Truly Human!

In the center of the room was a large white bed whose sheets were laying on the floor, wrapped up around the body of what could only be a person, soaked in blood.

At the edges of the room, there were several tall, well-built, and well-endowed naked men, huddled together like children under the roof of a bus station in the heavy rain.

The sheer terror and trepidation on their faces was a sharp contrast to their magnificent figure. It seemed so unnatural for them to have such dreadful expressions but when you stared at the furthest corner of the ceiling, it would all make sense.

A girl who was probably not even 20, was latched onto that corner. Her arms and legs bent at dangerous and potentially even fatal angles as her extremities clawed into the walls and ceiling, keeping her firmly stuck in place.

Her body was constantly squirming and twisting in its place, except it was not in its place. Her whole torso was facing backward, or so it may seem but in reality, her arms and legs were broken off their joints and distorted to such a degree.

She was almost like a spider.

But she was not an arthropod, but she was not human either, though.

There was a deep and dark shadow about her. One that cast its aberrant shade not just under her but on everything around her.

It was expanding rapidly, first it encompassed the walls, turning them a terrible black.

Then it corrupted her fair and supple skin until all the blood vessels in her arms and legs bulged and took a disgusting blue tint.

And it would not leave her innocent face either. However, it like the rest of her being, could never be called innocent again.

She had a devilish smile on her face. One that sent shivers down your very spine and caused cold sweat to trickle down your temples.

That look of anticipation and wickedness in her eyes could not be concealed as they flashed with a faint red hue before the darkness expanded from her pupils and turned her entire eyes black.

From there the demonic aura suffused her face and even her soul as all the blood vessels on her face turned blue and seemingly came alive, squirming across her face that had now blackened like worms, until only faint specks of white remained.

She had a mad, chaotic smile plastered onto her face, the pupils slowly gaining some color, a clear heinous shade of dark gold with black slits down the center.

The entire transformation took only a moment but for everybody involved, it seemed to last the rest of their lives.

Time for them had essentially slowed down to a pace where they could see every minor detail metamorphize into the corrupted monster now before their eyes.

And the moment Rin laid his eyes on it, he knew tonight may very well be his last.

The demonic creature opened its dirty blackened lips to reveal a disturbing set of rotting yellow teeth from which overflowed a dark mist, like smoke from an incense fountain.

The men all fought to get out of the room through the doorway but stopped when they saw John reach into his jacket to take out his cross.

"The more you fear it the stronger it gets! Get back in here, I'm gonna pull it down and you guys help me tie it up!"

John shouted loudly as Rin proceeded to shepherd them all into a barricade and pulled out three coils of synthetic ropes from his black traveling backpack which the porter-boy then took off his hands and placed in a corner of the corridor.

Rin handed two of the coils to the toughest-looking guys and gave one to the porter-boy.

Meanwhile, John had already crossed the room and stood beside the bed, directly in front of the girl who had already closed her mouth and began to hiss the moment she saw the cross.

The girl sneered as a revolting voice that was heavily incongruent with her physique spoke out from within her body, with the girl not even needing to move her mouth.

"Pesky little bug, is that all you have?"

The voice was so nauseating in fact, that just this simple sentence caused one of the mentally fainter men to outright projectile vomit onto the bathroom door; he had turned around just in time, otherwise it would have splattered onto one of the other men.

But hearing this, John only sported a disdainful smile as he kicked aside the body still wrapped up in bloody bed sheets.

"It's not every day you see a Golden Eyed. Tell me demon, would you like to do this the easy way or the hard way?"

John said loudly to the demon, putting his hands, alongside the cross, behind his back.

"Pssst, what are you doing, you can't talk with this monster!" One of the older and less fit men whispered to John from behind but was promptly pulled back by Rin.

"Just watch." He said.

Then he took out a pistol that was wedged between his jeans and his t-shirt.

"What's the gun for? I thought you were gonna perform an exorcism!" The man said in surprise.

"Just in case things get messy." He replied.

"They already are." The man who had just vomited said from the side.

Just then the demon spoke out, still in its deep and resounding ugly voice that sent tremors across the entire room, causing things on the tables to shake and the people themselves to vibrate in their entirety.

"Oh, so you know of us. Are you a member of the Evangelion? But I thought you came with wings. I love tearing them apart, it's a pity you don't have any-"

The demon was about to continue with his monologue but John stopped it in its tracks as he put his palm outstretched, signaling it to stop as he noticed one of the men had blood trickling down their orifices.

The speech of these demons did not really cause any physical damage, for it was all spiritual. These creatures possessed a terrifying spiritual force that could easily wipe out the average person's consciousness.

The vibrations were not because the sound waves were so powerful but simply because the spiritual power behind those words was so deep that it was rattling their very consciousnesses, causing their souls to shake and produce quakes in their visions.

"I come from the Hadashah Yetzirah. Your pact with the Evangelion might have expired but the force of Yeshanah Yetzirah still has heirs. It is not yet your turn to mess with this plane demon!"

John spoke with the utmost confidence and clarity, his words seemingly bringing rejuvenation to the depressed minds of the others.

He too had imbued his voice with spiritual power.

"Keke. So what? If you don't have the strength to stop me you might as well just die with the rest!"

The demon ended with a shrill scream as it pounced onto the bed, springing itself onto John who swiftly dodged by rolling aside.

The mattress had been ripped apart with five clawed slash marks and the floor where John had just been standing wasn't fairing much better.

The demon had transfigured the girl's fingers into monstrously thin and long finger-like dirty and black nails that would put even a sabretooth tiger's fangs to shame.

The demon was growing scales onto the girl's skin and the claws on the feet changed into hooves as the rest of the skin turned into a bright shade of crimson.

Bang! Bang!

Rin had shot the demon but it was too late, the bullets simply bounced off the demon's glistening scales and as if offended by how disrespectfully weak that attack was, it turned its head to look at Rin with a grim expression before pouncing towards him.

Rin backed away but it was only due to the well-timed tackle from two of the men, one black and another asian, that he was able to survive.

The demon had been shoved to the side but the two men had their skin torn apart by the sharp scales and the wound had instantly been cauterized by the high temperatures of the demon's skin.

It had almost completely materialized into the mortal plane.

John came up from behind before it could get up and shoved the pointed edge of his dagger-like cross into the demon's back as he started chanting mantras in a language that sounded like Hebrew.

The demon, unconvinced by his ritualistic fighting pushed him off its back and attempted to maul his face.

This attempt was stopped by the man who had previously puked on the bathroom door, now much more collected and with a sledgehammer in his hands.

He smashed it across the demon's jaw and sent crashing into the wall which now had heavy cracks in it.

The demon was enraged, and it let out a dense sonic beam that instantly knocked the man out. He fell to the floor with blood oozing out of all his orifices like water from a tap that hadn't been closed properly.

The remaining sound waves reflected around the room in such a swift and deadly manner, that all the glass in the room immediately shattered and shards of glass flew everywhere.

One particularly large shard pierced a person's neck, rendering them lifeless within a split second.

John came up to the demon right at this moment as two of the remaining men raced to the door to leave.

He had finished chanting his mantra and held his cross with both hands.

In a flash of white light, the cross extended like a baking soda volcano until it took the solid and defined form of a two-handed wooden sword which John grabbed firmly with both hands and swung towards the demon whose expression turned very ugly as it realized the amount of shit it had gotten itself into.

The demon blocked the slash with its claws and watched in mortification as sparks flew by its face.

"Y- you- you have a Balance Breaker? This is impossible!" The demon exclaimed in disbelief as it jumped back in retreat.

"You can't escape now demon. Do you think you can come and go as you please?"

He said so to startle the demon and bluffed to prevent it from leaving, as John really couldn't do anything to restrain its escape.

John was unrelenting, he stepped forward with a stability and robustness that was rare to see in even the most experienced swordsmen.

He stabbed his sword forward with both hands but right when the demon smirked to itself and was about to push it down with its claws and chop John's head off, the blade swung sideways.

It was a feint. The demon was tricked and in a clanging clash of metal and scale, the sword began to glow as its temperature vigorously increased until in a fraction of a second the demon's arm was chopped off at its shoulder.

Blood gushed out from the severed torso like water springing from a fountain.

The demon screamed in agony as the black in its eyes turned entirely red and it used its other claw to smash John, who had taken a defensive stance with his sword angled in front of his face - blocking the hit, as he was sent flying backwards, crashing into the wall.

The demon clutched the point of severance as it let loose its pain with its voice, causing the rest of the group to fall to the ground, blood flowing out like streams of water.

The wounds caused by Balance Breakers were despairingly difficult to heal and this was especially true for demonic creatures as this sacred weapon was specialized in restricting the boundless vitality of high level demons.

So far, only Rin remained relatively unharmed among the others as only a shard of glass had found its way into his thigh.

John quickly pushed himself off the ground with both of his hands and proceeded to immediately pull his sword out of the flesh of the man with sledgehammer as he had accidentally released it upon impact.

Moving into an advantageous position where he could leverage his weight, John raised the sword high above his head and dashed towards the demon, intending to slay it in one blow as it was preoccupied with the excruciating pain that was unique to sacred weapons.

His Balance Breaker was a divine treasure that he had been gifted by a member of the Yeshanah Yetzirah at birth. And like all other sacred-type Balance Breakers, even a scratch from it was fatal for all demonic entities as it would cause them nigh irreversible damage and force them to withstand an unbearable pain.

The demon in front of him was an offspring of a highly influential aristocratic clan of demons, and killing it would no doubt result in even more bloodshed in the form of genocide against humanity.

However, letting it go would be even more disastrous as it showed that humanity did not dare to fight back and it would result in even greater numbers of demons being set loose and give them the courage to wantonly massacre innocent people.

The Hadash Yetzirah had appointed him with the mission of protecting this particular territory from any and all demonic activity so it was his duty to annihilate this beast.

It was, after all, a soldier's platinum rule - follow the instructions without asking any questions.

So as he closed in for the kill he barely noticed a certain detail regarding the monster, but by the time he did, it was all too late.

The momentum was unstoppable and the demon had already made its move.

It had only been pretending to have lost all sense of self in the pain.

It was only baiting John to come within its killing zone to finish him off and resume its materialization process.

So as the demon's claws aimed towards John's neck, the demon pulled its body backward to avoid being cut apart by the sword.

John tried to pull back with every ounce of strength left in his body but it was all for naught, he had invested too much momentum into that final attack and couldn't extricate himself from it.

The demon's arm was much longer than his blade, and it could definitely kill him without suffering any damage.

This move would end up costing him his life.

With its last arm outstretched, the sharp and dirty black claws of the demon were only millimeters away from decapitating him.

But at that moment a jade pendant encrusted with a sparkling blue gemstone shot through the gap made by John's outstretched arms from behind and made contact with the demon's claws.

The demon was instantly thrown backwards as if it were hit by a freight train and crashed into the wall behind the large bed, breaking it entirely.

The pendant was thrown by Rin and it too, was a Balance Breaker.

He had just discovered its use, after 15 years of owning it and knowing what it was but never using it.

Only now, did he face an instinctive pull within his body to throw the pendant, and this managed to save John's life.

John struck the floor hard with his sword, embedding it in the tile completely.

Rin rushed over to pull him up and picked up his jade pendant as well, it had bounced back after hitting the demon.

It wasn't dented or anything but the gleam in the gemstone had definitely dimmed.

John gathered the remaining strength in his body and got up to administer the final blow to the demon.

But as he got closer to the rubble of the broken wall, he realized that they had made a grave mistake.

They hadn't evacuated any of the surrounding rooms. There were people in the room the demon had broken into.

"hanch et gofech, yald adam, ki adonch kan... kra berech lefani!"

John heard a raspy and beat-up voice whisper as he got nearer to the other room.

The demon had been almost entirely squashed by the rubble of the wall and the ceiling that had caved in, of course, most of the damage had been dealt by the internal explosion of the jade pendant but its body was utterly mutilated.

But it had grasped a young man, probably not even 20, with the black mist that it had partially materialized into a hand that the demon wielded to squeeze the boy, causing him to vomit blood and his face to turn purple.

"Xiao Yue, make a run for it" He managed to shout out, gasping for breath as his face contorted in pain.

John only then noticed a young girl, incredibly beautiful with rosy skin and wide doe eyes on a bed at the opposite side of the room with a terror-struck expression of inexplicable dread on her face.

She was simply petrified with fear and couldn't even blink, much less move herself out of the way.

At this moment John leapt out from aside the rubble and slashed down into the hand-shaped mist that was crushing the young man, only to find his attack absolutely ineffective as his blade merely phased through the mist.

"Kekeke, heir of Yishian Yetzirah, you have failed, this vessel is already ownerless," The demon said in its disgusting voice, causing the girl to bleed from her orifices and fall to the floor, her life and death uncertain.

"You shall still die demon, nothing can save you from the hands of me, John Constantine!"

John was incredibly angry, not just at the demon but also himself for allowing the death of two youngsters.

John's voice was quiet but seething, and causing the demon that was about to laugh to stop in its tracks.

It grew alarmed and tried to employ some evasive maneuvers but set an expression of desperation as it saw John's blade glow brighter once more.

And as he pulled it upwards to swing in a great downwards stabbing motion, the demon cried out in horror,

"Why do you still have so much spiritual pow--" It tried to utter with the most pitiful voice John had so far heard from a demon.

But before it could finish its last words, John slashed across its neck causing its head to roll across the bed before falling onto the floor, splattering purple blood everywhere, -completely lifeless.

John gave one last glance at the demon's body before he lit it on fire with his lighter, except the conventional paroxysm of fire did not occur.

The body of the demon was simply reduced to ashes, and soon, even those were vaporized into a cloud of smoke that quickly dispersed due to the sharp wind coming in from the window that had its glass shattered.

John walked towards the girl who was now lying immobile on the bed at an uncomfortable angle. He checked her pulse before shouting out.

"Rin! Call an ambulance, we have a survivor."