Dippel was not the first to attempt to imitate the Creator. He was just the first who was good at it. Possessing a body like that meant that it would be almost impossible to send one of the Fallen back to the Void.

Many of us watched from the shadows as Dippel worked. He understood the flesh, but he did not understand the spirit. He was unaware that he had created a beacon for the damned. He worked under a cloud of covetous demons. We were jealous of man’s creativity and imagination, but that was nothing compared to the hatred we had for each other. We fought amongst ourselves, each of the Fallen demanding rights to the body.

Then the strongest of the host who had escaped into the mortal world claimed the body for himself. He had been a prince in heaven and a general in the war. He declared that once complete this perfect body would be his, and he would use it to thwart the Creator’s work in the mortal world once and for all.

He had a name once, but since we had been cast out, we only knew him by the title branded upon him when the Creator had hurled us into the Void.

The weak spirits fled from Cursed.

I had other ideas.

* * *

Washington, DC, was a bipolar city. One portion was big buildings, monuments, government lackeys, and tourists. The other was impoverished slums, bad neighborhoods, drug dealers, and gang warfare. Franks went directly to the one that had fewer cameras.

He knew how the search would go because he’d been involved in creating the MCB’s contingency plans. They would make up a terrible but mundane crime, send it to the media, and then splash his picture and description everywhere. Every cop in the region would be on the lookout. It was times like this that he wished he’d built his current body out of average-sized pieces. Being bigger than most NFL linebackers was inconvenient when you were a fugitive. He could swap out body parts, but that required corpses and a place for surgery. Franks could change many of his limbs and organs on his own, but stitching a new face on—and having it actually fit and not look like a bad Halloween mask—was beyond what he could accomplish on his own.

The police had been all over the wreck a minute after he’d crashed through the side of a convenience store, but he’d already been long gone before they’d set up their perimeter. He’d ditched his damaged suit coat and found a black raincoat hanging on a peg by the back door. It was far too tight on his shoulders and he couldn’t even button it, but it had a hood to hide his face. Franks had fled on foot, sticking to the shadows for a few blocks before he’d found a car to hot-wire.