Chapter Four: “What the F**k Are You?”
The cops left with zipped-up bags. Three in total. Each one light, too light for what they should've weighed.
Daniel stood in the middle of a room that still dripped.
The kid hadn't moved. Her smile was the kind that belonged on cracked porcelain—too wide, too calm. Her eyes followed nothing and everything.
He stared down at her, fingers tightening around the notepad, now glowing faint with divine script and scorched symbols only things older than Earth could read.
He spoke low, but sharp.
"Three questions."
The air grew still.
---
Question One.
"You called me the Cop Between Worlds. What the hell does that mean?"
The girl blinked.
Then she giggled. "Because that's what you are, silly."
Her voice came in layers now, like multiple mouths speaking at once. "The fourth attempt. The others broke. One tore his own eyes out. One joined the things he was supposed to stop. The third?"
She tilted her head.
"He begged for Hell. Said it was quieter."
Daniel didn't react.
"You should be number Four. Or maybe Forty. Depends on how you do."
---
Question Two.
"Why a ten-year-old girl?" His voice dropped. "Why her? There's no cultists. No altar. Just… a used-up book."
The thing inside the girl blinked again—slowly, like she was trying on the human motion and finding it lacking.
"She called me."
"She prayed with broken teeth and wanted to fix her family."
"So I fixed them."
A pause.
"The father first. Screamed as he tore his own face off trying to get away."
"The mother next. I hollowed her out and used her screams to paint blessings."
"Then the baby brother—ah, a symphony."
She laughed—a high, glass-breaking sound.
"It was love, detective. Pure, twisted, messy love."
---
Daniel's jaw clenched.
"Final question." His voice was venom and lead.
"What the fuck are you…"
"…and who the fuck are you?"
The smile stopped.
The girl twitched.
Then her limbs cracked, one by one, folding inward, out of sync with biology. Flesh shifted. Veins turned black, then clear, then disappeared entirely. Her spine extended like a centipede of bones.
Her mouth tore sideways across her face, opening like a curtain, showing a writhing spiral of eyes and ink-black tongues. Fingers split into claws—then tendrils—then neither.
The thing stood now, tall, writhing, her flesh a suggestion.
"We are the Forgotten Wish."
"The Answered Prayer that shouldn't have been."
"And we remember you, Daniel Cross."
---
Daniel's coat flared as he activated his abilities.
From God: The ghost-forged tool manifested—a long-barreled revolver etched with golden runes and hex-tech mechanics. It hummed with light, locked to his soul.
From the Devil: His eyes burned red as he pulled the creature's sin-thread into view—a writhing, spiked chain of guilt and death and madness.
He grinned.
"Alright then. Let's put you down hard."
The creature lunged. Reality buckled.
Daniel flicked forward in ghost-step, phasing between space. He planted a boot in her shifting chest and fired point-blank—six blessed rounds splitting apart with holy heat and infernal gravity.
The thing screamed—a noise that cracked paint, shattered lights, and made the walls cry blood.
---
And it was only the beginning.
Smoke coiled from the barrel of Daniel's revolver as he stepped back. The thing that wore the girl should've been dead—his rounds carried divine ignition, infernal weight, and enough force to vaporize a demon's soul.
But the creature didn't fall.
It cracked backward, body slithering and reknitting itself, like gravity and anatomy were just suggestions.
Bones reversed. Flesh warped. The laughter came again—not from the mouth, but from the walls, the floor, and the broken TV screen sparking on the ground.
"Oh come on," Daniel muttered.
He ghost-stepped sideways, evading a flailing limb that looked like a blend of ribcage and spider leg.
Then: A voice in his head. Cold. Sharp. Angelic.
"Daniel. Progress report."
Astrael.
"Progress?" he snarled, ducking behind a half-shattered fridge. A tendon-spike hit the wall beside him with a wet shunk.
"This thing took six god-bullets to the chest and laughed about it. I'd call that a fucking C-minus."
A pause.
"That kind of resilience might mean it wasn't the intended summon."
Daniel blinked. "Wait, what?"
"False Summoning," Astrael continued, voice calm and clinical.
"When the summoning ritual pulls in something else instead of what the mortal requested. Usually a mistake. Sometimes… a cosmic prank."
Daniel fired another shot, aiming for the eyes—or where the eyes were. The bullet passed through a blur of shifting limbs and ribs. The thing staggered but didn't fall.
"Astrael. This is not a prank. This is an eldritch blender wearing a ten-year-old."
"Do you see its name?" she asked.
"The summoning should have left a mark—sigils, scrawled in salt or blood. Something will have its true name."
He dove backward, phased through a busted wall, and crashed into the hallway. He hit solid, breathed hard. The hallway smelled like sulfur and piss.
The thing shrieked, voice rising into frequencies that made the lightbulbs explode.
He made a choice—run and regroup.
Daniel ghosted into the room again, snatched the ancient book off the floor as the creature slithered up the wall like a lizard in fast-forward, baring teeth that weren't hers.
He phased outside through the balcony and dropped two stories, rolling onto the asphalt. Cars honked. Civilians screamed. Nobody saw the monster because it wasn't physical—not in their spectrum.
But it was there.
Daniel flipped open the book.
The pages bled black ink. Glyphs twisted like they were breathing.
One word seared itself into his head as he read it.
"K'HARAZAK."
Astrael froze.
"Say that again."
"K'HARAZAK."
Silence.
Then a quiet intake of breath.
"That's not a demon. That's a primordial godling. A 'Desire Echo'. A parasitic idea born from prayers that were never meant to be answered."
Daniel gritted his teeth. "How do I kill it?"
Astrael's voice grew heavy.
"Give me ten seconds. I need to dive the Inner Library."
Daniel turned as the monster burst through the apartment wall above, landing in front of him like a ruptured starfish made of limbs and hunger.
Ten seconds.
He just needed ten seconds.