Flirting with Sin Ch. 01

As Voh was sticking out her tongue to jam into my ear, the driver rapped his knuckles against the ceiling of the cab and shouted at us. "Hey, keep it down back there! This is a taxi, not a love hotel. You two start getting wild and I'm gonna kick you to the curb. Your fare don't cover cleaning my fucking seats."

He did eventually kick us out a few blocks away from the well, claiming the cab had begun to stink like bird shit and that I'm lucky he didn't charge me for his Febreeze can. He was just being an asshole, but I did have to wonder the last time Voh had taken a bath. Of course, to me she just smelled like smoke and damnation.

It was a shabby pre-Church neighborhood dotted with little buildings filled with little businesses and ran by little people who were just trying to get by and couldn't afford to live in the city proper. It was maybe ten miles away from the city center but it looked as though I'd stepped out into a small town in some rural countryside. At least you out here you weren't choked by smog.

Voh scraped her talons against the sidewalk and complained. "It is cold and it is wet. You should take me inside somewhere where it is warm," she said in curt displeasure. Then she grabbed my arm and pressed her cheek against my shoulder. "It is very warm next to you..."

I pulled my arm free and began down the sidewalk. "We'll be going inside somewhere soon, don't you worry."

The stench of trash fires burning in metal barrels wasn't far off as we rounded the corner. I'd seen it many times before. People in ratty clothing huddled up around their meager belongings in the subway stations and at bus stops. We would take in these sorts of people at the Church, providing manna meals and bedding for those with no place to go and nothing to eat, but they never lingered for long. Amen and let's eat, then they're gone, back to the gutter from whence they came so they might scrounge for booze or some narcotic.

The road was intersected by railroad tracks, rusted and out of use, the crossties splintered, the rails running off the track here and there. Grass had sprung up all around the tracks, untended and looming over the gravel. I stepped onto the track and began down the wet green hallway between the grass and the trees.

"Where are we going? Are you taking me back to your nest?" Voh trilled.

"Something like that."

A break in the grass along the tracks lead to a short trail, ending in a wooden gate rotting in the rain. A little farmhouse sat alone in the valley, its graying planks long stripped of paint and its windows all but deprived of any glass at all. The door was missing and nothing but darkness lurked within. An old barn sat across from it with a roof that looked prime to fall in and supports that looked ready to crumble at any moment, as well as a fenced prairie for what might have been cows or horses but were now merely mud.

A few paces into the farmyard I saw the well. 'Black' was certainly an apt descriptor for it; the well was surrounded by mud so thick and dark it could have been tar. The bricks were loose and scabbed with rain damage; I imagined a good kick would collapse the whole thing. A pentagram had been scrawled all around it in the earth, the markings several inches deep. Done fairly recently, too, I guessed--the sacrifices could attest to that.

No blood or bone or pounds of flesh strewn haphazardly around the grisly scene like I was used to seeing. Had the well been overflowing with blood or unmoving robed figures slumped over it with daggers in their backs, it would have made sense to me, maybe even been some twisted kind of normal. What I saw instead was a macabre sort of bizarre.

Empty sets of clothes lie discarded all around the well. Shirts and trousers, socks and shoes. Like I'd stumbled on some college kids' secret sex camp. Tossed aside like they couldn't wait to get out of them. Did they throw them aside and jump into the well? The quiet yawn of that dark hole offered no answers.

Looking over the edge, I felt the well belch up a chilling wind. A faint whisper of sound crawling up from someplace near the bottom. The inky blackness of the crevice seemed to grow the longer I stared at it, widening and stretching along the edges of my perception.

Shuu'Vohsa's hair fluttered over the edge as she peered down the well, like it was afraid of being lost in that widening abyss.

"What is this?" she chirped. "It is even darker and colder than out here. Your nest is not through here, is it?"

"Not mine, but someone's, I figure. And that's where I need to go."

I sized her up. There was one way down this well, and as it was lacking a rope, bucket, or absolutely any way of descent besides gravity, it would have to be her.

"Voh. Your hair. Can you...?"

"A songstress's hair is her finest feature. Men once asked me to wrap it around their necks and strangle them with it. I had always thought it a little odd, but if you like..." she said, her feathery strands standing and moving toward me threateningly.

"No, no!" I hastened to correct her, making a cross with my hands. "I was wondering, can you use it to fly? Or float at least?"

At this she stripped off my robe, rolled it up and handed it to me. The raindrops slid over her snow white skin and feathers, and her pink dot nipples were rock hard in the cold. Then her feather-hair began to move up and down, slowly and elegantly, until her talons lifted from the ground and she hovered in the wet air some feet above me. She did not continue to 'flap,' rather her hair was suspended there with her as if floating in water. Voh extended her legs and glided through the air. She twirled, pirouetted and danced for a moment, not at all ashamed of herself or her nude display of freedom, moving through empty space as if it were a swimming pool. She then touched back down to the earth and smiled at me.

"Hell of a thing..." I remarked, then peered back over into the lightless black well. "Listen. I want you to grab me and lower me down into that hole. There might not be an easy way back out, so you'll have to fly out. Can you do that?"

The demon gave a slow, noncommittal nod.

I pulled out the magnum and pushed the cylinder aside. Two shots left. With the remaining two in my pocket, I'd have four bullets if there was anything in that well. I slid them into the chambers and holstered the gun, thinking myself either desperate or very foolhardy to plunge into this hole so unprepared. I saw my doubt echoed in the song demon's face.

Voh pressed her index fingers together and frowned at me. "I am thankful to you for saving me from those men, but I would very much like to go back to your nest."

The look she gave me might have been enough to inspire pity, were she not a hellish abomination from the infernal below. Bringing her here at all hung on my decision to dump her on Alice, but still, I found myself thinking that if there were another way to find Alice, I wouldn't put Voh through this. She hadn't tried to run from me, and despite her corrupting presence really did not seem like she meant ill toward me or anyone else. It may have merely been that she had no way to get back where she came from without me and this world was unfamiliar and frightening to her, so she needed me to a degree. It didn't feel right to use her for my own ends like this.

"After this, I'll take you someplace comfortable for a while. I promise."

I promise? Even I wasn't sure if I actually meant it or if I was toying with her emotions. Still, she clapped her hands together and cheered, then she lifted into the air again, her hair floating in that eerie alien way, and closed her talons around my shoulders. I'd thrown the robe back on and she was gentle enough not to puncture my skin, so the pain was grating and unmistakable, but not wholly unbearable. I climbed onto the edge of the well, felt the bricks nearly give way underneath me, and leapt off into that dark chasm.

A 'lilim,' the doorman called Alice. The daughters of Lilith, Adam's first wife and what many have referred to as the first uppity woman, as she refused to be subservient to him. She left the Garden of Eden and coupled with fallen angels. Her progeny were demonic daughters who inherited their mother's beauty, charm, and dominant nature. Some believe her bloodline has bled into humanity itself and many women today are, in truth, lilim.

Alice's pouty black lips, her orange skin shining in the rave lights, her burning eyes, her sultry tone and the heated glances she gave me. She had the looks and the charm to be a lilim, for certain, and it seemed many men had already fallen under her spell.

Thinking about her two tongues slithering out to run wet over her black lips, the little glance down her shirt she offered me, couldn't have been a mistake, the heat of her breath as she pulled me close in the alleyway, I felt the devil on my shoulder poking me with his trident. He knew full well of my desires. As sinful and shameful as they are, I could not deny them. Alice was a daughter of Hell, yes, but she was beautiful.

They never teach you how powerful a demon's charm is, how hard they are to resist. How you look them in the eyes and want more than anything, more even than to go on living, to just give yourself over to them and do exactly as they tell you.

Glancing up at the songstress holding me by the talon, I saw the light fade away above us. Ordinarily I think I'd have gotten a good look at her nethers, but the dark of the well completely swallowed up my sight. After only a few feet, there were no bricks, no soil, just an endless expanse of blackness. A wispy wind blew through Voh's hair, I heard it singing against her feathers, the only sound to accompany that lightless void.

"I cannot see..." Voh whined, her voice shaking.

"Just a bit farther," I urged.

We were several minutes of descent into the Well. We had to be some several hundred feet down, though the lack of any visual clues made it hard to guess how far. The songstress's grip on me had wavered, but she held on fast, if not to keep me safe than at least to have something tangible to hold on to. Even if she began straight back up, I wasn't certain we'd be able to find our way back out. I wasn't certain there was a way back out.

Then I felt something wet tapping my robe. A dribble of moisture slid down my nose and to my lip. Instinctively, I tasted it--thick and warm, distinctly iron. Blood.

Shuu'Vohsa fluttered in a panic above me. "It is hot down here. And what is this hot rain? I want to get out of here, I want..."

A shrill chirp escaped her mouth, almost like a shriek, before being swallowed up by a thick wave of the liquid rolling over us. For a brief, crazed moment, the blood swept us apart and I was rolled, tossed and heaved into its lightless depths. Blind, deaf and dumb, I scrambled for anything to grab onto, but there was nothing, nothing but the embrace of the black.

Then I felt Shuu'Vohsa's legs wrap around me, her claws securing themselves in a tangle around my chest, and she pulled me upward. We breached the surface, choking and sputtering for breath. She clung to me desperately, shaking, terrified.

"... Lost you," was all she could manage, gasping for breath.

Before I could say anything a faint orange light appeared in the distance, flickering and morphing like a candle light. Thoughtlessly I began to swim towards it, thrashing my way through the blood and pulling Voh along with me.

The liquid was a deep and opaque crimson as sight crawled into view. There was a torch sitting on a tiny island of cinder jutting out from the ocean of blood, as well as a white door standing in the middle of it, frame and all, like a bright blot of paint against the canvas of black.

I crawled onto the jagged rock, hauling my body over the edge. Voh couldn't fly, her feather-hair was matted to her head by the thick red goop clinging to us. We were covered head to toe in blood; I was afraid to wipe my eyes lest I rub the blood into them. Voh's hair lifted up and down and 'flapped,' splattering the red slime everywhere. We just stared at one another for a moment in utter disbelief at the hellish insanity we had just experienced.

"This... we are not on Earth anymore, I think," Voh said, glancing around at all the nothing surrounding us, the ocean of blood.

"Well," I muttered, my breathing labored and blood dripping from my lips, "let's open this crazy fucking door and see what we even came down here for."

The knob was stiff and difficult to turn, the latchbolt protesting movement with a squeak. The door slowly creaked open, centimeters at a time, grinding against the cinder until finally enough purchase had been made to see what was on the other side.

Moody lights, a polished hardwood floor, and a red man in a suit's baritone notes greeted us on the other side--a singer and a stage. Seated at round tables surrounding the stage were figures with leathery skin and spikes protruding from their faces. They drank swirling gray liquid from shot glasses, while others drank blood from skulls. Imps and lesser demons.

There was a bar with a wall of spirits--swirling and silently moaning and begging for release inside the glass--and a skeleton manning the taps, serving blood and marrow to the fiends lapping it up on the stools. There were a few windows lining the walls that lent a perplexing view of inky darkness and profound nothingness, like the whole place sat in vacant space.

"Oh! This is a nice place! Why did you not tell me this is where we were going?" Voh gave a cheery chirp, instantly forgetting the hell we had gone through to get here.

Nobody paid us any heed as we stumbled through the door and tracked blood onto the hardwood sheen, nor did they look up when we slumped into the padded chairs at an empty table and nearly collapsed backward into the seatrests. I felt like I might throw up or pass out, my vision a little woozy, but Shuu'Vohsa was getting into the singer's song, tweeting quietly along with him. It might have been cute, were she not slathered in plasma.

There was a small glass dome in the middle of the table with a fountain erupting with drops of orange and blue flame, melting bits of fire that then drained away below. Every now and then I would get a glimpse of what I could swear was a face staring back at me from the flame, its eyes wide and empty.

"Well look what the cat dragged in."

The voice carried across the table with a sultry giggle. Standing there next to us was a woman with orange skin and black stripes, rearranging themselves in different shapes as she stared down at me with a mischievous toothy smile. She wore a pinstripe dress, red and black, with a small black apron tied around her waist.

"What can I getcha, mister Hunter? Maybe some worms for tweety here?" she asked, placing her hands on her hips and rocking them back and forth.

"I do not like worms, much. Goats are fine, or we could eat a newborn. I have had no problem with those offerings in the past," Voh trilled.

"Alice! What the hell is this place?" I asked, equal parts surprised and relieved to see her.

"'Hell's' not quite right, but close. S'more like a pocket hell, a hole leaking out of Inferno into nowhere. It's the Black Lounge, babe," she explained while examining her long black nails. "Anyway if you wanted to know where I worked you coulda asked me. That way you wouldn't have had to come in through that asshole in the Earth."

"I was told if we went to the Black Well we'd find you."

"He wanted to roost in your nest, I think," Voh chimed in unhelpfully.

Alice blinked at her, long lashes fluttering over her deep black orbs. "Where'd you find this little birdie?"

"Mister Hunter saved me from some bad men. Then he dragged me down a dark hole where we almost drowned," Voh chirped cheerfully.

"I was looking for a way to get her back to Inferno rather than just putting one between her eyes. Seemed like she'd been having a rough day. Least I could do," I explained.

"How very noble of you, Trevor. What a paragon of virtue," Alice sighed. She lowered her eyes and gave me a sour look; that was bullshit and she knew it. She went on, "I've had people who crossed me dumped in that well, but you're kidding yourself if you think I use it to get in here. It's a portal, yeah, but it's the worst one I could think of. Most people who leap in there drown... which I'm guessin' almost happened to you," Alice snickered. "So. How'd your little tussle with Alison go?" she asked, pointedly.

I just shook my head at her as blood dripped from my hair onto the table. She nodded, knowingly.

"That good, huh. And now I suppose you're here to beg me for my help? 'Oh, Alice, save me from the big mean kitty! Save me!'" The demon girl mocked me by raising her hands up near her face and making pawing motions at me. She bared her teeth and hissed, barely containing her laughter.

"He does smell like a cat. What happened?" Voh asked.

"If I had to guess, Alison pounced on you like a squirming little mouse and ate you up," the demon girl teased, her tongues running over her lips.

"Shut the fuck up," I groaned.

"I'm hurt, Trevor. You said you'd show me a good time! And then you run off and two-time me with that hussie! Men are just bastards, aren't they, tweety?" Alice poked Voh's shoulder with her elbow.

"... The offer's still up, Alice. If you help me, we can spend a little time together. I'll even keep the right gun in my pants this time."

"Ohhh no, buster," she said, leaning forward and glaring at me. "You had your chance. I was all hot and bothered and ready to go back on Earth. Putty in your hands. All you had to do was touch me and I would have melted. But you just had to be Mister High-and-Mighty Hunter-man, waving his gun around and taking off to do more important things like get fucked by a cat. Well you listen here, buddy, I got a thousand men who'd tear out their own heart to sniff my fucking taint! So if you want to get in my good graces, you better start doing nice things for me! And I mean right now!"

I was covered head to toe in blood, my pride had been severely wounded, I was babysitting a dimwitted demonspawn and the Church would remove my head from my shoulders if they knew I came to this pocket of hell without killing each and every hellion inside. And now this she-devil was looking down on me and making demands?

Steam puffed from my nose. My teeth were grinding hard enough to produce sparks. I was here to ask her for a favor and so I did owe her one in return, but I was not about to let her get away with mouthing off at me.

In a flash of wet red, I reached over the table and grabbed her hand.

"Please, Alice, grant me the pleasure of a night together with you. I promise to make it worth your while," I said, and planted a blood-moist kiss on her hand.

"Th-that's not gonna work!" she stuttered, and snatched her hand away. "You're not very sexy while you're all covered in ketchup, Trevor." The demon girl sighed and ran her orange fingers through her hair. "Alright, listen, I'll help you out. Come with me. You too, Big Bird."

The demoness led us back across the lounge, retracing our bloody steps. Some of the imps whispered and snickered, I overheard 'another victim' and 'tasty smelling soul' among the mumblings. We stopped in front of the door we'd came in, but before I could voice my confusion Alice was drawing a symbol on it with her finger.

From the point her index touched, a black flame sprouted and followed after her movements like she was drawing a lit wick. It was a demonic runeword that I couldn't identify, but visually it appeared to be a swirl of spikes surrounding a crooked star. With the runeword burnt into the door she gave a polite knock as if asking to be invited in, and the door crept open.