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and furrowed, his hair a grease-ball of ink. He was skinny—if I didn't know any better, I'd say he was disease-ridden. A disease of the soul for the atrocity he'd committed.
    I choked, “How?” My eyes were seared by the image. Him. The devil . The man who stole my family. “The police said there was no way of identifying them.” I was eight, and traumatized. They wouldn’t listen to a blood-splattered child and her adamant descriptions of the psychopaths.
    “The neighbors saw. They spoke to the police, but the sketch artist never lodged his drawings.”
    Heat boiled in my stomach. I had trouble breathing . “What?”
    “I pulled a lot of strings. Used favors that were owed to me, and managed to get the two drawings.”
    Maurice had more secrets than me. I still didn't know much of his past. Favors? From who? Did it matter? He’d identified the two men I desperately wanted to kill.
    “Show me the two drawings,” I demanded. The newspaper clipping shook in my hands. I wanted to shred it to pieces, but I stuffed it in my mini-skirt pocket instead. It wouldn’t leave my side until he was dead.
    Maurice gave me a long look before nodding and disappearing into the kitchen. By the time he appeared with a portfolio and placed it in my hands, my breathing was erratic. Oh God. Why did it take so long for identification? What I held represented years and years of guilt, hatred, and anguish.
    “I’ve only been able to track down one name. The man in the newspaper is Adrian Mathieu. It will take me a little longer to discover the other.”
    It was such a simple, normal name. I wanted something like Cut-throat Bastard Child-Molester. My surroundings were sucked into a vortex as I looked upon the faces of my two rapists and my family's killers.
    The unnamed perpetrator was plump. Heavy-set jaw and bags under his watery eyes. But the vacant, evil stare was the same. It was imprinted onto my eyelids. I saw them every night as I tried to sleep, never knowing who or why. The memories ghosted me every moment, of every day.
    Finally, I had a name.
    “You promised if I helped find them, you would stop. I'm calling in that promise,” Maurice said. His tone was stern, eyes never leaving mine.
    I glared. “How can you ask me to stop when monsters ruin lives every second? It's my duty to purge the world. Why else do I have this gift?” I balanced precariously on the edge of panic. I couldn’t see past my anger at the thought of stopping. Seeing those murderous eyes again sent me reeling back to the broken eight-year-old I'd been. Fury turned my fear to stone. I welcomed it. I was no longer that little girl. I was strong: an angel of death.
    And I would find them.
    I jerked the article from my pocket. Adrian Mathieu was in Perth, or had been three months ago. He was spotted at the local supermarket, of all places. Living as a normal human being, rather than the devil he was. The only reason he was in the paper was due to a bunch of unpaid parking tickets. The local council tried to shame him into paying. I shuddered. He lived while my family rotted. Bastard. 
    Maurice interrupted my thoughts. “Look in the mirror, Ocean.”
    My face scrunched. I had no intention of looking in the mirror. I knew what I would see. Ebony eyes, instead of my usual sapphire blue. Skin, which used to glow with youthfulness, now tired and muted. A body graced with killer curves, but slowly, stark angles were replacing the roundness of my hips, stealing the fullness from my bra.
    “I don't need to look in the mirror to know I look like a dirty hooker. I just need a shower and some rest, that's all.” A chill darted over my skin at the thought of the black marks scorched into my back. I needed to relax. I'd been hunting for too long. I needed a break.
    “And what of the marks? Have they stopped? Increased?” Maurice made to move closer.
    I took a hasty step back, fingers gripping my spine. “That's none of your business.”
    He shook his head. “It