INNOCENT EVIL by Missy Sue Hanson ~ Excerpt

This is an excerpt from one of my works in progress. Feel free to post your comments and critique!

Prologue

There are a lot of ways a soul can be stained. Abuse, neglect, and mistreatment are a few. Any one of these can turn good into evil, twisting and bending it into an unrecognizable feature. After all, everything is good in the beginning. Nobody and nothing starts out that way, climbing out of the womb with malice on their minds. Out of all things dangerous, nothing is more so when the righteous are driven down the path to insanity, barely clinging to the side of them that once spoke to angels. Screaming at the injustice, they flee, with a tail of fleet-footed retribution wagging steadily behind them. Indeed, there is a thin line between good and evil. For only when two wrongs make a right, can a tormented soul live with themselves.

Being innocent can only take someone so far. Once that point of no return has been reached, they must step freely over it, giving their pure and golden hearts to the dank and putrid darkness. Yes, good can overcome evil, it most often does. But, what happens when the good that is triumphing is also, concerning some elements, evil itself?

Chapter 1


Alessa McFee stepped from the void, licking her lips as she did so. The darkness that fell from her body revealed a slender, petite frame adorned with a soldier’s muscles. Curls that mirrored the ebony she had slipped from fell to rest against the small of her back. Flexing her right fist, she brought it to her mouth, uncurling her fingers. She would test the wind to find her prey. Slowly, she licked the tip of her slim index finger, displaying it in front of her pale features to gauge the breeze. East. Turning towards the current, she sniffed the air with her head tilted to one side. The scent of moss, from the lake nearby and freshly bailed hay filled her nostrils. Picking the scents apart, she honed in on her target. The stench of evil, the fragrance she had been tracking for three hours now through the woods.

Aggravated that a mere human could avoid her reckoning for so long, she clenched her teeth, causing her lips to curl and reveal two sharp teeth. Following, she cursed the human. Thinking of the others she had taken out, she quickly followed, her boots crunching on the worn path that led to the farm she had found him on. It was so familiar, this scene. It made her eyes sting and her throat constrict. The panic she had kept at bay through hunting evil for so long was threatening to consume her. Images dashed in and out of her mind, making her shake her head to clear them. Arrogant demons clothed in a human’s body, feeding on the pain inflicted on an innocent. Every scream they tore from the throats of women and children echoing their pleas, forever there, forever embedded in Alessa’s own rage.

This disease, this human capability, pitiless and quick to condemn, was becoming an epidemic. She would be the cure. She would be there when the last one fell, writhing in agony as every nasty thing they had ever done came back upon them tenfold.