 7th. Three days from now.

---

He came out in loose sleep trousers and a towel around his shoulders, rubbing his hair dry.

"Hm?"

Elena hadn’t gone back to her room. She was lying sideways on the couch, asleep, still in her clothes from earlier.

Moonlight through the window settled on her skin. Her eyes were closed, the lashes trembling faintly as though she was dreaming something active.

The energy that was usually so present in her face had gone quiet.

He thought of what the woman down the hall had called her.

Little bunny.

White and soft and quick, cheerful and open and completely lacking in self-protective instinct.

It fit.

Raphael sighed and looked at her with a kind of exasperation.

She really just trusts people this completely.

He decided a lesson was in order.

He found a marker pen, crouched beside the couch, and drew several things on her face, a small turtle on one cheek, a grinning face on the other, a few additional decorative lines.

He set the pen down.

Then he slid one arm beneath her knees and the other under her arms and lifted her.

Her body registered the shift in weight the way sleeping bodies sometimes do, she curled toward him without waking, pressing her face against his chest, making a small burrowing motion like something settling into a burrow.

"Mm..."

Her breath against his skin was warm. He clicked his tongue.

"You’re light. Lighter than the dumbbells I use for single-arm curls."

He carried her to her room and set her down on the bed, pulling the blanket over her.

He stood beside the bed for a moment, his back to the moonlight, watching her sleep with her face completely unguarded.

"If you weren’t a witch, perhaps this kind of life could continue."

He didn’t finish the thought out loud.

Every source said the same thing, religious texts, IFSA operational records, folk tradition. A witch’s life was a synonym for difficulty. Loss was built into it.

Blood debts accumulated. The fight between survival and death ran the whole length of it, and the option of stepping outside that fate simply didn’t exist.

He had no clear evidence, but the feeling was there, Elena’s fate and his had already begun to wind together in ways that wouldn’t easily unwind.

He thought about how Vigo had talked about him. The way witches seemed to orient toward a Demon Lord Candidate, some deep instinct pushing toward possession, toward claiming one as their own.

Deal with the future when it arrives.

He exhaled quietly, left the room, and pulled the door shut behind him.

The night passed without incident.

---

Morning. Elena opened her eyes slowly. The sky outside was barely light. From the other side of the door came the even rhythm of someone sleeping.

She’d gone to bed early, so she was up before him. Earlier than Raphael, even.

She stretched luxuriously, let out a slow breath, and took stock of herself. She was in her own bed. In her own pajamas.

She smiled. Then felt, immediately afterward, the faint stirring of something that was almost disappointment, almost indignation.

The vague sense of her own attractiveness having been evaluated and found insufficient.

Well. I’m up this early, I might as well make breakfast. Call it gratitude.

She padded out of the bedroom.

Raphael was sprawled across the couch with the uninhibited ease of someone who had decided the concept of a dignified sleeping position was optional.

Elena’s gaze traveled downward.

Toward the region between his legs.

Toward the area that was, in the particular way of early mornings, very much present and very much making itself known.

A wave of heat detonated across her face. She pulled in a sharp breath and produced a sound from somewhere deep in her soul.

"WHAT! I thought you took the medication!"