(A/N) Having such terrible writer's block on this story I'm sorry.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT own PJO

Thalia had to admit that demons were pretty fucking creepy, and she resigned herself to have a relationship with the monsters like how she had a relationship with spiders; she really hated them and was totally freaked out by them (though not as much as Annabeth was), but they were essential to the food chain, lest mosquitoes, which Thalia hated even more, multiplied. They were the lesser of two evils, really, and in all honesty they were pretty chill. They didn't bother anyone as long as nobody bothered them, but Thalia always had to try and block out the smell of blood and flesh on their breath after a hunt, knowing well that it'd come from people. People with homes and families and children, and perhaps they were the children, though the demons had (reluctantly) agreed to cease hunting youths and pregnant women.

"It's a bit hard to eat what you keep calling 'the ones who won't be missed'," Alfie scoffed during their trek towards demon headquarters, with Perseus firmly leading the entire group. Thalia noted the fact that the demigods were lagging behind, scowling as they muttered to one another, much like the spoiled rich kids at the private schools her mom had always made her attend.

"And why is that?" she asked, and she would be lying if she claimed she wasn't curious. Even though demons were brutal and savage, at least in her eyes, they were far from bland and uninteresting. The entire species was cloaked in shadow and mystery, and she wanted to find out everything she could about them, in case any ones that were spared after Lilith's death went rogue. Were there things that could harm but not kill them? Did they have any weaknesses physically or mentally? She didn't ask them this, though, because it would almost certainly sound like she was plotting their demise.

"The real scum of the earth are hyped up on drugs ninety-nine percent of the time. They taste awful," Alfie made a face and shivered violently as he recalled the experience. "Their flesh is too chewy and their blood tastes like cow blood." He made a disgusted sound and wrinkled his nose, and despite the fact that it was kind of cute, it was also creepy hearing a little kid talk about how druggies tasted bad if you ate them.

"That should be an anti-drug infomercial," Thalia suggested. In a sullen narrator voice she announced, "Don't do drugs. It can ruin your life and make your blood taste like cow blood." Alfie regarded her quizzically, arching an eyebrow, and Thalia had thought it was pretty funny. Either she was wrong or Alfie had absolutely zero sense of humor, unlike his twin who made jokes about homicide at every opportunity.

"I have no idea what an infomercial is," he stated, hopping over a fallen tree carefully. "Trapped in Hell for several millennia, remember?" Thalia gave him a long look, which he didn't seem to notice as he treaded carefully over the leaves.

Without really thinking, she asked, "What's Hell like?" She immediately regretted her words as Alpheus turned to her sharply, his pupils slitting as his upper lip curled, peeling away to reveal his fangs. "Sorry, it's none of my business."

"Indeed," Alfie replied and paused, staring off into nothing as the gears turned in his head. "But I've never told anyone. Not even Percy." Thalia's eyebrows climbed towards her hairline as the demon confessed this. "He would just get anxious and start treating me different. Like I'm fragile." Percy turned his head to look back, obviously overhearing the conversation, and he and his twin exchanged glares, though the other demon looked resigned, like he knew that Alfie's point was, in fact, a fair one.

"Well, I find it helpful to tell people about your problems so you don't have to shoulder them alone. At least they know what you're going through and can help if something suddenly triggers you," Thalia explained. "Like, my fear is of heights. Kind of odd for a daughter of Zeus, I know, but heights always terrified me." Alfie nodded, still staring straight ahead as they padded through the forest.

"I was always scared of toads and frogs," Thalia saw the amused smirk Percy cast behind him, "They weren't petrified like the other animals when we passed through, and when we lived in Greece they would hop right in front of us and scare me half to death." Thalia laughed out loud, imagining the big, bad demon startled by a harmless amphibian, which only made her laugh even more. Alfie smiled softly, gazing at her with his striking sea green eyes, and she ruffled the kid's hair. He harrumphed slightly, obviously harboring a dislike for being treated like a child, and Thalia found herself warming up to the demon. Of course, this was only supposed to be a business partnership, but what if demons weren't all that bad?

-Ω-

People would assume that Hell was scorching. That, because it was so close to Tartarus and Tartarus was blistering hot, that Hell was ever hotter. Someone says "Hell" and immediately red devils with pointy horns and pitchforks come to mind, along with fire, lava lakes, ash, and jagged black rocks. This view is customary, so most shouldn't worry. In fact, it technically is correct if one considered Tartarus Hell, in which the image in mind and the actual thing were almost identical minus the devils. Mortals have free reign to cling to whatever beliefs their puny little minds have, unless they come up with mind control (which is highly unlikely without siren venom in stock), but most of them are, indeed, wrong.

Hell was a frozen wasteland, as Alpheus soon found out when he woke up surrounded by white. His fingers were blackened, his nose and ears and toes more or less the same, but despite this they still worked fine as he let out a strangled gasp, clawing in whatever way he thought was up. His talons served as excellent shovels to the icy, packed, bitterly cold mound above him, which he could only assume was snow. He had no air and was starving, his stomach heaving and bellowing as it demanded sustenance, and the snow he carved off the pile above him fell into his nose and eyes. His heart, despite the fact that he was incredibly terrified, thumped sluggishly against his ribcage, chugging along at its own damn pace, thank you very much. Alpheus cursed it as he wriggled his way up the tunnel he was creating for himself, aware of the arctic temperature that probably hovered around absolute zero. Since this was Hell, snow could certainly fall from the sky in freezing little bits of death and destruction in such low temperature. Alpheus dug up until his whole body ached and one of his claws was ripped from his finger, and then, and only then, did he break the surface.

He gasped for air, receiving a mouthful of snow in return, and cracked his eyes open. There was nothing but white, only this time a biting wind whipped at his face, stinging him like a swarm of a thousand bees. The snow under him was unlike the closely packed snow under the surface; this was powdery and soft, and Alpheus lay down in it as his sides heaved, ignoring the frigidness. His blackened fingers were only barely clinging to his hand, the dead tissue beginning to spread, and Alpheus knew he had to create shelter where he could heal and perhaps catch something to eat. He opted for army crawling instead of standing. Even though it was cold and slow, walking in itself would be useless; the wind would easily blow him over and would serve to make the trip even icier as he tried to find shelter. Sure, he could always dig a snow hole, but he was wearing a tattered Greek toga that didn't offer much warmth. No, he needed a cave.

He sent out a high pitched cry for help, one at a frequency that was too high for mortals to hear, and found that the echo bounced back almost immediately. He was at the base of a mountain. A snow-covered one at that, but still a mountain. He was so overwhelmed with joy that he nearly didn't notice the reply to his SOS, which was far closer than he'd thought. A shadow loomed over him and then two arms were hooking under Alpheus', strong and unyielding. The demon was so exhausted and freezing that he was only mutedly aware of the fact that this demon could, indeed, want to eat him. It would be easy pickings, after all, and there didn't seem to be any other life out in this wasteland. He was dragged for a while, and he managed to get a glimpse of his completely black feet, but his head lolled back as he became dead to the world.

He wanted to question the stranger, wanted to ask whether he was a friend or a foe, but his lips were probably coming off too, and his saliva had frozen within his mouth, which didn't really encourage conversation. Besides, even if his voice wasn't the weak rasp he expected it to be, it would've been lost to the wind, no matter how loud he screamed or shouted his words. He was dragged along like a rag doll for quite the amount of time, and now he was even more lost than when he'd first begun, if that was even possible, but thoughts were racing through his head. Could he die in Hell if he was already dead? Would he come back just to be eaten again? How was this demon functioning normally? Had he popped up in a much warmer spot than ten feet below the surface in a subzero grave?

He was pretty sure his eyelids had frozen shut, and he felt like an Alfie popsicle, which made his heart ache when he thought of how his twin would always call himself a Percy-cicle when they'd lived in the Siberian wilderness. A kooky place to live, sure, but it was to get a vacation from the Trojan War, a vacation that Alfie despised. He'd lived in Greece most of his life, and therefore despised the cold. He supposed that that was the reason why his Hell was glacial instead of scorching, and the demon had to admit that he would prefer blistered skin slipping off his bones than this. He was like a Floridian in Canada, only the Floridian happened to be the spawn of the antichrist and the mighty moose god was trying to destroy them with temperatures that were below absolute zero. He would've laughed had he not been subjected to so much discomfort at the moment.

The snow turned into stone rather abruptly, and from behind his eyelids he could see red-gold, signaling a light source. From over a huge, engine-like roar, the crackle and popping of a fire could be heard nearby, and the sounds grew louder until he was pretty sure he was lying right next to it. That had to be a safety hazard of some sort, but the warmth was so glorious and blessed that he was too relieved to care. There was a grunting noise as Alfie's savior sat down to his left, crouched close to the flames to catch the heat. The demon was unsure of whether this fire would also be the fire that cooked him, but the demon didn't smell or act ravenous, which made Alfie suspicious but only mutedly. Why would this demon want him around if he didn't want to eat him?

He felt himself unthawing. The sensation came back to his fingers and toes as they were finally given time to heal themselves, and his eyelids defrosted. It was even warm enough for saliva to return to liquid form, and for that Alife was glad. Frozen saliva gave you terrible, terrible brain freeze. He couldn't help but let out a groan, throwing his arm over his face and rejoicing in the way his fingers burned as they warmed up too quickly. His heart was starting to get the memo and began to speed up as Alfie's worries and fears fueled its fire, and eventually the demon was able to sit up and look around.

Unsurprisingly, they were in a cave. Deep in a cave. The walls were all stone that'd been worn away by the elements, and even though it wasn't one hundred percent smooth, it was still comfortable enough to lie and sleep on, in Alfie's opinion. What he'd first mistaken as an engine was actually the sound of the wind outside, and when Alfie looked he saw large icicles shielding the cave from the wind, a little gap in the middle that was just large enough for a humanlike creature to be dragged through. Speaking of being dragged, Alfie turned to see a young man hunched by the fire, seeming mesmerized by the dancing and shifting of the flames.

His hair was a sandy blond, shot with white that looked so natural it couldn't possibly be highlights, which was odd considering he looked far from old. His hands were callused and riddled with scars, his biceps bulky and his body stocky, which was another commodity for demons, who'd evolved and adapted to look helpless and lure in victims who believed they were stronger. Then again, Alfie wasn't getting the demon vibe from him. He didn't smell right; he wasn't human but he wasn't a demon, either, and he certainly wasn't a Greek creature from the upper levels of Tartarus. No, he was somewhere in between, though Alfie wondered how that was physically possible.

His fawn colored eyes looked a bit crazed, and he couldn't seem to keep still as he shifted and fidgeted where he sat, but when Alfie bypassed all that he could see the sheer weight in his gaze, the heaviness that came with seeing so much as they stayed the same while everything around them ceased to stop changing. It was a bit odd and a little vertigo-inducing, Alpheus had to admit, as he watched humans go from hairy primates to at least slightly intelligent life forms that could bilt unimaginable things and accomplish stuff that the demon wouldn't even dream of. The wheel? Genius. Farming? Not really valuable to Alfie but still pretty cool (At least it kept the humans in one place so they could pick them off more easily).

"Who are you?" the demon asked cautiously. Warily. He wasn't sure if this unknown creature was a friend or a foe, and he had to keep his guard up until he was absolutely sure that he wasn't in danger. This stranger did save him, though, but he could've just done so for easy pickings. If that somewhat manic glint in his eye, Alpheus shouldn't relax any time soon.

"My name is Cain," he replied, his voice deep and rich. He'd be a teenage heartthrob had he not seemed so…jittery.

"Cain?" Alpheus asked, puzzled and well aware that all myths were true, even the Christian ones. "I find that hard to believe." He'd always thought that Cain had turned into a middle-aged man with grey, receding hair, crooked teeth, and a cockeye after he'd killed Abel. Which he was totally, one hundred percent against. Litter mate murder? He was so not in. Even when humans killed their brothers and sisters he found it revolting. Sure, if they were related to you but not your litter mate, he could see that, but if they were born of the same mother they shouldn't be at each other's throats. You might as well work together towards your goals instead of butting heads and getting nowhere.

"That's understandable," Cain replied shortly. "But you do realize that I smell different, right? That I'm human…ish." Alpheus was more on guard than he'd been before, knowing that this guy was a notorious killing machine, but he was pretty sure he was forgetting something. Something important…

Never mind. He was pretty sure he'd seen a frozen, dead forest nearby, which explains the lumber, and perhaps there'd be animals in there to hunt. He didn't need this so-called Cain, who probably wasn't the real thing at all. Without warning Alfie leapt at him, his talons extended and his teeth bared, but let out a howl of pain when two sets of claw marks suddenly imbedded themselves into his sides. He hissed and spat, writhing on the floor in his agony as his wounds stung and burned, but Cain either didn't notice or didn't care as he continued to stare, entranced, at the fire.

"You shouldn't've done that," he mumbled, rocking back and forth a little as his eyes remained transfixed on the flames. Alfie let out another pained cry, and then his wounds began to heal, closing up much slower than usual. As soon as the bleeding stopped, the demon leaped to his feet, a low snarl rumbling from his throat that Cain ignored completely, instead opting to feed more sticks to the blaze.

"What just happened?!" he bellowed and circled around the fire and the one tending it, wary of approaching after the event that just occurred. "Did you attack me?" For the first time, Cain smirked, chucking a bit to himself.

"No, but you attacked me," he replied, which was very cryptic and had Alfie becoming more frustrated than before. He didn't need this mysterious and obscure Oracle bullshit, he needed answers, and not just about the failed attempt to kill him. He also wanted to know where they were, what they had to do, and how they had to do it. Were there other demons around or was it just Cain? How can Alfie navigate Hell? Was this even Hell? Cain finally rose to his feet, for once ignoring the fire, and turned to face the demon who balked a bit and growled, though he was more anxious than angry.

"What is that supposed to mean?" he demanded huffily, though he cursed himself for the slightly nervous edge to his voice.

"It means that I still have the Mark that God bestowed upon me. The one that protects me and keeps me from perishing in this place," Cain replied evenly, and Alfie wanted to slap himself for it. He should've remembered the Mark of Cain, the one that was depicted in so many ways but all meant the same thing; Cain couldn't die, and any harm done do him would be returned to the harmer by tenfold.

"What do you want? Why did you save me?"

"So many questions."

"Answer them."

"My, my," Cain tutted, his eyes growing sharper. Deadlier. "What manners you have." He looked more like a killing machine now than a crazed lunatic, and it set Alfie on edge. Cain was more powerful than Alfie, and had been down her for much longer. Even though Alfie could survive the basics, he couldn't get anywhere without Cain's help, and the man seemed to know this, for he grinned rather sadistically "Now, first I'm going to talk and then you can ask your little questions. Got it?" The demon paused but then slowly nodded, though reluctantly. His trust for Cain had dropped into the negatives, and every muscle was tensed to run, though the exit was being blocked my Mr. Fratricide himself.

"Good," Cain replied, all too cheerily, clapping his hands together. "You see, my problem is that I don't belong in Hell. I'm human, but the mark that God has given me says otherwise. Obviously, the dynamics of the Earth would respond to the man upstairs' verdict rather than mine, so when my house fell upon me and killed me with the same stone I used to kill my brother, I went straight down here rather than to the Underworld for a chance at a happy afterlife. At least could've gone to Asphodel, knowing my misdeeds would land me in Punishment, but that place is considered lenient compared to this arctic misery." Cain gestured around, scowling. "Demons steer clear usually, but the problem is that I can't kill them unless they attack me and the Mark does its job, and they'd rather jump off a cliff than do that, so I need a demon to be my…partner in crime."

"Like hell," Alpheus snapped.

"Darling, you're in Hell," Cain ground out through gritted teeth. "The Mark gives me visions, little glimpses of the future, and I can piece together the fact that there will be a rapture. All the demons will be freed from Hell, but not all its inhabitants." The father of murder laughed bitterly. "So I'll be down here while you guys frolic up there, good as new. So I need you to do a little something for me, and I already talked to your Mother so it's all good…"

Alpheus leaned in as he was told what he had to do, and he had to admit, it sounded fine to him.