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She creeps silently into the house, her feet hardly making a sound. The boards do not creak under her weight, even as she walks carefully in on tiptoe, as though they have been ordered by some unseen force not to complain.

This is why people hire her.

Even though it is nearly pitch black outside, with only the slightest sliver of a moon to guide those along the street, she is wary. She darts around corners, and hides behind doorframes until she is certain the coast is clear. She has promised a quick, clean kill, and that is what she intends to deliver. Stealth is of the essence. She doesn't want another incident such as the one that resulted in the scarred tissue, just under her left eye. She quickly rubs two fingers across the rough skin, as a sort of ritual for good luck.

Finally, after climbing a flight of stairs, she comes across the bedroom of her target. The door is already halfway open - a stroke of luck! - and she slips inside without opening it further. Once in the room, she catches sight of the sleeping form of the man that she has been paid to kill, his face lit in dim moonlight. She's suddenly taken aback by the familiarity of this face. It's nobody that she knows personally - simply an infamous man recently. She's seen him in passing, standing in town squares, speaking out about his new discoveries and how the church has been shown to have committed atrocities.

She's also seen his face, caricatured in the newspapers controlled by the church. It's funny, she thinks, how he is usually portrayed with a devil's horn and tail. How the church assures everybody that he is evil - a demon that must be ignored at all costs, and how anybody associating with him will be tainted by his mere presence, and will be seen as a traitor to all things holy. And yet she couldn't help but notice that a man of the clergy was the one who hired her for this assignment. He had hired her - a true devil - in order to cast out this fake devil, with glued on horns. And yet it is this fake devil that is the true threat to the overwhelming hold of the church, while the true demon is perfectly happy to allow it to continue.

The irony is enough to make any normal man's head spin.

Yet, when she draws her blade across her target's throat, she feels no remorse. Who is she to meddle in the affairs of humans? Even if this man has been lumped in with her own kind, she feels no sort of kinship towards him. It hardly matters to her who she kills, or why, so long as the outcome is the same. She cares not for the human soul, or the state of politics, or the hypocrisy of man.

The only thing she cares for are the gold coins - cold and hard - that match her eyes so perfectly.

(This was written for free, by request, for Cantarella Borgia.)