The Last Temptation
A sort of belated madness set over the city, after the initial shock of the revelation passed. With the President's address, the full weight of a new world reality rested heavily on morale. There were those who continued rioting and looting and venting their frustrations in destructive ways. The mass exodus carried on, though highway traffic was nightmarish. But in increasing numbers, people began to go into nonfunctional states. They wandered about lost, having been ousted from hotel rooms or robbed of their cars. When stranded without a place to go or a direction to pursue, they simply walked.
But here, they were also thwarted. A national curfew had been put in place. At dusk, everyone was to get inside. While it would be impossible to capture all who disobeyed, the local policing forces and national guard managed to force businesses to close. Enforcement vehicles patrolled the streets, shining spotlights into dark corners, and pronouncing the curfew loudly to any who lingered. People were literally horded into the nearest buildings. It was the price to pay for pushing their luck.
Rhiannon got stuck in such a trap.
She was patrolling near the Orleans hotel when she rounded a corner and found herself face-to-face with a police car. Reversing directions only pointed her at another one. The area was blocked off. Rather than pick a fight, the brunette put her hands up, voicing a tired, "Alright, Christ," and went into the hotel...
Where there was profit to be made. Management claimed that no one was allowed to loiter. Since the casino and bar were closed, there was nothing else to do but pull out a bank card and get a hotel room. Luckily, over thirty rooms had gone prematurely vacant. Under normal circumstances, Rhiannon would've cursed a blue streak and hit the nearest emergency exit, but leaving was rendered impossible. With a mental attitude of 'fuck it', she dragged ass upstairs and locked herself in a standard single.
The decor in Orleans was a supposedly modern take on art deco. The walls were alternately red or rust or burnt orange. The furniture, white with turquoise accents. The throw pillows were shaped like tubes. Rhiannon grabbed such a tube and tossed it in the air, pacing around despite feeling as if she were an engine running on empty. The television as distraction? No. The only thing on was that god-forsaken man's face, reciting his inspirational script over and over and over... As if it wasn't his administration that made Project Integration possible. Rhiannon rubbed her wrist, where the chip was hidden, then forced herself to toss the pillow aside and check out the mini-fridge.
"I seem to recall a bath..."
Elfleda's voice. Unmistakable. One of those moments where she deliberately used that strange ability of hers to link with both mind and physical ears. Neither exclusively one, nor the other. Even when it came of sensation, it seemed the Corruptress teased. As ever, when next she spoke, it was purely with what could only really be described as vocal chords. Whether or not Elfleda physically still possessed any, of course, was a matter for personal interpretation. The last time they had met, Rhiannon had helped her to ascend back to hellish throne. As of now, she just casually walked directly through wall.
What could she want now?
"It's all a bit of a puzzle, isn't it?"
Just barely, Rhiannon managed not to drop the small bottle of liquor she'd chosen. The brunette jerked into upright position, on alert. Upon recognizing Elfleda's voice and visage, she closed her eyes in an expression revealing tried patience. "I dare you to knock on a door," she said, closing the mini-fridge with her shoe and backing away from Leviathan's Bride. She wandered towards the couch, only to stop and come back again, not wishing to put her back to the woman.
'I seem to recall a bath...'
Yes, that was a feature of the other time when Elfleda visited the Slayer in a hotel. Rhiannon was between residences, attempting to claw her way back from corruption, when retiring to a bath took a nasty turn. Suddenly the water was filled with black fluid that coalesced into tentacles, which wrapped around her limbs. They began to pull her under, to reinvigorate her desires of destruction, until Rhiannon made a splashy exit from the tub.
Yeah, those were fun times.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" she asked. So far as Rhiannon was concerned, their business was finished. She unscrewed the bottle cap and took a sip. From the top shelf it wasn't, but she wasn't picky. With the back of her legs against the couch, she studied the other. Her pulse did a familiar kick-start, a reaction she hated to have but couldn't control.
"Some would claim 'sulking'. And while they'd dare not do so in my presence, it's truthful to say I'm a little disappointed to have matters allowed to reverse, after such time has passed."
Looking out the window, a searchlight from passing helicopter swept by. Somewhere, in the distance, gunfire could be heard. Warning shots? It seemed to matter not. They were cut short, whatever the case. Elfleda seemed oddly calm. Regal, as ever the case, but seemingly without the attempt to entwine, entrap and merge herself with the Slayer, like some forceful ex-lover with something to prove. If one had to read the paler of the two brunettes' expression, it would have to be categorized as a strange mixture of contentment and boredom.
Finally, she turned attention back to Rhiannon. If one were to think back upon their first meeting, it would be strange to imagine just how closely their paths had crossed. Each had their motivations, but Elfleda genuinely had sometimes 'saved' the girl and, in her own selfish way, Rhiannon had done likewise for her.
"It was decreed the interference should proceed," she explained. "The Exile has been given release... Things have reached stagnation, Rhiannon Lee. Now the living can choose for themselves what doors they might seek. The old games... No longer do they hold validity."
"You feeling obsolete?" Taking a sip of her drink, Rhiannon kept her eyes on the Corruptress, gaging her reaction. "I mean, who needs you to open a hellverse? Any jackass with the right spellbook can do it now... And people are a lot more likely to do dirty deeds, all by themselves. Temptation's all around them." Hers was a cynical perspective of the new world disorder. Slayers had witnessed for untold centuries how degenerate demons were, how impossible to persuade into good behavior. Imagining that exposure would promote neighborly affection was ludicrous.
Rhiannon knew she was baiting Elfleda, and the last thing the arrogant entity would do was admit defeat or uselessness. Undoubtedly the Bride would land on her feet, find some new purpose into which she could pour her efforts. At the very least, she might proclaim how easy her work would now be, and say that it was exactly as Leviathan intended.
As she waited for a response, the fragrances of her old enemy wafted past her nose. The sweetness of Elfleda was nauseating. Perhaps it was paranoia, but Rhiannon didn't trust herself to breathe it in. She wished she could hold her breath indefinitely.
Rather troublingly, Elfleda's reaction came in the form of a look. An unblinking, unflinching look. It was too calm, too self-assured, to be described as a stare, but might as well qualify as such. Some underestimated Rhiannon, thinking that, without a stake, she was relatively harmless, in the grand scheme of things. A quality Elfleda, herself, had exploited against her temporary replacement. A similar strength laid in the Corruptress, for the ghostly brunette's armory consisted primarily of influence. Whether light or dark, rushing out in a blaze of glory and pronouncing yourself a champion of all and sundry, often only succeeded in attaining failure. The clever operators... Those who were warriors of the intellect... They worked through others. It mattered not whether their origin was heavenly or hellish.
For, if a call upon God could give one strength, then why could that not apply to Its opposite counterpart?
And here was a further example of Elfleda's power. With just a look, concentrated, though it was, she seemed somehow to be crawling around inside Rhiannon's skull - and not just in a figurative sense, either. Elfleda did not take well to insolence and there were times this 'old friend' tested the limits of what she might do. In one sense, she suspected that the girl rather enjoyed it: A vindication that Elfleda either did not want, or personally refused, to kill her. Or perhaps that feeling of being valued so highly by such an exotic power.
"Careful," the Corruptress announced, phrasing it more like an attentive mother, complete with loving smile, than the warning it was. "You're a special one, my little dove... Wouldn't like to see you broken, before your time's at an end."
That insidious probing seemed to flare up like an ice cream headache, before Elfleda consciously relented. Where she had wandered through a wall, a suspiciously dark and foreboding stain now seemed resident. The woman could play nicely, although this was not often the case.
"What you've known of me, Rhiannon Lee, is not the means to my personal ends. I have a station promised to me. Everything I have done is but a token formality, to that time."
Initially, the wriggling felt like a head rush. Then it intensified into discomfort of near-migraine proportions. Rhiannon first shook her head, as if clearing it of bugs, and then lowered it to her hand. Fingers pressed tight to her temples, as if she could squeeze the squirming sensations to a stop.
Slayers were not afraid of pain. In some respects, they seemed to seek it out and cherish it, perhaps feeling that it grounded them. In Rhiannon's case, she even considered pain a measure of her worth, depending upon how much she could take and not be undone by it. Elfleda always brought the danger of mental or physical pain. Some might wonder why the brunette prodded Elfleda, knowing that. Wouldn't it be safer if she showed some respect, or at least fear?
But she didn't operate that way.
The truth was that Rhiannon could only tolerate these visits by being disobedient. Otherwise, their relationship might resemble camaraderie. That was not acceptable. So she darted in and out of trouble, taking verbal jabs, maneuvering as close to outright rebellion as she dared. It was like dipping a quick finger into a pool of piranha, and daring them to arrive in time for a bite.
When the pain subsided, she recovered herself and said, "I don't care how you word it. You're just a pet waiting for a reward." Going to stand by the window, she looked down at the unusually empty street. Elfleda's reflection was projected against the backdrop. "You stand on your hind legs and beg and sit and roll over, all on command. What a good dog." A strange taste had been left on her tongue. She washed it down with alcohol.
"Just as are you, Miss Lee."
Back to formalities, it seemed. Elfleda's remark was swift and perhaps just a little cutting. Elfleda's statements could sometimes be more worrying than most, for the simple fact that she never seemed to actually lie. There was always an implied truth behind her statements, even if their target might not agree with the interpretation. She could often be an abject lesson in not fighting blade against blade, for someone inevitably gets cut in the process. She frequently gave the impression of being incapable of knowing how to back down from a challenge, just like the Slayer before her. Perhaps the concept no longer featured in her mental vocabulary.
"We both serve an authority, Rhiannon," said Elfleda, once more shifting to an approachable form of address. "Yours is morality. Ethics. Catholicism... The teachings given by those you either abandoned or who did the abandoning for you. A gradual reinforcement of dutiful inevitability... Mine is simply more direct than yours. Less... Ambiguous, hmm? You have peace at the expense of confusion, where I prefer clarity."
Not that the purpose for Elfleda's visitation had yet become clear. It would be awfully presumptuous to think it was an attempt of what might pass for friendship. Tilting head slightly onto one side, Elfleda now voiced that purpose.
"I once asked what you want... Allow me a moment of indulgence, if you will. Tell me, girl of warrior soul... What do you want?"
A dirty look passed from Rhiannon to the woman in black. "We're not the same. I fought demons even when I stopped believing there was a God. Not one who wanted anything to do with us, anyway. You can't say the same." The Slayer's job was thankless, like most of her kind. Little family to protect. No thanks from humanity to reinforce her quest for goodness. No watcher for whom to jump through hoops, just for the fleeting promise of a pat on the head. Why she did it, Rhiannon wasn't always sure, but she was damned certain it had more to do with the nature of her soul than behavioral programming.
To suggest otherwise was an enormous insult.
As for what she wanted?
"I want," she chewed her lip, brown eyes searching the buildings she could see, before she looked at Elfleda over her shoulder. "To win." A shrug given. "I don't care if it's unrealistic. I want to win." As for the wish more personal to her heart, involving a future, it would take more than an off-hand question to pry it loose.
"Precisely..."
There was something disarmingly serpentine about the way Elfleda pronounced that word. Not because of the letters. There was just a feeling of her somehow entwining around oneself and hovering venomously over exposed neck. Strange, really, that a creature with such a vampiric look did not seem to possess an actual pair of fangs. Then again, she had no apparent physical need for them. Perhaps, as with so much, she could will them into being, manifesting, when the time comes.
"This is your authority, Rhiannon. Self-service. It gratifies you to vanquish a foe, no matter who or what they might be. The heat of combat, the thrill of death... It gives you pleasure. It is how you feel things should be. Perhaps now, more than ever, where others feel this environment alien to them, it suits your kind more than most. What brews at mankind's feet... Above, in the sky... In the walls, in the ceilings, in the floors... You see your targets. You sense the impending hunt. Prey, supernatural and not, awaits your strike... Stakes, scythes, blades, fists, teeth... You speak the truth, Rhiannon Lee. You want to win, indeed, you do... It's quite literally what you were born for."
Then Elfleda's presence seemed to change. There was something she had done before and she was doing it now. Pulling on the ethereal bonds to the Slayer's demonic self. That darkened self, empowering with a killer's strength and reflex. Strangely, though, this maternal call seemed... More genuine than at other times. A certain legitimacy behind it.
"I am permitted to offer one final summons..." Elfleda had to know the answer, almost certainly. Yet, there was something about the way she now held out hand for the taking. A different feel to it, like the Corruptress was deliberately holding back with the darkness she could so easily flood the Slayer with. "Come with me, Rhiannon Lee. Not in Leviathan's service... Not in any service, at all. Remember me as your sword... The weapon you used to cut down Atia's pet. How so very well we worked as one... Become my warrior. My champion, to do same with the unworthy, the unloyal of the Abyss. Such a slaughter we could make, you and I... And a kingdom, you could have."
An unusual request, to be sure. Not to fight against the light, but instead to cut a swath through those of demonic rank, which even hell thought a disappointment or in some way an abomination. True agents of chaotic shadow. A position Elfleda had never offered before and might never do so again.
"Can you hope to achieve such victories, if left to your own devices? Definitely not the rewards, I'll wager..."
Should one listen hard enough, they might actually hear the Slayer's blood skidding to a stop in her veins.
In the past, Rhiannon feared herself weak-willed when it came to Elfleda. The temptation to join with her was overwhelming, at times. Sometimes all that held her back were pride and her makeshift family. But now, even those things seemed a world away. Most persuasive wasn't the ethereal bond stretching between them, but Rhiannon's own memory of how it felt to use that sword.
She remembered quite well.
They worked magnificently together. There was a sense of kinship between them, whether admitted aloud or not. Of mother and daughter, of spirits cut from the same cloth but worn differently. And as for Elfleda's prediction that Rhiannon would destroy more demons with her than without her, it could be true.
Feeling very disconnected from her arm, Rhiannon watched rather than felt it begin to reach. She couldn't help it. It hurt not to-- A sharp sense of longing for Elfleda, both spiritually and bodily. She hated herself for it, but in that moment, she actually wanted to be at her side.
But that was the problem.
The business of being at someone's side.
It was the affront that got Rhiannon to snatch back her arm, before it was too late. She wrapped it around herself. "When I win, I do it by myself," she snapped. "By the time I'm done, I'll have racked up a body count like no one's ever seen. That moment's gonna belong to me. I won't share it with anybody." Maybe it was an eerie declaration, coming from a girl who'd done her share of damage to regular people, but even the tiny voice of reprimand and worry in her conscience didn't stop her from asserting it.
Elfleda's reaction was quiet. A simple statement of body language, as much as voice, with a raising of eyebrow and contemplative gaze moving slowly to the floor. "So be it," came the deathly maiden's declaration, perhaps with a measure of disappointment around the edges. She did so value potential. That much had been evident since their first meeting. Rhiannon was undoubtedly free to still take up the offer, should compulsion suddenly take whole, but the symbolic offer of pale hand now rested back at side.
"And so another door closes to us both," the lady in black verbalized. Eyes flicking back to their quarry with a single blink.
There were almost countless moments like these. It must have been strange to imagine in just how many forms corruption might be realized and played out, until that little desert town and its vixen of shadows. Rhiannon's journey with Elfleda had been as epic as any battle with vampires. In some ways, more intense.
"Would you still kill me, Rhiannon? Render me to oblivion? Or now seek to 'save' me?" A pause. "I rather think you'd fancy to inflict torment." A further break of time, but that one mixed with a blackened curving of smile. "Oh, the talent you'd have for that..."
This answer was easy . "I'd kill you in a heartbeat," Rhiannon said, not making a dramatic gesture, but being very plain. She also wasn't lying. If the chance ever presented itself again, like that time years ago when she got close enough to literally put her fingers around Elfleda's heart, she'd take it. The only difference being, she'd be quicker to tug it out.
Who knew if it would put a permanent end to the Emissary? That was a technicality that didn't matter.
Turning attention outside again, Rhiannon added, "I wouldn't waste time on torture."
"Aw, so lovingly direct," Elfleda either taunted or teased, although it seemed not to matter which. There was a certain sugar-coated bitterness about her, regardless of hte situation, which often seemed at once an intoxicating allure and diseased with sickness. "You'll do wonders, during the holocaust."
Emissary of the Black Light... That was one of her titles. 'Elfleda' seemed not to be her original name. Nor was 'Beth', 'Pythia' or more. Ironically, it seemed to signify her position now: Shaped more by profession than personal independence, even if she would, quite rightly, argue that her lot was an enjoyable one. Or at least, something she had been conditioned into taking fun in doing. In Elfleda laid a message, somewhere. That if one, such as she, could turn out that way, then so could anyone.
"Your response was... Instructive," she voiced, with graceful bow of the head. Perhaps in mockery, perhaps not. Yet, for all her leisurely grace, the Corruptress was around the Slayer, from behind, in the blink of an eye. Fingers encircling the girl's biceps and a quiet, "There's an appetite for you," whispered dangerously low into ear.
With what had now become an almost familiar gesture of hand at wrist, a dimensional portal of black mist slowly unfurled by a wall and Elfleda's shadowy self merged into it with a magnetic sort of attraction. A ghostly thing now, but no less capable of that deliciously perverse laughter she could giggle aloud. A game of electrified barbed wire and teddy bears, that one... Lethal, dark and yet playfully wanton.
"I'll be watching, Rhiannon Lee," promised she, even as into the darkness that gaseous fog went.