Of Shadow, Shine, and Shades

Ch.16 Shadowed Thoughts

The fifth man he dropped off the balcony of his house after piercing his brains through the eye socket. He was long dead by the time his body hit the dirt of the street.

The sixth and seventh man he discovered in a port house. They never left the place alive. The screams of the women echoed in his ears as he left the place behind, undetected by all and any.

The eighth, ninth and tenth man had been home with their families. He'd crept silently into their houses and slashed their throats open without any fuzz. Even if they deserved to die, their families did not deserve to face the shame. And Zahra had been a secret to these men. A secret they had not easily shared with others. She'd changed hands many times, even if his first victim had been her true master, in possession of her bottle. They'd all taken the time to enjoy her and her powers. But the families did not need to know that. Ignorance was bliss.

Eleventh man was out in a restaurant. Caelum stayed beneath his Cloak, waiting for the moment to strike. Watching the man for an hour, watching him eat, laugh and drink coffee like any normal person had forced him to doubt his justification but the darkness had easily smothered the feeble attempts of forgiveness he was grasping at. He was not Dumbledore. Some deeds were unforgivable.

The man died in the bathroom. Caelum cut through half of his neck and left while the blood was still pooling on the tiles, the head hanging to the body by the flaps of skin.

He hated red.

The twelfth man never woke up from sleep. The thirteenth on the other hand screamed like murder. Which it was.

Caelum caught a sight of his reflection of a store's window and paused in his hunt. His white shirt had small dark spots scattered on it and he had not bothered to clean the claymore even once. The once gleaming steel blade was now coated in red and the wizard's eyes were blazing with power and magic through the gap on his veiled face. He looked dangerous and deadly. A side of himself he had not seen since the battlefields.

It was quite good that the Muggles were so ignorant. One simple spell and everyone walked past him.

The three remaining were not in Alexandria. Tracking them down proved to be more difficult than he'd expected and the horizon was lighting up by the time he made it back to the hotel. Harry and Zahra were waiting.

oooOOOooo

He took a shower first. Vanished the clothes, cleaned the sword. That was before he even let Harry see him. He knew his two charges were together but he had given strict orders to Zahra concerning Harry. He knew the boy was alright, and after tonight even Zahra would be more right.

As the hot water cascaded down his back, washing away the blood, the make-up, the grime and the sweat, the mage had to wonder about his sanity.

Was he further gone than he even realized?

The entire bathroom was quickly bathed in green light as the Emerald appeared from non-space. He barely gave it a sideways glance, his mind too occupied with that one thought. He'd taken another person under his wing when he was not even equipped to care for the first one. He would end up poisoning Harry with his darkness, if the horcrux did not do it first. He was a Dark Wizard with the power to kill gods and his mind was this great maelstrom of anxiety.

True, he had not broken down. Not since he'd lost it at Voldermort's headquarters. Neither could Apophis get to his mind because it was the one thing he had best shielded. But what good were the shields if the problem lay within? He processed things on so many levels, and remaining a feeling human being was harder without a focusing point. Severus. He needed to figure out his lover's past in this world.