Flirting with Sin Ch. 03

Our lips parted for the briefest of moments. Alice was straddling my hips, staring at me as if hypnotized. Then she smirked impishly and giggled.

"Just can't help yourself, huh? You really are my slave. Come and pray at my altar, church boy..."

She leaned into me and planted a tiny kiss on my bottom lip, as she had before. A claiming kiss. My heart was running a marathon in my chest. She was right, loathe I am to admit it. Her body was sweet incense and I was under her spell. I threw her down on the hay bed and clambered over her—when a loud bang rumbled against the side of the hut.

"Stop face-sucking that mortal in my home, imp! This is not a brothel!"

Giritholl's voice muffled through the wall. Alice and I gave each other an awkward look, blushing. I felt shame bubble up from my gut as I moved to sit on the floor. For several tense moments neither of us said anything.

"This ain't over," Alice said finally. "You started something and I expect you to finish it, Trevor. It'll just have to wait."

The demoness sat on the floor next to me, scooted close, and then grabbed my jaw and forced me to look into her eyes. "So listen to me. As your master, I'm telling you that ya can't die. You're not allowed until I say, got it? Once you've dealt with Alison, you better come right back and finish this. Or there'll be hell to pay, holy man."

Alice stood up, dusted off her dress, and winked at me before disappearing out the entrance. I let my head fall back against the hay bed and stewed in impotence.

It was miserably hot and humid inside the hut. It weighed me down, I could hardly move. The strength-sapping despair of the depths of Hell could be felt even in this remote plane. Or perhaps the lilim's corrupting presence had taken its toll on me—we had been together for hours. The holy symbols and the church's blessing would not protect me from her forever.

I fell in and out of sleep, occasionally stirred by the sound of demonic womens' muffled giggles outside the hut, the banging of metal on metal, or the distant moaning of a lost soul.

The room was darker than I first realized. The only source of light was trailing in from the entrance, the ambient glow of red sand and the black void above. The hut seemed to trail off into darkness beyond the walls of runed weapons. I tried to sit up to better take in the room, but my body was very heavy.

My stomach wound into a knot. A bead of sweat trailed from my forehead to my chin and fell to the dirt. My breath caught in my throat. The air tasted stale, like the dusty stench of this pocket of hell hadn't moved in centuries. I heard the sand shift, the air stir. There was something in there with me.

In the corner of my vision the shadows crept up on me, slowly swallowing up the light, black tendrils creeping along the ground, the walls, the ceiling. I felt its gaze on me, the pressure of its stare. I couldn't move a muscle. Claws of shadow crawled onto my body, an itching feeling like tiny insects, their hundreds of little legs pricking my skin. A deep growl filled my senses—it was all around me, under and below and inside my tiny presence in this ever-expanding mass of dark. A hiss from deep inside the blackness, slit eyes peeking into me. I could feel them, sense them in my soul. A primal fear welled up within me. There would be no escape, no mercy. Not this time.

She's found me.

I clenched my fists and stared into the dark as it engulfed the hut. Its breath grew closer until I could smell it, like rotting meat, the rancid stench of a beast who had gorged itself on flesh, the stink of sinew, the quiet moaning of lost souls forever boiling in a demon's gut. A terrible pause in the air—it was coiled, poised, ready to pounce, rip the flesh from my bones, tear out the marrow, suck out the soul. And with a terrible roar, its muscles fired and it leapt upon me.

All at once I sprang from the floor and closed my hand around its neck. In one fluid motion I redirected its trajectory into the wall and pressed my weight against it, shoving my arm into its windpipe. The creature, formless, dark, its terrible demonic body imperceptible to me gnashed and writhed and clawed at my arms. Then, between its pained wheezing, the voice of a scared girl.

"Trevor! Trevor! It's me!"

The beast was gone. There were no dark tendrils, no stench of decaying flesh. Underneath my arm was the lilim, her orange face turning red, her stripes scattered, her fingernails digging into my arm. I let go and she fell to her knees, coughing, hacking and sputtering. She wore a look of disbelief and anger.

"What... the hell... is wrong... with you?!" she wheezed.

"I—I thought—thought you were someone else. Someone, something was in here..."

Alice looked at me like I had completely lost it. Perhaps I had. Eventually she caught her breath and looked around the room, but the shadow had passed. The feeling in my gut like my intestines were wrapped around it was gone. When she was satisfied, she grabbed my chin with her thumb and index finger.

She watched the pain spread on my face as her burning hot fingers imprinted their heat on my skin and smirked. "You're wound up like a spring, aintcha? Little Trevor have a bad dream? Well, Alice is here now. I'll make sure no scary monsters get you. Come on, Girty's done with your stuff."

"... Already?"

"It's been hours. She works pretty fast. You been in here the whole time, sleepin' like a baby." She rubbed her thumb against my cheek in a painful hot swirl. "And what a cute little baby you are, Trevor."

In Giritholl's grip was a gleaming silver blade, long and jagged and pulsing madly with light like a caught rabbit trying to squirm free. The handle was entirely new, large and thick and black with some kind of obsidian jewel encased near the crossguard. I could scarcely believe it was the same weapon.

"Feast your eyes on Lightbane, Hunter! I have brought your loathsome dagger to heel! Here, catch."

The demon tossed the blade at me; the handle struck my hand with a terrible weight. There was much more here than I had left the smithy—a certain darkness dwelled within the blade that had not been present before. The black gem in its grip was perfectly dark as if resisting light. I turned it back and forth, looking over the wicked edges she had chiseled into the blade.

"It's longer, sharper. And this... this is a soul-gem," I said matter-of-factly, disregarding the utter horror of what she had done to my weapon.

The familiar feeling of holy energy coming from the weapon was shadowed by an unmistakable sensation of hunger. I could almost hear it whispering to me, though not in words. It was a lust for blood. My blood, her blood. Bubbling up from my subconscious was a hunger for death.

"Oh, yes, yes it is. Under normal circumstances I would charge a hefty fee for such a thing, but for one such as the imp's pet, I give it to you as a gift. I know, I know, I am too kind," Giritholl said, smirking. She reached out and pricked her finger on one of the blade's teeth, then stuck her finger in her mouth.

Giritholl reached over to her anvil and retrieved my gun, twirling it around her finger and pointing it at me before offering it to me. At first glance it was exactly the same.

"Watch closely. If you offer its chamber a drop of blood..." she said, squeezing the cut on her finger until a dribble of boiling demonic blood fell into the cylinder, "it will need no bullets."

She held my hand in hers and forced me to point the gun at the void above and fire. An earsplitting blast erupted from the chamber, as did a gush of crimson liquid hurtling toward infinity at blinding speed.

"I would advise against using your own. Prick your fingers, and it will lick them. It may acquire a taste for a human's lifeblood, sweet and invigorating as it is. Is that not the truth, imp?"

Alice blushed and shook her head angrily.

"Thank you, Girty!" she exclaimed through grit teeth. "Let's get outta here, Trevor, before she makes me bite off your dick or somethin'."

There is no simple way for a mortal to leave Inferno. The nine circles of Hell stretch on infinitely in every direction, its realms twisting and morphing to accommodate the torture of those unlucky enough to inhabit it. I could find a form of solace in that—if I chose to merely remain here, the Church couldn't hunt me down like an animal and cut off my head. All I had to give in return was my immortal soul and an eternity of suffering.

No, I would need Alice's help to leave.

The rolling hills of bloodsand were entirely different from what I remembered. There were no landmarks, nothing in the distance to mark our path. Still, the lilim marched on through the sand in her black dress like she knew exactly where she was going.

"Huh. Guess she was bluffing?" Alice said, looking across the dunes. "Girty told me some 'friends' of hers were headed out this way 'cause they'd heard someone spotted a Hunter. But I figured we would've ran into 'em by now..."

Below my feet, the bloodsand churned. It shifted and rippled below me, something moving just beneath the surface, threatening to toss me off my feet. Then a hand emerged from the sand, black and metallic, and grabbed my ankle.

Kicking myself free, I fell backward into the sands as forms from below pushed to the surface. Tall skeletons, their bones charred of any flesh, their chests and arms covered with hellwrought armor. Mounted on their shoulders were miniature rocket launchers, laser sights homing in on my chest and face. Their empty jaws fell open and a chorus of twisted screams wracked my eardrums.

"Me and my big mouth," Alice snickered, hands over her ears. She leapt behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. "Protect me, mister Hunter! I'm a frail and helpless little girl! Save me from the big bad Revenants!"

I grunted and brushed her off. With a screech, the monster before me lunged forward, the twisted metal of its jagged hands raised. Leaping to my feet I drew the blade—light as a feather, it sang through the air and sank into the skeleton's armor, cleaving free an entire arm. The mess of bones and steel fell with a thunk into the sand.

The blade was restless in my hands, as if sensing danger—no, like it was eager for it. The bone-monster, barely phased by its lost limb, roared and threw its remaining claws at me. The blade dove into the metal guarding its ribcage and, almost of its own volition, cut upwards through the spine, the ribs and the jaw. The monster dropped to the sands in pieces.

Lasers sighted to my head and a series of high pitched beeps filled my ears. A skeleton leapt at me and clawed at my robe, while one of the arms I'd cut loose into the sand was moving about on its own and grabbing at my leg. I plunged the blade into the Revenant's skull and kicked it loose, and took off into the dune to put distance between my face and the incoming rockets. Swirls of smoke, a stream of screaming missiles, two at a time, flew after me. I drew the revolver and fired—fireworks lit up the hellish black void as the projectiles collided.

Another Revenant emerged from the sand below me, its charred skull flapping its jaw and screeching at me, its jagged, broken teeth closing in on my jugular. I raised the blade to defend myself, but it became heavier than it was just a moment before—and before I realized it, the softly humming sword had grown a foot and sunk itself into the crumbling bone of the monster's skull.

Kicking the brittle bones away, I stared dumbstruck at the thing; it was now the length of a bastard sword, its teeth long fangs protruding from the side. The light shining from the silver steel grew and dampened, like it were breathing.

A claw caught me in the back, tearing the robe, but before I could even react, a second blade appeared from the sword's hilt, materializing as if from nothing, and stabbed the monster in its empty eyesocket. As the skeleton clattered to the ground, the second blade disintegrated in a flash of light and was gone, like it were never there at all.

I stared into the soul gem, its lightless gleam. Deep within I could feel something asserting its will on me. A voice, too quiet to hear, but could be felt very softly. If I wasn't vigilant, this weapon would control me.

The thought repeated in my head, stay in control, as I ran the blade through the steel and ribs of another Revenant's chest and scattered its blackened bone across the sands.

Stay in control, I thought, as the magnum blared and chunks of skull and teeth went flying in every direction. Don't let it do whatever it wants. It's a tool, I told myself, as I sheared the limbs from a Revenant and left it screeching there in the sand. Even as I cut a skeleton's skull from its spine and kicked it across the dunes, I kept reminding myself to be cautious.

The demonic skeletons lay in scattered piles of blackened bone and scrap metal around my feet. I stuffed the blade back under my robe, strapped it to my belt, and the voice fell silent.

Alice punched me on the shoulder.

"My hero!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands together. "I don't know what I'd do if you weren't there to protect me, good Hunter! Oh, I'd be lost without you!"

I rolled my eyes and began to walk away.

"Hey, where ya goin'? What part of 'I'd be lost without you' didn't you hear? I'm your saintly maiden and you're my loyal friggin' knight! Come back here and escort me, damn it!"

She leapt onto my back and threw her searing arms around my neck. Her steaming hot breath was in my ear.

"'Sides, it's that way," she said, pointing.

X - Of a Feather

The wood sizzled as Alice scrawled a runeword into it with her finger, a trail of flame following after her index. The door was in the building's foyer and probably led to a closet, but it would be my only way back home.

Once the runes were carved into the door—a series of circles with demonic letters in the overlaps—she turned the knob and pulled it open. A dingy, abandoned avenue lay on the other side. I recognized the decrepit buildings and scabbed streets; it wouldn't take long to find my way back from there.

"Trevor," Alice said. "Promise me somethin' before you go, alright?"

"What?"

She gave me a sly grin. "Don't let any other girls drink your blood. As your master, it belongs to me, got it? We both ate the pomegranate—I'll know if there's somebody else."

I shook my head at her. "You got it, 'Mistress Alice.' I'll try to keep my blood in my body."

I took a step through the door. Halfway onto the wet asphalt of the mortal world, I heard a loud squawk and the sound of flapping feathers. Behind me, the excited face of a songstress, her hair kicking up a gust of wind that nearly knocked me over before she collided with my back at breakneck speed and we both tumbled onto the rain-slick road.

"Voh! Goddamnit!" I shouted.

Scrambling to my feet I ran after the door, Alice's face disappearing behind the wood. It clicked shut—I threw it open and saw only the dark, dusty interior of an abandoned apartment complex.

"I—I am sorry, sorry, mister Hunter, sorry. It is just that I had not seen you in so long, and I thought you were going to leave me in that place, and then there you were in the door, and I got excited, and, and..."

"You were supposed to stay there," I sighed. Back to babysitting the fucking bird.

Shuu'Vohsa's blonde feathers, as fine as locks of hair, fell about her body in a heap on the ground. Her talons scraped the street as she picked herself up. Rather than walk around naked like she seemed to prefer, she had covered her shame in a simple white toga that cut off around her thighs—so as not to restrict her long chicken legs, I guessed. It wouldn't do her much good in this rain for long.

"Where did you go? Did you roost in that woman's nest? I did not like her. She smelled like smoke and had scary eyes. She did not hurt you, did she?" Voh flit about, circling around me and tugging at my clothes and my hair.

"I'm fine, Voh."

"That is good, that is good! That place was odd. There was no one else there. I took my bath and washed my hair and I found this garment—you said I should wear clothes, so I thought you would be happy if you saw me in it—but there was no one else. I knocked on every door I could find but no one answered." Voh spoke in a hurry, her words like quick chirps. "And there were so many rooms. But if I could get inside, it was empty. Or it lead to strange places where it was dark and cold and lonely, and you were not there. So I searched and searched. And then I found you."

The song demon hooked her arm around mine and gave me an expectant look.

"So? Shall we go? Back to your nest? It is wet, here. I do not like to be wet," she said pointedly.

I looked to the heavens and silently prayed for the Lord to take me then and there. Was I being tested? Is this a punishment for falling to temptation? Will the heavens part and a holy angel, cloistered in gold and light, come down and sever my head from my neck should I fail to deliver this devil back to the place she belongs?

Voh rubbed her wet feathers against my shoulder, smiling contentedly. It was pissing me off. How harmless she was frustrated me. If only she were a Revenant or a Hell Knight I could just blow her head off and be done with it.

We were some miles away from the city proper. Stretches of pre-church streets, crumbling buildings and mud lay between us and civilization. Off in the distance, unrestrained woodland was reaching out its gnarled roots and retaking the abandoned valleys.

This far away from the city, the streets were silent save for the rain. The decrepit buildings rustled as we passed them, the glow of beady eyes through grimy windows watched our passing. Voh seemed completely oblivious to our bleak surroundings, however.

"Will we be there soon? I did not need a shower, I just had one," she said, before lifting up my robe and tucking her head inside it.

"No."

For the next half-mile or longer, I walked the streets with Voh cooing under my clothes. She kept peeking her eyes out of the collar to see where we were going before ducking back under my arm. I should have been annoyed and pushed her out, but her chicken-leg strides were long enough that walking never became awkward.

The dead streets stretched on and on. I could see the city in the distance, the neon lights of high-rises lining the sky, the cross affixed to the grand cathedral standing tall in the night, its orange glow like a great blaze looming over the black-violet gloom.

Alice could have put me closer to the fucking town.

"Will we... ahm, be there? Soon?" Voh peeped.

The song demon spoke with a sleepy droll. It occurred to me that she probably hadn't slept since before I found her in that alleyway, and who knows how many hours had passed in the hellish pocket we had gone into looking for Alice.

"Yeah, soon," I lied.

She nodded at me through my collar and obediently continued walking, albeit slower and more awkwardly than before. Soon it became a problem and I gently forced her out from under my robes.

"I am sorry, mister Hunter. I just need to... to sit down..."

Shuu'Vohsa collapsed into a heap of white cloth and blonde feathers on the wet concrete. I sighed heavily. For a brief moment I considered just leaving her in the street—come morning she would no doubt find an earthworm to dig up before building herself a nice nest in the trees nearby. She'd be fine, I told myself.

I shook my head and ran a hand down my face. No, no...

"M-mister Hunter?!"

She squawked as I hoisted her up and cradled her in my arms, squirming but too weak to escape. As I took off down the street with her in my grasp she relaxed, laying her head against my bicep.