Bane

October 31, 1993

Noon

Gerald Dean stared from the second story The Lockdown, mild disgust barely hidden beneath his otherwise blank expression. To anyone else, he was just another owner surveying his own personal Sodom and Gomorrah, but those anybodies were nobodies. Concealing emotion was a discipline he both strove, and failed constantly.

Below the cast of dancers was much different than when he began, when Judge Grifford purged the monsters that preyed on Driftwood's lowlife underbelly. Now, the Inquisition sinned in their absence, valuable hunters shedding their clothes for the next conjurer to fall prey to such deadly seduction.

At least the monsters were honest about what they were.

Here, the widow's of fallen hunters bared everything to lure those drunk on power to their doom. From the door, to the stage, and the stage to the private dances. The last pseudosexual encounter the filth would ever have. Over the course of years since he took the helm at The Lockdown, he collected well over twenty hemp cords bearing small faceted shards of that oily black glass.

That sinister Black glass.

Only glass in name. The lore behind the glass was far more sinister, a tale worthy of ancient mythos, but one he was forced to believe, for the thing that revealed its secrets was Ammielle, daughter of the principalities, the ruination of both Reverend James Wallace, and James Wallace, Junior. A demon not for some war in heaven, but because it chose to fall, than follow; not a servant of The Lord; not a servant of Lucifer, but irredeemably evil all the same. Ammielle with her ageless, flawless olive flesh, in whose very stride held the universe in awe; Ammielle whose hair seemed to hold all the stars in its shimmering black locks.

Ammielle, who like the Vampire Crimson, and the Succubus Blanca, begged for anything but being cast into the land of the dead god, Taal; Taal, the fallen, whose size was so great, he was cast into the unending lands, who burned as he fell, and whose fires were quenched by the sands of the unending lands, even as his very touch corrupted forever the land around him; whose white fires scorched that land, and melted that sand, bearing the oily obsidian that came when sand turned to volcanic glass.

Taal who slept in an everlasting coma, and dreamt with belief, so strongly that belief made manifest to physical form; made real a host of terrible creatures whose existence plagued the unending lands, serving the will of their sleeping master.

Ammielle, who feared Taal, for Taal was cast out of heaven for making a choice, and she for choosing nothing at all.

Gerald shuddered, his eyes reluctantly fixed on the naked Chlöe, whose true name died with her fallen husband only three years before. Chlöe, ever graceful, ever brutal, and ever deadly, gyrating shamelessly to the delight of a witch whose attempts to impress her with the spontaneous generation of wealth was going to be the end for him. She would lure him, and lull him, and while she gave him the gift of one last primal, private dance, would steal his life, and turn his shard over to Gerald.

One a week was the house goal. It did not always happen, and in the weeks past, with Chlöe, it happened at least twice, sometimes trice in a week.

Gerald scowled. They were doing The Order's good work, hunting the enemy, but they were no longer hunters. They were opportunistic predators... not even predators. They were like carnivorous pitcher plants. Sitting around and waiting.

Gerald wiped his brow, and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. This was supposed to be a reward, but it felt like a punishment. Desk jobbed in such a place of iniquity. Subjecting these women to this lifestyle.

...still. Witches still came, monsters were still willing to shell out money, and the enemy was funding the war against itself without even knowing it.