Slade found her by accident.

The woods were quiet in that way that meant something had already gone wrong—no birds, no insects, just the wet sound of flesh tearing. He followed it without hurry, boots silent against the leaves, gun already in his hand.

She was crouched over the deer when he saw her.

What had been a buck was now little more than ribs and steam, blood soaking into the moss. She fed with an efficiency that wasn’t animal and wasn’t human either, movements precise, almost reverent. Horns curled back from her skull like broken crowns. Her skin caught the moonlight wrong—too smooth, too dark, like it drank it in.

Slade raised the gun and lined it up with the back of her head.

“Don’t,” he said calmly. Not a shout. A fact.

She froze.

Slowly, she turned.

Her eyes met his—bright, ancient, unreadable—and for a half second Slade felt something unfamiliar brush up his spine. Not fear. Appraisal. Like she was deciding whether he was prey, threat, or something else entirely.

He didn’t flinch.

Instead of attacking, she straightened, blood still on her hands, head tilting just slightly. Curious. Calculating. Hungry—but not for him. Not yet.

That was when Slade realized she wasn’t mindless. She wasn’t rampaging. She was surviving.

The gun didn’t lower, but his finger eased off the trigger.

“Ever eaten something that deserved it?” he asked.

Days later, she followed him.

He didn’t chain her. Didn’t command her. He just started leaving bodies where she could find them—men who’d trafficked kids, cultists who’d prayed to worse things than her, targets who’d already signed their own death warrants.

She learned his routes. His rules.

And Slade —assassin, mercenary, monster by most standards—found himself feeding a demon not out of mercy…

…but because it was the most efficient way he’d ever found to keep one pointed in the right direction.