Vaggie dashed down the multiple flights of stairs as quietly as she could until she finally reached the bottom and stopped to catch her breath and think.
The Radio Demon's home was much larger than she thought. Oh, well. On the bright side, that should mean she would have plenty of places to hide…
A bright red light lit up the far end of the hallway indicating the presence of Alastor or one of his minions. Vaggie practically stopped breathing for a moment. She didn't start breathing again until the light disappeared into another direction. Vaggie didn't know where it had gone, but she figured she didn't have time to figure that out.
Vaggie crept quietly off the stairs and opened the door of the first room she saw. After shutting the door with her bound hands, she stopped to look around.
As her eyes started adjusting to the dark, Vaggie realized that she was in a workout room.
Strewn all over the black-matted floor, there was a bunch of really old-fashioned looking workout equipment. There were dumbbells with round weights at the end, a treadmill that was run manually, a rowing machine, and other equipment that Vaggie could only vaguely recognize.
Vaggie didn't study the equipment too much however. She quickly noticed the sliding glass doors on the other side of the room leading to the outside and made her next move.
Vaggie silently navigated around the equipment. She moved as slowly and quietly as she possibly could avoiding every noise possible. Vaggie even regulated the noise of her breathing.
She did not know the full extent of Alastor's demonic power. Nobody really did, except those he had deposed and sent to the fiery pit, but Vaggie had a hunch.
Alastor only came back to her room and dished out punishment when she had destroyed one of his radios. A rich kingpin like him could easily replace a broken radio and Vaggie had seen dozens of them in the house during their "tour," so he didn't return to lecture her about breaking a prized possession. There was another reason Alastor came back.
Vaggie suspected that reason was that Alastor needed radios for surveillance. Somehow, he used radios as listening devices that were telepathically connected to his ears. He used them to survey his home, and most likely, the rest of hell. That was how Alastor could hear whatever Angel had done and how he likely collected information all over hell. Without them, he was blind, or more accurately, deaf to things happening across a longer distance.
If that was true, Alastor had a few obvious weaknesses. First, as with any security system, Alastor couldn't possibly catch everything, especially since radios didn't keep recordings. Second, Alastor couldn't track what he couldn't hear, so if a target was silent and fast enough, they could theoretically escape him. No one had succeeded yet, but that didn't mean Vaggie couldn't try. Besides, what choice did she have?
Vaggie finally reached the sliding door without facing any signs from Alastor. She unlocked the sliding door, stepped outside, and silently slid it shut. Still no sign of Alastor. Vaggie smiled. It looked like she was right.
That smile quickly disappeared however when she saw the Radio Demon's large garden. There were dozens of well-tended beds of red poppies with large statues in the center of each one. As she approached one of the beds, Vaggie's heart skipped a beat. The statues were of demons, and not just any demons, they were all painstakingly-detailed statues of former kingpins. Vaggie couldn't recognize their faces, but she recognized the names on the little plaques placed by their feet.
For the moth demon, it was more than a little unnerving, but she couldn't let herself get scared now. Vaggie shook the thoughts out of her head and looked for an exit.
Unfortunately, when Vaggie looked past the statues, she realized that there was a tall iron fence lining the property's boundary against the outskirts of a thick forest. Vaggie quickly but quietly ran up to the fence under the shadow of the trees where it would be easier to hide and look for an exit on the periphery.
Once she arrived, Vaggie stopped to catch her breath, looked back at the house she had just escaped from, and gasped in awe.
It was the largest house she had ever seen, not counting the Happy Hotel. It was easily five stories and large enough to house every resident in the El Salvador slum where she grew up. The exterior was a red, stone, chateau-esque Gilded Age mansion that somehow looked every bit as menacing as Alastor's reputation. The red-flowered vines growing on the walls did nothing to soften its threatening exterior. They couldn't have. The flowers, like the house and the poppies, were the color of blood.
It was nowhere Vaggie wanted to be forced to live. She scoffed at its excess and began walking tentatively under the shadow of the trees next to the iron fence.
Vaggie looked at the fence and guessed that it went up about 20 feet. A demon like Angel could hop over it without too much trouble, but for her, it was too high, especially considering that her wrists were still bound together. She would have to find a gate and pray that she could escape that way instead.
Vaggie began chewing at the knots that held her wrists together and tried her best not to worry about Angel. If she got out of this place at all, it would be because of him and yet there was nothing she could do to help him. That ate at Vaggie's conscience.
The dumbass got on her nerves and made horribly misguided decisions, but even she couldn't deny there was good in him. Angel had a reluctant heart of gold when it came to his friends, and even if he claimed he only came to save her to get back at Alastor, Vaggie knew that Angel considered her enough of a friend to stick his neck out for her all the same. She now owed him.
Vaggie stopped chewing the tight knots in frustration. Rosie was very experienced at tying knots. She probably had a kill count as high as Alastor did.
Vaggie hated it. She hated the rope that bound her hands together. She hated that she couldn't help Angel. She hated Rosie for being a sadistic bitch. She hated Alastor for dragging her there in the first place. She hated that she couldn't scream out her pain in frustration in case Alastor heard her and came running to retrieve her. She hated all of it and could do nothing but shed angry tears and send God angry prayers for not helping her more quickly.
Then as if an answer to prayer, Vaggie noticed a small stone house the size of a medium-sized shed coming up in the distance. She assumed it was a shed for gardening tools. It had to be.
Vaggie was overjoyed. The shed would have tools to cut her hands free. It could have the keys to the gate there, or at the very least, it was something she could use the rope to climb so she could reach the top of the gate. It didn't solve every issue, but it solved enough of them to give Vaggie a bit of hope, as long as it wasn't locked.
Upon closer inspection, the shed was larger and better built than Vaggie thought. It had air conditioning units on the side along with a hose and a few plumbing pipes going into the ground.
That was when Vaggie came to a horrifying realization. It was a slaughterhouse. It had to be. No garden shed was this well-built.
The hand-painted sign above the door seemed to confirm her suspicion. It said, "Sacred Treasure." Vaggie gagged. Yep. Alastor would pick such a messed-up title. She was in the right place. Oh, well. At least, a slaughterhouse had sharp objects Vaggie could cut her ropes on, again, as long as it wasn't locked.
Vaggie twisted open the handle, stepped into the dark, windowless building, and shut the door behind her. She felt around the wall with her bound hands until she found the light switch, and when Vaggie flipped it on, her mouth fell wide open.
The building was a slaughterhouse that Alastor had converted into a shrine dedicated to her. Hidden photographs of her covered the walls. Vaggie's heart sank. The Radio Demon had been stalking her for months without her knowledge and that was not all.
The slaughterhouse table was covered in blankets and pillows that smelled like the perfume she liked to use indicating that Alastor had slept in there. Vaggie gagged as she ran around the table, and found, to her horror, that a detailed statue of her with a display stand holding the spear she used to threaten him on the day they met.
Vaggie was frightened, but she was also angry. Alastor thought he could stalk her, study her like a new animal species, and steal her possessions without her permission. He was going to pay for that, but first, she had to cut her bonds.
Vaggie began cutting her rope on the sharp spear in front of her statue. She smirked in relief as the rope cut through the knots and unraveled on the ground. The rope finally broke apart.
"Yes!" Vaggie cried out in joy as she twisted her wrists around in relief and pulled the black handkerchief free from her neck. "Now to find Charlie…"
"There, you are, my love!" the eerie yet irritating radio host voice said happily from behind her causing Vaggie to freeze fearfully in her tracks. "I was so worried when Rosie told me about that fight you two got in. I wanted to come comfort you sooner, but we couldn't find you anywhere and I honestly never expected you to get this far. No one ever has. I'm honestly impressed."
Vaggie just then noticed the radio sitting at the feet of the statue. She screamed out in frustration as she kicked the radio against the wall breaking it instantly.
"Oh, you figured that out, too?!" Alastor exclaimed in surprise. "Oh, Vaggie! You are so smart! I'm falling in love with you more every minute!"
Vaggie angrily grabbed her spear and turned around to point it in the face of the Radio Demon sitting on the edge of the table.
"What happened to the intruder?!" Vaggie yelled pointing the spear in Alastor's face.
Alastor, of course, wasn't intimidated in the least but whistled a radio jingle and summoned his familiars. The light went out, the door flew open, and his deer familiars flew in carrying in Angel.
The spider demon had all six of his arms tied horizontally behind his back, and his feet were tied together rendering him completely immobile. He was slightly bruised and coughing very hard, but he still smiled weakly when he saw Vaggie.
"Hey, toots!" Angel said between coughing up blood. "How's it goin'?"
Vaggie didn't respond, but her frightened face said more than enough.
Alastor snapped his fingers causing his familiars to throw Angel against the wall making him grunt in pain.
"Argh!" Angel cried out with a condescending smirk. "Is that all ya got? Is that all ya got, Alastor? And, I thought you were going to show me a good time."
Alastor responded by snapping his fingers and summoning a gag around Angel's mouth.
"What have you done?!" Vaggie angrily yelled pointing her spear into Alastor's face.
"Nothing the little bluenose didn't deserve," Alastor replied nonchalantly pushing himself onto the floor and leaning his face in front of her.
"Let us go now, you creepy shitlord!" Vaggie yelled before attempting to stab Alastor in the face.
Unfortunately, in one fell swoop, Alastor swiped the spear out of Vaggie's hands, tossed it back to its stand, put both his hands around Vaggie's face, and leaned in until their faces were practically touching.
Alastor's eyes turned yellow as he started singing an old Southern lullaby, "Go to sleep, you little babe. Go to sleep, you little baby. Go to sleep, you little baby. Your mama's gone away, and your daddy's gonna stay. Didn't leave nobody but the baby…"
Something was wrong. Vaggie started losing the feeling in her fingers and toes. She knew it was Alastor's magic.
Vaggie tried shutting her eyes and squirming her head away from his grip, but Alastor used his thumbs to hold open Vaggie's eyelids and kept singing, "You're sweet, little babe. You're sweet, little babe. Honey in the rock and the sugar don't stop. Gonna bring a bottle to the baby…"
Angel screamed through his gag. Vaggie lost all the feeling in her limbs until her arms and legs were as stable as spaghetti noodles. She writhed around fruitlessly while fighting the heavy feeling in her eyelids as Alastor sat her down against the wall next to Angel who could only watch.
Suddenly, two cellar doors on the other side of the room that neither Angel nor Vaggie noticed before flung open and Rosie walked up the stairs.
Rosie glanced over at Vaggie coldly and complained, "Awww! It looks like I missed most of the fun. I so wanted to get back at her for burning my face."
"I know what she did was quite rude," Alastor said stepping in front of his barely conscious love interest and gesturing towards his other prisoner. "But surely, there's something I can do to make up for it."
Rosie suddenly noticed Angel and squealed in joy, "Oh, Alastor! Is that a new playmate? Can I play with him please? He's so handsome!"
"Of course, you can, but be sure you can satisfy him," Alastor warned her playfully as Angel suggestively wriggled his eyebrows at her in response. "He's in demand, and he's in need of relief if you know what I mean…"
"Oh, of course," Rosie said attempting to walk past Alastor to pick up her new "toy" before the latter put his staff in front of her.
"But I need you to do something for me first, if that's alright," Alastor said.
"Oh, I don't mind," Rosie replied. "You are giving me such a cute playmate after all. What do you need?"
Alastor glanced back at his two prisoners and gestured back at Rosie for her to follow him to the other corner of the room where their conversation wouldn't be heard.
Not that Vaggie could hear them anyway. Her senses were being dulled by the second, and there was nothing she could do.
The mouth demon began shaking fearfully until her right hand faintly felt a squeeze. She twisted her head over to look down and saw one of Angel's bound hands gripping hers. Vaggie looked up to see Angel's sympathetic eyes looking into hers in a warm, confident, unbroken stare. She could only stare back to show she understood and smiled tiredly as a few tears fell down her cheek. Angel did the same underneath his gag as he began massaging her paralyzed hand with his fingers.
The moment was broken when Alastor's foot stomped on Angel's hand. Vaggie looked up to see Alastor's angry eyes glare bullets into Angel as he howled painfully into his gag.
Alastor then knelt down to Angel's eye level, gripped the collar of Angel's jacket, pulled him in until their faces were almost touching, and whispered threateningly, "If you wish to live, Dust, you will never touch her like that again."
Alastor then picked Angel up and threw him over his shoulder easily as if he were a towel. Before Vaggie knew what was happening, Rosie did the same thing to her.
"Rosie, not so rough," Alastor protested placing his arm on Angel's back to stabilize him. "If that is how you're going to treat my future wife, I might have to rethink your present."
"My apologies, Alastor," Rosie said readjusting Vaggie so that she was being carried bridal style. "I'll try to be more careful. Please don't give my new toy away."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Alastor said merrily stepping onto the first stair going into his basement. "I'll see you two later."
Without another word, Alastor began stepping down his stairs while Angel stared back at Vaggie as reassuringly as he possibly could until they were out of sight. Vaggie stared back until her eyelids finally slid shut. as Rosie gently carried her back towards the house.