Flirting with Sin Ch. 01

Even without the sky-darkening dome, a veil of ashen clouds blotted out the sun and darkened the streets. Rain pelted our heads. Shuu'Vohsa couldn't fly above the buildings to follow Alison even if I had let her.

"Hate the rain," she complained. "Wet! And cold! Why could we not stay in your nest? It is nice there!"

"I'll get you some chocolate eggs on the way back. Stay close," I ordered, grabbing her hand to hurry her along. She chirped sharply in surprise, kicking up puddles as we chased Alison.

The cat demoness led us to a lonesome part of the city, its pothole-filled streets and scabbed sidewalks lined with dark, empty buildings. Not pre-Church, but it was as though the area was renovated some years ago and then absolutely nothing was done with it, left to be worn away by the elements and the homeless.

Which too was odd--this was exactly the kind of place you'd expect to see derelicts eking out a desperate existence in vacant structures and what dry alleyways they could find. Yet there was not a soul around.

Shuu'Vohsa lifted a talon, soaking wet, as the rainwater in the street rode up to the hem of her robe. The drains in the street were clogged with garbage, mud and scum, so the streets were flooded. She huffed and tugged at me to hold out my arm, leaping on it as soon as I complied. Voh was very light, so it wasn't much effort.

Alison dropped down onto the sidewalk next to us, her hair soaking wet. Her eyes darted back and forth between Voh and I, her nose twitching like she was trying to sniff out whether she could trust us.

"The chapel is nearby," she said, outstretching a claw to point farther down the road. "Get out your gun, Trevor. They won't be happy to see me."

"What, you think I'm going to run in there and shoot everyone wearing a cassock?" I scoffed.

Alison hissed, gnashing her teeth. "I think that you are going to do your goddamn job, or I'm going to rip you in half, little Hunter!"

"You will not hurt Mister Trevor!" Voh squawked, leaping off my arm. "I will tear your eyes out, angry cat-lady!"

"Don't get in my way, tweety-bird, if you want to keep the feathers on your head," Alison growled.

Sighing, I put myself between them. "Relax, both of you. Cold day in hell are demonspawn going to fight over me," I grumbled, shaking my head. "Even if we assume that literally everyone inside the chapel is either a demon or a Possessed, we still need a plan."

I tossed Alison her robe who caught it with her face and responded with a questioning mewl.

"Put that back on," I ordered. "You two are going to be acolytes on a pilgrimage."

Typically, a new acolyte has to prove his devotion to the Lord in some form or another to be accepted as one of His servants, but in practice this becomes proving your worth to the priesthood. An oft-accepted form of this is a pilgrimage, wherein the acolyte travels to all the branches of the Church in the city to gather the blessings of the local minister by paying some kind of lip service or doing grunt work.

I still remember my own pilgrimage. Cleaning heretic blood and gore off the floors, carrying buckets of water to be blessed, praying on my knees in the mud and rain for hours at a time. Nothing the clergymen couldn't have handled, but the priests seemed to get a kick out of my toil. Something about 'paying one's dues,' this fetishism the older generation has for sweating blood to get anywhere in life.

Voh adjusted her robe and put her hands together in mock prayer. "Do I get to be a holy person like you? Are we going to sing hymns, and feed the hungry, and and, cure the sick?"

"Is that what you think I--never mind," I dismissed her and turned to Alison. "Put your hood up and follow me. I'll ask them if we can see the minister to bless your pilgrimage."

"Just like that, huh. This isn't a holy place full of clergy, Trevor. I hope you know what you're doing," she muttered, more meows than words.

"Don't worry. If it's as bad as you say, a Hunter come knocking will send the whole heretic's nest into a panic. I'm counting on it."

A muddy knoll up the road stuck out like a sore thumb between the pavement and empty buildings. An old wooden building sat on top, its white and grey rain soaked planks like no other chapel in the city. Definitely pre-Church. How a building so old-fashioned had survived this long within city limits was further than I could guess, but the terrible state of the land around it offered a hint.

The muddy hill it sat on bore no trees, no shrubs, not a single blade of grass. Grey and dead, it was as though the life surrounding the chapel had been sucked dry. One foot in the mud, a sense of dread washed over me; we were definitely being watched.

The wooden double doors creaked open ahead of our approach and a small old man in white vestments with only a tiny tuft of grey hair remaining on his head wandered out, his hands together.

"Welcome, good Hunter. What brings you to this humble place?" he croaked, shaking under the weight of old age.

His eyes were tiny slits in his face, barely open enough to see me. I could only just make out their dull gray color. Suspiciously they scanned the two robed figures behind me.

"I have come to guide these two acolytes on their pilgrimage. We were hoping his holiness, Father Gales, could grant our journey his blessing," I calmly lied.

Alison flinched at the mention of their shared surname. The man's gray caterpillar eyebrow crawled up his forehead, looking at her.

"Father Gales is a busy man, carrying out the duties of the Church, but I am sure the benevolent Father can spare a moment for one such as you, good Hunter," he said with a trained smile. "I shall go and inform him of your arrival. Whom shall I tell him comes asking for his blessing?"

Voh piped up with a cheery tweet. "I am Shu--"

As quickly as I could, I reached behind and closed my hand around her jaw, tightly constricting her lips.

"Trevor Rensor. These acolytes have been newly welcomed as His holy servants, and have for now relinquished their names as part of their pilgrimage. Please, allow us to see Father Gales that they might gain from the presence of his holiness."

Voh's cheeks flushed with warmth. Her stubby tongue stroked my palm. I glanced back at her and she raised her brows up and down at me, giggling when I pulled my hand away.

"Very well," the little old man said, turning around. "Please, come inside. I shall inform him of your coming."

The doors opened straight into the service room. It was a tiny, ordinary chapel, albeit very old. A blue carpet led us down the aisle, past the old wooden pews and stained glass windows. It wasn't well maintained; there was a musty smell of dirt in the air and a layer of dust seemed to have settled everywhere I looked.

This room is never used.

Behind the stage where the altar sat, there were two archways that lead further into the building. A baptism room or maybe a confessional and some extra rooms for storage, I guessed.

"This way, please." The old clergyman pointed down the archway on the left.

Alison let out a low growl, but soon caught herself and went quiet. The clergyman looked around the room, confused.

"Has a stray cat gotten inside?" he puzzled, then shook his head and continued down the hall.

The cat demoness laid a paw on my shoulder and leaned in close. "This isn't right. It wasn't like this before. This isn't the same building...!"

"Play along for now," I whispered.

Down the archway was a long hallway lined with doors. Tan walls and beige carpet, it was a tunnel of featureless bland office rooms. It stretched on for what seemed like a mile--this building didn't look nearly this large when we entered.

The aged holy servant opened a door near us and gestured inside. "Right in here, please. I will go along to inform Father Gales of your coming. If you would be so kind as to wait, he should be along shortly."

I was one step into the door when the smell hit me. A rank, musky smell like the wet stench of a murky swamp. The room was plain as could be, tiny and beige and tan like the hallway, with a small table lined with some chairs. Likely a room for bible study for children. Yet the air was heavy and the smell was thick. As I planted my feet in the carpet, my boots sunk into something viscous and damp.

Alison's nose was twitching, she didn't like it either. Voh's feathers were poking out of the collar; she piped up with a troubled peep.

"Trevor! Wait!" she tweeted in alarm.

"What is the matter, young lady?" wheezed the old man.

Shuu'Vohsa's long 'wings' of hair pushed free from the collar of her robe and lurched toward me. Wrapping around my chest and shoulder, she tugged me toward the hall--in the same moment, the clergyman threw himself against the door, slamming me into the frame.

"Impertinent little bird..." he croaked. The tone of his voice shifted to a low, booming roar. "Such rude guests must pay tribute to the Father!"

He began to laugh, a deep, wicked cackle that echoed down the hallway. His eyes were an eerie red, staring hungrily at Voh like she were an order of fried drumsticks. Shoving and struggling I inched little by little out of the doorway, but he shoved his body against the wood, pinning me.

"Trevor! Cat-lady! Cover your ears!" Voh cried.

Alison's paws flew to her head; I slammed my hands against my ears. A piercing vibration rang out from Shuu'Vohsa's throat, pounding against my eardrums, barely dulled by my hands. The old man slunk away from the door, clutching his head and groaning. He fell to his knees, convulsing.

The walls breathed. The floor shook. The plain wooden doors and tan walls faded from vision; for one confused moment, I was standing in a great black void. The crackle of flame and the smell of smoldering embers were at the edge of my perception, but all I could make out in the dark were Voh's golden feathers and Alison's green eyes, seemingly aglow. Then as if the void was yawning, I felt my perception sucked away somewhere else.

Obsidian stone stained red with blood, flowing through the cracks of every brick in the floor. It drained away down the hall, long and dark and endless. Unnatural fire burning a deep red lit the hallway from sconces constructed from bone. Behind me, through the doorway, a cell overflowing with blood and viscera. My boots were soaked in it.

A bubbling stew of blood, bone and organs. Eyeballs and intestines were scattered around the room, floating in the bloody soup. It was hot enough to sizzle on my boots.

"This chapel is a portal to Inferno!" I realized. "Where was the gate? When did we hit it?"

The man on the dungeon floor, his vestments soaking up blood, squirmed with laughter. The bald patches on his head pulsed sickeningly, his purple veins poking through his scalp. His skin was a ghastly gray like that of a decomposing corpse. His hands were gangrenous, torn flesh giving way to rotting bone.

"You are all fodder for the master!" he screeched, his voice rattling. His eyes were nearly bulging out of their sockets.

"Wh-what is he?" Voh's voice shook.

"An undead thrall," I replied. I drew the magnum and pulled back the hammer, zeroing in on the space between his eyes. "Some incantation cast on him makes you see this place as a normal chapel. By the time a follower of the Church is inside, it's too late. They get tossed in one of these cells, their flesh is boiled, and their blood is used to fuel these satanic rites."

"That a Demon Hunter should consort with his prey..." the undead clergy cackled with ghoulish glee. "We have such delights to show you, Trevor Rensor. A banquet of souls, a feast of infernal flesh. Come! Come and gorge yourself like the beast you are!"

Nonchalantly I pulled the five pounds of weight and sent a silver bullet into his skull, scattering chunks of bone and green rotted brain all over the dungeon floor. The sound of the blast echoed down the hallway for what sounded like miles. In no time at all his flesh faded to ashes and was swept away by the river of blood running through the bricks.

With his unmaking, the passageway was quiet. The drip of blood, the crackle of flame, and Voh's frightened breaths were all I could hear.

"I-I don't like it here," Alison said, clearly shaken. "I saw them lead others down this way. I don't think that passage ever ends. H-he wasn't this way when I was last here. Let's retrace our st--"

Alison stopped dead, staring into one of the nearby cells.

"M-mo-mother?" A tiny, quiet mewl escaped her trembling lips.

The demoness pressed her paws against the cell bars. With disbelieving gasps she tried to mouth speech but words failed her. She struggled with the lock, but the door wouldn't budge.

"Trevor! It's... it's my mother! She's here! She's alive!" she cried, her eyes wide open in shock.

A terrible feeling wrenched my gut.

Looking through the bars past Alison's lowered ears, I saw a cell filled with gore and viscera like the others. Chained against the wall was a long-decomposed corpse, little remaining of it but red-stained bone. I put my hand on Alison's shoulder.

"Alison... There's no one there."

She turned to me with desperate eyes. "No! No, she's right there, can't you see her? She's in pain! We have to help her!"

Shuu'Vohsa looked in from behind us, then shook her head at Alison sadly. "There is no one, Miss Alison."

"Whoever was in this cell died a long time ago," I added somberly.

The demoness's eyes fell to the dungeon floor. One finger at a time, she withdrew her hands from the cell bars. "You're... you're right. Mother is dead. Mother died long ago. She's not here."

Alison placed her hands on her shoulders, hugging herself and trembling for a moment. Then, she extended her claws and tore the robe to shreds. The discarded scraps fell away, her pale skin and auburn fur lit red by the torches.

"Listen to me, Demon Hunter," Alison began, spoken through grit teeth. "I will never forsake the gift Mother gave me. You will have to kill me before that. I am going to take these claws, and I am going to tear out that man's heart. If there is a single pious bone in your body, you will help me."

XIII: The Chapel Beneath

The sound of Alison's paws hitting the obsidian floor carried off down the hall. I tried to call after her, but my voice caught in my throat.

"Alison, wai..."

The darkness swallowed up the sound. I drew in breath to shout, but my lungs seized and my throat burned. I coughed, gurgling on a sudden buildup of liquid in the back of my mouth. Gagging, I coughed it up into my hands--blood.

The torches flickered out, only smoldering crimson embers in their sconces. The blood flowing through the cracks in the stone below bubbled and popped, boiling hot. My temples were throbbing.

"V-Voh, something's not right..." I choked out. "Voh?"

The song demon was nowhere to be found. My only companions in the dark were the sounds of flickering embers and boiling blood.

Step by careful step, I felt along the wall, following the glowing torches. It was much too dark to see where I was going, but If I just retraced my steps and followed after Alison, I'd find my way back out. I was sure of it.

The blood sizzled and smoked on my boots. Drops of it trickled onto my robe from the ceiling. Soon the blood had pooled up around my ankles, steadily getting deeper. It was difficult to walk; chunks of viscera and gore littered the floor and with each step I had to kick them out of the way.

Sobbing and moans came from a cell down the hall, growing louder and louder the closer I drew. Inhuman wails that made my eardrums shudder and my head buzz with pain. The blood was getting deeper and as thick as mud; each step was a great effort.

Peering inside the cell, the softest glimpse of light from the fading torch near the cell door was enough. Inside, slathered in gore, was Alessa chained to the wall. Her skin had dulled to a sickly brown and in several places was torn open, black blood falling away into the stew below. She cried out, her voice so terrible and agonizing I clutched my head in pain.

"Alessa! What happened to you?! I-I'll get you out of there!" I called out to her, choking on the smell of rot.

She looked up at me making an expression I couldn't quite see in the dark, but that I knew wasn't right. Not a frown, or a smile, not a face of despair or relief or fear or pain. Her eyes, tiny red lights staring from a void of black, looked into me and my stomach turned. There was no soul in those eyes.

The rotten brown skin rolled off of her flesh. The muscles, green with decay, sank into the blood and boiled. There was no bone beneath them, but some kind of red pulsating mass that was tearing its way free from the inside. Alessa's face melted away and in its place was something with no eyes, no nose, just a gaping maw of endless teeth. It snapped and bit at the chains restraining it, steaming slobber splashing all over its thin featureless limbs--nothing but claws at the end of its appendages.

The teeth sank into pulsating flesh, pus and blood oozing free from the wound, and it tore its arm free from the chains. Roaring and shaking, the mass pulled away from its other arm, struggling and convulsing, until its entire arm ripped free from the socket, the flesh tearing away. Now free and hyperventilating from that inhuman maw, it turned to the door and roared, the sound enough to rattle the cell bars.

The creature threw itself against the bars, the force enough to shake the enclosure. Plasma oozed from its flesh, a dark red bloody slime, splattered everywhere from the force of the blow. Again it crashed against the cell door, slobbering and screaming. The hinges fell loose and again it smashed its 'face' into the bars, knocking them cleanly away.

Frozen with primal terror, it was all I could do to draw the blade. As the disgusting pulsating mass of flesh and teeth threw itself upon me, I desperately thrust the blade forward and felt the steel sink into--

Nothing.

The cell was empty. There was no blood, no gore, nor any sign that anything other than dust and cobwebs had touched these hallways in untold eons. A single torch next to me was lit, casting a soft light into the hall. I drew it from the sconce and stared into the darkened blade in my hand.

Quiet. The sword's hunger had ceased. I was alone.

What...?

At the end of the hall, the corner turned to another hallway of empty cells and dust. I followed it as far as it went, but ended up facing a dead end. Thinking I must have gone the wrong way, I turned around and followed the corner back, which, curiously, did not turn the same way.

Did I miss a path somehow? Is there a third way?

Following the corridor back I should have eventually arrived at the path we came in from. There were only more empty cells. More cobwebs. Another dead end. This can't be right.

When I turned around to go back the way I came, I caught a glimpse of golden feathers disappearing behind the turn of the corner.

"Voh? Voh!"

I shouted down the corridor, dashing to the corner--but when I reached the turn and looked down the hall, there was no sign of anyone and nowhere they could have gone. Just more locked cells and another dead end.

When I returned to retrace my steps yet again, there was a new opening in the turn of the corner. A tiny hallway barely wide enough to squeeze through, like someone had dug a square hole in the wall. Pushing my way inside I saw a door on the other end, wooden and decrepit.

There was barely enough room to edge through; my robe was scraping against stone on both sides. Inch by inch I pushed further, trying to reach the corridor with the door beyond. It was far enough away that I could just barely make it out in the faint light.