And Sing of Sweet Surrender - Part Nine
Oh no,
here it is again
I need to know
when I will fall into decay
“I found a new case for us,” Jo grinned, leaning across the table as she pushed the newspaper across towards Jess.
Looking up from her bacon and eggs, which she had been picking delicately at in an attempt to avoid the burned bits, Jess leaned forward to consider the obituary that her table mate had circled, hissing. “Shit, that is revolting, Jo. I have completely lost any taste I might have had for breakfast. Ever.”
The other woman snorted. “It’s not that bad.”
“They found the man in the chimney,” she said, firmly. “Stuffed into a space that you might be able to fit a cat into, they found a three hundred pound man. The article says it made him nineteenfeet long.”
“Yeah… that part was a little gross…” Jo tugged the paper back, considering the page. “What exactly could make a person get sucked into a chimney like that? Some kind of creature, maybe…”
“Springheel Jack,” Jess guessed, sipping at her coffee, grimacing slightly. It was burnt.
“I think he just kind of bounced around and burned footprints in people’s roofs,” the other murmured, sipping at her coffee, still reading, not even seeming to notice the burnt flavour. “I don’t think he ever actually killed people, and I really don’t think that he ever pulled people up chimney’s. I think there are some stories about an evil imp who impersonated Santa Claus, or something…”
“That was Claus’ brother. Zwarte Piet.”
“What now?” she looked up at that, blinking at the other woman.
“Zwarte Piet. Ah - Black Peter.” Jess flushed slightly. “My grandmother was Dutch, came overseas after the second World War. She used to scare the crap out of us around Christmas, threatening that if we were bad, Zwarte Piet was going to come and crack us over the head. But he wasn’t supposed to pull people up the chimney, or anything, just give coal and crack you upside the skull if you were a brat. So unless this guy got a concussion before he was turned into the milkshake in the chimney straw…”
“Ugh, that is the grossest mental image I’ve ever had, thank you,” Jo groaned, closing her eyes. “You want to look into it, or…?”
“Yeah. But it sounds like a poltergeist to me,” she stood, tugging bills out of her pocket, tossing them on the table.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah… most people think of poltergeists like from the movie. No one remembers that in the old days, they were much more terrifying than just throwing around plates and moving chairs and things. They were old school scary spirits. Human souls who were trapped in one place so long they got twisted and bent, almost like demons.”
“I know that, Jess. I do know what I’m talking about… but I don’t know if any poltergeist has the kind of power needed to really twist a person up like that and shove them in that teeny tiny space. I think it might have to be something more… well, powerful.”
“Like what, a witch?”
“Maybe… something with the power to curse a person,” Jo stuck the paper under her arm, leading the way back out to the car. They’d recently chosen a new one out of a nice parking garage, and this one Jo said that they needed to keep - baby blue and low to the ground, wide and kind of finned, like a yuppie suburbs version of the Batmobile. It was old, but in good shape - and according to Jess’ more car minded companion, it was a 1959 Chrysler Imperial Southampton. Jess referred to it as the boat, because it was roughly the size and maneuverability of one. “Like some kind of wizard?”
“Pointy hat and all?” Jess blinked, slipping into the driver’s seat. What was truly wonderful about this car, as far as she was concerned, was the fact that the car’s apparently naïve owner had honestly left the keys on top of the visor, so they hadn’t even had to punch the vintage ignition.
“Oh, hell, no, but there are such a thing as real wizards, anyways.” The other frowned, considering the paper. “I dunno.”
“Demon?” she suggested, twisting to rest her arm on the back of Jo’s seat as she backed out of the parking space. “I mean, we seem to run into them more often than not… think a demon might do this?”
“Well, a demon would sure have the power to do it, but… I can’t see them willingly doing so,” she frowned.
“You think they’d be forced to do it?” she snorted, amused.
“No, just… you know… why would they do it?” she shrugged. “I mean… demons like killing people, sure, and fucking with them, and doing whatever they want. But they don’t usually, I dunno, make people really skinny and shove them in small places. Making them skinny by sucking all the blood out of them, or by making them seal a deal with them, or something, sure, but… it just seems strange. You know?”
“Yeah, I know… weird.” She muttered, fingers tapping on the steering wheel. “It bothers me.”
“So… we’re not going?” Jo asked, considering her.
“…no, we’re going.” Jess sighed, and glanced at her friend, grinning. “We’re gonna go. We’re gonna investigate, and we’re going to figure out what the hell is making people into silly putty versions of themselves. Did the guy have a single unbroken bone?”
“Nope. Every one was broken, even the ones in his fingers, and those teeny tiny ones in the ear. The guy was turned into a giant sac of bone powder.”
Jess shuddered. “That is a wonderful mental image, babe.”
“I know,” she smirked, stretching.
Things had changed in a way that seemed small, but was actually quite significant, since the ritual. They didn’t talk about what had happened during it, because that was part of the point of the ritual - you didn’t talk about what had happened afterwards. After all, it was supposed to be expelled from the body, from the mind, from the air around them. But the trust they’d both shown during the ceremony had apparently meant something. They slept in the same bed now, every night, with no hesitation, and half the time they weren’t even clothed. There had been no sex, but caught moments of brief kisses and fleeting, gentle affection. It was good.
And while Jess might occasionally wish she could just jump the shorter woman and get what she was craving, she was mostly just glad that everything was as different as it had been with Meg as possible.
She glanced over at the other, smiling softly. Jo was starting to fall asleep, nodding off quietly. “You can lean on me.”
“Mmm?” Jo glanced up, then nodded, and leaned over a little, resting her head on Jess’ shoulder, quietly. Closing her eyes, she curled into her, sighing gently, then slipped into sleep.
Tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, Jess smiled.
She knew that she should be more hesitant about this. Hell, until Meg had rather strongly come onto her, she’d never done anything sexual with another woman, just occasionally pecked others in the bar, usually for dares or when drunk. But there was nothing freaking her out now. Even though she’d never really planned on being with a woman, or wanted it, here she was, with Jo Harvelle curled against her side, sleeping on her, and she wanted her. A lot.
But hell, she didn’t really want to freak out about things. It was nicer, not freaking out. Besides, the lifestyle she was leading these days wasn’t exactly conducive to normal relationships. So this quiet thing that was not really a thing with Jo… this was good.
Humming softly, feeling warm and genuinely happy for the first time since she’d risen from the grave, Jess drove down the road, fingers tapping on the wheel.
“Wake up, Jo, c’mon, we’re there,” Jess said softly, a few hours later, as she shook her friend’s shoulder, gently.
Jo’s eyes slowly fluttered open, and she sighed softly. “Mmmh?”
“Time to wake up,” she pressed her lips briefly to the other’s, then grinned, sitting up and stretching. “Mmm. Time to figure out what’s making the milkshake people stuff.”
“Nnngh,” she groaned, and leaned over to kiss Jess’ cheek for a moment, then slipped out of the car, cracking her spine as she stretched, then headed to the back of the car, digging around in the trunk. A few moments later, she offered Jess her weapons as she tucked a rifle into one of her duffel bags. “Okay, I think we have everything we need… you want to head inside, now?”
“Yep,” Jess nodded, and headed up the steps, cutting the police seal with her hunting knife, then slipped into the house.
It was silent and sort of eerie, partially because everything in the house looked perfectly normal and still, as though it had been just a normal day in a normal person’s house. There was no movement, no noise whatsoever, but everything seemed just normal, until they finally reached the living room. Even there, the only thing that was strange was the massive tarp spread across the carpet. Awkwardly, however, that tarp was bloodstained and covered in bits and pieces of… well… person.
“That is disgusting,” Jess announced, nose curling.
“Nnngh.” Jo looked away, shuddering.
“That is fucking gross,” she murmured, quietly, shaking her head. “Shit, okay… I’m gonna go looking for sulfur, or whatever else it might be… you want to check out the rest of the house?”
“Mmhmm,” Jo nodded, reaching over to squeeze Jess’ hand for a moment, then headed off towards the rest of the house, rifle firmly under her arm, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
Jess took a deep breath, then started pacing the edges of the room, slowly, trying to find any signs of whatever might have done this. There was no obvious traces, no symbols drawn on anything, no objects or artifacts that she could point to and say, ‘Ah, that is what pulled him into the chimney!’ There were no claw marks from some kind of creature, no evidence whatsoever of what might have done this.
Taking another deep breath, she finally turned to the one thing in the room she had thus far managed to avoid - the massive stone fireplace.
It sat there, quietly, like an open stone maw, a hungry mouth that wanted to swallow up more victims, as though waiting for someone else to get sucked into it. It was just stone and brickwork, but it felt evil and hungry.
Swallowing, she gingerly set her hand on the mantle, and leaned down, peering up into the blackness. What was that, in the darkness? If only she could see…
“Just what d’ya think yer doin’?!”
Jess jumped, startled, and yelped when her forehead crashed off the stone edge of the fireplace. Reeling back, she braced her hand against her forehead, blinking blearily at the shape in the doorframe, trying to make it consolidate into one person, instead of two dizzy blurry someones. “Woah…”
They stepped closer, and checked her head before she could tell them she was fine. “You ain’t supposed to be in this house.”
Blinking at the person as her vision slowly started to come back to itself, she realized that this was a man, and more specifically, a man dressed in a crisp police uniform.
Oh shit.
“Ah… yeah, I know, officer, but… see, this was my cousin’s house, and when I heard what had happened, well… I mean… I just wanted to get something of him. to keep, so I could remember her, properly.”
His eyes narrowed as he considered her. “From the chimney?”
“Oh, that, I - thought I heard a bird up there. And I know he used to have problems with that, birds getting in his chimney. I just wanted to see if it was.” Jess thought her lies were actually fairly good, if she said so herself. It wasn’t a good thing to be proud of, and she knew that, but she had always managed to balance just the right level of believability with a believable emotional response. After all, being too slick and smooth about lies didn’t actually make it realistic. You needed it to be plausible, but with real human feeling behind everything.
He frowned, and nodded slowly. “What do you know about this case, miss….?”
“Cynthia Gallagher.” She made up a random name, and hoped to all hell she’d remember it later.
“Cynthia.” He nodded, frowning. “What do you know?”
“Only that my cousin was found dead,” she shrugged, playing dumb. “I was really broken up when I heard… I mean, I have never been terribly close with my cousin, but I did love him, and I miss him. We were supposed to be visiting him soon.”
“We?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
“My friend and I.” she said, quickly, crossing her arms, hoping to all hell that her guns were hidden under her coat. The last thing she needed was for this officer to think he needed to frisk her for any reason, and find all the random little ‘occult’ items scattered on her person. A hunter might think her assortment normal, but for a normal person, they were sort of crazy.
The officer frowned, glancing behind him as though he knew Jo was somewhere in the house, nostrils flaring.
“So… do they know what happened to him yet, officer?” she asked, hopefully. She could pretend to be hopeful because she was supposed to be a grieving family member who just wanted answers, and her genuine hope that they’d find a hint as to what had killed him easily translated as though it was real.
“Of course they do,” he frowned, blinking at her.
“….they do?” Jess blinked back.
“He was a witch.” He said, matter of factly, as though this was the most normal thing in the world to say. “He was a witch, with powers derived by signing the devil’s book, but he decided to back out of the deal, and decided not to honour his contract, so his demon took it outta his hide.”
She took a step back from the officer, blinking at him in alarm.
“Oh come on now, don’t be a fool, Jessica.” He drawled, and her blood ran cold as the man stepped closer to her, eyes flickering like shutters for a moment, sinking into full black as he approached. Demon. “We all know who you are. You reek of hell still, even if you got out to the surface again. Even if you got out of our grip, we all know who you are, and we will get you back.”
“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus,” she started, quickly, trying to get the exorcism out before he could get to her, then gagged. Her chest suddenly hurt, like someone was stabbing her, and she staggered back again, gasping in pain. It fucking hurt.
“Not a good idea, little girl,” the demon drawled, smirking.
She coughed, gagging, hand over her mouth. It felt like her lungs were trying to claw their way out of her body, just trying to rip themselves to pieces and get out of her body. Pulling her trembling fingers away from her mouth, her eyes widened, shocked at the amount of blood on her fingers, across her palm.
“I told you, we will pull you back into our world, into hell,” he grinned, too many teeth.
Jess gagged on her own blood, reminded of biting off her tongue again, staggering to her knees as she struggled to breathe, blood splattering on the hardwood floor.
Oddly, the thought flickered through her mind that if she had fallen just two feet to the left, she would have at least coughed the blood up onto the tarp, with all the other blood, where it would be easily cleaned up.
“Crux sancta sit mihi lux!” a new voice called, and Jess looked up, desperately, seeing her lover in the doorway.
“Jo…” she rasped through the blood, gagging slightly.
The demon spun, roaring, then howled when the other woman raised and dropped her arm like a slash through the air, throwing holy water in the demons face. He screamed and howled, clutching at his face.
“Non draco sit mihi dux,” Jo continued, speaking so rapidly her words were almost slurred as she stormed forward, slashing holy water over and over at the demon, not letting him a moment’s respite. “Non draco sit mihi dux, nunquam suade mihi vana sunt mala quae libas, ipse venena bibas!”
The man’s head was thrown back, and a black cloud billowed out of him, hovering in the air for a moment, then the cloud slid out of the window, as though fleeing, and his body slumped to the ground, lifeless.
“Oh fuck,” Jess grunted, the coughing and the bleeding stopped, though her chest still hurt.
Jo dashed to her side, grabbing her arms and hauling her up. “Car.”
“Yes ma’am,” she drawled, laughing weakly.
“Don’t call me ma’am, that’s my mother,” Jo grimaced, but smiled as she slid her arm around Jess’ waist, leading her towards the car. “And I don’t want you sleeping with my mother.”
She laughed weakly. “I don’t want to sleep with your mother, either.”
“Good. C’mon. Good work distracting it.”
Jess snorted, wiping her bloody mouth with her sleeve, wincing at the amount on the fabric. “Was that my job?”
“Mmmhmm.” Jo nodded, and helped her into the passenger seat. “Let’s go get you cleaned up, distracting sidekick.”
“Yes mistress,” she smiled, tired.
“Better.”
----
Precious and fragile things
Need special handling
My God what have we done to you?
“We are the worst hunters in the universe.”
Jo snorted, looking up at Jess. “Why would you say that?”
“What are we doing?”
“Watching badly subtitled Bollywood movies, pigging out on Big Macs and fries, and sitting around in our underwear,” the other chirped, smirking as she dug in her paper bag, tugging out a little package of sweet and sour sauce to dip her fries in.
“Exactly. And what are we not doing?” she asked, popping some of the lettuce from the bottom of her burger box in her mouth.
“Hunting?” Jo guessed.
“Exactly. Ergo, worst hunters in the universe.”
“C’mon, even Samuel Colt got some downtime every now and then.”
Jess perked up at the name. She couldn’t really help it. Even though she had finally decided not to try and track Sam down, deciding that it was healthier for him to grieve and move on than to freak him out and send his world crashing down around his ears, she still missed him. “Samuel Colt? The gun maker?”
“Not just a gun maker,” Jo turned to face Jess, instead of the television. It wasn’t as though the plot of the movie was really going to make any less sense if she didn’t pay attention. “Samuel Colt is a legend among hunters. He created the Colt.”
“…weren’t all of his guns called Colts?”
“Yeah, but not all of them were like this gun. Ever hear of the ‘dead man’s gun’?”
Jess frowned. The name sounded familiar… “Wait, wasn’t that the gun that a single shot from it could kill anything instantly, and anything shot by it went straight to hell, no matter what it was?”
“Exactly!” she nodded, fervently. “There are even rumours he killed an angel.”
She snorted. “Well, in order to believe that story, you have to first believe that angels are real.”
“You don’t?” Jo hesitated, waylaid momentarily.
“I’ve never seen one. I don’t believe in things I haven’t seen,” Jess murmured, feeling very jaded, just uttering those words. “Demons and hell, I believe in. heaven… seems like a sweet fantasy to me.”
The other woman looked torn for a moment, like she wanted to argue, the point, but returned to the original story instead. “Anyway, regardless, the colt, the dead man’s gun, it could do things that no other gun could do. Sure, it still depended on the wielder. I mean, you couldn’t just shoot in the air and expect it to hit the person you were trying to hit, but as long as you hit them, they were kaput. Dead. And if you shot the body the demon was in, killing it, that killed the demon too!”
“So?” she shrugged, shifting so that her legs were bent and her arms were resting on her knees. “I can do that with an exorcism, too.”
“No, no no no no no,” Jo held up her hands, quickly. “An exorcism does not kill the demon.”
“…what does it do, then?” she frowned, leaning forward slightly.
“It just kicks them out,” the other pointed at Jess with one of her fries. “Sends them packing, back to hell. It just kicks them completely out of the body, but they’re not dead, you can’t kill demons, that’s the thing about it. There is no way to actually kill demons. Except for this gun.”
Jess whistled, impressed. “Sounds like a hell of thing to have. Where is it?”
“Well, no one knows, do they?” Jo frowned slightly, leaning back, crunching on her fries again. “When Samuel Colt died, he left it to his son, but he didn’t hold onto it for very long. At that point, it started bouncing around from hand to hand. Some of the people recorded as holding onto it were hunters, some of them were just people who wanted a fool proof gun. It was generally assumed that it was sort of cursed, maybe not really cursed, but people who had the gun didn’t have it for very long. Maybe people just stole it from them, not sure.”
“Kind of like a supernatural monster killer version of the Hope Diamond,” Jess offered.
“Only usually the deaths were slightly more frequent and slightly more gruesome than with that rock,” Jo snorted.
“Oh, come on, the Hope Diamond deaths were both creative and gruesome,” she grinned.
“That they might have been. But the Colt…” she shook her head. “There’s a really good reason they called it ‘dead man’s gun’, and it wasn’t just because the damn gun could kill anything.”
Jess shook her head, sipping at her milkshake. “So no one has any idea where it is now?”
“None. But hunters all over the world are looking for the damn thing. Hope they find it, too. I’d like it to be in play again.”
“You want to kill the thing that killed your father,” Jess murmured. They hadn’t spoken again of the cleansing ritual - they were never to speak of the actual ritual and the things that happened in it again, so said the book, but Jo had since murmured things here and there about her father.
Jo shrugged, picking at one of the fries. Her reactions weren’t as strong about the death as she might have expected - except that Jess had felt that energy flowing through the water, as creepy and strange as that thought seemed to her. She really believed that the other woman had been cleansed of all of her resentment and obsession about that issue. “Sure, I’d like to kill him. I would. But I think there are other, bigger issues that the gun might be used for. I mean, think about it. Preachers the world over are saying we’re in the end times - wouldn’t a gun that could maybe kill the devil be a great thing to have right about now?”
“Preachers have been saying we’re living in the end times since someone sat down and wrote a book about what was going to happen in those ‘end times’.” Jess pointed out, rolling her eyes.
“True. But we’re hunters, Jess. We know the signs. We are in the end times.”
“You really think so?” she hesitated, considering her.
“I don’t think so. I know so. I know that the way things are going, this world isn’t going to last much longer.” Jo shrugged. “Either the devil comes back to the earth and makes us all his unholy bitches, or we’re gonna blow ourselves into the sun. Really, I think either possibility is entirely possible.”
She smirked slightly, nodding. “True.”
“If you don’t believe in heaven,” Jo spoke up suddenly, the issue clearly still bothering her, “Does that mean that you think everyone goes to hell when they die?”
“Yes.”
“…you didn’t even think about that.” She blinked, surprised.
To an extent, Jess was surprised herself with how abruptly she’d answered that question, but the honest truth, if the other woman wanted it, was that she believed that every human being, regardless of how good or kind or pious they might have been when they were alive, went into a hole in the ground, and then went under the torturer’s knife.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, softly. “Because of the whole ‘never seeing an angel’ thing?”
“Partly.” She murmured, picking at a scab on her knee. She’d scraped that up last week when she and Jo had been slipping into the vampire nest and she’d caught her jeans on the edge of a board that had been used at one point to close up the old school they were camping out in. She had loved those jeans, too, it felt bad to throw them out. “Partly because I just know that much more about hell.”
“Why? I mean… I’ve seen demons, too. I know about them. That doesn’t make me feel like I know a lot about the firey pit.”
“Pit, yes. Fire, no.”
“I don’t follow,” Jo frowned, brows furrowed.
“If we’re going to talk about this, I need to be drunk,” Jess said abruptly, slipping off the bed, and digging in her backpack. She’d picked up a few supplies when she’d gone into town to get their dinner anyway, so she silently offered Jo a small mickey of cinnamon whiskey, then settled back on the bed herself with a large bottle of Jack Daniels. Folding her legs Indian style, she peeled the seal off the square bottle, then cracked off the cap, and leaned back as she took several deep swallows. It was like she was trying to chug the thing, but she just needed that stinging burn, sliding down her throat like liquid fire, warming her from the inside out as she felt it rush through her veins.
“Woah, pace yourself…” the other reached forward to touch her arm, making her lower the bottle for a moment. “You still need that liver, you know.”
Jess shuddered. “He liked livers.”
“Who liked livers?” she blinked at her, confused.
“He did. The torturer.”
“You really need to explain, I don’t - I don’t understand,” Jo said, quietly, shifting closer to Jess on the bed, shoving the remains of their dinner aside as she sat directly in front of her, her knees pressing into Jess’ as she rested her hands on the other’s thighs, as though trying to send her strength through her palms. “Please, Jess.”
She met the other’s eyes for a moment, and had to look away. “I feel like I should be skyclad and doing widdershins,” she muttered.
“We don’t need that. Talk to me.”
Jess closed her eyes, then murmured, “Did your mother tell you that I had problems with my boyfriend?”
She had tried to hide this from Jo. She’d thought she’d hid it from Meg, but clearly that had failed. And that demon… that demon had known. This secret was not going to stay secret much longer, and she felt good about Jo, felt like she wanted this to last, so she didn’t want it to come out wrong, like when some sadistic demon thought it would be funny to ruin things.
She had to tell her.
“Something like that, I heard something, yeah,” Jo nodded. “What about it?”
“He was a hunter. I think he was, anyway, before he knew me. He did the whole thing - watching newspapers for strange, unusual murders… salt lines under the door frame. All of it. But he never mentioned it to me, so I thought nothing of it… until the night he came home from a weekend with his brother.” Jess drew a deep breath. “I was expecting him, so I cleaned up, made cookies. I was going to take a shower when I heard the door open. I thought it was him, so I - I went to see him, but…. It wasn’t.”
“Who was it?” the other asked, quietly.
“I dunno. But he was… his eyes were yellow. Like… canary yellow. I really think he was a demon, but I’ve never seen a demon with anything but black eyes before.”
“Crossroad demons have red eyes,” Jo offered, quickly. “The book said so. And Leviathan is the green eyed monster, even though he’s a demon too, so it happens that demons have different coloured eyes.”
“That actually doesn’t make me feel better,” Jess murmured.
“Sorry.” She flushed.
“It doesn’t matter, I was already pretty sure that’s what he was,” Jess shrugged, leaning back as she took another deep pull of the Jack, sighing softly. She was starting to feel it burn through her veins. “I was pretty sure already. Anyway, there he was in my room, all yellow eyed, and he said, ‘Don’t take this personally, sweetheart, but…’”
She took a moment, taking a deep breath. These words were burned into her head, like they’d been branded in her mind. “’Don’t take this personally, sweetheart, but you make him happy, and I can’t really let that happen. Y’see, I’ve got plans for your boy, and you’re in the way’. And then… then I started to bleed.”
The other woman shifted slightly closer, confused. “Bleeding?”
“From my stomach. He slashed me right open, I don’t know how. He never moved.”
Jo’s fingers trailed to Jess’ bare stomach, confused. “There’s no scar.”
“I know,” she murmured. “But I was slashed right open, like a c-section scar, or something, right open, bleeding everywhere, and then… he slammed me against the wall. He didn’t move, and I was against the wall, and I got pulled up, up to the ceiling. Then he came home, and there I was, trapped. I was starting to - I had lost so much blood already.” Her voice cracked. She didn’t want to talk about this, but now that she was speaking, she didn’t seem able to stop, it was like her mind was determined to expel everything all at once.
“Jess…”
“He saw me,” she interrupted the other. She just needed to say this. It needed to come out. “He saw me, and I saw this look of - of recognition. He knew why I was there. He saw me on that ceiling, bleeding my guts out, and the only thing I saw was that he knew what was happening, why I was there. And then the fire started. Burned me alive.”
“You don’t have any scars,” Jo murmured, confused.
“I know.”
“How is that possible? How is it possible for you to be burned apart, and not - “
“See this?” Jess held up her hand, tensor bandages still wrapped tightly around it. “These are the only marks I have. The only ones.”
“Can I - “ Jo reached for the bandages.
“In a minute,” Jess tugged her arm back. “Let me tell the rest of what happened.”
She hesitated, but nodded slowly.
She took a few deep, steadying breaths, and a few deep, steadying swallows of the Jack, then murmured, “I don’t really know how much the fire burned me, but it pretty much scorched our apartment. The floors were still solid, and a lot of our stuff was still… mostly… intact, but the ceilings of the whole building were destroyed. I was on the ceiling, so I was entirely engulfed, but there was enough of me left that they buried me, they didn’t cremate me. I don’t even want to know what would have happened if they’d cremated me.”
“Cremated - Jess, seriously, what are you talking about?!” Jo was looking like she seriously though the other woman was just fucking with her, just trying to make her believe something so ridiculous that it couldn’t possibly be true. “Seriously, this isn’t funny.”
“I know it isn’t.” Jess met her eyes. “I went to hell.”
The other hesitated.
“I’ve been to hell, Jo.”
“That’s not possible. Jess, I know that something happened, but… people don’t come back from hell.”
“Don’t I know it.” Jess murmured, and started slowly unwinding the bandages around her arm, quietly. “I thought I was facing a full eternity of hell, of suffering, of torture. But then… something happened.”
“What happened?” Jo asked, frowning.
“I don’t know.” She admitted. “I don’t really… remember. But what I do remember is waking up in my coffin, four days after I had died, with no scarring, no cuts… every wound I had ever gotten and scarred from had disappeared. I was as smooth as I had ever been. Except for this.” She finished unwrapping her bandaged arm, and offered her wrist to her friend.
Jo reached forward, gingerly taking the other’s hand, twisting and turning it a little so that she could look at the scar. It was still raw and shiny, like a fresh burn, a clear handprint, fingers curled around her wrist , around the base of her hand. It still looked like some kind of fire elemental had reached down and grabbed her, yanking her up by the hand. “What is this? I’ve never seen anything like that before…”
“I know,” she murmured, sighing softly. “I dunno.”
“It looks like someone grabbed you… it’s a full on handprint,” she gaped at her, shocked. “Do you think someone full on yanked you out of there?”
“Yeah, I think so, but…”
“What did it, right?” Jo asked, softly, fingertips brushing over the clear fingerprints.
“Exactly.”
Looking up at her, she met Jess’ eyes, and whispered, “You really were in hell, weren’t you?”
“Yeah.” She whispered.
“Fuck. You were really in hell. You were… I didn’t even think… but you’re a hunter, you’re a good person…”
“I hunt because I was in hell,” she murmured. “Because I know what its like for people trapped in the pit, and if there is any way I can prevent them from ending up back in that pit with everyone else… even if it’s just a little slower getting there, then that’s what I’m going to do. I can help them. And yeah. I was a good person. I was a pretty good person, I always figured I’d go past those legendary pearly gates when I died. But then I died, and I was on a torture rack.”
Jo flinched, fingers curling in Jess’, holding onto her. “You think everyone…?”
“Yeah,” she whispered softly. “Everyone goes to hell.”
Part Ten
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