Taint

4 - Smoking or Non?

Kai may not have had any wings yet, but that didn't mean there weren't any tricks up his sleeve. The power brewing from his demon blood allowed him to get pretty creative, even against his omnipotent father.

"Fumus!" Kai snarled, and just as he was about to headbutt the poor woman face-first, he vapourized into a puff of smoke and passed right around her without a trace. He shot himself up Lord Umbra's nose and burrowed down into his father's lungs.

"Fuck, Malachai, what the hell?" Lord Umbra released the traumatized woman. She ran back into the building, her screams echoing through the midnight streets.

Lord Umbra hacked and wheezed as his son wreaked havoc in his lungs. There wasn't a heck of a lot Kai could do in there, other than be insanely irritating and rupture a few alveoli. Maybe if he embraced his demon nature and ripped his father apart from the inside, he could do some damage. Alas, something in his soul wouldn't let him do that.

"Malachai!" Lady Elanizia cried. She patted her husband on the back, adding a hearty thwomp every few pats for good measure. "We do not attack our father inside out!"

Another problem was Kai in smoke form didn't have a mouth anymore, so he couldn't do anything to change back into a demon. That, and the underlying issue of ripping his father in half. It wouldn't kill Lord Umbra, but fuck, would he be pissed.

"Kai, what the hell is wrong with you?" Sharla was loving every minute of this. Family squabbles brought out the worst in everybody.

The Shadowthorns had their fair share of problems, but no more than any other demonic clan. Old Brimstone and his lot hadn't been allowed to have a 'big, old-fashioned family reunion' since they sank Atlantis. Pompeii still wouldn't return Alsaycea Fleshrend's calls after that whole Vesuvius incident. And the less said about the Spanish Inquisition, the better.

Of course, the rest of them weren't full-on reality with designs on taking over all of existence.

Something inside Kai tweaked, something he'd known was there for a long time, but had ignored and stuffed way back down. Maybe it was being stuck inside his father's lungs, maybe it was knowing he would catch hell once he got out of there, but he decided that was it. He would not put up with his family's shit anymore.

The only problem was he had no idea how to do that. Demons had countless ways of tracking each other down, showing up at the most inopportune times just to piss someone off. How many times had his father interrupted Kai taking a dump just to tell his son he was bored and wanted to go 'people-hunting?'

His mother's shrieks, Sharla's cackling, and the radiating hatred Kai could feel from deep within his father fuelled an unspoken fire layered deep in Kai's soul–or lack thereof. He was a demon, after all.

He channeled everything he was into that fire. Every scrap of energy he could muster, every fibre of his being focussed on the one thing he knew got rid of demons: a banishment curse.

Was it wise to banish his own family? He didn't care. If being a Shadowthorn meant torturing innocent humans and killing them for sport, he wasn't sure how much longer he wanted to be part of the family. The whole 'Lord of All' thing sounded pretty shitty if it meant taking all the horrible things his father had done over the years, then duplicating and elaborating.

Fuck it. He'd deal with the consequences later–whatever they may be. Kai let his whole mind fill with one word: 'BANNIR.'

The world ripped apart around him, and all he knew was a deeper pain than anything he'd ever felt. His bones screamed, his fucking hair hurt. He wanted to peel off his skin, and would have welcomed death were it offered to him.

All Kai could see was his father's face.

Lord Umbra was not amused.