My first day in exile, Mrs. McGuire made me chop wood.

  I woke up at the crack of dawn to the old lady loudly complaining about not having enough firewood and the house being too cold for her old bones until I couldn’t take it any more and just went out to get some for her.

  There was an axe leaning by the front door, almost as if it was placed there for me to see. I grabbed it, got a safe distance from the house, and started felling the nearest tree. It was grueling work, even with super strength, and took me the better part of an hour, with most of the time spent just figuring out how one goes about chopping a tree into bits. Turns out: it’s more complicated than I’d expected, with all the branches and extra bits. Still, by the end I had a nice pile of usable wood and felt rather proud of myself.

  That was, until Mrs. McGuire started loudly complaining about having to go into town tomorrow because the wood was “runnin’ low.” A few more seconds of that and I went back out again to chop more. And more. And more. Because, no matter how much wood I collected for her, she never stopped complaining about not having enough. All I did was change her phrasing.

  About four rounds of this in, Multishot - Julian, apparently - came out and asked me why I was chopping wood. He seemed sincerely curious, so I answered.

  “Mrs. McGuire wants me to,” I said.

  “Did she say that?” He asked.

  “No, not technically.”

  “Then why, if I may, are you chopping wood for her?”

  “She needs some, so I’m getting some. Why else?”

  At that, Multishot simply shrugged thoughtfully and went back inside. I continued chopping wood until sundown, at which point I had dinner and promptly fell asleep afterwards, as tired as I was.

  The second day I was still chopping wood. From dawn to dusk, like a good frontiersman. I’m a little worried about just how easily I took to doing it, but I did it anyway.

  The only change from the first day was when Multishot went out around midday, then returned a few hours later carrying a dead deer over his shoulder. Its head was gone, its neck ending in a mass of mangled flesh. He brought it inside without saying a word. Dinner that night was venison, and throughout the whole thing McGuire complained about having to deal with the mangled kill. Multishot never said a word.

  I arise on the dawn of the third day to find, blissfully, that Mr. McGuire is finally quiet. I’d managed to sleep in until ten, and I feel amazing. However, as I head downstairs to find myself some breakfast, I see McGuire sitting by the stairs, polishing the barrel of an old rifle. She thrusts it into my hands the moment she sees me.

  “Find dinner,” is all she tells me. I pass the gun back to her.

  “I don’t use firearms,” I respond.

  “Then use somethin’ else.”

  She leaves without another word, resting the gun against the wall, just like the axe was. Multishot is sitting on the couch downstairs; he saw the whole thing. I go up to him.

  “What does she mean by that?” I ask him.

  “She wants you to hunt something to eat, miss, like I did yesterday. There’s all kinds of game out there: rabbits, squirrels, deer, even some bears.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can eat, and because she told you to.”

  “No, I mean, why me? I’ve never hunted anything before.”

  “If you truly haven’t, miss, then that would make you exceptionally bad at your job.”

  I scowl at him, but the polite man doesn’t seem to notice. Failing that, I turn and grab the axe by the door and storm off. In a way, I guess, he isn’t wrong. I have hunted before, by a loose definition. I’ve tracked villains down to stop them. That doesn’t mean the two are at all similar, though. I can’t possibly be the best person for this.

  Feeling unsure of myself, I just stalk around the woods for a few hours, trying yet failing to be quiet as I comb through the undergrowth, searching for movement. The axe feels awkward in my hand, and all I see are squirrels high up in the trees where I’d be unlikely to get them.

  It isn’t until after another hour that I finally realize I’m lost. I’d been wandering through the woods on a one-track mind for so long I’d completely forgotten my way. I’m definitely too much of a city girl; I find myself unsure of how to navigate without roads. I decide to rely on my superior physical capabilities, and climb a tree to scout out the area. Luckily, I spot a puff of smoke in the distance that happens to be the house, and I make it back, though without anything to show for it.

  Dinner that night was sparse: wild greens and some bread. I go to bed still feeling hungry.

  The fourth day is much the same as the third. Mrs. McGuire tries to give me the gun again, and once again I refuse, taking the axe out instead. I wander for a few more hours, but the only thing different that I find is a mangled deer corpse, one nearly picked clean. I ask Multishot about it when I return to the house, but when Mrs. McGuire interrupts and starts talking about a devil in the woods, I figure I won’t get a real answer. I go to bed hungry once more.

  By the fifth day, I start to get frustrated. I find a rabbit, but it’s too fast and the axe is too unwieldy. I fail to catch it and return unsuccessful once more. At the dinner table, I ask why Multishot isn’t the one hunting, since he was successful before.

  “‘Cause he mangled that deer, that’s why. Boy can’t aim worth shit without his shotgun,” Mrs. McGuire responds. Multishot smiles politely but remains silent.

  “That still has to be better than nothing, though,” I respond. The old woman shakes her head at me in disappointment.

  “Wouldn’t be nothing if you’d take it seriously,” She tells me.

  Once again, I’m hungry that night.

  On the sixth day, I finally track down a deer. It appears from behind a bush a few dozen yards away from me, shaking leaves from its antlers. I chase after it the moment I spot it, and, despite how fast it is, it’s much easier to keep up with than the rabbit - not as able to go places I cannot. When I reach it, I slam it with the but of the axe, knocking it down, but it scrambles up again and runs off. I continue to chase it on foot for a while, but I quickly realize it’s leading me away from the house. Eventually, I have to give up and turn back, or else I’ll get lost.

  At dinner, I speak about what happened with the deer. Multishot tells me I should’ve used the blade - politely, but it still stings. Mrs. McGuire is less friendly, telling me I was an idiot not to bring the gun. I shrug it off and go to bed hungry once more.

  On day seven, I’m excused from hunting to escort Mrs. McGuire into a nearby town for supplies. Multishot goes in my stead.

  “That boy spoils you,” Mrs. McGuire says while we buy sacks of flour from a millhouse, “You should face consequences, not a vacation.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m in the middle of nowhere, cut off from my friends and family, and forced to hunt for my own meals. How is this not punishment enough?”

  “It’s easy, is what it is. He should have picked something else,” She grumbles.

  I leave wondering why she thinks Multishot is responsible for the details of my exile.

  I’m excused from hunting on day eight too. Multishot came back with a pair of deer the previous day, and nobody asked me to hunt so I didn’t. In fact, nobody asked me to do much of anything, so I had to find other ways to pass the time.

  I’d been slacking on my training since coming here - assuming hunting doesn’t count - so I enter the woods where I remembered finding a fallen tree, and start using it and its branches as weights.

  It’s not a perfect solution, so after about an hour I switch to just punching trees - not something I’d recommend to those without an ability, for the record. It feels more satisfying, and with adaptability it’s pulling double duty on both strength and durability, so I don’t quit until a few hours later when I’ve knocked down several formerly healthy trees with just my fists.

  By the time I return back to the house, my hands are bloody but I’m feeling satisfied. Multishot offers to wrap them when he sees and I let him, then we proceed to have dinner. I go to bed feeling rather good that night.

  On day nine I find a bear. Not a live one, unfortunately - I might have found it easier to hunt something that fought back - but a very mangled corpse of one. A black bear, which is good. A brown bear would’ve meant we somehow managed to travel way further than I’d thought, but black bears aren’t unheard of along the northeast coasts of the USC.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Not that the sight of the mangled thing is exactly comforting. I know I could win a fight with a bear - probably - and so something that could kill one isn’t necessarily a threat to me, but they aren’t exactly prey either. A deer corpse is likely just a sign of simple predation, but a bear means something unusual is wandering around in these woods. My brain points out Mrs. McGuire’s comments about a devil, but I shake it off. At worst, it’s probably just someone with an ability, and that kind of thing is right up my wheelhouse.

  That night I swear I hear some sort of unusual noise - perhaps a scream - coming from the woods. It’s probably just my imagination, though, my mind being on edge from my discovery.

  On day ten, the car we used to get here breaks down. I don’t know how it happened, but in the morning Mrs. McGuire tells me I’m to push it into town to have it fixed by the local mechanic, then drive back. I’m not strong enough to lift a car, but even a normal human can push one on neutral over flat ground, if they really try, so I can manage this much at least. I get the car to town in about an hour and a half. The mechanic tells me repairs will take another two hours, so I have some free time in town without any supervision. A helpful opportunity.

  With a little bit of asking around, I learn we’re somewhere in Southern New Jersey - rather close to Newest York, all things considered. Aside from that, I learn more than I need to know about the personal life of one “Ellis Greenwood” and overhear a peculiar conversation.

  “That thing’s back again,” One man says to another.

  “For the last time, Marty, there ain’t no devil in the woods. It’s a bear or a coyote eating your goats,” The other replies.

  “Bears don’t leave goddang bloody skulls on doorsteps in the middle of the night," Marty replies fiercely, “An’ they don’t have no wings, either, or a scream like Satan’s own voice. This thing was a devil, mark my words. You’ll be sorry if you don’t listen.”

  “Devils ain’t real. And if there was something that is real out there, McGuire’s little ‘friend’ woulda dealt with it by now, besides.”

  That last line makes me perk up, but the men are already moving on. It feels like a little clue, some secret I was let in on. They know about Multishot; they might not know what he is, or why he’s here, but they know something.

  That night at dinner I ask about the devil, hoping to prompt more conversation. Mrs. McGuire starts ranting about it again, but I get more of a clue when Multishot pulls me over after the meal.

  “You hear something in town, miss?” He asks me.

  I nod.

  “Try not to worry about it,” He continues, “Some things seem like problems when they really aren’t, and you wouldn’t want to get in more trouble than you already are, right?”

  I nod at him again, but this time I don’t mean it.

  On the eleventh day I’m back to hunting, but this time I actually want to be. I’ve determined that the best way to learn more about this place and whatever secrets it might be involved in is to do the exact thing I was informed not to do: hunt for the Devil. After all, the townsfolk weren’t wrong; any real danger would’ve been snuffed out by Multishot or another reaper long ago. That makes this suspicious. So first I head back to both the locations where I’d found corpses before. The deer is completely gone - or at least I can’t find it anymore - but the bear was easy enough to locate.

  First I study its wounds more closely. It appears to have had several massive bites taken out of it, but otherwise be unharmed. “Unharmed” being a relative term, of course. It seems to have either bled to death or lost an important organ - I’m not a veterinarian.

  Next I look for tracks. There’s quite a lot of crushed undergrowth around the corpse, and a whole lot of blood, but the only tracks I find are human - probably mine, to be honest; I’m not a tracker either.

  Unsatisfied, I return to hunting/wandering, hoping I might stumble upon something useful. Unfortunately, all I manage to find is a live deer, which is more of a distraction than anything as I’m obligated to chase after it for the sake of dinner. Once again though, I fail to kill it in one blow and it escapes, leaving me to return back to the house empty handed and unsure of how to proceed.

  That night, Multishot politely asks me if I managed to find anything hunting today. I tell him about the deer, to which he looks quizzical.

  “You seem to have no trouble finding them, miss,” He says, “so why do you keep failing to catch one?”

  “They’re too fast,” I reply, “I can usually only catch up once before I start risking not being able to find my way back.”

  “Once should be enough, miss. Something else is getting in your way,” Multishot shoots back. I frown at him, but we leave it there.

  On day twelve, I finally manage to get somewhere.

  Not with hunting, of course, but with the other thing - what I’ve been tentatively calling the devil for now. I know it probably isn’t a real devil, but there isn’t much else I can call it.

  Anyways, while out hunting I stumble upon a clear trail of blood. Following it gets me to a farm, where a little bit of reconnaissance tells me the blood likely came from one of the goats kept there. They seem spooked, and the trail ends in their pen. It’s as clear a sign as I’ll get.

  I start following the trail in the other direction, but by then it’s already getting late. Still, even as I head back to the house, I can tell my discovery is going to be helpful. That night after dinner, I slip out through the second floor window, heading back to the farm. I remembered that guy in town saying the devil came in the night, and so I figure it’ll be more active after dark. A little stakeout can’t hurt, in case it comes back.

  I settle down in a nearby bush and wait it out, watching the goats peacefully sleeping in their pen. After a while without anything, though, I start to get sleepy myself. I’m able to hold out a little longer, but eventually my eyelids start to droop and slowly my vision starts to dim…

  Then, in a flash, I’m awake again, my eyes slamming open as I hear the goats scream. A massive shape moves in the dark, black wings stretched out in the air. It hurries off into the night as the goats continue to scream, and I know I’ve found what I’m looking for.

  It snakes between the trees, large wings folding into the horse-sized body as the trunks grow closer. I bolt after the thing, racing close behind, suddenly thankful for my experience hunting prior to now - even with it, I’m barely able to keep up.

  The thing leaps a small brook and I do as well, it summits a massive boulder which I run around, and finally it scales a massive, old oak, hissing down at me.

  I punch the tree.

  Branches shake, the thing wobbling in its precarious perch. It lets out a noise, a scream, utterly human - except, I’d really describe it as more of a yelp. A goat corpse falls from above.

  “All right, all right, I’m sorry! I didn’t know this was your goat, I swear!” The thing cries. Its voice is scratchy and inhuman, but the tone of its words almost sounds… pathetic.

  “The fuck?” I exclaim, my mind working overtime to try and figure out what in the hells is going on here. I’d figured the devil might be related to some ability - either that or an exceptionally gifted effects artist - but I’d guessed a rogue summon or something, not an actual person.

  “Don’t hurt me!” The thing cries back.

  “What are you?” I ask it, staring up at the thing.

  As if on cue, a cloud that was blocking the moon passes, and the new light reveals what I’m looking at in grotesque clarity.

  It’s a dragon, but with the head and back limbs of a goat. Its massive bat-like wings are pitch black, its scales green, and its eyes piss yellow in the moonlight. The way its face is contorted almost seems like an animal trying to mimic a human expression of emotion - that emotion being a mix of fear, regret, and… remorse?

  “A person!” The thing yelps, “So you definitely shouldn’t hurt me, it would be wrong!”

  I eye it incredulously.

  “I swear,” It says, “Here, look.”

  At once, the thing begins crawling to the ground. I back away on instinct, but it crawls just a little off to the side away from me. There, it starts doing something horrifying.

  First, it rips off its own wings and eats them, then moves on to the tail. After that, it folds its legs back into its body with lots of squelching noses and way too much blood. Finally, with nothing but the head and torso remaining, it seems to tear open along the spine, and as the flesh begins to dissolve into red smoke, a completely naked man steps out of the corpse.

  He’s scrawny and pale - sickly, to be honest, with wild eyes and hair. As I stare at him, covered in various unmentionable fluids from inside the body, he waves his arms over himself as though to demonstrate the change.

  “See!” He squeaks, “I told you I was human.”

  —

  I don’t really keep a journal - too much of a security risk given my line of work - but if I did, then tonight’s entry would read: “I have now officially borne witness to the weirdest ability of all time.” Because I have.

  “It’s called Devil,” The man explains from behind me - I’ve turned away from the scene, “and it comes complete with all the unnecessary body horror you’d expect. Abilities, amiright?”

  “You are clearly not alright,” I mutter.

  “Hey, don’t judge. Just because you’ve got some kind of wholesome super-strength thing going on doesn’t mean we can all be so lucky. Just gotta work with what you get sometimes,” The man counters.

  “If I had that ability, I would never use it, as would any sane person.”

  “Don’t knock it ‘till you try it. I’ll have you know that staying in that form for days or even weeks on end is the best. I can just eat whatever and sleep wherever and scare the shit outta crotchety old farmers wherever I go. Peak living.”

  “So you have been eating livestock,” I whirl back on him, then instantly regret it. He has not changed - still very horrifying and kinda ugly.

  “Um… yeah? You caught me with that goat just a second ago.”

  “That’s illegal, and very mean to the farmers. You know I have to take you in for that, right?”

  “You a cop?” He asks cautiously.

  “Hero,” I answer. The man looks surprised, then laughs.

  “No kiddin’? Wow! What’s a hero doing all the way out here? Don’t you belong in cities and such?”

  “Crime can happen anywhere,” I excuse.

  “Yeah, but nobody does anything about it out here. Unless you’re fleeing from something you did while still in a city, that is. How do you think I got away with doing this for so long? If I tried my little antic in a city, they’d have had my hide by dawn, but here? Here all I have to worry ‘bout are angry farmers, and all they have are guns.”

  I would have denied it if he’d said that to me not half a month ago, but now? He’s right, isn't he. After hearing about how villain fights aren’t actually intended to capture villains, it makes sense that they wouldn’t put in much effort to do the same thing out in the sticks, where there’s nobody to care. I’m sure they hunt down damned, or even high-profile villains that try their luck, but this guy? He’s a loser - that much is clear, and, to be honest, I’m not sure he’s even doing anything all that bad.

  “You…you’re right, aren’t you?” I say, “Fine. You can go.” His eyes light up.

  “But!” I interject, “No more scaring people, okay? Taking livestock is one thing - if and only if you can’t find suitable wildlife - but running around people’s homes in your transformed state is just going to cause unnecessary panic.”

  “But that’s half the fun!” The man whines.

  “No, it’s meaningless cruelty.”

  He stares at me for a heartbeat.

  “Fine,” He agrees reluctantly, “Can I go now?”

  “Please do,” I tell him, finally allowing myself to turn away. I really just can’t look any longer.

  I wander off before allowing him to subject me to the reverse of his earlier transformation, and make my way back to the house in the dark. To be entirely honest, this endeavor wasn’t nearly as fruitful as I’d hoped it would be. All I really learned was just one more way the USC has been neglecting its people. Sullen, I return to my bed and await the next day.

  —

  Somewhere in the dark, a mouth opens.

  Teeth gleam.

  A red tongue lashes.

  And a woman screams.

  Devil is an idea that comes from the artist behind Book 1's cover: Thulium. We were on call and they jokingly suggested a villain based on the Jersey Devil, and I thought the idea was hilarious so I wrote it down and promised to use it at some point. Along comes' Charlie's exile, and I wanted to make things more interesting than just Charlie doing chores in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks, so I popped it in and now here we are. Funny how this stuff ends up happening, right?