Lief kept his arm firmly around Jennifer's waist, and his steps did not waver for even a fraction of a second.
The smile on his face remained intact, projecting the perfect image of a boyfriend in love who, after a passionate kiss, has become lost in the fog of happiness and has completely lowered his guard to the outside world.
But that was only the surface.
Inside, the lake of his emotions had frozen.
'Just at the best moment, he appears…' he thought with irritation, suppressing a snort. 'They really have a special talent for choosing the worst possible moment.'
His mental power penetrated the chassis of the car and the image he received was clear.
He could "see them" clearly. A man and a woman. He could feel the erratic rhythm of their hearts racing with adrenaline, the agitated frequency of their breathing and, above all, that malignant presence in them.
It was not the desperate greed of a pickpocket, nor the violence of a gang member.
It was something more rotten.
It was a pure and distilled madness, the kind of depravity of someone who has turned the suffering and death of others into their form of entertainment.
"Master?" whispered Jennifer.
Despite her dreamy state, she caught the microscopic tension in the muscles of Lief's arm and raised her head, searching for his gaze with concern.
"It is nothing," Lief reassured her, lowering his head to place a tender kiss on her forehead, dispelling her doubts, "I was just thinking... the night is too perfect and the moon is incredible. Going straight home would be a waste, don't you think? How about we walk a little more? We could go by the river path. It is much quieter there and there will be no one to bother us."
"..."
Jennifer looked at him in silence for a few seconds. She knew he was hiding something, but his blue eyes looked at her with such warmth that she decided to ignore her instinct of alert.
Right now, her mind and heart were saturated by the presence of the man at her side, and the idea of prolonging the night alone with him was too tempting to reject.
"Sounds perfect," she murmured, resting her head on his arm.
Meanwhile, inside the black sedan...
Bob laughed full of excitement.
"Oh, look at that... look at that, dear" he said, tapping the steering wheel, "What a considerate gentleman! It is as if he were reading our minds!"
With smooth movements, he began to follow them at a walking pace, keeping the lights off.
"He is even voluntarily choosing the setting for us!" he exclaimed with admiration.
The woman ran the tip of her finger over her own lips, outlining them slowly.
"He felt it, Bob…" she whispered convinced of her own fantasy, "Without a doubt he felt it. He felt our call... our search for the "art". On some subconscious level, he knows that his destiny is to become a masterpiece…. He is taking his companion to the slaughterhouse so she can witness the most magnificent gala of death."
Bob nodded, completely immersed in the shared madness.
"It is destiny, my love. A tacit collaboration between the artist and the canvas."
"I can't wait anymore," said the woman, and her breathing accelerated, slightly misting the window glass, "I can almost smell them from here. That youthful fragrance, that pulsating life... they will be the most perfect pigment we have ever used in our work."
"It will be, dear. Be patient."
…
Lief guided Jennifer off the paved path, going down the grassy slope to the very bank of the river.
Down there, the city seemed to disappear.
They were far from the main avenue and the traffic noise.
Only a couple of old streetlamps fought against the darkness, casting puddles of white light onto the gravel.
The river water flowed, reflecting the moon as if it were spilled oil, and the constant sound of the current drowned out any other noise.
It was an isolated, cold, and private place.
It was, in fact, the perfect place to kill someone and get rid of the body.
Lief stopped near the water, watching the current with absolute calm.
Almost at the same time, the sound of tires braking announced the arrival of their guests.
The black sedan, which had been stalking in the shadows, stopped softly on the dirt path, about twenty meters from them.
The engine turned off, letting the silence of the night reclaim the space.
The vehicle's doors opened.
Bob and his wife got out of the car.
They no longer looked like a high-class couple returning from a gala. They had changed and both wore tight suits, completely black. But the strange thing was what covered their faces.
They wore white masks, smooth and shiny. They had no mouth or nose, just two black holes in the shape of perfect, empty hearts painted over the position of the eyes.
Through those hearts, one could only glimpse a deep and human darkness watching.
They walked toward the couple with a rehearsed elegance.
"Good evening, sir... and madam" Bob's voice filtered through the mask, acquiring a hollow and slightly theatrical quality, "I deeply regret interrupting your romantic evening. I really do."
He made a dramatic pause, spreading his hands like a presenter.
"But, please, believe me when I tell you that the show that follows... will be much more unforgettable than anything you had planned to do in bed tonight."
Jennifer's body tensed instantly.
The fog of romance dissipated at once and she looked at the desolate place, then at the two masked strangers, and finally at Lief's quiet back.
She understood why Lief had brought her here…
Her blue eyes flashed with a dangerous glint, and a faint but unmistakable smell of sulfur began to emanate from her pores, while her nails lengthened slightly.
"Master…"
"Get behind me."
Lief ordered.
"These clowns want to give us an unsolicited extra show. Let's see what they have and then we go home."
With a fluid movement, he placed her gently behind his back, and faced the two strangers with heart masks.
There was no fear in his posture, only a bored curiosity.
"Let me guess…" he asked suddenly, breaking the villain monologue that Bob was preparing, "Conceptual artists?"
"..."
Bob and his wife stopped dead. The body language of both betrayed their bewilderment, visibly, they did not expect their victim to be so calm, much less that he would guess their self-image so fast.
"Oh... " Bob's voice sounded genuinely surprised, and then delighted, "Well, well. It seems you are not a common little lamb, boy. You have a critical eye."
"That is right. We are artists. And you... you have the honor of being our most perfect work to date. We have titled it: "The death of the lovers under the moon"."
The woman, unable to contain her enthusiasm, took a step forward, opening her arms.
"It is pure poetry…" She whispered with fervor, "At the moment when you love each other the most, when happiness is at its peak... we will use your hot blood to paint a flower of love that will never wither on this cold ground. It is so romantic! It is magnificent!"
"Sigh…"
Lief sighed loudly and picked his ear with his pinky finger.
"Are you done with the speech?" he asked, shaking his finger, "Your lines are extremely long, pretentious and stink of a cheap movie script. The central idea is that you want to kill us for fun, right? Can you be a little more professional and direct? Tomorrow I have history class first thing in the morning and I don't want to be late."
"You...!" The woman hissed at the lack of respect. But Bob raised a hand to stop her, letting out a low laugh.
"Calm down, dear. What an interesting canvas we have ended up with" he said enjoying the challenge, "That is it! Rebel! Fight! Despair tastes better when cooked over low heat. The more pain you feel, the more soul our final work will have."
Just when he finished speaking, the theatricality gave way to the physical threat.
With a synchronized movement, both reached behind their backs and drew.
They took out two ceremonial daggers, more than thirty centimeters long. They were ornate weapons, designed for the ritual.
The Damascus steel blades shone with a lethal edge, and embedded in the hilts were red gems that, under the moonlight, seemed like eyes of blood watching with thirst.
They separated. Bob went to the left, his wife to the right, closing in around Lief and Jennifer step by step.
"Master…" hissed Jennifer.
"Let me destroy them" She begged, with her voice trembling with anticipation, "Let me rip off those ridiculous masks along with their faces."
But Lief raised a hand and pressed her shoulder gently.
"No" he said sketching a playful smile, "Don't dirty your hands with trash, beautiful."
Jennifer stopped reluctantly, retracting her claws, although her eyes remained fixed on the couple like two lasers.
Lief fully faced the two "artists" who advanced toward them moving with a slowness that he found pathetic.
He let out a long sigh, shaking his head with genuine disappointment.
"Seriously, you two…" he commented looking at them with pity, "What era do you think we are in? The Victorian era? The Renaissance?" He paused, arching an eyebrow, "Still playing with knives in the middle of the twenty-first century?"
?
Bob and the woman stopped dead. They hesitated. The script they had in their heads had broken.
They did not understand the question. They did not understand the lack of fear.
A second later, they understood everything. But it was already too late.
With a movement of Lief's wrists, the air around his hands distorted with a black and silver static.
Reality tore and the weight of cold steel fell into his palms.
In his right hand appeared Ivory.
In his left hand, Ebony.
"..."
The sudden appearance of the two weapons completely dismantled the killers' understanding of the world.
The daggers in their hands, which seconds before seemed like instruments of power, suddenly looked like what they were: obsolete and ridiculous toys.
The masks with painted hearts lost all their mysticism and became Halloween costumes.
Through the holes of the mask, Bob's eyes widened upon realizing that he had stepped into a tyrannosaur's cage.
'Magic?' The thought crossed his paralyzed mind. 'Where did they come from? Has the world changed–?'
"Correct," said Lief, answering the unspoken question in the man's terrified eyes, "But there is no consolation prize."
Bang Bang
The sound of the shots broke the peace of the riverbank. A flock of birds flew out of the nearby trees.
There was no fight.
The bullets crossed the short distance in a fraction of a second and impacted with precision right in the center of the masks' foreheads.
The enormous kinetic force of the bullets not only penetrated, it tore off the back of their skulls in an explosion of red liquid and bone fragments that splashed the grass behind them, creating, ironically, the only piece of real "modern art" of the night.
The bodies of Bob and his wife shook violently from the impact.
Their knees gave way and they fell backward rigidly, like puppets that had all their strings cut at once.
The bejeweled daggers slipped from their inert fingers and fell.
From the moment they drew their knives until they became two smoking corpses cooling under the moon, no more than five seconds had passed.
Silence returned to the river.
The so-called artists, with their pretentious philosophy about beauty and death, facing firepower, had been nothing more than a bad joke.
Jennifer poked her head out from behind Lief's broad back, observing the two inert bodies lying in the pool of blood with an expression that distilled pure contempt.
"This is what they called art?"
She walked forward with a firm step, ignoring the carnage, and with the sharp tip of her stiletto heel, pierced the side of Bob's corpse with disdain.
"They were just two hopeless idiots."
Lief, with a simple thought, made Ebony and Ivory vanish.
He walked calmly until positioning himself behind Jennifer and wrapped a strong arm around her waist, pulling her toward him to calm the residual tension and bloodlust that still vibrated in the succubus's body.
"Done. The trash took itself out, the show is over…" he murmured lowering his head to place a kiss on her hair, inhaling her perfume, "Let's go home. Didn't you tell me that tomorrow you had plans to go shopping with Maria at the mall?"
Jennifer did not answer.
Instead of answering about her plans, she turned abruptly in his arms, coming face to face with him. Her eyes shone with a liquid and hungry intensity, dilated by the mix of recent violence and desire.
Without warning, her hand descended with predatory speed and precision, grabbing Lief's crotch firmly and without any shame.
!
Her fingers closed over the member that was hidden beneath the fabric of his pants, squeezing with a possessiveness that stole his breath for a second.
He could perfectly feel the size and thickness of his member through the clothes, and Lief's immediate physical reaction to her touch only seemed to arouse her more.
Jennifer took a step forward, eliminating any distance between them, pressing her hips against his while massaging the area with a torturous slowness. A lascivious and dangerous smile curved her red lips.
"Forget about Maria and the shopping…" she purred, her voice dropping an octave until it became a whisper charged with need, "You prevented me from hunting, Master…. You didn't let me destroy them, so now I have a lot of accumulated energy that I don't know where to put."
She tightened her grip once more, feeling how he throbbed under her hand, and moved closer to his ear, gently biting the lobe before whispering, "You owe me compensation for ruining my fun, Lief. One day you are going to have to pay this debt. You are going to have to feed me... and you are going to have to do it so hard and for so long, that I am so full of you that I can't even walk."
...
The next morning.
The hum of the television on in the kitchen served as background noise for breakfast. The local news anchor, with her usual tone, read the teleprompter:
"...and in breaking news, the county police have confirmed the discovery of two bodies early this morning in the river park of the west sector."
The image on the screen changed to an aerial shot of the area cordoned off with yellow police tape.
"Official sources have identified the deceased as Bob and Cynthia, the couple who had been terrorizing the city and whom the press had nicknamed the "Valentine Killers". According to the preliminary report, both present fatal bullet wounds to the skull."
The anchor paused, looking at the camera with seriousness.
"Although bladed weapons were found at the scene, no firearm has been found. Investigators are working with the theory that it could have been a domestic dispute that escalated violently or a suicide pact that went wrong, ending in a mutual murder scenario. The case has been preliminarily closed, putting an end to their crime wave."
In the Connor family dining room, sunlight entered softly through the window.
Lief was sitting at the table, reviewing the same news on his phone while calmly finishing a perfectly cut sandwich that Lillith had prepared for him.
Upon reading the headline: "IRONIC END: THE VALENTINE KILLERS DIE IN INTERNAL FIGHT", he couldn't help it. The corner of his lips curved into a cynical half smile.
The police always looked for the most logical explanation, even when logic did not apply.
"Brother…" Lillith approached the table carrying a glass pitcher, "What is so funny to you?"
She filled Lief's glass with freshly squeezed orange juice and looked at him with curiosity.
Lief locked the phone screen and placed it on the table. He took the glass of juice and took a long and refreshing sip before answering.
"Nothing important" he said with a relaxed tone, wiping the corner of his lips, "I was just reading the review of a play. Apparently, a couple of clowns tried to put on a comedy, but the ending was a disaster."
________
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