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The scream cut off too fast.
That was how everyone knew it was over.
Mrs. Calder lived three houses down and had always watched Tommy a little too closely—counting steps, lingering near the gate, asking questions no one answered. That night, she followed the wrong shadow.
The twisted angel reached her first.
There was a sound like canvas tearing, like bones being bent past their purpose. Her lantern hit the ground and rolled, light spinning wildly before going dark. The angel did not roar. It never did. It simply finished the problem.
By morning, only the lantern remained. No body. No blood trail. Just scorched feathers caught in the fence and the smell of something burned clean out of the air.
The town did not ask where Mrs. Calder went.
They asked instead if Tommy had slept well.
He had.
—
The bloodied king came home before dawn, boots darkened to the knee. He paused at the threshold long enough to strip off his gloves and rinse his hands in the basin until the water ran clear.
Outside, three men would never be found.
The king had been thorough. Not merciful—thorough. Broken doors, snapped weapons, a collapsed shed that would be blamed on rot and weather. By the time the sun rose, there was nothing left to investigate but silence and the faint iron smell soaked into the soil.
Tommy toddled up and hugged his leg anyway.
The king went very still.
“Never you,” he murmured, resting his palm on the child’s head. “Never.”
—
The drowned poet dealt with the last one.
They found the man’s coat floating in the river two days later, pockets turned inside out, shoes neatly placed on the bank as if he’d stepped out of them willingly. The current gave up nothing else.
The poet returned home dripping, eyes distant, fingers bruised purple where hands had struggled against him. He wrote nothing that night.
He only sat by Tommy’s bed and watched the child breathe.
—
The town understood, finally.
This was not random violence. This was selective. Every disappearance fit together if you looked too closely: abusers, stalkers, men who whispered about children as if they were property.
No one innocent vanished.
No one who left Tommy alone was touched.
The house at the edge of town was avoided after that. Not out of fear—but respect.
Inside it, the floors were scrubbed. The weapons were stored away. The river smell faded.
Tommy learned new words. Learned how to laugh louder. Learned that when monsters held him, they did so gently.
Outside, the population grew smaller.
Inside, the family remained.
And the town slept easier knowing that whatever was killing its worst sins had its hands full raising a child.
---
---
Tommy liked the flowers behind the chapel best.
They grew where nothing else should—pale blossoms pushing up through cracked stone, petals trembling whenever the wind slipped down from the hill. He crouched beside them, chubby fingers careful as he traced their edges, counting aloud in a voice still soft with babyhood.
“One… two… four,” he decided, satisfied.
Behind him, the twisted angel moved.
It did not hurry. It never did.
The man had made the mistake of stepping through the chapel gate with a knife tucked badly into his coat and hunger written plainly across his face. He did not see Tommy at first. He saw only the door. The promise of something small and defenseless inside.
The angel’s shadow fell over him.
There was a sharp sound—metal striking stone as the knife hit the ground. Then the angel’s wings unfurled fully, blocking the path, feathers scraping hard enough to leave marks in the gatepost.
“No,” the angel said.
The man tried to run.
He did not get far.
Tommy heard something heavy hit the earth. A single cry, cut short. Then a wet cough that never finished turning into words.
He looked up, curious, clutching a flower he’d pulled loose by accident.
“Papa?” he called, using the name he had given the angel because it was the easiest one to say.
The angel turned only after it was done.
The man lay very still in the grass beyond the gate, eyes open and unfocused, breath gone for good. His body was already cooling, already becoming just another thing the town would not speak of. The knife lay snapped in two beside him.
The angel wiped its hands on the hem of its robe, then folded its wings carefully, feathers trembling with the effort of restraint.
It knelt.
“Yes,” it said softly.
Tommy toddled over, holding out the crushed flower like an offering. The angel accepted it without hesitation, tucking it behind the child’s ear instead.
“Pretty,” Tommy declared.
The angel agreed.
Later, when the bloodied king dragged the body far from the chapel and the drowned poet let the river take what remained, the flowers were left untouched. By morning, there was no sign anyone had ever crossed the gate at all—only flattened grass and a faint, metallic smell the wind quickly carried away.
Tommy went back to counting.
The angel stood watch.
---
The town called it an inquiry, not an investigation.
That was important.
An investigation implied answers. An inquiry was just people standing together in the square, speaking carefully, avoiding certain words, and pretending they didn’t already know what had happened.
Constable Hargreeve adjusted his coat and stared at the empty space where Mrs. Calder’s house should have felt occupied. The door was locked. The windows were shut. The woman herself was gone.
Again.
“This makes the fifth,” someone muttered.
“No,” another corrected quietly. “The fifth this year.”
They did not say the names. Everyone knew the pattern well enough now. People who lingered. People who asked about the child. People who crossed lines that decent folk pretended not to see.
Hargreeve cleared his throat. “Anyone see anything unusual last night?”
Silence.
Then Mrs. Bell raised her hand, trembling. “I heard wings.”
No one laughed.
“I heard something fall,” she continued. “Hard. Like a sack of grain. Then nothing.”
Hargreeve wrote it down anyway, even though the paper stayed blank.
At the edge of town, Tommy sat in the dirt and pushed a wooden horse through the dust.
“Clop,” he whispered to it, completely absorbed.
The drowned poet watched from the porch, unreadable. Water dripped steadily from his sleeves, forming a small puddle that Tommy stepped in with delight.
“Splash!” he giggled.
“Yes,” the poet agreed faintly.
Down the road, boots crunched.
The bloodied king straightened immediately, hand resting on the doorframe—not reaching for a weapon, just ready. The twisted angel remained still, wings folded tight, eyes sharp.
Constable Hargreeve stopped at the gate.
He did not open it.
“I won’t stay long,” he said, voice careful. “Just routine.”
Tommy looked up at the stranger and waved.
“Hi,” he said proudly.
Hargreeve froze.
The child was clean. Fed. Smiling. There were toys scattered around the yard. Flowers blooming where stone should have refused them. No signs of struggle. No fear.
Nothing a constable could act on.
“You’re… doing well?” Hargreeve asked, hating how small his voice sounded.
The angel nodded once.
“We are,” it said.
Hargreeve swallowed. His eyes drifted—not to the angel’s wings, not to the king’s scarred hands, not to the poet’s damp footprints—but to the child.
“And the missing people?”
Tommy shoved his horse into the dirt mound he’d built. “He’s sleeping now,” he announced, pleased with himself.
No one corrected him.
The king stepped forward just enough to cast a shadow over the gate. “They will not be missed.”
That was not a threat.
It was a statement of fact.
Hargreeve hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Right,” he said. “Well. If you hear anything… unusual.”
“We won’t,” the poet replied.
That was true.
The constable left.
By evening, the inquiry dissolved. No evidence. No witnesses. No bodies. Just a collective understanding reinforced for the sixth time.
Children were safe.
The guilty were not.
Tommy fell asleep that night with dirt under his nails and a flower clutched in his fist. The angel sat beside his bed until his breathing evened out, then rose silently and went to stand watch.
Outside, the town locked its doors.
Inside, the monsters kept their promise.
---
Dinner was quiet.
Tommy sat in his chair, feet swinging, humming to himself as the bloodied king set a bowl in front of him. It looked like stew—thick, dark, steaming gently. Bread beside it. Water in a chipped cup.
“Eat,” the king said softly.
Tommy obeyed without question.
He always did.
The twisted angel watched closely, not the bowl, but the child’s face. One wing was half-unfurled, a habit it never broke during meals. The drowned poet leaned against the wall, damp footprints spreading slowly beneath him.
Tommy scooped with his spoon, messy and uncoordinated. Some spilled onto the table. He laughed and wiped it with his sleeve.
“Tastes funny,” he announced.
“Different,” the king corrected.
Tommy accepted that. He always did.
Outside, the yard still smelled faintly of iron despite the scrubbing. A shirt lay buried at the base of the tree—torn, stained beyond saving. One boot sat by the riverbank, laces cut clean through. The other would never be found.
The man who’d worn them would not be missed.
He had screamed once. He had struggled longer. He had stopped breathing before the angel ever let go.
By the time the king’s blade finished its work, there was nothing left that could beg.
Inside, Tommy reached for more bread.
“More?” he asked.
The angel nodded and tore off a piece with hands that had ended a life less than an hour earlier. It wiped those hands carefully before touching the child’s plate.
Always.
Tommy ate until he was full, then pushed the bowl away, distracted by a crumb he’d dropped on the floor.
“Down,” he told it seriously.
The poet crouched and wiped the floor clean before the child could try to eat it anyway.
Later, when Tommy was carried to bed with a full stomach and heavy eyelids, the table was cleared in silence. The bones were wrapped and taken far from the house. The pot was scrubbed until it shone. The smell lingered anyway, faint and unavoidable.
The angel stood at the sink longer than necessary, feathers twitching.
“He didn’t know,” it said quietly.
“He doesn’t need to,” the king replied.
Outside, the town would wake to another absence. Another name crossed out of quiet lists. Another door left locked forever.
Inside, Tommy slept peacefully, unaware that the hands that tucked him in had fed him with the remnants of a man who would never hurt anyone again.
The monsters kept him safe.
The cost was simply paid elsewhere. Tommy was very full.
This was a new and fascinating problem.
He sat on the floor with his back against the angel’s leg, tummy round and solid beneath his shirt, patting it experimentally as if it might make a sound.
“Mm,” he decided, nodding to himself.
The bloodied king watched with something like awe. “He’s… wider,” he said slowly.
Tommy beamed.
“Big,” he agreed, spreading his hands as far apart as they would go. Then, for emphasis, he leaned forward and nearly toppled over.
The angel caught him instantly, one wing bracing, one hand steadying his soft middle.
“No running after meals,” it murmured.
Tommy giggled, entirely unconcerned, and leaned back again—this time on purpose. He kicked his feet, socks mismatched, and yawned so wide his eyes watered.
The drowned poet crouched nearby, towel in hand, wiping Tommy’s face with exaggerated care. “You missed some,” he said gently.
Tommy frowned, then licked his lips. “Gone?”
“Yes,” the poet replied. “Now it is.”
Satisfied, Tommy rested his head against the angel’s knee, eyelids drooping. He sucked his thumb for a moment, then abandoned it in favor of hugging his own belly like a treasured pillow.
“Warm,” he mumbled.
The king laughed quietly and draped a blanket over him anyway. “That’s what happens when you eat well.”
Tommy hummed again, a tuneless little sound, already halfway to sleep. His breathing evened out, slow and content, stomach rising and falling beneath the fabric of his shirt.
The angel adjusted the blanket. The poet dimmed the lights. The king sat on the floor instead of the chair, just to be closer.
For a while, nothing else mattered.
Tommy slept, full and safe and blissfully unaware of anything beyond warmth, familiar voices, and the comforting weight of a good meal.
And the monsters watched him like he was the gentlest thing in the world.