A/N: Here is the second chapter of Metal Heart. Please review! My thanks to the people who reviewed on the first chapter. Some of you are anonymous so I can't reply personally, but I still thank you.

Part II, "Cross the Line"

The days merge together but the nights are exhausting. She wants to sleep and have normal dreams. She wants to take her meds and fall into an Ambien induced slumber, dreamless and forced. The pinned demon leaves her alone most nights, but she can feel him there much more acutely than she could before she got pregnant. Even in her waking moments she feels his presence around her, hovering like a hunter waiting for the deer to drop its guard and come closer.

Kirsty doesn't want to drop her guard. Instead she quits her job at an inbound call center, and focuses all of her attention on theology. At five months along, it is not enough that her ultrasounds show a completely normal, male human fetus. She is still frightened both for herself and for her son. She visits the churches of Methodists, Protestants, Catholics, Christians, Episcopalians and Lutherans. After all attempts end the way her first visit to a Church did, she fans out and visits Temples and Mosques looking for answers. Once she even let a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses into her small apartment, at a loss when they scrambled out before she could put a kettle of water on the stove for some tea.

Eventually, Kirsty dips into her tainted inheritance to purchase a small home for herself and her child. It has two bedrooms and is situated in a modest, low-crime neighborhood with great schools. Her neighbors welcome her as she appears vulnerable with her baby bump and no wedding ring on her finger. They fish for gossip, throwing worms out to the water in hopes that they will catch a big one, but Kirsty is tight-lipped when it comes to her personal life and they leave disappointed with the same amount of information they had coming in.

The largest motivator for her moving to this neighborhood was their neighborhood watch. Lately, Kirsty has noticed that there has been an increase of shady characters who are watching her, following her every move. Some remind her all too much of a homeless man who liked to dine on pet store crickets. It wouldn't surprise her in the least if the box had watch dogs on her. Not only is she still in possession of a lament configuration, she is also currently pregnant with a cenobite's child. That has to raise some flags somewhere.

The neighborhood watch has Kirsty feeling safe until she starts to get tribute from the dark masses. They start out small enough: letters and then boxes … dripping with blood like packages of meat from a butcher. She is not entirely sure why the mail carrier continues to deliver them but every day she gets rancid letters and packages with small bits of flesh that have her puking in her mouth before she can make it to the bathroom.

Finally, she gets a post office box and lets them deal with it.

Kirsty opens the front door for her early morning walk and finds a slaughtered pigeon on her porch, the slice across its throat eerily similar to the one across her own in her dreams. She hopes it's a singular event but every day there is a new dead bird. She finds an eviscerated red-bellied wood pecker, goldfinches without heads, a blue jay with mangled limbs and a perfectly skinned northern cardinal, its glorious red feathers torn apart as though done by the chains of the puzzle box itself.

Dorothy, her 86 year-old neighbor directly across the street shakes her head and watches Kirsty from her window during her morning routine of removing bird corpses and hosing down her porch.

Kirsty has the corpse removal down to an art. It never takes her more than five minutes to erase any evidence of bird murder, but it bothers her that she can feel various sets of eyes on her while she does it every morning.

In her sixth month of pregnancy the murdered birds become murdered squirrels, chipmunks and opossums with each mammal death more hideous and detailed than the first. The neighborhood watch focuses entirely on her home and what they think is a malicious ex-boyfriend that is stalking her, but they never catch anyone. She knew they wouldn't the entire time, but their hearts are in the right place. She goes to their meetings and brings cookies and coffee, blending in effortlessly without really blending in at all. At the very least, she feels a little less lonely surrounded by the small community that has accepted her darkness and all.

One morning during her seventh month of pregnancy Kirsty opens the door to a large buck, its antlers fully grown, gargling on its dying breath on the tar of her driveway that is awash with puddles of blood. She stays with it while it dies, a comforting hand on the arch of its neck, the other rubbing the soft fluff of fur on its head and between its wide set eyes, while nosy neighbors come out of their houses to gawk at the scene while tears roll down her face. Kirsty is exposed there, on her driveway, clad only in a tank top and a pair of sleep shorts, covered in blood. The black, circular scar on her shoulder is in full view. She can feel their eyes on her, scrutinizing.

Kirsty is aware that she is giving this wild animal more compassion in her touch than she did the five people she killed.

Someone calls the cops; she doesn't know who. The police tell her the buck was probably shot by a hunter in the woods by the highway nearby. She hears the gossiping whispers plainly while trying to wipe her tears with the backs of her hands.

It has to be her stalker ex-boyfriend. Do you see that scar? Domestic violence! He probably stabbed her. Poor thing!

He must have beaten her within an inch of her life.

Why isn't she running and hiding again?

You know how it is. They always find them. It's sick.

"The show is over!" Kirsty yells at them, her fright and discomfort clear for all to see. "Go home!"

The crowd begins to disperse, huffs of indignation clearly heard. She narrows her gaze and gives them her best stink-eye as they leave. Soon, they are all gone back to their houses to gossip about her more or to watch daytime TV. Only a little boy stays behind. He looks roughly three or four and should definitely not be there alone.

Kirsty sniffs a little, her tears finally drying. "Where do you live?"

The little boy points to a few houses down, his golden hair glinting in the sunlight. The home is a nice light blue cottage with bright yellow shutters.

"Your mommy misses you. You should go home," she tells him, concerned.

The boy shakes his head back and forth. "No." He approaches her slowly; his dark brown eyes an echo of her own. When he is in front of her, she can see there is slight bruising around his neck as though he's been abused recently.

Before she can stop him, he places both of his little hands on her baby bump, heedless of the deer blood staining her shirt. "Baby nice," he says. "Don't worry."

He smiles at her, a beautiful soul and she finds herself returning it. It's the first genuine smile she's given since Trevor gave her the box.

"Thank you, baby," she says earnestly.

"Tommy!" she hears a disgruntled voice yell from the light blue house.

Tommy immediately responds to the name, already in motion to sprint back home. He takes a final look back, meeting and holding her gaze before he tells her, "Sad for you!"

The smile drops from Kirsty's face, replaced by a frown as she is unsure what his ominous final words mean.

Later one of her neighbors informs her that no one has lived in that light blue house for years. Not since a little boy and his mother were murdered in it.


Month eight Kirsty sleeps fitfully when she can. More often than not she sleeps for an hour and is up for five. She gives in and gets a roommate, someone she can feel safe with. His name is Vincent, and he is a former Marine. He doesn't ask about the low rent she's charging and he doesn't judge when she wakes up screaming every night.

They settle together nicely, comfortably.

After two weeks of living there, Vincent sees the scar on her shoulder one day and his thick black eyebrows rise warily. "Who are you running from, Kirsty?"

She laughs lightly. "God," she answers, finding it more than ironic that God is actually running from her.

Vincent's fingers run over the scar, at first methodically as though feeling every nook and cranny, but then it starts to become a sensual caress. Kirsty tenses immediately, not understanding this new dynamic in their relationship.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Kirsty asks him, staring into his dark blue eyes. She has never been one to mince words.

"Worshiping you," he says reverently, his hand cupping her breast through her thin black tank top.

Kirsty's heart races at the unexpected and unwanted touch. She pushes him away with all her might, and he hits the wall with a thud, an expression of surprise at her display of strength flitting across his face. "Get out!" she demands.

This is what she gets for getting a roommate off of craigslist.

"What?" he sneers at her, his face contorting with rage that had gone previously unnoticed, "You haven't liked my gifts, Priestess?"

"Don't call me that!" she exclaims, backing away from him with something akin to terror.

"Why? I've done my research. You are the black Priestess. You carry his child," he moves into her personal space, lifting her shirt and rubbing the bare flesh of her stomach as though he has the right to do so. "A fitting sacrifice would be to cut open your womb, rip the baby right out of you and then stab you in your cold, cold heart. It is cold, right Kirsty?"

Vincent smiles at her horror, at the way her flesh breaks out in goose bumps at his touch. "I used to think," he tells her in a hushed tone as though he is sharing a secret, "that in war I had been the closest to death and to Hell as possible and then I met you."

Vincent has one hand on her belly and the other on her cheek. "Is it true?" he asks with child-like delight. "Is it true that when you saw your father's corpse it was still smoldering like a lit cigarette?" She cries out at his imagery, her mind being assaulted with past trauma. It doesn't stop his line of questioning. "Is it true that you fucked the priest to save yourself? Killed five people to seal the deal?"

Kirsty stays quiet, backed against the pale yellow wall in her kitchen caught in the web of Vincent's treachery.

"I know you did, you little bitch. You killed my sister, Sage. She was one of the five people you murdered. You remember her, right? She was the massage therapist you ice picked."

"You don't have an accent," Kirsty says a moment later. "She had an accent. Fuck!" Kirsty exclaims, knowing that she is in extreme danger. No one understands revenge as a motive more than her and now she is up against a marine that has a foot and a half height and over a hundred pounds of weight on her. She knew a roommate had been a bad idea!

"She fucked my husband!" Kirsty says as though that gave her a free pass to murder the woman.

"Oh, poor you Kirsty Cotton, I'm playing the world's smallest violin for you. Did it ever occur to you that maybe she didn't even know your sleazy husband was married?"

Kirsty bares her teeth at him. "She knew. There were videos. She fucked my husband in my home! On my couch, in my shower and in my bed! She fucked him in front of our wedding photos and he whispered in her ear that he loved fucking her. If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that your sister had it coming!"

"Bitch, Sage had to pay because of your husband's actions. Your husband had it coming. Not her!" he bellows, backhanding Kirsty so hard she loses her footing and falls to her knees, her lip split and bleeding from the top and bottom.

He shakes his head at her and paces back and forth. "It doesn't matter. I'm going to give you to him. I'm going to offer you up on a silver fucking platter like a prized turkey at Thanksgiving Dinner."

Kirsty is still dazed by the slap, but she watches warily as he digs in his khaki messenger bag that was lying on the kitchen table and produces a puzzle box.

He throws it at her. "Open it!" he demands.

"No!" she says, petulance coloring her tone. She throws it back at him. "I won't!"

Vincent shrugs his shoulders and starts solving the puzzle himself. It takes a few times but eventually the tolling bell echoes in their ears. The crazy, saccharine tune begins playing, foreshadowing the cenobites arrival.

Kirsty's heart beats frantically at the sound and the baby kicks, light flutters as her son reacts to the adrenaline pumping through her veins.

The walls break apart, exposing the inner workings of their construction. Light bulbs burst in their sockets and the temperature lowers by at least fifteen degrees. Her son kicks from his safety in the womb, harder than she has felt so far as though reacting to the precursors of his father's arrival.

Kirsty brings her right hand up to her stomach and places it on her flesh protectively. It might make her look weak and vulnerable, but her instinct to see no harm to her baby is in her DNA.

When the pinned demon makes his entrance he only has eyes for Kirsty.

"Kirsty," he says, as though her name is a prayer.

There are other cenobites, flanking out to provide assistance should one of them decide to run. The one with the chattering teeth hovers nearby, a large axe, brightly polished and hanging from a chain on his leather belt, glints dangerously in the blue hue of their dimension. It looks strangely ornate and ceremonial to her. She hopes that has no special meaning.

There is a cenobite, a tall man who has a blind fold across his eyes and mouth, his entire head wrapped with barbed wire, his leather outfit similar to Pinhead's but not as intricate or woven into his flesh. There are two that are connected as though Siamese twins, their bodies seemingly sewn to one another through a diamond of skin. Their walk is stiff and difficult, but they hover around as one entity and Kirsty warily keeps her distance from them all.

The thud of Vincent landing on his knees at the demon's feet instantly has Xipe Totec's attention.

"What is this?" he asks his voice tinged with irritation.

"I brought her for you, dark lord. I brought Kirsty Cotton for Leviathan so that she can fulfill her destiny. Take her and give me back my sister, my Sage." Vincent rambles, genuflecting at the demon's feet.

Pinhead's eyes narrow slightly. "That is not how this works. You opened the box, we came … for you."

The bell tolls again, ominous and loud like thunder. The atmosphere turns even more inhospitable than it was moments before.

"What? No. I brought her! Her! She's the one. The one that got away, the one that carries your heir. I'm trading HER for my sister!" Vincent exclaims, his eyes wild like a rabid squirrel.

The demon snarls. "Enough! When Kirsty Cotton is taken it will be willingly and not dropped off at our door like an orphaned infant! I will keep your hand alive, skin it and keep it in a bucket of salt so that your nerve endings will be on fire for eternity for daring to mark such exquisite flesh as hers."

"What?" Vincent asks, shaking his head in confusion. "The whispers, they say it. They say you want her and her only. The darkness, the masses, the blood … it's all her! It's all supposed to be her."

Vincent grabs his KBar from its sheath at his waist as he realizes his mistake. Kirsty Cotton is not just a sacrifice, and the demon can't be bought with her. He holds the military knife it his hand, the sharp edge sparkling in a blue hue. He gestures with it to Kirsty with the handle pointed toward her.

"I made a mistake, Priestess. Kill me. Kill me now. It would be my honor. Let me be with Sage forever," he states, his eyes alight with a certain type of crazy Kirsty has never been witness to before.

Pinhead waits for her response, but she only stares at Vincent with her jaw dropped slightly, her breathing hard. Finally, she says, "I'm not doing that. There's no way I'm doing that!"

Vincent's eyes are wide, his expression frantic. "Please!" he begs. "Please! You have to!"

He grabs her hand in his and closes it around the handle of the KBar. Before she can react, he plunges the knife straight into his heart with all his force, taking her along for the ride, a murder by proxy.

"No!" she says, her voice trembling with dismay. "No! This is not happening!"

Vincent's life's blood drains out and splashes over his hand, then seeps through to hers coating her hands in red before dripping to the floor.

Pinhead watches, expressionless.

"Pitiful," he says after a moment. Slowly, he stalks towards Kirsty, invading her personal space. "He was right about one thing, Priestess," he informs her.

The cenobites flank Kirsty on both sides, unmoving and awaiting a command from their leader. "No," she whispers. "You're lying! I'm not a priestess of anything!"

"I am not one of your lovers who will speak to you in lies cocooned in lies. You were anointed with the oil of your flesh the moment you solved the box," he tells her.

Kirsty doesn't scream at him to go away, instead she cries while he watches. She wipes at her tears with blood soaked hands. "It's a waste of good suffering, I know," she says as he simply watches her with dark eyes. "You have been manipulating my life from the day I opened the puzzle box, haven't you?"

"I exploit nothing that does not wish to be exploited," he answers cryptically.

"You have saved me more than once. I know you said it wasn't free … but you saved my life. Why do you keep saving me if you want to kill me?"

"This is not death," he explains, his arm fanning out to his surroundings in a regal gesture, "This … is freedom."

Kirsty is left in her cheery kitchen minus her roommate, staring at her wall and pondering the demon's words.

Freedom is starting to look appealing.

End, Part II "Cross the Line"