The city was already half-possessed before midnight.Halloween turned its streets into a carnival of light and rot: neon bleeding into fog, candy wrapping itself to boots, laughter echoing from a thousand mortal throats that had never learned the taste of real fear. Windows flickered orange, music thumped from bars, and every alley breathed like a furnace fed by wine and smoke.

Alastor moved through it all as a conductor through an orchestra pit. Each passing car horn became a trumpet in his private symphony. He tapped the pavement with his cane and the lights obeyed—streetlamps flashing in rhythm, traffic signals blinking in percussive applause. A radio far above switched itself on, crackling with a tune older than the city: “When the moon’s your chandelier, darling, what’s a little sin?” The crowd cheered; they thought it a trick of good speakers.

Children pointed at him, admiring the “costume”—the bow tie too crisp, the smile too exact, the faint shimmer of antler-shadow that crowned his head when the wind shifted. He bowed to them, let his laughter spill from unseen speakers, and strolled on. Behind him, shadows grew long and twitching. Balloons burst into flocks of crows. Store windows filled with static that shaped itself into smiling faces. He was only warming up.

And then—something wrong in the rhythm. One of his conjured jack-o’-lanterns snuffed itself out, not by wind but by will. Another light, meant to follow his gesture, dimmed in defiance. His grin froze, then sharpened. Someone else was playing.

At the end of the block stood a woman dressed for the night’s masquerade—so the mortals thought. Her glamour shimmered just enough to fool them: a human outline painted over something deer like and ancient. Where Alastor’s mischief had been flamboyant, hers was subtle, surgical. While he made the city sing, she made it forget: street signs reversed themselves, alleyways swapped places, lovers walking hand in hand found different partners at the corner. Chaos, but with precision—his mirror opposite.

He admired that. And he despised it.

They met in the middle of an intersection ringed with fog and colored lights. To the humans around them, it was just two costumed performers about to dance. To everything that could see, the air itself tightened like drawn wire.

“Good evening,”Alastor purred, voice rolling through the speakers of every car parked nearby.“A charming little symphony I had going—until someone rewrote my score.”

Her eyes gleamed under the streetlight, reflection like cold glass.“Your tune was too loud,”she said softly.“I prefer harmony.”

The words shouldn’t have stung, yet they did. He leaned closer, cane tapping once against asphalt.“Then play, my dear. Let’s hear your version.”

The city obliged. Sirens howled without cause; streetlights blinked in Morse patterns that meant run. The smell of ozone and roses filled the air as their magics crossed—his radio static against her forest hush. Mortals laughed and clapped, mistaking terror for performance.

For a heartbeat he forgot the crowd. He watched her move: the tilt of her head, the poise between grace and feral instinct. She was built of everything he loved—beauty that promised ruin. When her glamour faltered for just a moment, he saw the truth: ears curved like living calligraphy, pupils elongated to slits, skin glimmering faintly with patterns of a young female deer. His heart, long dormant, stuttered like a skipped record.

“You’re no human trickster,”he murmured“You’re kin.”

“And you,”she replied,“are far too pleased with yourself.”

Their laughter cracked the nearest windows.

Then came the duel.

Shadows leapt from his feet and formed a spinning lattice; she answered with a storm of autumn leaves turned to razors. He dissolved into static and reappeared behind her; she caught him with a sweep of her arm, hooves slicing the air where his throat had been. Every blow sparked color—crimson, gold, electric white—painting the night sky above the rooftops. The city below saw fireworks and roared approval. They didn’t notice the smell of burning ozone or the fact that gravity bent slightly sideways for a few seconds.

When at last they paused, breath steaming, both were smiling—predator smiles, edged and gleaming. The fog itself seemed to pulse between them. The air carried that unmistakable weight that comes before surrender or kiss or kill; the difference was only angle.

“We appear evenly matched,”Alastor said, smoothing his lapel though his sleeve smoked.She tilted her head, hair falling like a blade of light.“Evenly cursed, perhaps.”

He chuckled, the sound curling through every streetlamp for a block.“A stalemate bores me. A duet does not. Partner with me—this city still has heartbeats left to steal.”

Her answering smile was slow, dangerous. The streetlights flickered in time with it. Perhaps the humans would remember tonight as the best Halloween they’d ever seen. Perhaps they would never remember it at all.

And high above them, two demons stood amid the wreckage of their mischief, the city their stage, the moon their spotlight—drawn not by mercy or goodness but by the intoxicating discovery of a kindred monster.