"Elonore?" he asked hesitantly, her name echoing hollowly in the large, dead space. The creature that turned to look at him with hostile curiosity looked like his lover but bore no trace of her soul in their eyes.
                              
####
                              
Rimmon and the assorted flavours of lesser damned creatures all mumbled their appropriate lines of ritual. To any outsider, it looked like four adults playing at being mystic, a paint and candel etched sigil looking harmless while they muttered nonsense.
                              
A few herbs burned fitfully on the charcoal brazer with the slowly roasting carcass of a dead rabbit making the apartment smell like roasted fur. It wasn't lovely and it would take weeks to air out of the apartment fully. None of that mattered now.
                              
The blood had been spilt, the words had been chanted and the power had been cast. Every being in the room: Arc Angel, Neutral, mortal and Descended, felt the strength drain out of them, collapsing all four of them to the ground. The candles snuffed out, the sigil burned a fitful red and all of them groaned in pain and the aura of terror that filled the room.
                              
Rimmon was the most immune to the sense of inevitable terror, having been exposed to the particular and unique torture that was the King's personal aura. Coyote was able to defend only himself from the effects, safe in the cocoon of his own aura, Gabriel grimaced in pain and silently endured. Poor, sweet Belle fainted, but since the males had all anticipated that issue, she'd been seated amongst all the pillows they could have mustered. For her 'comfort' of course. Now she lay out of the way, clear of the protective circle and happily unconscious. Sometimes the image the King of Hell wore was beyong the coping capabilities of the mortal mind.
                              
Rimmon dropped to his knees, not dominant enough on the Descended heirarchy to maintain his dignity in this exchange and Gabriel held out a while longer. But the Arc Angel, for all his glory, was not a Seraphim or any of the Higher elite that could hold out against a Lower Descended, not without his own Ascended home advantage and a lot of backup. He fell to his hands and knees after Rimmon succumbed. Coyote demurely knelt, not sucumbing but not resisting either.
                              
Azazel slowly tore his way into this reality, the fabric of reality crying out at his intrustion. Their circle of Power fluctuated, dimming against the assault of the King of Hell but against all odds, holding. Azazel formed in the room and none present could identify the battered visage of that as Lone's father. He snarled something out, the sound dissonant and painful to all ears except Rimmon's.
                              
"He demands address with the Neutral, seeing none other present worthy of his attention." Rimmon declared in a flat tone, playing translator easily.
                              
"We request audience to negotiate the soul of one Elonore Priest. She is my apprentice and thus beyond the Temptation and Salvation of either Descended or Ascended." Coyote proclaimed calmly, taking out a worn and weathered looking pipe. He quickly and expertly packed it with fresh tobacco and lit it while Azazel watched. And with the skill only an experienced Neutral could claim, he reached across the protective circle without breaking it, and offered the pipe to Azazel in the ages old gesture of temporary peace.
                              
"And what exactly do you think is your bargaining position?" Azazel demanded, arrogant and skeptical.
                              
Coyote smiled softly, looking down in an almost feminine show of demure passivity, the Neutral shrugged. "I can do or offer nothing. My compatriot Rimmon, however, offers a most interesting option." he admitted.
                              
The King of Hell turned his hellfire eyes on Rimmon and the Demon Ambassador struggled to maintain his posture under the weight of his Master's gaze. If this failed, his fate wouldn't be swift, it would hold no trace of mercy and it would make the entirely of hell pale in terror. He was staging not just a mutiny, but a complete coup de gras. He'd abandonded his Descended nature and gave the Neutral the knowledge on how to entrap this entity. A secret only one of his rank or higher knew, because it worked on him too.
                              
####
                              
"Lone, please indicate that some part of you can hear me?" Gavin kept his voice calm, as if he were speaking to a mass murderer with a high powered rifle.
                              
Gavin watched the woman he loved take as strangely alien and yet graceful step to the side, walking a wide perimeter around him and creeping ever closer to the no longer present Azazel. He didn't know what she hoped to achieve, he could taste the tang of a Summoning in the air. And the foul musk of the Twisted. His mind made the intuitive leap necessary and understood that somehow Lone had invited it inside her.
                              
Her own mortality was being used against her now, because soon it would give her unimaginanle power, and neigh immortality , but would also destroy the soul of the woman he loved. Every pulse of her heart spread the sickness, her strengths useless against this poison. It was the perfect infector, because it was a corrupted Fallen, capable of absorbing Ascended, Descended and mortal alike. She was a spirit touched and could see the personal auras of each being and could slip passed their defences and snag a piece of their soul.
                              
The only way to chase the Twisted out of her was to make it feel the sting of a mortal death. He had to kill Lone to save her, and being her once Guardian Angel, he knew how. He'd resurrected her from a drowning, and he could still revoke the second chance. As all powerful as the Twisted and Lone combined were the woman fell to her knees gasping for breath that now frothed with water. Gavin watched while gritting his teeth as Lone slowly drowned on dry land while he watched, willing it to happen. Until the darkness fled from under her skin, retreating as the Twisted fled death. By then Lone was blue lipped and dead limp. Gavin rushed to her side, flipping her onto her back and started to pound CPR into her chest, unable to use any power to start her heart this time.