Flirting with Sin Ch. 04

"Trevor... Trevor...!" she cried, grinding her lower half against me.

In the midst of her heated cries she didn't notice as I reached into my pocket and grabbed the lump of metal waiting there. The shards dislodged themselves from her back and scattered the alley around us until they reformed again. She rose and sat on my groin, rocking her hips back and forth, her purrs so loud I could feel them vibrating her entire body.

Then, all at once as she let out a pleased sigh and her cheeks were flushed a rosy red, I pushed myself up and slammed the cross into her chest.

An ear splitting scream filled the alley. Alison howled in agony, tearing at my robe and my back. I heard her skin sizzling and bubbling beneath the rosary. Tears welled up in her eyes; she stared up at me pleading wordlessly for mercy. There would be none.

Above me, I heard the cawing of a bird.

"Mister Trevooooor!"

A flash of gold feathers filled my vision as the wind was kicked up all around me. A woman with flowing blonde and white locks--a head of shining feathers, suspending her in the air as the strands 'flapped' up and down--dressed in one of my spare robes. She beamed at me as I took notice of her looking like a cloistered nun.

"Voh?! I told you to--"

The wind was violently ejected from my body; in the distraction Alison kicked me several feet. I crashed into the brick wall lining the alley and crumbled in a heap on the ground, the rosary falling next to me.

Snarling and grasping the cross-shaped burn on her chest, Alison glared death into me. She leapt onto her paws and yowled, bits of saliva flying from her mouth.

"I'm going to the chapel, Trevor! If you don't want every last Church servant I see to die, you will follow me! You will kill him!"

Alison primed her legs and sprung high into the air. She bound off the walls of the alley until she kicked herself up to the roof where she sat on her paws and watched me. Those green eyes glimmered in the dark above, the black outline of her tail swishing back and forth.

"Scary cat-woman!" Voh cawed. "Did she hurt you? Are you alright?"

Shuu'Vohsa touched down next to me and traced her fingers over the tears in my robe, worried coos coming from her lips all the while. Her hands came away bloody.

"Ohh! Oh no!" she squawked. "Mister Trevor! You are hurt!"

"I'm fine, Voh, I just--grrhhk!"

I tried to stand up, but the gash in my side where Alison's claws dug into me sent a terrible pain screaming through my core. I fell back to the concrete, groaning.

Voh hopped from one talon to the other, panicking. "I can help! I can help! Just hold still!"

With shaking fingers, the songstress undid the buttons on my robe, revealing my blood-soaked undershirt. She rolled it up to reveal a nasty tear--if Alison's claws had dug any deeper my intestines would lie splayed all over the alleyway.

Shuu'Vohsa stretched out her hair, like two living tendrils of blonde feathers, and wrapped it around my abdomen.

"I know a song! A song that can help!" She put a finger to her chin and looked doubtful for a moment. "Oh, but it is meant to heat up mens' blood so that they cannot think of anything but lust. But, but! It should help you!"

"How is that going to--"

Ignoring me, Voh became swept up in a chorus of cheery tweets. The songstress's hair was tight around my body applying pressure to the wound. The song itself was slow and sultry; Voh stared into my eyes as she sang. My body quickly became hot, like steam was rising from my stomach to my head and blowing out my ears.

"Come, careless boy... I will hie thee away... All of your worries, your troubles, shall fade..."

I felt my pulse everywhere. My toes, my arms, my neck. I felt it in my ears, and I swear I could feel it in my nails and hair. The blood was boiling hot in my veins and I was sweating bullets. Voh squeezed tight on my midsection; I felt like at any moment I'd melt right out of my clothes.

When she finished singing and pulled her wings away--now covered in blood--I ran my hands over my abdomen to find the gash had been scabbed over. If I moved wrong it would open up again, but the pain had significantly waned.

"How did...?" I mumbled in confusion.

"Your blood got hot!" she chirped. "My mother always told me it is your life force, so I should drink it to be strong. So I thought, ahm, thought that if I made it pump real fast, you would get better."

I gave her a cold look. "How many times have you drank a man's blood?"

"Ahh, err--only a few times! And, and, only when they offered it to me!" she stammered, shrinking under my gaze.

'Truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.' For a brief moment I wondered if Shuu'Vohsa's mother had read scripture to her.

I just shook my head. Looking up to Alison's perch, she was still there staring down at me. In her emerald glare I could sense what it was she wanted. Despite being at each other's throats only moments ago, still she expected me to go along with her murderous game.

If I wanted to get this rosary around her neck I'd have to play at going along with it.

"Voh," I called to the bird-girl and gestured to my raised right arm.

The songstress let out a peep and soared to my arm, gripping it with her talons to stand on me. She squat down on her chicken legs so we were face-to-face.

"Listen. I'm going to follow that cat up there," I said, looking up at Alison. Voh's gaze followed. "I want you to come with me, but stay covered up in your robe and don't tell anyone your name. Nobody can know you're a songstress."

Voh nodded, beaming like an excited child. "I will be the quietest, secretest songstress you've ever seen!" She announced it loud enough for the entire street nearby to hear.

"Just stay next to me," I commanded. "She's dangerous and she's taking us to a bad place. There'll be blood before this is over. Can I rely on you?"

Shuu'Vohsa locked eyes with me. "Do not be afraid. I am here with you! I will not let you get hurt again." Brimming with confidence, it was hard to doubt her even if I knew deep down I would be protecting her, not the other way around.

I gathered up Alison's discarded robe from the alley and looked up at her. Silently we came to an understanding; she leapt off from the roof to another nearby building, stopping to wait for me with those leering green eyes. I let Shuu'Vohsa down, stuffed her hair into the collar of the robe--to which she loudly protested--and followed after the demon cat.

XII: A Demon's Pilgrimage

Alison leapt from building to building and waited for us to follow at each stop, the shadow of a great cat outstretched over the sidewalk with each jump. Shuu'Vohsa's talons clicked and scraped against the asphalt as we gave chase, the cat demon affording us little time to rest between buildings.

The domed off section of the city was behind us and so were the holographic adverts and the streets filled with people shopping and heading to and from work. The further we went, the fewer people we saw. A small mercy.

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 a small 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 grey 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 grey 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 grey 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 four 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.