Logan couldn’t help but sigh and sit when the door finally closed. Miyuki joined him after carefully laying Sarah down.

  “That was exhausting,” he said while staring into space. If he used his internal energy he could be in combat for hours at a time and still feel at near peak condition, yet the sheer amount of power behind the Council’s gazes exhausted him.

  “You’re not kidding,” she replied, “remind me never to do something stupid enough to call a full council.”

  “Never do something stupid-.”

  “Not now, idiot,” she sighed, “so…what next?”

  “We wait for Sarah to wake up and then go to Master Sigurd. After that…I’m not sure.”

  Miyuki was about to say something but was interrupted by a quiet groan. Sarah began to stir and soon rose to her elbows.

  “Welcome to the land of the living, princess,” Miyuki said.

  Sarah sat up and rubbed her head. “What happened?”

  “Councilor Boleyn entered your mind,” Logan answered, “and performed a test on whether you can be trusted. They then decided to allow you to keep your beast and accepted you as a being. Welcome to one of the most exclusive and dangerous clubs in the world, congratulations.” He stood with a grunt. “The welcome party will have to come later. Now, we need to meet with Master Sigurd and find out what he has to say.”

  While Logan answered Sarah, Miyuki walked over and helped her up. He made his way to the door and held it open. After Miyuki and the still unsteady Sarah exited the room, he followed and closed the door behind him.

  He only took four steps into the seeming empty hall before he felt someone or something blowing on the back of his neck. The breath was cold and put every hair on his body on end. He reflexively drew his sword, moved forward to make space and turned, ready to kill whoever or whatever it was. He stopped the strike when he saw the perpetrator.

  Before him was a stunning woman who was only a few centimeters shorter than him with long black hair, striking green eyes, and a full body that would turn most men into a slack-jawed simpleton. She had curves in all the right places and the snug nature of the black Hunter-class uniform accentuated that, though hers seemed to be a little tighter than the standard issue sets. Even her scent beckoned him forward. He scented a creature of passion and power that would fight to their last breath to get what they wanted.

  The only response he gave was an annoyed grunt and returning his sword to his back.

  “Ah Logan, it really has been too long.” Her voice was smoother than silk, that of a seductress. It dripped with the confidence of someone who knew they could get whoever they wanted with little to no difficulty.

  She took a step forward. She got close enough to just barely be on the edge of his personal space. It was as if she had a supernatural sense of his boundaries and knew exactly how to tease at them. “I really wish we were meeting again under better circumstances." She gave him a look up and down before gaining a salacious smile. “I must say that you’re looking as good as ever.”

  He shook his head, both to show his displeasure and to clear his slightly affected thoughts. “Please stop sneaking up on me like that.”

  In a split second her shadow seemed to come alive and cover her. As fast as it leapt up she had been absorbed by her manipulation and disappeared.

  “But it’s so much fun." She whispered into his ear from somewhere.

  He then felt the ever so light touch of her fingertips up his spine. Despite himself, his body shivered pleasurably beneath her touch. He sucked in a breath as his body stiffened. He hated it when she did that. One of her abilities was to instantly hypnotize someone, both humans and beings, with just a look or touch. For some reason, to both her surprise and his relief, he was immune to her power. Annoyingly, the occasional forced response slipped through the cracks.

  When he turned, he found her looking down at a stabilized if cautious Sarah. “So, this is the little kitten that has joined our cursed brethren?” she asked mockingly.

  Logan heard Sarah begin to growl and her fingers curl instinctively. Her beast was coming forward. He wondered why then of all times. As to prevent her from doing something stupid, and potentially life ending, he intervened. He made his way between the stare-down, the woman with her cat that just ate the canary smile and Sarah with an anger filled growl.

  “Sarah,” he said, “I would like to introduce to you Lilith.” He waited a few moments for her to look at him and begin to compose herself before continuing. “She is the Council’s top Hunter-Class and Beelzebub’s second.”

  Sarah looked at him for a moment before being forced down by his own glare. Upon seeing her backing down, he extricated himself from between the two women.

  It was all going well until Lilith decided to light the match in the dynamite shed. “Good kitty.”

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  Before he could stop her Sarah tried to punch Lilith. She only smiled at Sarah’s attempted sloppy right hook before she effortlessly caught the flying fist in her left hand.

  Fast enough to leave a blur, her right hand snapped up and gripped Sarah around the throat. Miyuki moved to intervene but Logan stopped her. She needed to learn a lesson and Lilith was a good person to learn it from.

  Lilith started to lightly squeeze Sarah’s neck while freeing Sarah’s hand. She grabbed onto Lilith’s arm in a desperate attempt for freedom. Without even a single bead of sweat or shaking limb, Lilith slowly started lifting Sarah into the air by nothing but her throat.

  The entire time the sadist’s smile never even faltered. “Before you go off to wherever’s next for you, I have a little tip for you.” She brought Sarah’s face closer to hers so they looked eye to eye. “There are always bigger predators, and you need to know who they are. Make sure you know who you’re taking a bite out of before they rip out your throat.” She dropped Sarah unceremoniously onto her rump as she gasped for air. Lilith turned and started walking toward the elevators. While she passed by Logan, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “Take care of that kitty. I don’t want to see her get declawed by someone not worthy of it.” Without another word she was once more devoured by her shadow.

  He looked down at a scowling Sarah who proceeded to yell up at him. “The hell Logan! Why didn’t you stop her!?”

  He offered Sarah a hand to help her up. She slapped away the good-natured gesture. He sighed. “Though I don’t exactly agree with Lilith’s teaching methods, I agree with the lesson. You attacked her without thinking about if she was more powerful than you. You allowed your beast to get a hold on you and control your actions. This is exactly why we have to keep our eye on you.”

  She glared at him. “How was I supposed to know how strong she was?”

  “There were two major clues,” Myuki answered. “First, she was able to appear without any of us realizing it, quite the difficult task when the two of us are specifically trained to detect and eliminate. Second, he introduced her as the rank one Hunter-Class and as Councilor Beelzebub’s second. Seconds need to be intelligent, loyal, and are just under the Councilors in levels of power. You never want to get on one of their bad sides. If that ever happens does happen, your only real choice is to run or die, though running often just makes them want to kill you more.”

  She glared at the two of them with a lip raised in a snarl. “You two could have told me that earlier but no, you decided to let an insane devil almost kill me!”

  “Welcome to our world,” Miyuki waved her hand. “You learn the fast way, which is most often the hard way. And trust me, if she wanted to kill you, you’d be dead before you even noticed anything wrong.”

  The three of them then entered the elevator and started their way to the top floor and Master Sigurd’s office. Although Logan wasn’t nearly as nervous as before he faced the council, there still was a kernel of unease as they approached.

  “You’re an ass, you know that?” Sarah said, apparently still aggravated as she rubbed her neck.

  He smirked. “It may shock you to learn that I’ve been called much worse.” His smirk fell as he turned serious. “What just happened was a lesson you needed to learn quickly. Our world is just like what happened. If you don’t think and adapt, you’ll get badly hurt, if not get killed.”

  He heard her swallow through the pain. “Did you say killed?”

  “Yup,” Miyuki answered from over her shoulder. “For example, on average at least one person dies in one of our elite training camps every other year. And that’s just the training. It is not unheard of for entire teams to be wiped out on a mission. Artifact guardians can vary in power wildly and incorrect reports aren’t uncommon.”

  Sarah slowed at the new information. After a nervous swallow she changed the subject. “But what was up with her? No normal person just chokes someone like that.”

  “Exactly.” He looked at her quizzically. “She isn’t a person; she is literally a demon, one of the first. In fact, he is so unique that she lays outside the very strict command structure of the Demon Realm. The only reason she’s a Hunter-Class is because she was bored and the job sounded interesting. Be glad she stopped at a choke.”

  “But, why?”

  “You were disrespectful.”

  She looked shocked. “I was disrespectful? She was the one insulting me.”

  “But you were the one to throw the first punch. She’s a weird one. She doesn’t respect anyone, or even learn people’s names, unless they are obviously more powerful than her, can beat her, or at least make her bleed. It took me seventy years of constant training to be good enough to even wound her in her human form before she almost killed me. Because of that she started respecting me. As I got stronger she started respecting me more and stopped calling me Wolfie.” He shuttered.

  “Though she did start getting more attached to him.” Miyuki laughed.

  He grumbled. “There is that.”

  Sarah was no doubt about to ask another question before giving her a sideways glance. “Our world runs on a delicate system of power, responsibility, and respect. Those with power have the responsibility to help and protect those that are weaker than them, no matter what position they’re in. If they succeed in this responsibility, they deserve respect for how much they go through.” He looked at her. “There are beings and groups that if you tried to attack someone stronger than you, like you did, they would be fully in their right to literally beat you into submission. They wouldn’t have the right to outright kill you but would leave you hospitalized or crippled.”

  “What kind of weird system is that?” she asked in shocked disgust.

  “That is the system every government and group relies on. When a ruler has the power but doesn’t fulfill the responsibility, there is no respect, leading to possible rebellion. If they have the responsibilities but not the power, they again lose respect and can lead to destruction. If they have the respect and power but not the responsibilities, then the system becomes stagnant. Finally, if they have the power and responsibilities but somehow don’t have the respect, there is chaos. Everything is a balancing act. If the scale is unbalanced, it all collapses. ”

  They remained in silence as they exited the elevator into a stereotypic hallway that wouldn’t have been out of place in any generic office building. His master’s office wasn’t far from the elevators so it didn’t take longer than a minute for the three to arrive.

  Unlike the boring hallway the office’s doors were very distinctive. The entrance was a double door made of pure hand-carved mahogany. On the face of the doors was carved a mirrored depiction of the battle between the evil dragon Fafnir and a small group of humans facing it with courage and determination. With nervous energy he brought his fist up and knocked.