Soren stepped out of the room.
Everyone's eyes locked on him.
He paused, eyebrows lifting. "What's wrong?"
Constantine shot him a sideways glance, his gaze lingering on Soren's face for a few seconds before he let out a cold laugh. "Nice dye job. You could open a salon after you retire."
Soren instinctively pulled out his phone and checked the screen's reflection.
After hitting twenty percent bloodline awakening, his hair had gone completely white.
Still, the naturally grown silver strands looked far smoother and more lustrous than anything a salon could fake.
"Oh, right—about that sealing technique you mentioned and the ouroboros mark you brought back, I've got a new lead," Constantine said, his expression turning serious. "But I'll need some time to dig through old manuscripts and really study it."
"Got it."
Soren nodded and headed for the door.
At the threshold he stopped and glanced back at Angela, who was still zoning out on the couch. "Officer, don't forget you still owe me money."
The last few days had been nonstop chaos; he'd almost let that slip his mind.
Soren left Constantine's place but skipped the stairs. He climbed straight to the rooftop instead.
With Demonization unlocked, the power inside him was screaming to be let out.
The sky outside had already darkened, the sun sinking low.
He walked to the edge of the roof. Only the cold wind at this height could cool the heat building in his veins.
He looked down at the city that never slept.
Despite the recent string of bizarre incidents, Los Santos still stood tall, drawing in people like moths to a flame.
Then he stopped holding back.
Purple energy exploded outward and swallowed his entire body.
Soren closed his eyes and let the power wash over him.
In the blink of an eye his human clothes and skin vanished, replaced by sleek, powerful biological armor.
Dark bio-armor covered him from head to toe, purple demonic energy flowing through the joints and gathering at his chest.
Long silver-white hair whipped in the night wind. A cold metallic mask hid his face, only his eyes glowing with an unsettling purple light.
Even standing still, the concrete beneath his boots cracked and crumbled.
The snake tattoo of [Valak] coiled around his right arm was absorbed straight into the armor. Behind him it formed a single wing-like cape made of pure energy.
Soren flexed his will. The cape shifted into a venomous snake and lunged forward.
Bang!
The wall exploded into a crater.
He nodded, satisfied. This would make his fighting style even more unpredictable.
Who would expect a harmless-looking cape to turn into a striking serpent at the worst possible moment?
Soren bent his knees and leaped upward.
Mid-air, he studied his new form.
Unlike Dante and Vergil's Demonization—which still kept pieces of their human clothes—Soren's version had stripped everything away. Pure biological armor.
Just as he started to fall, Alastor appeared in his hand.
Now that Demonization was unlocked, Alastor's true value finally showed.
Flight.
The lightning sword seemed to come alive, snapping onto his back and greedily drinking in demonic power.
A pair of crackling thunder wings exploded outward behind him.
One powerful beat and he shot forward in a purple streak, tearing through the clouds like a meteor.
Wind roared past his ears. Gravity meant nothing.
Conquering the sky had always been humanity's oldest dream of freedom.
Soren looked down at the city shrinking beneath him and laughed out loud, pure exhilaration pouring out of him.
A blazing purple trail sliced across the night sky, leaving a long glowing wake between the clouds.
Down on the street, a group of young people stumbling out of a bar looked up, bleary-eyed, pointing at the light. "Meteor? Or some new military jet?"
In just a few minutes Soren had crossed from the southern coast of Los Santos all the way to the endless mountain range in the north.
But the rush didn't last.
A sudden emptiness hit his body.
Maintaining Demonization already burned insane amounts of energy, and Alastor kept sucking it down like a black hole. His reserves ran dry in seconds.
"Shit—am I about to crash?"
The thought barely formed before Alastor cut out. The bio-armor flickered twice and vanished.
Gravity slammed back into him. He plummeted straight toward the dark mountains.
In the woods below, a handful of backpackers were scouting for a campsite with flashlights.
Boom!
A violent rush of wind tore through the trees, followed by a thunderous crash that sent birds exploding into the sky.
"Look! Something just fell!"
A young woman pointed excitedly toward the sound.
Other campers heard the noise and hurried over with their flashlights.
They pushed through the underbrush and found a deep human-shaped crater in the ground.
Empty.
Handprints climbed one muddy wall of the pit.
Fifty feet away, under a tree, Soren leaned against the trunk, gasping for air.
Sharp pain stabbed through his stomach. He winced.
He brushed leaves and dry grass off his coat, then spat dirt out of his mouth.
"Still not enough demonic power."
He could feel every cell in his body screaming with hunger. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he started walking down the mountain.
He needed to focus on raising his bloodline percentage. Only then could he treat flight like actual long-distance travel.
Half an hour later he sat inside a roadside pizza joint.
The few scattered customers all turned to stare at the man by the window.
Covered in dirt, clothes rumpled, he was devouring food like a starving animal.
A stack of eight large empty pizza boxes already towered beside him.
Soren swallowed the last bite and finally felt the hunger ease. He let out a shaky breath.
Still not completely full, but at least his stomach had enough energy to stop complaining.
He raised a hand for the waitress and slid Patty's black card across the table. "Charge it."
This was the emergency fund she'd given him to handle the Carrie situation. It had gone unused, so he'd kept the card.
In the back of a taxi, Soren watched the city lights slide past the window and turned his thoughts to what Patty had told him.
In this city, the only groups that could roll out fully armed tactical teams and armored vehicles weren't just the government.
Deep-pocketed tycoons and factions with tangled military ties kept their own private squads.
Enemy in the light, him in the dark.
He'd been wanting his own dedicated intelligence network for a long time.
Now it was time to pay Papa Midnight a visit and see if the old voodoo king had any fortune-tellers worth recruiting.