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Chapter 5

Aisha, once known as the legendary superhero Paladin, whirled and sliced, spun and cut, a dervish of death whose skin glowed golden and brighter with every kill. The demons swarmed her in vain, their numbers endless in the featureless black that she and Dr. Theorem battled their way through.

"Which way are we going, Doctor? Their numbers may well be endless."

"If they are endless, then he has opened a portal to the Hell of Shadows in her mind!"

"It would seem that is just exactly what has happened."

"Damnitall!" the elder wizard yelled, and then threw out both paws, hurling his eldritch will and mighty mana outward in a shockwave of purplish-white arcane flame, leaving nothing but a rain of falling demon bones in its wake. Panting, he bent forward, holding his aching chest. Even in the Astral realm, he could feel the fatigue as icy numbing fingers running down from shoulder to gut. They didn't have long.

"That should...Huhh...Stall them for now...Aisha, promise me, if I cannot go on, you will not stop until she is safe."

"I so swear, Theo," she said, while slipping under his withered old arm. Holding him up was no effort to the mighty albeit dead lioness. "Though if you do not mind me asking, what is this girl to you, that you would risk so much?"

"Hah. That question from the woman who unconditionally agreed to save her?"

"I am a hero, Theo. Of course I would save her. Even if she was my enemy, if you asked, I would save anyone. It is your motive I question, not the value of saving this girl's life."

Theo Rémy laughed with a light hearted sound, though his chest was heavy with worry. They had continued to walk as they spoke, taking their brief respite from the relentless demonic assault to make whatever progress they could. He knew well enough that it mattered little what direction they walked; the core of Eve's dreams would always be in front of them, so long as they kept moving with the intent of finding it.

"Did you know that when you died, your sister already had a seventeen year old son?"

"No...Did she? She and I had not spoken in years. Her choice to be a villain was...Difficult for me to bear."

"Villain? Hard to call her a villain, Aisha, even by your standards."

"A corporate leader who was stealing from her company counts as a thief, Theo."

"Well, in any case," the aging lynx said, batting an ear in dismissal of their old argument on ethics, "she had a son. He's a meta-fur, though his powers haven't yet fully manifested. I suspect someday I'll be giving him your scimitar."

"The scimitar was never mine. It is my ancestors'."

"Hah. You ARE one of the ancestors, Aisha. Anyway, the girl we're rescuing is a meta-fur, part of one of the teams I've been training since the Nightsiders disbanded. Her boyfriend, and team-mate, is your nephew."

He hadn't expected a grand display of emotion from the stoic lioness. They'd known each other for a long time. So, when the walking woman made of light simply nodded and said, "I am glad the line continues," it was no surprise. It did make the old wizard happy, to know that death hadn't changed her one bit.

Most would be changed by facing a certain and horrifying demise, such as she had suffered. Except that they didn't get the chance, on account of being dead. He remembered, clear as the daylight sun, watching as Warlocke's hex boiled the flesh off her bones, made her eyes explode, shredded her body in a molasses-slow instant of horrific suffering. When she had entered the time-eddy created by their clashing magics, he'd had no choice but to let her die thusly. If he hadn't, Warlocke would have taken that instant of distraction to win the fight. The city would swiftly have been laid waste by the demon-worshipping ancient.

Aisha had known it, too, when she'd chosen to enter. She had sacrificed herself, charged knowingly to a horrifying death, to give others the chance to win. He could not think of a demise more noble. Now here she was, in torment again just by virtue of having been torn briefly away from her reward, helping an endangered soul purely because it was the right thing to do. Of course, using the excuse that he'd asked for her help.

They noticed at the same moment that the scenery was changing. Where the world had been a pitch-black nothing before, they had at least been able to see ground of sorts beneath their feet in the form of her radiant light striking a solid surface. Now, it was as if they were walking in total void, like they had walked off a cliff but not fallen. Dr. Theorem felt the presence of evil, pulsing like a stereo base against his third eye, and looked out at blackness his eyes resolved as streaks of hallucinated color.

"We are close. Be prepared, we'll have to cut through and get her out before it closes again."

Paladin simply nodded. Though he couldn't see her face, he knew somehow she would be smiling, that grim stoic twitch of her lips that always happened just before the most serious part of the fight.

Somewhere ahead of them, a horrid, groaning wail of a noise burst through the endless nightscape, shivering the illusory air they breathed with vicious and horrible intent. Paladin raised her shimmering silvery-black blade, so Theo could see.

The aura was like blacklight, gleaming off the silvery blade and their clothing.

"Whoever entrapped her must not understand his powers, Theo. Only a fool would summon a demon lord to entrap one young girl. Go, Theo. Find and close the portal. I will save the girl."

Eve had lost herself in the blackness, the slithering tentacles that gnawed slimily at her shredded skin driving her mind to a deep dark place within itself. Slippery, slimy appendages traced their oily paths across her Astral body, digging teeth into her flesh, tearing away fur in an almost gentle pattern of spirals. Only after this had gone on for what seemed like years in that unholy black place, the first voice that, in her hallucinating mind, had ever existed, spoke to her.

It was scratchy, hoarse, hard-edged and angry.

"Why do you resist?" it demanded, its fury lashing through her defenses, cutting through the wall she'd placed between herself and the violated body that was even then having its legs pried open, and tentacles shoved unceremoniously into places she'd never want them.

When she gave no response, the voice returned, filled with wrath, as she noted distantly that her tail was being yanked aside, and a tooth-covered tentacle jammed into the taboo passage beneath.

"WHY DO YOU FORCE ME TO DO THIS?!" it howled, like a hurricane wind, blasting and blustering and savaging her mental body.

Too blank to respond, Eve huddled in a deep place within her own mind's core, curled up in fetal position to make herself as small as possible, praying the vicious things savaging her body would have done and kill her soon, to make the pain stop. That voice, though, the cracking and furious sound of a shrieking teenager, continued, rising in pitch as a strange sense of desperation slowly became evident to her.

"I don't want to hurt you! I DON'T! STOP!"

Something was shaking her, paws digging into her throat, but Eve knew better than to open her eyes. She knew if she did, she would see the true, irredeemable horror that was tearing her apart, and that she would never survive long enough for...Something. Something she knew was coming, though she could not recall what that meant or why she should think it was something worth surviving for. Nothing existed, in the void, nothing could help her, and this was her fate. Yet she held on anyway, eyes tightly closed, mind sealed up as best she could seal it.

When she felt his breath, and smelled its fetid reek, she could no longer do so. Her eyes snapped open, and she shrieked, screamed like a wailing banshee, clawing and thrashing and howling as blinding blackness swarmed in on her.

There, she saw him. A young male, black-furred and feline, his eartips clipped off as if surgically, his face a strange mask of patchwork fur patterns, stitched together with bleeding sutures. He held her with iron-like paws, but his eyes were wide with terror and rage, froth seeping from the corners of his muzzle as he shook her and roared.

The tentacles were gone. All sensation of them as well, and something in that fact sparked in her magic-addled mind. His eyes, she saw, were wide and blood-shot, surrounded in circles of puffiness the likes of which she'd seen often in the faces of sleep-deprived collegiates. In that face, she saw desperation and malice, but most of all fear. For a moment, her heart lurched for the terrified and terrifying master of her nightmares.

In that moment, he jerked back from her, dropping the petite vixen and hissing as if his paws had been scorched. He turned away from her, hunching forward. When he turned back around, that midnight-blue mask was in place, dripping black ichor from the muzzle. She knew he was about to kill her, for seeing into his weakness, his heart of hearts, the nature of his motivations.

Then, as he raised both paws and began to gather the shadows to him, swirling them around his paws, tentacles began to gather and eyes began to open baleful and golden in the dark. Just before a silvery blade wielded by a glowing golden paw slammed through his midriff, twisted, and sliced upward, and he burst into smoke and brightness with a horrible roaring explosion of sound.

Dr. Theorem plunged through blackness thick as crude oil, his arcane shields flaring and ebbing constantly in a flashing webwork of silver light to push the stuff away from him with strobes of mystical power and purification. As Paladin had broken off to go find Eve herself, Theo had turned toward the blackest of blacknesses in her dreamscape, knowing that it was where the demon lord Aisha had sensed would most likely be.

Approaching such a creature for any reason was a lethal proposition; some were unintelligent, lords of demon worlds by dint of their sheer savage might. Others were clever, vicious generals in otherworldly hosts, given to horrifying and cyclopean stratagem and cunning use of their legions of hordelings. Yet another type were the aristocratic and magical monsters of the outer realms, lords of horrifying concepts and black sorcery even The Rémy, Archmagister of Earth, would have difficulty combating. The last type he hoped to encounter were the terrible Cthonic entities even demons knew to fear. He could only hope this would not be one such, and the lynx checked his leather belt bag with a steady but sweaty paw, for the spell components and potions he'd brought along to give him some chance of surviving such an encounter.

However, he had to know who had summoned this creature, whatever it was, and why it had agreed to come. Only the most powerful of infernomancers could draw such a creature against its will, and those who were powerful enough to do so almost universally avoided such risky acts. They had not come to such potent skill by foolishly toying with mighty, prideful, unspeakably long-sighted and vengeful aristocrats of the infernal realms.

No living villain he knew of, though it was quite a long list, was both capable and sufficiently foolish to do such a thing. And the only villain he'd ever known who was so capable and confident to actually pull it off was long gone, obliterated in the magical duel that had nearly leveled the city.

He sensed the trap an instant before it sprung. Throwing himself forward into a roll his aging body certainly didn't appreciate, he flew under swiping shadowy claws two feet long that raked out of utter blackness. An explosion of darkness and sound like a bellowing elephant with a hernia thundered past, as the very shadow-earth he'd walked over exploded, a magical glyph hidden in the blackness discharging it's power into where he would have been.

Spinning, throwing his paws out, the archmagus roared out a mystical string of syllables, and fired ruby-gold blasts from his fingertips, smashing one shadowy demon to withering bits and sending the other flying away into the darkness trying to flee the bolts that would inevitably catch and destroy it.

Then the darkness exploded into motion, and Dr. Theorem crossed his arms over his chest, ear tufts shivering in a sudden wind of energy, as he called out a single word of power that lit the air around him in a bubble of fire and destruction designed to stop anything that came too close. The sizzling, blaring explosions that went off in a chain all around him said just what the Dr. had suspected; he'd walked into a swarm of the monsters, who had cannily hidden themselves with the natural camouflage available to them in this place.

For a count of thirty seconds, he stood his ground, annihilating demon after demon as they flew into his coruscating offensive shield, burnt away by pure elemental fire and arcane energy. Then, as if someone had turned off a faucet of demon-spawn, the flow simply stopped, and he was left standing in an utterly silent dimness not so dark as it had been before.

There, some thirty paces in front of him, stood the object of his search. It stood perhaps six feet tall, a shadowy anthropomorphic figure with long, spindly, spiked limbs. Its eyes, a dull red like cherry-hot iron, had fixed on Dr. Theorem, and though its two-dimensional muzzle never moved, its words echoed from all around them as sibilant hisses from the dark.

Archmagus, it whispered, the sounds skirling across Dr. Theorem's ears like glass on chalkboard.

Refusing to wince or show sign of weakness, the old lynx gave his best confident smirk and bowed courtfully though his joints protested it with twinges of chilly pain.

"You have the advantage of me, I'm afraid. Might I have your name?"

No.

_ _

"Then shall we skip past the formal etiquette of trickery and name-asking, and come to the point?"

It raised a shadowy paw, claws two feet long flicking as it made an oddly mortal gesture, as if shrugging its assent. The thing seemed interested, Theo noted, a knowledge that made his stomach sour with concern as his mind raced to discern the motives of a thing that had no face to read.

"Why are you here, Shadow?"

I was called.

_ _

"By whom?"

You already know.

_ _

Dr. Theorem smiled, despite himself. Trading verbal games with demons was always a challenge, if nothing else.

"I don't believe a young supervillain new to his powers strong enough to summon you."

That is because the powers themselves are not his.

_ _

Theo felt his heart jerk. The inky blackness in the magic's signature, when he'd first broken into the cocoon, had reminded him so very much of Warlocke that he'd almost expected to find the bastard still alive somehow hiding in Eve's mind. The sheer ridiculousness of such an act though had made it seemed too far-fetched.

"How is that possible?"

He was given these powers. Perhaps they were forced into him. Surely you do not believe Warlocke acted alone?

_ _

Theo felt sick to his stomach at the implications of this. The dead priests had each been slain by their own paw, forced through torture via use of terror magic. It was an old hex, a curse designed to slay a victim from afar, using demonic infestations of a target's dreams. It was a type of killing reserved only for traitors, for those from whom the killer would not gain strength from the challenge of fighting face to face.

Each priest's face was familiar to him, from the files he'd read before engaging in saving Eve's mind. No known connection had existed between them, except that they were all members of the Catholic church, and the Augur had obliquely predicted each of their deaths. Three dead clerics, and he knew that Warlocke's cabal would number either three or nine, a squaring of three.

If the three priests already slain were part of a group trained by Warlocke, there would be five more. Five more powerful sorcerers schooled in the monstrous villain's ways. And the boy was hunting them.

"Thank you, Shadow, for answering my questions."

I did so only to distract you as my minions gathered.

_ _

"But of course. You also benefit if I escape, as I will hunt down those using you against your will. Well played. Goodbye, demon Shadow."

He withdrew his paw from his bag, as an infinite blackness of devils and claws descended towards him. The glass of a vial broke on the umbral terrain beneath his feet, and as he awoke from Eve's dream and immediately lunged for his phone, his spell back in the dream-world exploded, tearing a whole segment of Eve's dream out of her mind and out of reality, dumping that portion back into the Abyss from which it had come.

Dr. Theorem didn't bother calling the other meta-powered. He instead called the police, knowing they would need the detectives' skills at connecting patterns, to determine who else was on the boy's list. The three already slain had clearly been unable to stand up against the boy's power. The other five would be stronger, and more prepared, and the damage they wrought in such a fight could become quite serious indeed.

He didn't have time to stop and consider how, or why, the boy had been given such power.

Eve sat up in her hospital bed screaming so hard that bloody phlegm flew from her lips, splattering onto Mack's jersey as he rushed to her side.

Walking with a slightly bow-legged posture that had Jeff flushing red in the ears and apologizing every time he saw it, John had spent the last hour getting cleaned up, snuggling his all-too-adorable jaguar lover, and eventually migrating them both, still naked, to the couch in Jeff's living room.

There they ended up laying down, wrapped up in one another, watching the morning news as John massaged at the jaguar's belly and chest, still a bit surprised that someone who was, until that morning, self-identifying as straight would allow himself to be the 'small spoon'.

Not that he was going to complain. Having ample opportunity to nibble on the jag's evidently quite-sensitive adorable little round ears was a nice addition to a day that was already going quite well. He was well-fucked, as evidenced by his sore but happy behind, had helped a friend get a better handle on his powers, and was now spooning a cute guy while watching the mindlessly-droning news box.

It would have been better if Bobby was there. The thought soured his mood a little, even though Jeff wriggled back against him to get more comfortable again, which had the unintended consequence of pushing the cat's firm butt against a happily plumped wolf sheath.

If he didn't know any better, he would have thought the black jaguar was hinting he wanted to try being on the bottom. Still too shy to ask for it verbally would be the best guess, he supposed, if there was reason to think the newly-bi boy really would want to try that so soon. If at all. The wolf considered the fact that Jeff might be a top himself, and the complications that could come of it.

Polygamy, for one, which he and Bobby had agreed to but never tried. There had been no need, and neither of them was particularly the wandering type. He caught himself wondering just how bad Bobby was doing right that moment, and the thought had him craning his neck around trying to remember where his pants had gone by plumbing the fuzzy beer-laced memories of the night before.

A slight shift of the softly-furred cat that blanketed his front indicated he'd been noticed.

"Um...What're you looking for?"

"My pants. Can't remember where I stripped 'em last night. Gotta check for messages an' such."

Jeff reached out an arm and pointed toward the kitchen.

"I...Got my pants off in the kitchen?" The wolf couldn't help but laugh, and nuzzle his snout into the ruff of fur atop Jeff's head, getting a flick of an ear across his cheek.

"You uh...Don't remember...Last night?" His voice sounded uncertain, and John felt the slight tension in Jeff's shoulders. The jaguar was still fragile and skittish of intimacy, jumping at any possible signal that his affections were unwanted or misconstrued. He couldn't have been more wrong.

"I remember you sitting right about where our feet are, and me drinkin' your cum down like it was fine wine. If that answers yer question. And I liked it, too. Going to do it again, later tonight."

The blush was almost audible. It was certainly noticeable enough to feel as a rush of heat through the jag's skin, under that layer of fur.

"I-if you want to?"

"Kitty, as long as you lay off the asparagus, I'll slob that nice hard pole of yours anytime."

The silence stretched on for a few seconds, television forgotten, as the two furs stayed snuggled together, one deciding what to say next, the other waiting patiently for the same.

"Aren't you um...A top? I m-mean...Not that I don't appreciate you going out of your comfort zone for me, but..."

"But you don't want me to feel taken advantage of, because I'm the one sucking your dick? You're sweet, Jeff, but don't worry about it. Remember, just tell me what you want, and I'll either accommodate or tell you why I don't want to. Straightforward is the way to be."

"Ugh...God, I feel like a child in need of instruction. Totally out of my depth here..."

The wolf snickered, which blew warm breath across his jaguar's headfur, ruffling it and then sending a very pleasing shiver down the sensitive male's spine and tail.

"You sounded my depths jus' fine earlier."

If he didn't explode into flame from blushing so heatedly, Jeff was going to burst an artery, John figured, laughing as he slipped a paw down over the gently-curved hip rested against his own. When he gripped the jaguar's sac, playing with the downy and newly-dried fur there, Jeff didn't jerk away, just gave a little puffing noise, as the wolf's thumb brushed along his half-erect cock.

"Sh-shit...I uh...J-john um..."

The wolf was stroking a thumb-pad upward, tracing delicate veins and jangling nerves in the cat's hardening cock. Meanwhile, he'd taken one of those rounded ears in his teeth again, chewing it, causing the cat to crane his neck in instinctual pleasure-seeking. His purr was audible, and rumbling through both their bodies, when John's phone went off with a buzz and a police whistle.

Rolling his eyes to look toward it, he debated the merits of ignoring the call. A nice, full set of balls were in his paw, warm and ready, topped by a nice hard barbed cock for him to toy with. Jeff's back was arched, pushing his butt into the wolf's lap whether consciously or not, and he was at least half-sure he could get the jag to experiment if he was gentle.

The phone stopped ringing, then started again immediately. John's paw went around his lover's cock, giving it slow strokes to harden it up, peeling the sheath down in the process. The phone stopped, then began ringing again. John growled low in his throat, not that Jeff seemed to notice as he languidly squirmed about and tried to find a place to put his paws.

"Godfucking...Kitty, that sounds important."

"Mm...Hm?"

"I have to get that."

It had stopped again, and started a fourth time. Nobody called four times in a row for no reason. Gently pushing Jeff forward until the cat rolled enough to give him the space, John got up, and trotted to the kitchen with his frustrated boner leading the way. Digging his phone out of blue jean pockets took just a second, and he slapped the thing to his ear, forced himself to calm down so he wouldn't sound angry, and answered.

"Talk to me."

"Mr. Silverstone, this is Detective Kolter. A four-forty has just gone out. I'm requesting you and Castillas."

"What? You need backup?"

He rushed to the window, looking out over the city only to find it stormy and unremarkable. No pillar of fire, no clouds of smoke, nothing that looked to his eye like what would make the cops do something they always hated to do. Four-forty was police code for 'meta-powered crime in progress,' and allowed the super-powered community to get involved.

"The killer took someone alive this time. Elderly priest named Dover. Command thinks if we can find him fast enough, we might get this one back alive."

He looked down at a suddenly-wilting boner, and grumbled. His knot had already half-formed, which would take a while to deflate. Nonetheless, the logic was rock-solid, and he wasn't about to let some poor holy man get murdered so he could get laid.

"Has a general announcement been made? Are other meta-powered getting involved?"

Kolter's response was quick, businesslike and slightly winded, as if he were trotting at speed while talking.

"Not yet. We have three hours before the announcement goes out."

"Good. Text me an address, we'll get there asap."

Jeff looked up from the couch, perplexed and flushed.

"C'mon, kitty, get your god-of-death-and-lightning shit on. We're being called in."

Father Dover awoke with a start, and immediately regretted it as his temples, shoulders and elbows all shrieked in conflicting cacophonies of agonized fire. His skull felt as if someone had tapped out a metronome on it with a sledge hammer, and his ears rang like a beehive in a belltower. A shaking, harsh inhalation pulled air that stank of mildew and rot into his lungs, setting off a fit of dry coughing that made the chains of his bonds jangle.

A falling drop of water struck his ear with a thump, causing it to flick, which reminded the elderly cleric to open his eyes for a look around. Though he was forsworn against violence, even in his own defense, knowing what had happened and where he was could be the difference between life and death for him and anyone else unfortunate enough to have been taken captive. Memory of the disturbed young man, though not of what he had done to subdue Dover, came streaming back. The grey fox grimaced, hoping he could find some way to both help the poor child. Escape would be a secondary concern, if there were no other captives.

They were underground, that much seemed obvious by the damp stonework covered in a rug of mold. A single long taper candle, of the kind often used at church altars, burned away atop a half-crumbled stone slab festooned with damp paper and books with moldering leather covers.

A slight twist of his head, trying to get a look up at whatever was holding his paws above him made the world spin and wheel, and a wave of nausea exploded up from his gut, taking lunch and dinner with it in a painful gagging burst. He let himself hang for a bit, then, while his body recovered, eyes closed so he wouldn't have to watch the vomit drip down his soiled vestments.

He was chained up, with his arms over his head, explaining the pain in his arthritic joints. His head also hurt something terrible along it's back side, so he assumed he'd been concussed, explaining why he couldn't remember what exactly had happened. A soft, muttered prayer whispered on his lips, as he prayed to God for fortitude in his time of need.

The elderly cleric had seen tests of faith before, throughout his career as a priest. Most came in the form of difficult decisions between good behavior and taking the easy route in life. While they had never been easy, he had always managed to choose what he felt was the best path at the time. Some more difficult tests had been in reconciling tragedies with the idea of God the benevolent.

This test of faith came in the form of torture, as Christ had once borne upon the cross, though he would never compare himself in such a prideful way. At that moment, the elderly gray fox hung from a rotting rafter in what seemed to be a masonry basement, both paws chained above his head, his shoulders and elbows a mass of pain and as his age-withered body hadn't had the muscle tone to keep him suspended in such a way for long. At least, he mused, focusing on the positive despite the urge to give in to the pain, the boy had been kind enough to chain him with his feet flat upon the ground and his back to a wall.

Otherwise, he knew he would already be dead of a stretched diaphragm and collapsed lungs.

Testing the chains just showed him that they were impregnable to him. Old, rusty but solid iron manacles held his grey-furred wrists to a wall lined with similar hardware, with hardly any slack in the chain. A quick glance to the center told him something disheartening, too; the floor sloped inward from the walls, down to a steel mesh-covered drain in the floor. The stains were old, blackened into the rock in a grisly starburst pattern, but he knew blood when he saw it.

When voices echoed from somewhere in the distance, he knew there had to be a door somewhere, but which he was unable to see. One fur sounded older, gruff and hard-toned and emotionless. The other was higher-pitched, hissing in intonation, and sent a chill of recognition down his spine when it spoke loudly enough to be picked out.

"I paid you to find the priests! All you've brought me are their apprentices! I should put the demons in you for this!"

"Calm down, Daimon. If you took the time to interrogate the apprentices before you made them off themselves, you would have found the Shadow Congregation by now."

'Shadow Congregation?', Father Dover thought, perplexed brows pinching together. The name gave him no sense of recognition, given so little context. He strained to hear, as the conversation's tone lost volume again, the older, less emotional voice seeming to take over.

"You also need to have those wounds looked at. You're still bleeding, and it's been most of a day. Don't worry, Daimon, considering how well you paid us, we'll be there to help when the priests are found. No idiot 'hero' will prevent you getting your revenge."

The furious young male named Daimon's voice came again, so quiet Dover could barely make it out, and thought he had half-imagined the choked tone.

"This isn't about revenge. And they had best not..."

After that, echoes of the strange conversation faded, and Dover was left alone with his thoughts. There, hanging in the flickering candlelit darkness, the elderly clergy-fox closed his eyes and meditated, as he was often wont to do when left to wait. So far as he could tell, he was the only prisoner, though for all he knew whatever structure they were in could well contain innocent bystanders in need of protection. What was more, if the eyes he'd seen at the grisly scene back at the soup kitchen were any indication, this 'Daimon' was a very disturbed young fur.

That he was killing veteran priests searching for some 'Shadow Congregation,' just made Dover more convinced that the boy was deeply deranged. Something, however, niggled at the back of his mind, telling the elder there was more to this. Most of all, that another person who sounded far more rational was assisting Daimon in his personal crusade. Which meant Daimon could afford a mercenary, who was either profiteering from a dangerous madman's psychosis, or believed this Shadow Congregation was real.

At least, Dover thought, Daimon wasn't so far gone that he killed every priest he met. Any remaining rumination was cut off, though, as a noise of stone grinding on stone resounded through the chamber, veritably vibrating his aching bones. Cool, swamp-moist air swirled against the damp fur of his face as light spilled into the stone chamber from a passage somewhere to his left.

Before the young male even came into sight, Dover could smell him. Not body odor, but a metallic tang of blood and the scorched scent of burnt fabric. He could hear the sound of wet cloth moving and a shuffling gait, just before Daimon emerged from around a curve in the wall.

His costume, such as it was, looked like a lot of navy-blue fabric stained through in splotches all over his body where glass had pierced him. It was wrapped about his body like some sort of ninja costume, kept tight in most places by careful layering that had been disrupted by the glass imbedded in the boy's flesh.

Flesh that was still visibly bleeding, especially on Daimon's right flank, where the cloth looked rent apart like it had gone through a paper shredder, exposing flesh that hung in black-striped furred ribbons and seeped constantly underneath.

Dover interrupted the growling words that were beginning to emerge from Daimon's mouth.

"For God's sake, young cat, let me down so I can do something for your wounds!"

The cat called Daimon just stood there, having walked in front of Dover's chained-up spot, staring more than glaring with his blood-shot eyes. He'd been clearly taken by surprise, and slowly tilted his head to the left, which must have been all it took to rupture the thin layer of skin holding his snout's inner lining together, since the muzzle of his mask started to immediately darken.

Dover gave the boy his best look of fatherly disapproval, caring but cross, and twisted his aching wrists to jangle his chains pointedly.

"Well?"

The costumed cat's paws were shivering with blood loss, though his eyes were steady as tombstones. A quick clink and jingling of chain, and Dover was free, wincing as his arms came down to his sides, old shoulders crackling as he bent forward.

"Just...Give me a moment. I'm Father Dover, by the way. What's your name?"

Silence boiled between them a moment, and Dover was half certain the boy was considering ending it right there, breaking an old priest's neck for being impertinent. Still, he had to push forward, if there was to be any hope of helping the poor young thing. To his surprise, the cat responded finally, just as Dover was beginning to straighten up and regain some feeling in his paws.

"You can call me Daimon."

"Daimon...As in a personal spirit?"

"No. Daimon, the Nightmare Demon."

"How cheerful. Now sit down, so I can see to those wounds before you bleed to death."

Still perhaps a bit bewildered by the very forward and suddenly bossy prisoner, Daimon folded his legs and sat on the rough, splintery wooden ttable, brushing aside those tools Dover had seen earlier with careless motions of his paws, his shoulders and arms shaking with blood loss and fatigue.

"I was flung through stained glass. These are from the face of Jesus. Does that offend you?" The question seemed more one of curiosity than concern, Dover noted. Deranged but calculating, and remarkably lucid at the moment, he observed.

"No. Glass is glass. Your health is more important."

He got no further argument as he went to work, tearing up his own shirt sleeves to use as bandages, and slowly peeling the layers of blood-caked cloth from his captor's wounds. Sadly, though he looked, there was no key to find.

"Your sympathy will not stop me from killing, priest. I have to stop them."

"Stop whom? From doing what?" he asked, conversationally, while picking at glass shards with cloth-wrapped fingertips, wishing he had tweezers or some other sort of medical equipment.

"Them. From opening the door they left inside me."