Making Deals With the Devil

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon wasn’t sure if summoning worked this way; she only knew where Elfleda had appeared to her before, so that is where she headed after leaving Cian’s cabin near the lake.

She drove back to Searchlight, back to where she’d rented a cheap room after riding in a stale bus for days. She parked her car in the lot of the gas station where she’d gone to make a long-distance call with a pocket full of quarters. She walked past the bank of payphones and out into the desert, far enough to escape the glow from the light posts, so far she could barely see her shoes. Her flashlight picked out plants to avoid and, once, the striped tail of a snake under a rock. When she came to a clearing, she dropped her pack and crouched beside it with the flashlight in her teeth.

The black stone was in her pants pocket. Sometimes it seemed to burn her like a coal. Other times, it felt as innocuous as an ordinary rock. She took it out and studied it in the glow of the flashlight. In that yellow-tinged motel room, it had taken Rhiannon a few minutes of looking to realize what was so odd about it; it was polished smooth yet reflected no light.

Rhiannon switched off the flashlight and put it inside the pack. She stood up and ran her thumb across it. Then she closed her eyes. Clearing her mind was a challenge. She could faintly smell Cian’s soapy scent and she could hear trucks making good time on the highway. It was freezing out. Her sweatshirt wasn’t thick enough. Beyond all that, her stomach felt like a loosely coiled wire that jerked and sparked periodically. Maybe her anger would help serve as a beacon to Elfleda, who seemed to get off on that kind of thing. Rhiannon thought about that woman now. She pictured her gaunt face and black dress and how it felt to be touched by her.

‘Come on, please… Please.’

[Thread]

Comments

[lady_elfleda]

It did.

Amplifying the Slayer's signature aura, it anchored Rhiannon's thoughts of the Corruptress to a time and place far beyond this one. Somewhere in that great abyss of aching loneliness, oppressive carnage and terrors to melt the imagination, something sparked within the darkness of Elfleda's consciousness.

It was a great hall. A chest-like container without an imprisoning top, within which an inky blackness swirled, suddenly flexing in on itself, fluidly, as the young woman's plea was ignited with that base need to witness... To summon.

She was desired.

On the Earthly plane, a steady chorus of insect calls began to quieten, as if drowned by a blanket of nothingness. The same nothingness which caused one's own animal instincts to heighten with alarm, instinctively knowing something ill and malevolent was stalking the air. Was watching. A Slayer, though... Especially one who had been keyed to before, would also feel something else. That same distant strangeness... A simultaneous feeling of a spiritual home being represented.

An ambassadorial mother in damnation.

"I had only to wait, precious thing..."

And there she was. The face from before, having just spoken over shoulder. A smile most impish being cast Rhiannon's way.

[rhiannon_lee]

“Sorry I took so long.”

Waiting for the woman to show up was like watching a horror movie between your fingers, expecting a scare but jumping when it happened, anyway. Rhiannon had gotten a little jolt. She stowed the rock in her pants pocket and the denim abraded her cold, chapped hands. In looking at Elfleda she saw that she had remembered a few details wrong. The entity was a few inches shorter than Rhiannon; it was her presence that loomed.

“You’ve been setting people’s teeth on edge. Valerie, Julianna, Holly. Have you got a thing for girls?”

She itched for a cigarette but kept her hands in her pockets. Fidgeting was weak. Rhiannon angled her head to keep the stinging ends of her ponytail from lashing her cheek. It wasn’t that she had fancied herself unique to Elfleda’s ends, but she was curious about those particular women. All had ties to the Council. Did all of them feel what Rhiannon did when the Corruptress showed her ‘home’?

[lady_elfleda]

Like prodding a sleeping dragon, there was always a feeling that the wrong move or an ill-timed exposure of an emotional vulnerability might leave you set upon, as surely as an investigative rodent crawling down tarantula's burrow. It didn't matter how far technology had evolved or the thickness of your walls. Certain entities just had a 'get you' feel about them.

"Potential... And interference," came the sickly-pale brunette's reply, haunting the young warrior with a gaze most shadowy. "One is shown guidance. The other is warned. Desire is but one shard of the broken mirror..."

That sensation of slipping into ice-cold water? Nerves standing on end, bones crying out in dulled ache... It happened now, only to be accompanied, just as suddenly, by precisely the reverse, as if warmth had come flooding around, like a mother gathering her child into a welcoming blanket.

The ebb and flow of Elfleda's metaphysical tides were alarming, indeed. Perhaps just a demonstration of her worded sentiments or, just as likely, simply how being around her could be.

Like wisps of smoke, Elfleda's raised hand had fingers moving to where knife had stabbed cleanly through Rhiannon's flesh. A delicately soothing, "Hmmm..." Then a further smile. "The resolve has strengthened you... Is it that which brings me to you?"

[rhiannon_lee]

It took a moment to recover from the physical assault on her senses. Ice cold and then hot. She had felt it before, freezing on an operating table, a needle’s prick, and then a flood of warmth and wooziness as consciousness slipped away. She mustn’t forget that Elfleda was responsible for both dousing and reprieve; there was no comfort to be taken from the latter.

“Yes.” Rhiannon swallowed. “The vampire is secondary. I want the man who paid her. He’s my Watcher but I don’t know where he is.”

She knew that there would be a price for information or access, whether now or down the road. All such favors came due eventually. Rhiannon had weighed consequences. Any number of bad things resulted from dealing with the devil, but she had already made up her mind. She might want to find answers before he tried again, but she needed revenge. That was her urgency.

“Will you help me?”

[lady_elfleda]

To want something... Anger could be righteous and retribution could be just. But to be so, one's thoughts had to be pure. A regular human being, especially one who felt personally wronged, held a perspective which could be tainted. Skewed. Ultimately, open to influence.

And that was Elfleda's domain.

Hands clasped in an almost nun-like pose of contemplation. The more ghostly of the two brunettes calmly, slowly, pacing to one side. Or at least, her physical self was. Her presence was all around Rhiannon, like some vampiric cloud of spiritual filth. Feeding. Nurturing. Coaxing.

"Of course, I'll help you."

Ominously comforting... A contradiction in terms for some, but Elfleda was good at those. Very good.

"On one condition," she corrected, looking up. Black eyes glinting in their ebony-lined sockets as a pointed finger raised. "Vengeance shall be by your hand, not mine."

Head tilted. Lips curving wider.

"And if you wish it, you can grant me his soul..."

[rhiannon_lee]

Vengeance by her own hand? Rhiannon wouldn’t accept it any other way. If she had wanted help in solving her problems, then Cian would be in the passenger seat. She had a visceral urge to hurt Duncan and a good idea that she could take it all the way, if he didn’t respond in just the way she liked, and that was something she didn’t want her lover to witness. Or stop.

But a soul? To condemn a man to hell?

Rhiannon closed her eyes. She let herself feel what she’d been tamping down: anger, sadness, fear, humiliation. If she killed Duncan, the Council might put the pieces together, but she’d deal with that when the time came. The bigger question was how much it would change her to know he was burning.

“What would you do to him?”

[lady_elfleda]

"Why should you care? Your enemy would be disposed of... Those in your care, no longer having to fear retribution of his own. What would it matter?"

She was named the Corruptress for a reason. The longer in her presence, the more appealing certain darker temptations became; the messier and more blurred the lines between right and wrong.

Was Rhiannon's natural will-power enough to resist that? Or was her answer, in itself, the true test? Elfleda did seem to be registering a vested interest in the Slayer taking ownership of consequences.

"Would it not give you satisfaction? The delicious, infernal mystery of it all..."

[rhiannon_lee]

"I'm not much for mysteries." Rhiannon's thumb and middle finger rubbed together in her pocket as she contemplated the situation. She could fulfill her end of the deal by meting out justice by her hand. She didn't need to hand his soul over, so why was she entertaining the notion?

Because deep down, you're a bad person.

Her face was cold. Her knees trembled, whether from temperature or company.

"How would I find him? Would you send me there or just give me an address?"

[lady_elfleda]

Elfleda wasn't moving. So, why was there an impression of a large shark cruising by? Maybe because there was blood in the water, so to speak. With every passing moment that such a thing was even considered, yes, there was blood.

And Rhiannon's waters were starting to run crimson.

"A friendly gesture... Why not?"

Another flash of a smile, this one quicker. Hands unclasping, fingers quickly scything together like sharpened knives, moonlight glinting upon black fingernails. Elfleda making a gesture of hand to ignite a portal of swirling blackness. The inference clear: A metaphysical taxi cab. Rhiannon Lee's personal doorway to her enemy.

Assuming she trusted Elfleda to take her there and not... Home.

"Unless your preference is for information."

[rhiannon_lee]

“No,” Rhiannon said too quickly. The portal loomed and it was all she could do not to leap through right now. “I want it done.”

She had done all the waiting she could stand. Her backpack contained an assortment of materials gathered for her journey, be it by car or Elfleda’s hand: gloves, a dark cap, a knife, a lighter and a small tin of flammable liquid, a length of rope, binoculars purchased at military surplus, and a stake since he was keeping company with vampires of late. The truth was, she didn’t know yet how she wanted to do this; she’d settle on an approach when she saw Duncan. If she’d had a gun, Rhiannon would have brought it, too.

But now one thing was certain: if she didn’t kill him, she’d be in Elfleda’s debt.

“If I want to deliver him … I mean his soul to you, how? It’s not a firefly in a jar.”

[lady_elfleda]

Much was left unsaid. Elfleda was a being who felt the need to comment upon everything the least bit relevant. She was, however, the kind of being who could convey a great deal with a well-timed glance. Right now, she was thinking of vindication, for the Slayer was proving her hunter's instinct for what it was and the lust for vengeance, to inflict, was blazing brightly for all the empathic world to see.

But then came the question.

The portal swirled in murky silence and the monochromatic temptress raised forearm, palm turned out as fingers made a slow dance-like movement. Spidery, like a slow-motion scuttle. Then reaching forth, extending to touch upon the mortal's brow. What followed came as a stream of arcane knowledge, spreading out as ripples upon the Lee girl's mental pond. Instinctive knowledge of the right symbols to carve into flesh, the most conducive way to arrange a would-be victim's limbs, the correct things to say...

If the concept of sin truly existed, then stealing another living being's soul away must surely rank as one of the worst.

"I'll take care of the rest," Elfleda mentioned. "Should you wish it..."

And there it was. Possibly the most diabolical weapon of all. One she was handing freely over to one Rhiannon Lee.

[rhiannon_lee]

To say that the imparted knowledge weighed heavy on Rhiannon’s mind would be minimizing things. The images felt as if they’d been singed onto the backs of her eyelids. She blinked and made a faltering move away from Elfleda. She touched her face. “Got it.”

Kneeling to collect her backpack was a welcome distraction. She hauled the straps onto her shoulders and flexed her legs to stand. Should she thank her? Were niceties used when dealing with hellish entities? Already she had made a highly questionable move here, and it was only now that Rhiannon realized a telling truth: she had not asked for God’s help before coming here. She hadn’t wanted to handle it in a moral way and she’d been looking for an expedient solution.

She swallowed.

“It’ll be quick,” Rhiannon said instead. “I’m not the kind to fuck around.”

Her hair snapped on the wind as she turned and faced down the portal. Once she went through it, nothing would be the same.

‘On a count of three’, she told herself. ‘One… two…’

The air whooshed past her ears.

‘Three.’