The Pleasures of Hell 01.012

"I talked to Dao, and we've both decided that we want to keep you."

"Oh. As a pet."

Her tail pressed down against his belly button. "Got a problem with that?"

"Nope. Nope."

"And, talking to Dao, she made me realize something, I guess. It's... because Dao and I were really happy, when Leos was with us."

David tensed. Leos, the incubus Diogo had killed. He'd been avoiding the topic, halfly because Jes was the sort of person -- demon -- who'd hit him for asking. He didn't need Mia to warn him the gargoyle had a volatile personality.

After a heavy sigh, Dao leaned back, and combed her claws through his hair. Judging from the sound, she was reminiscing about her old friend.

"We want things to go back to the way they were. We want to just enjoy our little slice of Hell, be with each other, and have our little plaything between us." Again, Jes poked him with her tail, this time in the chin. "And... And maybe I do want to see what happens."

"What happens?"

"What happens. You know shit's going to happen. All the stuff that's unusual about you. That invisible thing. The rider showing up. Something's going to happen."

"I thought you wanted to avoid all that stuff."

The gargoyle nodded. "I did, but... I talked with Caera, too." Again, the tiger lady made one of those tiny chuckle snorts that sounded more natural on a real tiger than a demon, but she didn't interrupt. "She convinced me. I want to see what happens. Ideally we'll keep you alive, and when the crazy shit comes and goes, we can go back to living happy little lives, the way it'd been when we had Leos with us. And hey, who knows, maybe something special will happen and we'll all benefit? I wouldn't mind being rich." She laughed at her joke. Hell had no money.

Dao clicked a few times as she tilted her head back down, and gently scratched David's chest with one hand, her other still combing his hair. He'd fall asleep if it weren't already day. His afterlife body didn't care for naps.

"I mean, that does sound pretty awesome," he said. "What about Mia?"

"Hey, if we can get your sister, she can join us. I bet she'll be a great fuck, too."

"What? No no no no, no no. No."

Laughing, Jes teased her tail down his abs. "Fine fine. Maybe we can find another group of demons for her to fuck? Or you know, maybe we could all join a big group? The Damall might take us in. In fact, I bet they'd love to get their hands on you and Mia."

Right, the Damall. Troublemakers. A group of demons that purposefully caused problems for the spires.

"Can we trust them?"

"No idea. Caera?"

Caera shrugged, and kept facing the entrance. "The Damall might be a good option. I don't think the crazy shit coming David's way is just going to stop, and maybe they'll have answers. But..."

"But?" David asked.

"But, they have their own goals. They're not just going to let us join them for asylum. We'd be joining guerrilla fighters, who are all determined to cause chaos."

"That does get in the way of what I want to do," Jes said. "Fuck me, I just want to do be left alone, me and my lover and her pet boy toy. Is that so much to fucking ask?" Grumbling, she traced a claw down his chest, next to Dao's claws. "But... I mean, I do still kinda want to see what's gonna happen, too." After a few quiet seconds, she looked away, and a small smile snuck onto her lips. "Dao wants to keep her pet alive, no matter what we do. So I guess I'm gonna stick around."

He was tempted to eye her suspiciously, maybe remark he thought maybe there was something else going on in her head. Maybe she actually liked him? Maybe--

"You just want him for the sex," Caera said, prowling over to them.

Dao chirped a few times before she smiled down at him, huge breasts hanging over his head. They were dark red, firm, not aroused, but that was the smile she used when she had sexy thoughts on the mind.

"Dao's right," Jes said. "Dude has the dick of a tetrad and the aura of an incubus. It'd be a shame to not indulge." More than Dao with sexy thoughts, then.

Caera chuckled as she lay on the ground beside David, leaned in, and rested her chin on his shoulder.

"Well, until the patrols die down, we got nothing to do but hide out in here. We should go hunting again soon, but for now, I'm forced to agree. It'd be a shame to not indulge."

David gulped, and looked at the beautiful tiger lady's face only inches from his, before he looked up at Dao. Right before his eyes, her enormous breasts softened again, more than they'd been moments before with Jes, until the giant pillows brushed against the tip of his nose. His aura hadn't awoken yet, either.

"What if I say no?" he asked. It took a mountain of effort to not stare up at the glorious boobs a literal inch above his face.

Dao clicked a few times, shook her head, and frowned down at him. Without eyes or eyebrows, frowning consisted of scrunching up her nose. It was adorable.

Jes laughed, slipped out from under his legs, and straddled his waist. Her body had softened, too.

"Look, I know you're the type to think about shit until it kills you. You need to get out of your head more, fresh meat. Shit happens. Apparently even really crazy shit happens, like invisible monsters and the fucker riding showing up." Oh god she was giving him the 'roll with it, adapt' speech.

Caera laughed, leaned in, and kissed him. "If demons sat around, thinking about shit a tenth as much as you do, David, none of us would make it out of the hatching pit."

Right, the hatching pit. No wonder demons were able to keep going, keep moving, and not let shit bog them down. Unlike him. He wanted to curl up in a corner, brood, and think about all the shit happening to him and his sister that wasn't fair. The random deaths, getting kicked out of Heaven, and now being the target of a bunch of people, for who knew what reason. He wanted to disappear into a hole, duck and cover, wait for things to calm down. But he had to get Mia safe, first.

Much as his inner voice screamed at him to figure out what was happening to him, to solve the puzzle, another voice screamed at him to not do anything stupid, and to stay alive. His eternal duality, forever tearing him apart. Solve the puzzle, figure out why, or just walk away before his obsessive need to figure shit out got him killed. In the past, 'get him killed' was really just whether he should annoy the school bully, or see what happened if he did some fun science experiments with gasoline. Now, it was really about life or death... in the afterlife.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They waited for twilight. Why they called it twilight, he didn't know, but they couldn't really call it sunrise or sunset, dusk or dawn. The sky of fire, a maelstrom of swirling flame during the day, died down to glowing embers at night, and the amber veins in the ground and rocks softened, too.

Demons didn't like the twilight hours. Supposedly the hellbeasts were more active during that time. Why hellbeasts weren't their most active in the middle of night, he didn't know, but Hell was a strange place with strange rules.

Ideally, their little group would have stayed in the cave until night, but demons did go out at night sometimes. Common hunting time for demons, on the prowl for souls to eat. Twilight hours were dark enough for demons to sneak around though if they were willing to risk it, and avoid detection by other demons and humans, and hellbeasts too. The problem was, according to the girls, moving during twilight was a gamble. One mistake and you were a hellbeast's meal.

Demons hated hellbeasts for one very specific reason: you couldn't eat them. No resonance to eat. Hellbeasts, on the other hand, loved to eat demons, and humans too. It was a weird food chain.

The four of them crouched along, and David learned the meaning of a leg workout. Just like his other hunt with Caera, having to crouch, squat, and creep along on toes and fingertips meant burning exhaustion in the quads until more than a few drops of sweat ran down his body. They worked their way up, slithering around big rocks, until the nearby mountains grew distant, and the point of the mountain's top grew into a sheer cliff face he wouldn't be climbing without gear.

He almost asked about getting on Caera's back, but pebbles in the ravine below shifted, no louder than a pin drop. It was enough. The four of them flattened to the rocks, turned, and peeked down into the darkness below.

Something slithered, something massive. Black skin roamed over the stones below, making less noise than anything that big should have, and its thickness nudged up against the walls of the ditch it swam through. If it had legs, David couldn't see them in the heavy shadows or through the walls of rock. It moved like a snake, or a worm, or maybe a lizard with short legs. Its back was covered in spikes, and its head looked more an alligator's than any sort of snake.

The damn thing also had to be at least fifty feet long.

He gulped, and nudged Jes. She nodded slowly, and made eye contact with him long enough to let him know that yes, she was scared of this thing, too.

They sat, and waited. The serpent creature moved along unhurriedly, exploring, not making a sound as its colossal body pushed past the stones. It didn't need armor with onyx skin. Maybe it had a red vulnerable belly, but with the way it moved its underside never exposed itself, planted flat to the ground. And he didn't want to find out. Him and the girls were just taking a trip out to see if they could get some sort of update on what was happening to the spire, no need to rush themselves into an early grave.

When it was gone, everyone took a deep breath.

"That," Jeskura said, "was a fucking wurm."

"A worm?" he asked.

"Wurm." She emphasized the 'erm' sound.

"Oh. I mean, it does look kinda worm-ish... and snake-ish, and crocodile-ish."

"It can get pretty fast when it wants to," Caera said. "But like you saw, they're normally slow, and silent. They slither around in the tunnels and catch humans and demons off guard."

He shivered. Something that big slithering around in dark tunnels? Nightmare fuel.

"Why does it hunt only during twilight hours though? If it can hunt in dark tunnels, why would the time of day matter?"

Jes shrugged. "Hellbeasts just prefer twilight hours."

"Might have something to do with Hell herself," Caera said. "She gets quiet and dark for night, almost like she's going to sleep. Hellbeasts are born of Hell. They bask during the day, sleep at night, hunt between."

"But, aren't demons born of Hell, too?"

"The spires aren't Hell's. They're Lucifer's." Shrugging again, Caera went back to the wall they'd been about to climb. "Get on."

He grinned, got on her back, got his arms around her shoulders, and held on tight as the tiger lady got vertical. Up they went, with Jes and Dao having no trouble following, the gargoyle using her claws, and Dao using her gravity-defying wall hopping skills, just like a mountain goat.

High up on the mountain, with no fear of being spotted by demons, the four of them stood at the top of a rock ledge, and stared out to the valley below. The climb took over an hour, but he'd been adamant it was worth doing. He wasn't sure if he'd been right.

The spire buzzed with demon activity. No hellbeast with half a brain would approach it, so the demons felt comfortable doing whatever it is they did in the valley around the spire. Little demons jumped from the tower, and glided down to the huge spikes below. Some perched near dangling skull braziers, and munched on things in the light they provided. Demons grouped up and chatted. Some got into fights, but short lived and non lethal. They were too far for David to see any details, no matter how hard he squinted.

"I'd give my left nut for some binoculars," he said.

Dao chirped a quiet giggle, rubbed a horn against his head, and clicked a few times.

Jes snorted on a laugh she fought to keep quiet, but even after David gave her an evil eye, she refused to translate.

"If we ever get to False Gate," Caera said, "maybe you can figure out how to make some."

"We're going to False Gate?"

The tiger shrugged. "You can't honestly expect to hang around Death's Grip for eternity, right? Shit's going to happen and force you to move. Either that invisible thing again, or the rider, or maybe Zel, or maybe some angry angels looking to smite things. Something's going to happen."

Dao and Jes both sighed at Caera's words.

"You don't know that," David said. "Maybe there are other unmarked souls out there, and they can... I dunno, attract all this attention I'm getting?" Just saying the words made him feel guilty. Passing the buck onto someone else? Bleh. "Maybe--"

The four of them spun around as a breeze hit them. It'd felt wrong, out of place, and sure enough he was right.

An arrow struck the ground at his feet. It was gold. He took a step back, but behind him was a sharp fall down onto rocks and more steep ground. Fuck.

White feathers swung out, a flare of gold hit his eyes, and he fell to his knees as he clutched them. Blinding pain, literally. Unable to open his eyes, he forced down the need to cry out, some part of his brain still able to hold onto the fact they needed to be quiet.

He braced for something to hit him, maybe bite him, stab him, grab him. Nothing followed. He knelt, clutched his eyes, and squeezed them tight as they fought off the burning white orbs that still penetrated his vision. Noise erupted around him, the grunts and growls of his protectors, and the quiet but heavy flapping of white wings that buried them in more air.

"Quiet." A voice he didn't recognize. A woman's. Heavy thuds followed, and then silence.

After a minute, the searing white orbs in his vision faded, at least enough he could open his tearing eyes and see what'd attacked them. But he knew already. There was only one thing in the afterlife -- far as he knew -- with white feathers. Like Caera had just said, angry angels looking to smite things.

Two angels stood before him. One of them had a sword and shield half the size of the giant shields he'd seen on the stairs to Heaven, a woman with dark skin, and she had her blade pointed down at Caera's exposed throat, her armored boot pressed on Caera's chest and pinning her. The angel's only bit of exposed skin was the T slit visor of her shining silver and gold armor, but visible in the darkness of twilight hours. Her eyes were obsidian. Bits of white silk hung from between the joints of her thick, beautiful, extravagant armor, similar to the angels he'd seen on the stairs of Heaven, if a bit less bulky.

Her wingspan was massive, borderline ridiculous. Her shield had a quiet glimmer, catching the ember light of the darkening sky, and her sword blade was a literal mirror, silvery, and perfect. She looked a bit over six feet tall, tall by human standards but from what David remembered, normal for an angel woman. Maybe even a little short. Definitely short compared to Caera and Jes, and about the same height as Dao. But the little angel stood on Caera's chest with violent confidence, face hard, eyes locked on David, not even breathing heavy.

Beside her stood another angel, a man, seven feet tall. His helmet left his face exposed, and the armor wasn't nearly as thick, with more sheer white silk exposed around his joints. He held a bow in his hand, a glorious thing of silver and gold, and a bowstring that shined. The nocked arrow held the same mirror blade on its tip as the woman's sword, and the arrow was aimed straight for Jeskura. His bronze eyes grinned at Jes. Tan skin. Long dark hair. Ridiculously attractive, of course. All angels were, apparently.

He had one of his feet on Daoka's throat, the satyr pinned on her back. At least the armor didn't look as heavy as the woman's, and Dao could breathe, but she didn't struggle to escape. If she did, the other angel would push her sword straight through Caera's neck. And Jes wasn't pouncing at the angel because she'd get an arrow through the face.

Situation assessed, David slowly held up his hands.

"Uh... hi?" Angels were nice people, right? Nice, beautiful and handsome, heavily armed, heavily armored, and in control of the situation.

They hadn't looked nice, when he'd bounced off the gate to Heaven. They'd looked surprised. Some of them had looked ready to kill him. The big angel had looked ready to obliterate him.

The woman sneered. "So it's true. You really are unmarked."

With a heavy gulp, he nodded, and brushed some of his shaggy red hair from his forehead to prove it. Talking was good. He might not be good at it, but it was still good, better than getting shot.

Sighing, the woman peeked toward her fellow angel, frown unending.

"You were right."

The man chuckled, nodding as he kept his smile pointed at David, and arrow still pointed at Jes.

"Not me. Romakus."

"Could you not say the demon's name?"

"If you didn't want people to associate him with you, you should pick a better bed fellow."

The woman ground her teeth, eyes hardening.

"He is not--"

"You know Romakus?" Caera asked. Mistake. The angel pressed her sword down, and the tiger hissed as the blade cut her, like someone gently dragging a scalpel across skin. Holy shit that was a sharp sword.

"Wait!" David said. "Wait. Don't hurt her, please."

The man raised a brow, and leaned in toward his friend.

"He has empathy."

"He hasn't proven that."

He shook his head, without taking his eyes off David.

"I'm pretty sure he does. You feel that?"

She ground her teeth. "The unmarked are dangerous. You can't just--"

"Romakus was right. I can feel the aura, and he's genuinely concerned for these three."

"And we should spare him because he feels empathy for demons?"

The man rolled his eyes. "Uh, what's Romakus supposed to be?"

The woman didn't like that. Her eyes flared, and her wings spread out far, blocking out the mountains behind them. Angels may not have been big compared to demons, but holy fuck, David found himself struck frozen in awe, with a healthy dose of fear mixed in.

The man grinned at David. "Alright. Let's talk."