To Hell and Back Again Ch. 08

As promised, with this chapter we begin pulling back the curtain to explore some of the mysteries hinted at in previous chapters. Thanks again for all the kind comments and continued interest in my story!

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"Because my large friend," Alan replied. "Everyone knows ships don't sail on the rivers. They fly."

"Flying ships..." Logan looked at Karen, who nodded as if Alan's claim about flying ships was the most normal idea imaginable. "I... did not see that one coming."

I definitely don't remember reading about flying ships in Dante's Inferno, he thought to himself.

"How odd." Alan rose to his feet. "Well then, if it is still your intention to meet the others, I should return and prepare them first. Otherwise, arriving armed as you are, would only frighten them and achieve no good purpose. Please allow me that courtesy."

"Ok," Logan replied. "You do that. Come back tomorrow and you can show me the way and introduce me to your friends."

"Agreed." Alan held up the small crystal in his hand. "May I leave this here to charge?"

What the hell is he talking about? Rather than advertise his ignorance, Logan noded. "Sure"

They watched Alan walk over to the orange glowing crystal cluster and place his own smaller crystal among them. Moments later it too began to glow a bright orange. With a gentle tug, he pulled a different small crystal loose that continued to glow with the same bright light.

"For the walk back," Alan explained.

Logan just watched in stunned silence. In the last minutes he had learned of flying ships, Circle hopping, wandering neighbors, and detachable crystals. Information overload made his head spin.

Alan paused just before walking off into the darkness and turned to Logan. The crystal in his hand cast eerie shadows across his face.

"Regarding your stated intention to escape out of Hell. Allow me to leave you with this thought for our next conversation. What if I told you Hell was not supposed to exist?"

Logan looked around and chuckled. "Friend, I hate to break it to you..."

Alan smiled. "Yes, yes. And yet, consider that this place we see around us, this Christian Hell, was not once mentioned in Christian teachings during the first four hundred years of being an established religion. It is later mentioned in the various versions of the Bible, of course, but every one of those examples is a mistaken translation of one of four words, none of which accurately translates to a fiery domain of eternal punishment."

Alan stared at him and smiled in the orange glow of the crystal. "In other words, my friend, about fifteen hundred years ago, the church fathers made it all up." He tapped the side of his head and winked. "Think about it."

Karen stood beside Logan and watched as the strange, little man turned a corner and slipped away into darkness. Logan startled her by suddenly leaping into motion to strap his armor on. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"To follow," he answered as he pocketed a handful of small rocks.

Karen shivered and seemed to shrink in on herself. "You're going to leave me here alone? You don't have to go. He seems nice enough. Besides..." She smiled. "I'm sure we could find more interesting things to do right here."

"Perhaps his people are no threat and perhaps not." Logan buckled his blades around his waist. I'm not taking any chances. If they are a danger, I intend to have the advantage of surprise."

He walked over to the crystal cluster and bent down for a closer look. Carefully, he tugged at the smaller crystals. Sure enough, one came loose in his hands, glowing a bright orange. "Cool."

He looked back at Karen, staring at him wide-eyed. He gave her a wink and a grin. "Remember you are Karen the Slayer and officially a badass now. Stay alert. I'll be back in no time."

Logan moved off into unexplored darkness as quickly as stealth would allow and tried not to think about how many things could go wrong with this plan. Cave exploration came with serious risks, especially in a rush. The ground was not level or smooth. He climbed, crawled, and squeezed through the random flow of stone and sediment where serious injury could happen at a moment's notice.

Side passages emerged out of the shadow. The faint sound of movement ahead kept him oriented but getting hopelessly lost was a real, and terrifying, danger. He carefully placed small rocks at every new passage to help point the way back home.

It was a great relief to finally catch up to the orange nimbus of Alan's borrowed light crystal. Logan smothered his light as much as he could and still be able to see where to put his feet. From that point, the greatest danger was destroying what little trust they had managed to build with this new neighbor.

If Alan discovered him sneaking along behind, the man would have every justification to think the worst. It might start the exact conflict Logan hoped to avoid. Alan was careful, looking back over his shoulder as if worried about the very thing Logan was attempting to do.

Logan felt guilty about it, like he was the bad guy in this scenario but not, he realized, as guilty as he would have felt only a few weeks ago. Life in Hell was changing him in more ways than one. The fight for survival was reshaping him, body and mind. Back into the mindset of the soldier he had been on the war-torn battlefields of Afghanistan. Weeks of hunting had melted the softness of easy living off of his body until nothing but lean, hard muscle remained.

Whatever was happening, it wasn't just to him. What did I do to Karen?

He knew his way around a woman's body, but this had been something entirely new. Never before had he fucked a woman into unconsciousness and into what he could only define as a transformation.

Logan had watched it happen as he kept a worried watch on Karen as she lay sleeping. Over a few hours, her body had begun to change. Karen's complexion and hair had lost that pale wash of color so common amongst the few damned souls he had seen. The circles under her eyes had vanished. By the time she had woken, Logan could almost swear she looked...

Almost alive, he realized with a shock. What the hell happened?

And, of course, he had abandoned her almost immediately after she had woken to stalk a man who had offered them no threat. With all that was happening, should he have stayed to look after her?

No, he decided, remembering an earlier conversation with Beauty. Everything in Hell was predator or prey. He could not afford the luxury of assuming strangers were not a threat. All he could do was tackle one problem at a time and trust that both women could handle themselves just fine.

Alan led him on a merry chase through twisting passages before eventually stepping out into a second, large cavern. A fissure in the ceiling allowed a slim ray of light in. Two small clusters of crystal glowed a pale beige. Between the two, there was enough illumination to drive the blackness back and see...

Logan looked but could not believe what he was seeing. He remembered a vacation to Greece during his second deployment and a visit to the Parthenon, still standing after countless centuries, with its many columns of marble and peaked roof. Here, buried in this cavern below the blasted landscape of Hell, he was seeing it again.

Or a smaller version of it, he realized. Three, low steps led up to a platform lined with six, tapered columns. The columns supported a triangular roof decorated with a band of elaborate carvings Logan could not identify from so far away. What should have been a long building appeared to melt into the cavern wall. All that could be seen was maybe fifteen feet of the structure and one open doorway, almost like the fake buildings Hollywood built on studio lots for filming Western movies. The entire structure was canted at a slight angle, perhaps from a long-ago earthquake.

As he watched, Alan approached and called out a greeting. eighteen men and ten women emerged out of the doorway and into the light. Some had that haggard look Logan had come to associate with damned souls. Most looked relatively healthy, at least by Hell standards. Ages ranged from young adults to the elderly. They were all, of course, completely naked.

"Back so soon?" one of the men asked.

"I have some good news," Alan replied. "I have made a new friend. Someone who could be an ally in our efforts to save more souls."

Multiple voices spoke up at once. Logan couldn't make out the conversation but he could hear the doubt and suspicion in the way they spoke. By all accounts, they seemed more afraid of discovery than Logan had been. More importantly, what he did not hear was any sense of anger or violent response. There were curiosity and concern in their collective reaction but nothing Logan saw gave him any reason to think the gathered souls were a danger.

That would have to be enough. The longer he stayed, the more risk he took of being discovered. Logan backed into darkness and began to find his way back home, trying to understand what he had just witnessed.

An ancient Greek building in Hell. Then there was what Alan had said. Five rivers in Hell, all of Greek origin.

It made no sense. What did ancient Greece have to do with Christian Hell? The Greeks worshipped pagan gods like Zeus and Athena. What was the connection?

Logan found no answers on the return journey. Karen beamed to see him return and jumped into his embrace, kissing him with feverish intensity.

"I was so... worried about... you!" she managed between kisses.

Logan gently untangled himself from her. "I was worried about you too. Are you ok?"

"I am now. What did you see?"

I wish I knew. Out loud, he said, "A group of human souls hiding out in the deep caves. Perhaps thirty, counting Alan. They seem harmless enough for now. Tomorrow I will go to meet them and be able to better judge how to move forward."

"I wouldn't worry too much about them." Karen offered. "Our kind gather into small communities when we can. It's dangerous but often better than being alone. And we know better than to try and fight back. Damned souls only know two options, submit or run away and hide."

A slow, wicked smile spread across her lips. Her hand reached out to rub at his crotch. "Speaking of which, I wouldn't mind doing a little submitting right about now."

"Horny again already?" he laughed.

Good lord! he thought. These women are going to kill me!

Karen opened her mouth to reply, then paused. An odd look passed across her face. "Yes, and... also no."

She blinked at him in astonishment, smiling in pure delight. "I don't feel like I have to have it anymore, at all. The hunger is completely gone! I feel wonderful!"

"You look amazing."

She laughed self-consciously and touched her tangled hair. "Well, that's probably an exaggeration."

"Karen, I'm serious. I wish I had a mirror to show you. Look at your hands."

She held her hands up and stared at them as she wiggled her fingers, at the healthy complexion that had replaced the washed out color of her flesh.

"Oh my!" A slow smile of delight spread across her face.

"I watched it happen to you while you slept," he said. "Somehow, you and I having sex did this to you though I can't imagine idea how or why."

Karen reached up to explore the lines of her face with her fingertips, then looked at him and nodded. "I have a theory about that. It relates to something else I meant to talk to you about."

"Oh? Alright, color me curious. What do you think happened?"

She grinned. "I think you happened. Ever since waking up, I have been feeling this strange warmth and energy spreading throughout my entire body. And it all started right here." Karen tapped a finger against the delicate strip of her dark pubes.

"What are you suggesting?"

"That you are a very special and remarkable man."

"Karen..." Logan sighed.

She silenced his protests with a kiss and a smile. "No, hear me out. It has to be because you are alive, truly alive." She pointed at her chest. "I died, Logan. I am here only in spirit, just like every other human in Hell."

She laid a hand on his chest, gliding her fingers over the swell of his pectoral muscles. "All except you. Somehow, you are here in spirit and body. That has to be where your strength and power comes from. It is why you don't seemed to be tethered to the limitations the rest of us suffer from such as a dependency on demons for sexual gratification. What's more, I think you can share that strength with others."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "How's that?"

Karen grinned and gave his crotch a playful squeeze. "With this."

Logan rolled his eyes. "I thought we were having a serious discussion."

"Oh, we are," she nodded with a sober expression. "Think about it. The average human male ejaculate contains upwards of one billion sperm cells. One billion, all hardwired for just one purpose. To germinate a female for the creation of life itself."

His eyes opened wide. "Tell me you're not suggesting...."

Karen replied with a sad smile. "No, I will never know what it is to be with child. I only exist in spirit, remember? This body is just an echo, a memory, of the woman I was in life. But you are real. The billion little swimmers you released in me are real and all of that protein and life giving energy has to go somewhere."

"Yeah, but... where?" he asked.

"Everywhere," she shrugged. "Logan, I can still feel your semen inside me. Not like a fluid, not anymore, but like a... a warmth and an energy slowly spreading throughout my entire being." She laughed. "I can even feel it in the roots of my hair!"

Logan stared past her. His eyebrows rose toward his hairline as he thought about Beauty and her obsession with finishing him off in her mouth. Feeding on him week after week, sometimes multiple times a day. "I remember wondering how Beauty was capable of going claw-to-claw with that other Succubus when she broke free. I mean, by all accounts, she was older and strobger but Beauty held her own."

"Yes," Karen nodded. "And I think we now know why. Your life force, what we refer to as Essence, is like nothing else in all of Hell and I suspect it has made her strong far beyond her apparent age. You're Essence is unmatched and practically infinite because, unlike the rest of us, you have a physical body that constantly renews your energy levels."

Karen grinned. "No wonder our friendly sex demon latched on to you at first taste and didn't let go!"

Logan shook his head and smiled back. "As crazy as it sounds, I can't think of a single argument for what you are suggesting."

The wicked expression was back on her face. "We could test my theory." "I thought you said you weren't horny?" he laughed.

"I said I don't need to. I didn't say that I don't want to. To be more specific, I want to blow you."

"You do?"

She nodded and licked her lips. "I do. I really do."

Logan heaved a dramatic sigh as if shouldering a heavy burden. "Well, if you must. I suppose it would be rude to deny you the opportunity."

"Yes, it would," she laughed. "But first things first. Kindly strip and join me in the water."

"Yes ma'am!" Logan stripped in record time and climbed into the steaming pool. Karen followed him in.

"You just relax and let me do everything," she murmured into his ear as she straddled his legs, trapping his dick between them. Karen began to wash his face and neck, then down to his chest, all while rolling her hips and sliding her sex up and down his thighs in a most distracting manner. She slid back to better reach his abs. Logan could feel the plump lips of her pussy pressing on the top of his leg as she cleaned him.

"Turn around." Once Logan had complied, she started again from the top, rubbing every inch of his back.

"Stand up."

He stood. Karen did not and continued, gliding wet hands over his thighs and knees, down to wash and massage his calves. Her hands slid up his body to cup and squeeze at his muscular ass. She used her pert breasts, dragging her nipples across his goosebump covered flesh.

"Did I forget anything?' she asked in an innocent, playful voice.

He turned to look down at her with an amused grin, his dick swaying and pointing at her face like a loaded gun. "I think maybe you did."

Karen twirled her finger in a "turn back around" gesture. Logan offered only a grunt of mild protest, then obeyed.

Her hands reached around to glide over him from knob to balls, pausing occasionally to scoop a handful of warm water and let it trickled down onto his now aching rod. Her fingers closed around his shaft and began to stroke him in long, slow motions. The other hand cupped his balls and rolled them around in her palm. He could feel her tongue gliding across his ass. Logan jumped as Karen's teeth gently nipped at one cheek and then the other.

Logan fought to keep his breathing slow and regular. It was a losing battle. Karen stoked the fire of his lust one slow stroke at a time.

"All done."

He turned around and looked into her eyes, bright and sultry with excitement. Her hands trailed over the wet curves of her own body in languid pleasure.

"We should get you clean too," he offered.

"What, like this?" Karen moaned as her hand slipped beneath the water and between her legs.

He watched, spellbound. "Yeah, something like that."

She slipped beneath the water, then rose to her knees to wring out her long, dark hair. "All done!"

"Fuck," Logan grumbled in good humor.

"Not this time," she grinned with a saucy gleam in her eye.

"Ok, stud. I think you're ready for the main event. Get settled on the moss and get comfortable. This is going to take awhile. I'm feeling... inspired."

"I've created a monster," Logan smiled at her as they climbed out of the pool. His raging erection led the way.

He stretched out on the moss, resting on his elbows so he could watch the show, eager and curious to see what else she had in mind. Karin started by crawling up between his legs and dragging wet hair across his body, down his thighs, and over his cock in soft sweeps. Back and forth, around and down until Logan was squirming and cursing under his breath. Cold hair was soon replaced by warm breath as she moved lower. Almost, but not quite, touching his skin with her open mouth.

The first shock of contact made his whole body jerk as her lips closed around one testicle and began to gently suckle. The tip of her tongue traced around and down. Logan groaned through gritted teeth when she reached the spot between ass and balls and licked at the tender flesh. Karen's hand resumed stroking his shaft.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of waiting, her mouth brushed against the underside of his cock and began to explore upward, kissing and licking as she went. Her tongue glided up and circled the swollen tip. Her dark eyes looked up at him, full of mischief and almost daring him to take what he so desperately wanted.

Logan was more than a little tempted to do just that. "You're going to pay for this later," he promised in a lust-filled voice.

"Why?" she teased. "Have I been bad? Are you going to spank my tight, little ass?"

"Yes, I will," he decided at that moment. The idea made his cock ache even more. "Next time."

"Mmm... promises, promises," she breathed and closed her lips around the swollen, purple head.

"Gah!" Logan's hands curled into fists. His entire body tightened into a coil of muscle and nerve endings.

She worked his length into her throat with no sense of urgency. She rose, gasping for breath, only to descend again, moaning at the feel and weight in her mouth. Karin began to throat fuck him with reckless abandon, driving Logan to the edge, only to back off into slow suckling, again and again, until he writhed in exquisite agony.