The Price of Vengeance
She had texted hours ago that she was on her way home from her evening class. His calls went straight to voicemail. The clock on the wall ticked mercilessly, each second stretching his nerves thinner. Where was Hope, his wife?When the lock finally turned, relief flooded through him—only to freeze in his veins at the sight that greeted him.
Hope stood in the doorway, her blonde hair matted with dirt and blood. Her clothes hung in tatters, revealing angry red marks across her pale skin. Her left eye was swollen shut, her lip split and bleeding. But it was the emptiness in her remaining open eye that struck Andrew the hardest—a vacant stare that seemed to look through him rather than at him.
"Hope," he whispered, afraid that speaking too loudly might shatter her completely.
She didn't respond. She simply stood there, swaying slightly, her arms wrapped around herself as if trying to hold the broken pieces together.
Andrew approached her slowly, the way one might approach a wounded animal. When she didn't flinch away, he gently guided her inside and closed the door behind them. Only then did she collapse against him, her body wracked with silent sobs.
"I'll call an ambulance," he said, reaching for his phone.
"No." Her voice was barely audible, rough and raw. "Police first. Evidence."
The word hung between them, heavy with implication. Andrew felt something cold and hard form in the pit of his stomach as the reality of what had happened began to sink in.
The following weeks passed in a blur of hospital visits, police interviews, and sleepless nights. Hope identified her attacker from a lineup—a man named Victor Reese—though she admitted to the detective that she couldn't be completely certain. The attack had happened in a dimly lit parking lot, and her memories were fragmented, distorted by trauma and fear.
"It's normal," the detective assured them. "Trauma affects memory. But we have some physical evidence that might help build the case."
Andrew held onto that hope, thin as it was. He watched as Hope withdrew further into herself with each passing day. The vibrant, laughing woman he had fallen in love with seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a shadow that moved through their apartment like a ghost.
The trial came six months later. Andrew sat in the courtroom, his hand squeezing Hope's as Victor Reese took the stand. The man was unremarkable in appearance—average height, average build, with close-cropped brown hair and eyes that revealed nothing. He spoke clearly and confidently as he presented his alibi: he had been at a bar across town with friends at the time of the attack. Friends who testified on his behalf, their stories aligning perfectly with his.
The physical evidence was deemed inconclusive. Hope's uncertain identification was called into question by the defense. And when the jury returned with their verdict—Not Guilty—Andrew felt something inside him break.
Hope said nothing as they left the courthouse. She simply stared straight ahead, her face a mask of resignation, as if she had expected this outcome all along.
The first time they saw Victor Reese after the trial was at the grocery store. Hope froze in the produce section, her hand tightening around a bell pepper until her knuckles turned white, crushing the fruit and causing seeds and juice to run over the fingers.. Andrew followed her gaze and saw him standing by the apples, casually selecting fruit as if he didn't have a care in the world.
As if sensing their attention, Reese looked up. His eyes met theirs, and a slow smile spread across his face—not a smile of greeting or acknowledgment, but something darker. Something that said, I won, and we all know it.
Hope dropped the damaged pepper and walked out of the store without a word. Andrew followed, leaving their half-filled cart abandoned in the aisle.
It happened again at a restaurant two weeks later. Then at the movie theater. The coffee shop near their apartment. Each time, that same knowing smirk. Each time, Hope retreated further into herself.
"He's following us," Andrew said one night as they lay in bed, Hope staring blankly at the ceiling.
"No," she replied, her voice flat. "He's just living his life. That's what hurts the most. He gets to just... live. While I'm still trapped in that parking lot every night when I close my eyes."
Andrew turned to look at her profile in the darkness. "What if there was a way to make him pay?"
Hope didn't respond, but her silence felt different this time—attentive rather than absent.
"My parents..." Andrew hesitated. He rarely spoke of his eccentric parents, who had died in a car accident when he was in college. "They believed in things most people don't."
"Magic," Hope said softly. It wasn't a question. Andrew had told her about his upbringing, though he'd always downplayed the extent of his parents' beliefs and practices.
"Yes," he admitted. "They left me things. Books. Tools. Things I've kept locked away because I never thought I'd use them."
Hope turned to face him, her eyes searching his in the dim light filtering through the curtains. "Would you use them now? For me?"
The question hung between them, heavy with implication. Andrew thought of the locked trunk in the back of their storage closet, untouched for years. He thought of his parents' warnings about consequences and balance.
"Yes," he said finally. "For you, I would."
The trunk was covered in a layer of dust that coated Andrew's fingers as he lifted the lid. Inside, nestled among velvet cloth, lay the remnants of his inheritance: leather-bound books with strange symbols embossed on their covers, small bottles filled with substances he couldn't name, and at the very bottom, a wooden box inlaid with silver.
He lifted the box carefully, feeling its weight—heavier than its size suggested. Inside lay a single book, smaller than the others but bound in what appeared to be some kind of scaled leather that shimmered faintly in the light.
"The Summoning of Vengeance," Andrew read aloud, his finger tracing the title embossed in silver on the cover.
Hope stood in the doorway, watching him. "Will it work?"
Andrew looked up at her. "My parents believed it would. They said they'd seen it work once, though they never told me the details." He hesitated. "But Hope, there's always a price with these things. That's what they taught me. Magic requires balance."
"What's the price for this?" she asked, stepping closer.
Andrew opened the book, scanning the first few pages. The text was written in his mother's flowing script, translated from something much older. "It says the summoner must surrender what they think is the most valuable thing they have once the vengeance is complete."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know exactly," Andrew admitted. "But I'm willing to pay it. Whatever it is."
Hope knelt beside him, her hand covering his on the page. "Are you sure? We could just move. Start over somewhere else."
Andrew thought of Victor Reese's smirking face, of Hope's nightmares, of the justice that had been denied. "Would that really help? Would you ever feel safe again, knowing he's out there?"
Hope's silence was answer enough.
The ritual required specific components: a circle drawn with chalk mixed with the summoner's blood, candles made from fat and herbs, and a focus for the vengeance—something connected to the target. For this, Andrew used a napkin from the coffee shop where Reese had last tormented them with his presence, bearing his fingerprints.
Andrew studied the final pages of the book one more time, his finger tracing the warning inscribed at the bottom of the page, in his mother's elegant script: "The price of vengeance is always exacted in kind—what you treasure above all else will be claimed as payment. This is not a metaphor or riddle, but the immutable law of balance." He hesitated, remembering his parents' frequent cautions about the literal nature of magical contracts. The phrasing troubled him—"what you value most" seemed deliberately ambiguous. But surely it meant a possession, an object of great worth. It couldn't possibly mean...
He closed the book decisively. Whatever the price, justice for Hope was worth it.
The night of the new moon, Andrew sent Hope to stay with her sister. "Just in case," he told her, though he wasn't sure what he was protecting her from—the ritual itself, or the possibility of witnessing his failure.
Alone in their apartment, with the furniture pushed against the walls to make space for the circle, Andrew began the ritual as midnight approached. He cut his palm, letting the blood drip into the chalk mixture before drawing the intricate pattern described in the book. He placed the candles at specific points around the circle and the napkin in the center.
As the clock struck twelve, Andrew began to recite the words written in his mother's hand. The language was unfamiliar, the syllables awkward on his tongue, but he forced himself to continue, focusing on the image of Hope's battered face the night she'd come home.
Nothing happened at first. The candles flickered, casting dancing shadows on the walls, but the room remained otherwise unchanged. Andrew felt a creeping sense of foolishness, of desperation driving him to childish beliefs.
Then the temperature dropped.
It happened suddenly, his breath fogging in front of him where moments before the air had been comfortably warm. The candle flames turned blue, then an unnatural purple, stretching upward in thin columns before freezing in place like glass sculptures.
The air in the center of the circle began to distort, as if viewed through heat waves rising from hot pavement. A darkness gathered there, not the absence of light but something more substantial—a darkness that seemed to absorb the very air around it.
And then it took form.
The demon—for Andrew had no other word to describe the entity that now stood before him—was tall, its proportions just wrong enough to be unsettling. Its skin was the deep red of congealed blood, stretched tight over a frame that seemed more bone than flesh. Its face was almost human, with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes that glowed like embers, but its mouth was too wide, filled with teeth like shards of obsidian.
"Who calls upon the Vengeance?" The voice seemed to bypass Andrew's ears entirely, resonating directly in his mind.
Andrew swallowed hard, fighting the instinct to flee. "I do. Andrew Mercer."
The demon tilted its head, studying him with those burning eyes. "And what vengeance do you seek, Andrew Mercer?"
"Justice for Hope. For what was done to her." Andrew gestured to the napkin in the center of the circle. "By him. Victor Reese."
The demon looked down at the napkin, then extended one long-fingered hand over it, not quite touching. "I see him," it said after a moment. "I see his crime. I see his escape from your human justice." Its gaze returned to Andrew. "You understand the price?"
Andrew nodded, though his throat had gone dry. "What I value most."
The demon's mouth stretched into what might have been a smile on a human face. "Once the vengeance is complete, I will return for payment. Do you accept these terms?"
Andrew thought of Hope, of the light that had gone out in her eyes, of the life that had been stolen from her that night in the parking lot. "I accept."
The demon nodded once, a strangely formal gesture. "It shall be done."
And then it was gone, the candles extinguishing simultaneously, plunging the room into darkness. The only evidence that it had been there at all was the lingering chill in the air and the circle on the floor, the chalk now burned black as if by intense heat.
Victor Reese was reported missing three days later. The police questioned his friends, searched his apartment, but found no signs of foul play. Just a man who had seemingly walked away from his life without warning.
Hope watched the news report with Andrew, her expression unreadable. "Do you think...?" she began, then stopped.
"Yes," Andrew said simply.
She nodded slowly. "When will you know if it's done? If the... payment is due?"
Andrew had been asking himself the same question. "I don't know. The book didn't specify."
They lived in a strange limbo for the next week, jumping at unexpected sounds, watching the shadows in their apartment with wary eyes. Hope began to emerge from her shell slightly, venturing out more, sleeping through the night occasionally. Andrew found himself wondering if perhaps the price had already been paid in some subtle way he hadn't noticed.
Then came the dream.
Andrew found himself standing in a vast, dimly lit space that seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions. The ground beneath his feet was hard and smooth, like polished stone, but warm to the touch. The air smelled of sulfur and something metallic—blood, he realized with a jolt.
Before him stood the demon, exactly as it had appeared in his living room. Beside it, on his knees, was Victor Reese.
Reese looked up at Andrew, his eyes wide with terror and recognition. His clothes were torn, his body covered in wounds that mirrored those he had inflicted on Hope—and others, Andrew realized. Many others.
"Please," Reese gasped, blood bubbling from his lips. "Make it stop. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
The demon placed a hand on Reese's shoulder, its claws digging into the flesh. "He has much to be sorry for," it told Andrew. "Not just your Hope. There were others before her. And there would have been more."
Andrew felt no pity as he looked at the broken man before him. "Is this real? Or just a dream?"
"Both," the demon replied. "I thought you might want to witness the vengeance you sought. To see justice served."
As it spoke, the demon's claws sank deeper into Reese's shoulder, drawing a scream from the man. Wounds began to open across his body, invisible hands tearing at his flesh, recreating the violence he had inflicted on his victims.
"This is just the beginning," the demon told Reese, its voice almost gentle. "A preview of what awaits you for eternity. Each pain you inflicted will be returned a thousandfold. Each fear you inspired will become your own. Each life you damaged will be avenged in the endless time we have together."
Reese's screams echoed in the vast space as his body contorted in agony. Andrew watched, feeling a complex mixture of satisfaction and horror. This was what he had wanted—justice, vengeance, punishment for the man who had destroyed Hope's sense of safety and trust. And yet, witnessing it brought him no peace.
"The vengeance is complete," the demon said, turning its burning gaze to Andrew. "I will come for my payment soon."
Andrew woke with a gasp, his body drenched in sweat. Beside him, Hope slept peacefully for the first time in months.
The demon came three nights later.
Andrew was alone in the apartment, Hope having gone to dinner with her sister—another small step in her gradual return to normalcy. He felt the temperature drop first, then saw the shadows in the corner of the living room deepen and coalesce.
"The vengeance is complete," the demon said as it stepped into the light. "Victor Reese suffers as he made others suffer. His soul will know no peace for eternity."
Andrew nodded, a strange calm settling over him. He had prepared for this moment. "I have your payment."
He crossed to the bookshelf and removed a small wooden box. Inside, nestled on velvet, lay a crown—or what appeared to be one. It was small, perhaps meant for a child, but crafted of what looked like pure gold and studded with gems that caught the light in impossible ways, shifting colors that shouldn't exist.
"This belonged to my parents," Andrew explained, holding the box out to the demon. "They said it was given to them on their wedding day by a dragon they had befriended during their travels. It's the most valuable thing I own."
The demon looked at the crown, its ember eyes reflecting the strange lights of the gems. Then it laughed—a sound like breaking glass that sent shivers down Andrew's spine.
"This is not what I have come for, Andrew Mercer," it said. "The price is not what you value in monetary terms. It is what you value most in your heart."
Andrew's blood ran cold as understanding dawned. "No," he whispered. "Please. Anything else. Take me instead."
The demon shook its head, an almost sympathetic gesture. "The terms were clear. What you value most. And what you value most is not your own life, but hers."
As if summoned by the words, the front door opened, and Hope stepped in. She froze at the sight before her—Andrew standing with the strange crown, the demon towering in their living room.
"Andrew?" Her voice was small, confused. "What's happening?"
Before Andrew could respond, the demon moved. One moment it stood across the room, the next it was beside Hope, one clawed hand wrapped around her wrist.
"No!" Andrew lunged forward, but an invisible force held him in place. "Please! I'll give you anything else! Everything I have!"
"The bargain is struck," the demon said simply. "Vengeance has its price."
Hope's eyes met Andrew's, confusion giving way to understanding. "What did you do?" she asked softly.
"I'm sorry," Andrew choked out, tears streaming down his face. "I just wanted him to pay for what he did to you. I wanted you to feel safe again."
Hope's expression softened. "Oh, Andrew." She looked at the demon holding her wrist, then back to Andrew. "It's okay. I understand."
The demon began to pull her toward the shadows in the corner, which had deepened into what appeared to be a doorway to somewhere else—somewhere that radiated heat and the smell of sulfur.
"I'll find you!" Andrew shouted, straining against the invisible bonds. "I swear, Hope, I'll find a way to bring you back!"
Hope's last look was one of sad acceptance as she disappeared into the darkness with the demon. The shadows receded, the temperature returned to normal, and Andrew collapsed to his knees in the suddenly empty apartment, the useless crown falling from his hands.
Five years passed. Five years of searching, of desperate research, of following every lead no matter how obscure or dangerous. Andrew's apartment became a shrine to his obsession—walls covered in maps and diagrams, shelves filled with books on demonology and the afterlife, tables cluttered with artifacts and components for rituals that never worked.
He even went looking for dragons. He heard there was a colony of them in Australia, but he was unable to find it. He heard that a dragon lived in Arizona and another lived in Finland, but he was unable to find either. He also heard that there was a dragon that appeared every Christmas, like Santa Claus. He dismissed this as too ridiculous to be real.
He lost his job. Lost contact with friends and family. Lost everything except his determination to find a way to Hell—not to escape it, but to break into it. To find Hope and bring her back.
Each failed attempt chipped away at his sanity. He began to see shadows moving in his peripheral vision, to hear whispers in empty rooms. Sometimes, in dreams, he caught glimpses of Hope—not suffering as he had feared, but existing in a strange twilight realm, her eyes sad but resigned.
"You need to let me go," she told him in one such dream. "This is destroying you."
"I can't," he replied. "I did this to you. I have to make it right."
She reached out as if to touch his face, but her hand passed through him like smoke. "Some exchanges can't be undone, Andrew. That's why there are prices."
He woke from these dreams more determined than ever, pushing himself further into dangerous territory. He made deals with entities he once would have fled from, traded pieces of himself—memories, years of his life, even fragments of his soul—for knowledge that brought him no closer to his goal.
On the fifth anniversary of Hope's taking, Andrew prepared for his most desperate attempt yet. The ritual required blood—more than he could safely give—but he no longer cared about safety. He drew the circle with shaking hands, his vision blurring from exhaustion and blood loss.
As midnight approached, he began the incantation, his voice hoarse from years of similar attempts. The candles flickered, the temperature dropped, and for a moment, he felt a surge of wild hope—this time, perhaps this time...
But as the clock struck twelve, nothing happened. The candles continued to burn normally, the air remained cold but not supernaturally so. No doorway opened in the shadows.
Andrew collapsed in the center of the useless circle, his body finally giving out after years of abuse and neglect. As consciousness began to fade, he thought he saw a figure standing over him—not the demon that had taken Hope, but Hope herself, looking as she had the day they met, whole and unbroken.
"It's time to rest, Andrew," she said softly, kneeling beside him. "You can't find me this way. I'm not lost—I'm just somewhere you can't follow."
"I'm sorry," he whispered, tears sliding down his temples into his hair. "I thought I could save you. I thought I could fix it."
She smiled sadly. "Some things can't be fixed. But they can be accepted." She reached out, and this time, he felt the cool touch of her hand against his cheek. "Let go of your vengeance. It's taken enough from both of us."
As darkness claimed him, Andrew wondered if this was just another hallucination born of desperation and madness, or if somehow, Hope had found a way to reach across the barrier between worlds to say goodbye.
Either way, he finally surrendered to the darkness, his last thought a silent apology to the Hope he had lost—both the woman and the emotion—knowing that some prices, once paid, can never be reclaimed.
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