The candles kept burning. Lumpy, misshapen tapers, their thin flames struggling in the noxious air, stuck to any surfaces above the water’s edge. I waded toward the altar, my blue eye smarting and filling with hot water as it untangled the web of etheric bruising hanging over every surface. Little crawling strands, pools of sickness a normal person would feel like a chill draft on the nape or an uncomfortable feeling it seems best to ignore.

The drift of small bones on the altar, some tangled with fur, others with bits of cloth that might have once been clothes, made small clicking sounds as I approached. Random bits of meat quivered, and if I hadn’t already been on the verge of retching from the stench I’d probably have lost my breakfast right there. As it was, it had been a while since I’d eaten, and my stomach was near empty.

My fingers tingled. It took a short while before the thin blue whispering flames of banefire would stay lit along my fingers, a sorcery of cleansing almost drowned by the tenebrous air.

I’m sorry. My lips twitched. I almost said it. It’s my job to protect you. I’m sorry.

Four kids we knew about. Three we suspected, another two I was reasonably sure of. Nine little vulnerable lives, sucked dry by a monster who had bargained with Hell.

Who knew what those kids would have grown up to do? Save lives, find a cure for cancer, bring some joy to the world. But not now. Now there was only this vengeance in a filthy, stinking sewer.

I cast the banefire, my fingers flicking forward and long thin jets of blue flame splitting the dimness. The candles hissed, banefire chuckled, and I stumbled back, blinking the blood out of my watering eyes. The bane would burn clean and leave a blessing in its wake, a thin layer inimical to hellbreed and other contagion.

I’m so, so sorry.

It was getting harder and harder to keep the words to myself.