Disclaimer : Don't own Hetalia

Chapter 3

Elizabeta, Gilbert and Antonio watched as Natalia performed the last rites of the body. They had arrived at this isolated shed hours ago, and their curiosity prevented them from leaving, even though the doors were unguarded and Natalia was occupied with the ritual.

"What is going on?" Gilbert whispered.

Eliza was sitting on the floor, watching Natalia. Natalia was sitting on the ground, the body laid out in front of her. She was surrounded by an assortment of items – rice, grass, water, vermillion, different kinds of seeds, leaves and other things Eliza couldn't name.

"I don't know," she said to Gilbert sitting next to her, idly rubbing the bandage on her wrist. The priestess had dressed all their wounds, laid the driver and worked on his wounds, and had sat down for the ritual.

Antonio walked up to them, and handed them bottles of chilled orange juice. "It looks like a burial ritual," he said, sitting down next to Gilbert. "I remember nana doing something of the sort for my uncle when he passed away."

The other two murmured their thanks, and watched the priestess. She was sitting motionless now, her fingers interlaced from the back, head bowed.

"Maci žryca."

"A demon who speaks my tongue. How strange."

"I speak the language you think. I know of no language.

"You are very strong, demon. What is your name?"

"It is of no consequence. You, too, are strong, which is why I tell you this. The contract is not between I and the body. My contract is between I and the mind of this entity. Killing the body isn't going to liberate me. Fulfilling the contract will."

"What is the contract?"

"I cannot say. To break the contract, I must destroy those who drew anger in his heart, and save those who drew guilt in his heart, his moda being the witness."

"You cannot destroy the site of summon?"

"He summoned me with his moda, and he has bound me to it."

"But his body is dead. There is nothing for me to bind his moda to. He cannot reside in me."

"He prepared for this."

"He wouldn't have known that I would kill his body."

"That I do not know. He has imprinted me in one of his spawns. Direct me to the spawn and bind me to it" –

"Binding two entities in one person is dangerous."

"One will escape, and one will stay."

"Which one?"

"I do not know. That is all I can say. Goodbye, maci žryca."

Natalia slowly grew conscious of the physical reality around her. Her senses began to work. She kept her eyes closed.

As long as the contact between her and the demon existed, the demon could talk to her. Technically, she could also talk to the demon, but she didn't know how to. She didn't have the time, either – right then, she was the person in danger as she had two entities bound to her.

Her respect for Alfred Jones Sr. grew. He had managed to do the near impossible – he had managed to focus the image of a summoning chakra in his mind, without any distractions for long enough to be able to summon a demon. A demon of this level would take a longer time to be summoned, and the idea of a human mind being able to focus on one object for that long without any distractions internally and externally was not only unthinkable, she was in awe. As a part of her training in the temple, she had to learn to concentrate on only one thing, so she knew the difficulty in the feat he had achieved.

She didn't have the time to be figuring out how the chat up the demon. Her body was going to start burning up like the body before her had, and she didn't want to wait until then.

She had to find this 'spawn' of his. She knew that Johnny Doe didn't find the need to be careful about whom, where and how many women he fathered children with. He had married once, but the woman had soon died, the reasons to which she didn't know. No one did.

Nat looked at the body before her. It was well on its way to decomposing. She had to find this 'spawn' before it began to rot, so that she could remove the identical vermillion marks on both their persons, thereby releasing the demon from her body.

She sighed softly to herself. She had been planning on letting the three of them go – in fact, she had left the doors open just so that they could leave. But she could sense their presence, so they were still there, for whatever reasons. She was glad, because it made her job easier.

She had never meant for them to be frightened or wounded. The priest of the sister House – Frederick – had taken his job a bit too seriously and had added his own brand of drama. She hadn't counted on more than half of the morning's incidences, and her life had taken a peculiar turn than what she had planned or expected.

Her faith compelled her to prepare for everything. She wished she'd obeyed.

She rose, and the three looked at her. "What's going on?"

"I could tell you, but you might not comprehend. Tell me," she asked before any one of them looked like they would protest, "how many of his children was he still talking to?"

"Is that necessary?" Gilbert asked while the other two gaped at her.

"Very."

He mused, and all of them thought. "There's his legitimate son, Mathew. He's the heir," Gilbert said.

"Johnny knew all his children, took care of all of them," Antonio added. "But he is – was- closest to Matt."

Matt. Natalia thought awhile; she didn't have time to discount anything. She looked at the three of them. She didn't have any right to keep the three of them with her, but… "I need your help. I will return you to your homes safely by this evening," she said, and pulled on her coat. The familiar clothing gave her comfort.

"There's some food in the back," Nat said, gathering her things. "Take how much you need, and come to the van." Nat walked to Frederick. He looked better. He would probably be up by dusk, and she'd return him back to his monastery by then, with apologies. She'd never…she sighed. She didn't have time to be doing this.

She had to keep herself from burning up like a log of wood.

"You have a very…interesting place here."

The man before her smiled sweetly. "Why do you say that?"

She tried to translate her native tongue into their language, but it was too much work, and she was in too much pain. So she just shook her head, and sipped on the cool apple cider that was in her hand.

Mathew Williams Jones, supplier of said cider, didn't take any offence, and continued to drink his cider. "Is it because I've got five bathrooms?" he asked.

She smiled wanly. It had more to do with the fact that he took her in and gave her food and allowed her to clean herself up, even after being told she had killed his father. But she didn't say anything, and just shrugged the best she could. Everything hurt so badly, but she couldn't even bother to pinpoint what hurt more than what. She was drowning in her pain, drowning in her sofa, and drowning in the glass of cider.

Oh, God, her brain wasn't functioning properly anymore.

"If you need to get some sleep, I've got plenty of room," Mathew offered. "Besides, Mr Antonio and Mr Gilbert and Miss Eliza are all planning to stay here anyways. You need them for a while longer, right?"

She nodded. "I need sleep, Mr Williams," Nat agreed, "but I'm afraid I won't wake up to face tomorrow."

He chuckled, and Nat managed a small frown. Her brain circuits were fried, but she knew she wasn't funny. He looked up, and saw her frown. "Oh. That's what my dad says – said," he quietly added, and Nat knew which part of her hurt the most. Her heart.

"Can you tell me…why?"

"Why did I kill him?" Nat asked, and he nodded. Nat groped her way out of the sofa, and got off to sit down on the ground. She needed something to anchor her, not something she was going to drown in, if she was going to tell him something of importance.

Besides, she felt she owed him that much.

"I – or my House, the House of Wheels, we belong to a larger faith. We have various other Houses, temples, monasteries which practice differently, but we all believe in a group of interconnected philosophies, and that keeps us together.

"Two of our sister Houses – one of them practices in your country, and another one lies outside – noticed that there was something stopping people from…dying."

Matt frowned at this, and Nat continued. "I'm not explaining this very well. People were physically dying, dy, but the problem was their bodies managed to keep their spirits trapped within the body. That is not natural. The spirit leaves the body, and, in our belief, is reborn, according to its past actions. Even if you do not believe that, there has been a disturbance in the flow of energy within the living and the non-living. This was first observed by the House within the country, and then by one outside. And then we were called.

"One priest from each House looked at the matter. They all realised that one large force was the reason for the disturbance. They thought it was your father, but it was the demon within your father."

"You killed my father to stop this disturbance?" Matt asked.

He could believe just that much, if it let him sleep peacefully. "Dy."

"But it hasn't stopped anything."

"Niama."

"What will happen, if you don't stop this?"

"It will disrupt the order of nature." That much she was sure of. "Other than you, was he close to any of his other children?"

She looked at his grief-laden face and sleep-filled eyes. "I am disturbing you." When he shook his head, she got up. Somehow. "I shall return tomorrow. There is still some work that needs to be done. Mr Williams, I…am sorry for your loss."

He lowered his head, and sat still for a moment. Then he got up, and looked her in the eye. "I don't want to believe anything you have told me, Priestess. I wish I didn't. But I know my father, and I know his…ways. If I believed in your faith, or in mine, I would believe he would have made a contract with the Devil himself. And the three people he needed the most wouldn't lie to me, either. I believe you, Priestess. I will help you. And I hope you do manage to stop whatever it is my father started."

For your sake. Nat heard those words loud and clear. She nodded. She didn't know what to say, so she turned around, and walked towards the door. She'd come back tomorrow, a little more fresh, and hopefully a little less in pain, and she'd find her answers then.

But, for more reasons than Mathew Williams Jones could know, she needed to stop whatever his father had started.

Nat waited outside the door. Her body generally hurt less, she'd gotten ample rest at the House of Fire, after arriving with a much better Frederick and profusely apologising to the Head Priest. The symbol she'd made on her chest with vermilion was burnt into her skin due to the energy of the demon she'd trapped, and she had to make a similar symbol on the spawn of Johnny Doe, whoever he was.

So she decided to go and visit Mathew Williams Jones again.

Williams, she had found out, was his mother's maiden name. She hadn't been able to find out much between leaving his house a little after midnight and reaching his office in the afternoon, waiting outside his door, but whatever she knew of the man was completely different from what she knew of his dead father.

A dead father whose body was currently wrapped in the shimmering black cloth crafted with a special thread, and strapped to her back. She was grateful for the ancient monks who'd designed the thread and cloth, because she wouldn't be agreeable to carrying a dead body otherwise. It didn't stink, and it looked like an oversized bag on her back.

The door opened, and Nat blinked. The man was…"You look different."

He smiled at her, and Nat felt something jump and open up a vacuum in her. "Come on it," he said. She moved into the room, and warily looked around. It was a very modern looking office, with glass and metal finishes. "I don't think you got a good look of me last night. It was late, and you were in terrible pain," he said, coming from behind her. She turned, gave him way so that he could walk further into the room. "How are you now?"

She shrugged. Mathew Jones was…wonderful to look at. His hair fell in honey-golden waves, curled at the edges, and his calm blue eyes twinkled with a quiet joy she recognised. But the rest of him caught her attention just as much, even made her gape. He was suited and booted, but she had little trouble imagining what he might look like underneath. He was lean and hadn't a stitch of lethargy on him. Although she knew he was not very noticeable, she could make out through his gait that he owned the place, and knew it.

But the lack of sleep showed under his eyes, and she could see the pain in his gaze. He probably was very good at hiding behind his smiling demeanour, but Nat had spent a lifetime with people who survived by hiding their true emotions. She was one such person herself.

She considered feeling guilty for having slept like a log, but she knew she wasn't going to get any sleep for some time to come, and she needed all the rest she could get. Guilt and whatever other emotions she would have to feel could wait until she'd figured out what the hell she was going to do with the demon on her hands.

She unlatched the belt with which she'd held the body on her bag, and set the bag on the ground. "That's the body of Doe." She saw the pain that shot across his face, and she wished she had the time. "I've managed to seal the demon within him. The demon is too powerful, so I manage to seal its energy within me. I have performed your father's last rites, so that he may leave this body peacefully, once the demon has been sealed inside the 'spawn'."

"I didn't quite understand that, I'm afraid."

"The sealing part or…?"

"The spawn part," he said.

"Oh. From what I know, Doe imprinted one of his children. Part of the demon rests within this child. Whether he wishes to summon the demon from this child, or the power was too much for him to handle, or he wishes to use the child as a vessel, I do not know. But if I need to fulfil my mission, I must find this child and transfer the demon within him or her. Otherwise, I will burn to death, and the demon will be let loose in this Realm once I die and its bindings have been removed."

Mathew kept blinking at her, so she let it sink it. She looked at him, then pulled herself back and reminded herself of what she had come here for. She went over to the door, locked it, and walked back to Mathew, who had seemingly digested it all.

"Am I this spawn?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I do not know. I will scribe the symbol, which is on the body. If you are the spawn, then the demon will go into your body."

He frowned. God, he looked cute when he frowned, too. She frowned. She needed to stop gushing like a teenager. "Is that…harmful?"

She couldn't be sure, but… "If you have been imprinted, it will not be. If you are not the spawn, then the symbol will have no meaning."

He nodded, and his eyes fell on the figure wrapped in black on the floor. His eyes softened in both fondness and pain. "Can I…?"

She nodded, but he wasn't looking at her. She got on her knees, and unravelled the cloth. Quite a bit of her morning had gone in cleaning and dressing the body, and she was glad that Mathew could see his father without the charred skin and burnt clothes, that his last image was of a man looking peaceful.

And even as she herself gazed at the body, she felt that Johnny Doe looked…free. He had lived a long life, she knew, longer than most others. Maybe, once she found this spawn, he would be free. She looked up at Mathew. His eyes were tearful, his lips drawn to a tight line.

She supressed a sigh. She couldn't handle these emotions very well. She got up, stood before him. "Mr Mathew?"

"Matt," he corrected her, tearing his eyes off the body and looking at her.

"Matt. I need you to remove your shirt."

Well, that was one way of handling tears –shock the pants right off people. Or shirt, as was in this case. Matt's eyes opened wide, and he just stared at her for a very long time. Nat could feel her cheeks heating up, and she hoped it wasn't showing.

"I need to draw the symbol. Since it's been scribed on his chest and on mine…." She trailed off.

He kept staring at her until something flashed to him. "Does that mean…?"

When she nodded, he blushed a bright red. She couldn't help but smile – there was something very endearing about this man, and she really wished she hadn't met him under these circumstances.

Well, one of them had to start. She began unbuttoning her jacket, aware of his eyes on her. She unbuttoned till her waist, and tied it up there, revealing her white shirt underneath. Her fingers found the collar button, and she raised her eyes to Matt.

"What?" she managed nonchalantly, and Matt's blush grew deeper. He began furiously unbuttoning his shirt with all the concentration he could muster between his brows, and suppressing a chuckle, Nat began unbuttoning her shirt.

She unbuttoned it halfway to her stomach, and pulled the halves aside. Looking down on her revealed middle, she realised the symbol was underneath the bindings wrapped around her breasts. Sighing in exasperation, she reached in, under her shirt, and undid the catches that held the bindings in place.

"Couldn't you wear a…"

"A bra?" Nat asked, and looked up. Sviataja karova, she gulped. Holy cow.

She'd forgotten to tell him to only unbutton his shirt halfway down, and he had unbuttoned it all the way down. He was lean, and even though his muscles didn't bulge frown underneath his flat stomach and powerful chest, she could see them bunch and roll underneath his taut skin as he shifted from foot to foot. He had a matting of golden hair on his chest that continued in a line down his stomach, and…

She grew aware of her own partial nudity, now that the bindings had come off and only the canvas cotton of her shirt covered her bare breasts. And the more she looked at him, the more she realised his growing awareness of her as well.

O Boža.

"Now," she began. She wasn't going to stutter like a little girl caught staring at the boy she liked. Nat rummaged her coat pocket, took out the case of vermilion. She walked up to Matt, staring at his chest. She knew he was blushing; she knew there was no point in denying the same for her. She stood before him. She opened the case of vermilion, and tilted some of the powder into the lid. She held out the case to Matt, who took it from her, and took out a vial of water from another pocket in her coat. She made a paste out of the two, and raised her fingers to Matt's chest.

Closing her eyes, she recited the incantation, the same one that she had while marking herself and Johnny Doe, and marked Matt.

She kept her eyes closed, trying to sense if anything changed within the corpse lying behind her, if the pain her chest reduced.

Nothing.

Nat felt tears well up behind her closed eyes, which quickly dissipated. If she was going to die and a demon was going to ravage the dimension, there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. She would die a painful death if so, and she had to accept it.

And she didn't have a problem with that.

She'd faced pain before.

She'd faced death before.

She'd faced her own death before, many times.

But she wasn't going to die in vain.

She opened her eyes, and looked at him. "You're not the 'spawn' the demon was talking about."

She dropped the vial in its pocket, took the case from Matt, closed it and dropped it in its pocket. She looked up at him, her previous thoughts erased. "I'm sorry for wasting your time."

"Does this mean that…?"

She didn't need him to complete the sentence. "Most probably going to die, yes. Unless there is some child of his that no one knows about."

She back away from him, and turned around, slipping her shirt off her arms. She straightened the bounds which had bunched around her waist, and began binding her breasts with it. She did have more comfortable ways of keeping her breasts safe from the exertion of fighting or heavy duty work, but the special cloth that the bindings were made of enhanced her ability to judge the flow of life energy from one form to another. The same cloth made her coat, her trousers and her shirt. It was made to keep her connected to the reservoir of energy that thrummed in the earth.

And ever since she'd stepped into Johnny Doe's land, she could sense another energy flowing underneath them, intermixing with the energy reservoir, contaminating it.

She tucked in the ends of her bindings, which had been secured with steel clips, and pulled her shirt back on. "You can wipe that off"—

"There is one more person."

She felt her insides grind, and containing her rushing emotions, she turned around. "What do you mean?"

"I'm my father's heir, yes. But my father has sired other children, too."

She looked at Matt, who had wiped the mark off his chest and was buttoning his shirt. Her need to stay alive pushed back any feelings the man before her engendered within her.

"They're all across the country. Although my father doesn't involve himself in their lives, he does what he can to provide for them," Matt said, and Nat didn't want to correct his use of tense. "But there is one brother of mine he speaks to, more than me himself." Matt chuckled as he slid his glasses up his nose, but the sound wasn't a pleasant one. He read the look on her face, and smiled pleasantly. "You won't have to travel far – he's within the city."

Nat frowned. "I have not heard of this son you talk about."

Matt nodded, his curls swaying softly. "Not many know about him. Most people think he died as a teenager. I'll ask Gilbert to take you there," he said, and began walking to the door. At the door, he paused and turned around. "Priestess, when can I perform my father's last rites?"

"As soon as I find this 'spawn'."

He gave her a smile, but his eyes were so full of pain she couldn't help herself. "I'm sorry, Mathew."

His smile wavered, and she saw the pleasant aura around him dimming. "I'll forgive you, priestess. Someday."

Icy fingers gripped her heart tightly, and squeezed until the agony surpassed the pain caused by the demon. All she could do was nod, as Matt left the room, and closed the door behind him.

Maybe, someday, she could explain everything to him. She didn't understand why, but she didn't want to see him in pain. He seemed like such a nice person, and that coming from Nat was very rare. She liked him, she realised.

Matt reminded her of another person she knew, the reason why she was there.

And if not for herself, she had to stay alive for him.

"We're here."

Nat's eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness in the underground tunnel, which widened out just as Gilbert spoke. She frowned. This place was giving her the chills, apart from being totally dark. Surprising thing was, it was quite airy, for a dungeon.

She wanted to smile, and would have, if her chest wasn't burning now. The most powerful man in the world had a dungeon below the castle from where he ruled.

Gilbert turned around. "You will have to go down this corridor. He's in the last cell."

Natalia looked in the direction where he was pointing. It wasn't too far off, but when she looked back at Gilbert, he was shaking like a leaf. "Any warning you would like to give me?" she asked wryly, surprised at still retaining her humour.

"That man is dangerous. Don't get too close to him," Gilbert said.

"You are not coming with me?"

Gilbert turned towards her. "Priestess, I've got you here only because of Mathew's request. The awesome me would never come here otherwise, or help you."

Nat sighed softly to herself. She was beginning to wonder why any of them were being so helpful, and now she knew. "Wait here, then, if you must," she said. She hefted Johnny Doe's body back in place, and made her way down the corridor.

The corridor was wide, and the cells were large. She could sense a strange life energy at the end of the corridor. Light streamed in from a window placed high on the wall of all the cells to her left. As she walked, she could hear movement, and breathing. But the dungeons, Gilbert's fear and the strange energy couldn't prepare her for what she saw.

It was very rare that something managed to shock Natalia, but from all that she'd seen in her life, this easily took the cake. Her grip on the corpse over her shoulder slackened, and she had to place it down before she dropped it in shock.

A man was in the room, bound to the wall by thick chains. Chains encircled his entire body, almost lovingly. His arms were held apart, high above his head. A chain ran around his neck, holding his head back to the wall. His legs were bound, and so was his body, the three-finger thick links cutting into his flesh at places. Blood pooled at some places, and was dry at others. Light streamed from behind him, setting a dark shadow to his face. His head hung down, his hair falling over his eyes.

But, somehow, he didn't seem to be trapped. He wasn't straining or struggling – he just sat there, legs stretched, arms above his head, head hanging down, surrounding and entangled in a never-ending frenzy of chains.

A spider in the web of metal.

His aura was…terrifying. He wasn't even looking at her – his even, steady breathing was the only indication of life. The energy around him was miasmic, making her blood chill and slow down, her hackles raise, her entire body tense and ready to flee.

She didn't even have to put the symbol on him to know he was the spawn the demon spoke about.

Her mind raced, trying to recollect information through the haze of fear that had enveloped it. His aura could partly be because of the part of the demon trapped within him.

That explained the chains. The demon within him, no matter how small, would still give him supernatural strength of some sort. And by the look of how he was bound, he was strong, and his aura was enough to tell her that the demon part within him was more than just 'small'.

"Like what you see?"

Her heart stopped, and her stomach was replaced by an endless vacuum. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried on that terrifying energy, filling up the entire space around him. Nat felt fear spring out within her, flowing through her veins, dragging her blood to flow faster. His voice was hoarse, but his words were well paced. Nat wanted to run.

O Boža, she wanted to flee.

"I don't really have many visitors. But it's the first time a lady has ever come to see me here."

Her hand slipped into her pockets, and found the key of the cell. But she didn't want to go in there anymore.

"And, by the looks of it, I've got a priestess here. What happened, priestess? Cat got your tongue?"

He looked at her, his blue eyes shining brilliantly, cutting right through her. His grin was languorous, but it carried as much humour as a cat's grin on sighting a mouse. Those blue eyes mocked her, laughed at her, dared her to come closer.

Nat's fear dissipated. She wasn't going to back down from any challenge.

Her fingers gripped the key hard. Her mind was screaming at her, telling her to get away from this…this monster. But she wasn't going to listen – she'd faced too many monsters in her life to be scared of another one.

She took out the key, and turned the lock.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"You're not me," she gritted, and swung the door opened.

He chuckled, a little amused this time. "Oh, so you do know how to speak." He raised his head; the chains around his neck tightened. Nat winced; it was painful just looking at him.

"Don't come any further, priestess, if you value your life," he said, and gave her an easy grin. "These chains might not be easy to break, but that doesn't mean they can hold me to this wall. You're better off leaving."

Nat looked at him square in the eye. "I'm dead either way, so I'll make the choice on how it happens."

He didn't look the least bit surprised. "I warned you. But tell me, Priestess, what brings you here? That, too, with the corpse of my father?"

She froze, and stood, immobile, as he got up. The chains rankled, the links cutting into his flesh. He didn't seem to feel the pain, feel the blood streaming down his body, his arms, his legs. "You must have killed him," he continued. Even through her fear, she noticed that while he could move the rest of his body, his arms were perfectly still.

"Do tell me, how did you kill him?"

"You just don't stop talking, do you, Jones?"

He blinked, surprised. "You know my name?"

"Alfred Jones Jr. I wouldn't come in here without knowing your name," she said. The pain in her chest was receding, further confirming her hunch. He must be the spawn.

Even though her pain was slowly dying out, her body was still feeling the effect of hosting a demon. Her body was being burnt inside out, starting from her stomach. It was becoming painful to breathe, to speak. She had to do this quickly.

She studied the chains as he spoke. She could easily get caught in them, and she didn't want to think of what would happen to her if he got his hands on her. She took out the vermilion case from her coat pocket, and began undoing the stays that held the coat.

"Did they tell you why I'm here?"

"I couldn't care less."

"You're in my cell. And, by the looks of it, you're planning to approach me," he said. "Let me stop you right there, Priestess. Once you enter this circle here, I can get my hands on you. And not even your God can prevent anything I would do then."

Nat looked at the ground, found the white marking of the circle. She frowned. It was closer to where she was standing, at least a good three feet away from him. Having being bound so tightly to the wall, how could he possibly close the gap?

She looked back at the chains, and back at him. She didn't doubt what he said – she had a feeling he was enjoying telling her the truth, just to make her scared and back away, without even knowing her objective. Well, he picked the wrong person to scare.

Natalia opened the case, and looked at the lid. The vermilion there was still wet. She looked back at him. There was no chance that he'd stand still and let her apply vermilion the way Matt did. She closed the case, and unbuttoned the top of her shirt, until the beginning of her stomach. She untucked her shirt, and slipped her hand from behind to find the metal buckles.

"What are you doing?" he asked. He wasn't smiling at her anymore; his confusion was clear on his face.

She released the metal catch, and let the bindings around her breasts unravel. She needed the mark she'd made to be revealed, and the cloth would hinder the passage of energy from her to him. The bindings fell to the ground, and she suppressed the urge to rub her breasts after having them confined.

If she made it back to the monastery, she was going to switch to a bra made of the same cloth.

"I can see your breasts, priestess. Is that what they're teaching you in your temples nowadays?" he taunted. She gritted her teeth, but didn't grace him with a reply. She got out the case, opened it, and applied the wet vermilion to all her fingers. She took a deep breath, and looked up at him.

"I'm only going to tell you this once. Stand still."

"Impressive, priestess. Have you learnt what comes after undressing, too?" he leered at her.

Vyradak, she cursed mentally. There was only one way to do this.

She moved towards him, but just before she stepped over the white mark, he lunged at her. She couldn't move. He was right in front of her, the chains straining against him, his breath falling on her face. The chains seemed to scream out in pain, even though he was bleeding. He had covered the distance till the mark in the blink of an eye, his arms drawn to his sides, his torso straining silently against the pressure of the chains. The chain around his neck had snapped and fallen.

He raised his head, his eyes burning into hers. "I warned you, didn't I, priestess?"

"I told you to hold still."

"Looks like we don't like to listen to each other, huh, priestess?" he whispered. "Now, be a good girl, and get away from me."

Nat blinked. He wasn't completely under the control of the demon.

"I can help you," she whispered.

"I can't," he whispered back. "If you get in here, I'll kill you."

She had to do something.

She had to think of something fast.

She couldn't—

She couldn't—

"Look at me," she said.

He looked up.

She pushed him back with the back of her fist, grabbed the back of his head with one hand, and pressed her lips to his mouth.

She could hear the chains swirling around her, digging into her skin, crushing her against him. She could feel his mouth opening up under hers, and kissing her back.

Her fingertips found his scalp, and slowly created the symbol. Slowly, because she couldn't think anymore.

His mouth didn't rank, like she'd thought it would. His mouth tasted oddly clean. And he didn't smell as bad as she'd thought he would, either. He didn't smell bad at all.

He raised one hand to her cheek, the chain around his palm pressing into her flesh. He sucked on her mouth, then changed angles and pushed his tongue inside. His other hand cupped her breast through the cloth of her shirt, and Boh, heat was raging through her.

It didn't make any sense. But she knew he couldn't kill her like this.

She didn't expect to enjoy it. And she would never admit it to herself.

The chains tightened, drawing her closer to him. His hand left her breast, and she was crushed against his chest. Their legs entangled; she felt him against her crotch, and heat shot through her, faster, engulfing her senses and throbbing alongside need.

Feeling herself slipping, she bit down on his lip, and quickly finished drawing the symbol on the back of his head in a few strokes.

She drew her head back, and froze.

I am coming.

Gilbert looked worriedly towards the exit, then towards the cell. The priestess had been away for almost seven minutes now. He thought he heard voices, and then the clinking of chains. That demon-man must've been trying to kill her, just like he'd killed so many others.

He didn't know the story of Alfred Jones Jr., but Matt had once told him that they were twins, and that while Matt had been left behind with their mother, Alfred had been taken away by their father when they were just three years old. When their mother died, Matt had joined Alfred Jones Sr., who had then become the most powerful man in the world. Mathew and Alfred began training under their father, but, one day Alfred Jr. had been brought here, and chained to the wall like a dog.

People said that Alfred had ravaged an entire town overnight, killing all of its inhabitants. His father was said to have personally gone there and dragged Alfred into these cells, and locked him in. The world thought that Alfred Jones Jr., demon personified, had been shot dead by a firing squad. Truth was, he had been hidden in these dungeons the entire time.

Those who came to see him in the beginning never returned to see him again, and only his father was brave enough to see him. Matt was the only one prevented from seeing his brother. Johnny Doe saw him regularly, and spent long hours with his son, with either Gilbert or Antonio on call, in case Alfred went out of hand. The two of them, and Matt were the only ones who knew of Alfred Jr.'s existence.

And, now, the priestess. Gilbert frowned. Honestly, he didn't want to help her. She killed the one man who had made his life seem meaningful, who had saved him from despair and anguish. But after all that that had happened, he didn't know what to believe anymore. She had her reasons for killing Doe. Gilbert had a strong sense of right and wrong, and he was beginning to feel that whatever the priestess's reasons were, they were beginning to seem more and more…right. And he didn't like that one little bit.

The painful screams threw him right off his train of thought. He turned to run towards the cell, but halted as the voices grew clearer. The priestess was screaming…and so was a man?

He shook his head, ran down the corridor. "Priestess!" He reached the cell, and froze.

A pulsating glow enveloped both of them. The chains that bound the two of the crumbled to dust, and he could see them holding onto each other. And their screams…

It made his blood run cold.

His foot pressed against something, and he looked down. A black cloth was wrapped around something that seemed to be glowing just like the two in the cell. Gilbert bent down and pushed away the black cloth, to see the body of Johnny Doe glowing in tandem with Alfred and Natalia. Their screams grew louder and louder, finally drowned out by an unnatural, demonic roar that seemed to emanate from both of them.

"What the…?" Gilbert managed to say before the light blinded him.

The heat that seemed to radiate from the cell was astonishing. Gilbert curled into a ball as the heat waves hit him again and again, their intensity reducing after each wave. Finally, the heat died down, and Gilbert dared to open his eyes.

For a few moments, he couldn't see. Everything seemed white. Finally, his eyes got adjusted to the darkness than swamped the dungeons again, and looked up.

He gasped.

The chains were gone.

He looked at the wall; the chains that remained were deformed and looked like clay moulds, due to the heat. Gilbert looked at his skin; it had turned pink, and was raw to touch. He looked back up. Alfred was propped up against the wall, holding onto Natalia, who had curled up against him. She lifted her head, and looked at Gilbert.

She opened her mouth to say something, but her voice was so feeble Gilbert had to strain to hear her, even though the dungeons were dead silent.

"Tell…Matt…he can…cremate his…father. I…I found the…spawn."

"What?" Gilbert gasped. He couldn't make head or tail of what she was saying. By the look of it, though, Alfred was unconscious, and she was clinging onto the last shreds of consciousness. Something suddenly spurred him to action – he sprung up, and began running towards the exit.

She'd said something about Matt. He'd get him down here, let him deal with it. But…

What the hell is going on?

A/T: Hoooolidays! Well, I'll hopefully get to go back to my once-in-three-days uploading schedule, the way I used to two years back. (I'm still getting a bit over that). The chapters won't be coming out as soon as they're done, since I plan to be at least one chapter ahead of schedule, at least in the beginning. If there are any delays, do forgive me.

Well, this is clearly my favourite chapter so far.

If I'm going ooc, do forgive me. I won't compromise the story, so if the characters don't appeal to you at this stage, don't worry - it gets better. I'm just setting the stage right now, so it'll probably be ooc for some of you reading. So please bear with it for a while.

Hope you enjoyed.

R. K. Iris.