Fifty-Five: Interrogation

Lilith and Elasha led Abaddon to a Void Sect cultist. The accompanying Vampires dragged the unlucky body to the trio.

Elasha bit her own finger; ruby blood beaded on her pale tip and threaded down his mouth like a scarlet stream.

The cultist, a Demon, had been a corpse of silence. He coughed twice, eyes snapping open like shutters in a storm, confusion fogging the three silhouettes before him.

"Uh... where is this?" He rubbed his spinning head, then looked up at a slender figure in a black hood, thin as a shadow at dusk.

The man froze, then dove forward. He kowtowed with a crisp thud, kneeling to pray with hands trembling like leaves in wind.

"My Lord, my beloved Father," his voice burned like incense smoke. "Your most devout servant is in peril. Will You show Your power to these worms?"

Fanatic fire flickered in his eyes, a bonfire gone mad under a midnight sky.

"No," Abaddon rasped, the old-man voice drawn out like a rusted chain over stone.

The man wilted like frost-struck wheat. He sank, slammed his right fist into the floor once, and growled low, bitterness coiling like a snake.

"No, I knew it. Words alone can’t draw down Your punishment," he muttered, each syllable heavy as wet earth. "Great Lords aren’t shallow gods. Empty talk is blasphemy."

"How would I do something so stupid? Heaven help me—where did my pious heart go?" He slapped himself, the crack sharp as winter ice.

He cupped his reddened left cheek, and a smile crawled across his face like a spider under a lamp.

He knelt before Abaddon, palms pressed. He drew a circle over his chest, then hammered his right fist into his left forearm like a mallet on bone.

One strike snapped the small forearm; the sound was dry as breaking twigs. Blood soaked his robe like rain on old canvas, yet he kept pounding.

He didn’t feel pain, only purpose, each blow falling like a drumbeat. The white shards of bone pushed through skin, glinting like frost under moonlight.

He grabbed the broken half of his arm, twisted hard, and tore it free with a wet rip, like uprooting a gnarly root.

Agony drenched the Demon in cold sweat, beads hanging like dew, yet he didn’t slow, devotion driving him like a tide.

He laid the severed arm before Abaddon, breathing ragged, words stumbling like stones in a stream. "Gr- great Lord... please, accept this offering."

"This is a sacrifice, to beg Your might," he panted, face gray as ash. "With this, grant me one request."

"What do you seek?" Lilith forced down nausea, her whisper a thin blade. Behind Abaddon, she nudged her line, and the demon girl kept the cold, old-goat rasp.

"I beg You to name me bishop of the Void Sect," he gasped, eyes widening like cracked glass. "And give me the power You granted that woman—no, that traitor."

His wound had touched a nerve; he strained his vision, the world swimming like ink in water. He howled, kneeling as if at an altar of thorns.

"That woman, the one who inherited our Lord’s power, the one the Lord favored," he spat, each word a coal. "She should’ve carried our grand work first."

"She should’ve been the Lord’s most loyal hound, a dog that does whatever the Lord says," he hissed, knuckles whitening like bones.

He clenched his single fist and cursed in strings, venom like black rain. He scrawled over the floor again and again in letters Xiaolong had never seen, crooked as reeds.

"Bishop? Sage?" his voice cracked like old bark. "We gave her so much honor. We sacrificed so much, to win her strength to rival anyone in this world."

Only the Lord stood above her. Yet she betrayed us—betrayed the Void Sect, betrayed the Lord, betrayed our Demons’ wish to set our footprints on every land.

"That woman, the one disguised as a Vampire," he begged, face tilted like a dying flower. "My Lord, grant her death. Take back every favor You gave her."

"This is my last wish. I..." He crawled to Abaddon’s feet, head bowing to kiss the toes like a pilgrim kissing stone.

But blood loss hollowed him out like a drained gourd. With his last breath, he raised his head and saw the face beneath Abaddon’s hood.

"Ah, you are... so beautiful," he murmured, smile dreamy as dew. "Like that damned little princess. Ha... how could that be?"

"You are the great and merciful Lord. How could You wear the same face as our enemy?" His expression shattered like ice across a pond.

"No, no, no!" Color fled his cheeks like dusk. Strength flooded back wild and wrong; he seized his own throat with his remaining hand, veins rising like ropes.

He stared wide, eyes round as moons, disbelief nailed to Abaddon. "You—how are you—you—this is a dream. It’s not real. It’s not—"

He didn’t finish. His grip went slack; his hand slid off, and darkness took him like a wave.

"Uh..." Abaddon lifted her hood, her small-girl voice soft as a sparrow. "Did I do it wrong?"

"Uh..." Lilith looked down at the Demon male sprawled there, one arm gone and blood seeping like wine. She had no words, only a tight brow.

Elasha moved first, quick as a knife in rain. She sealed the bleeding, then fed some blood back, keeping him from dying to the pale hand of loss.

"At least we pulled some useful threads," Elasha said, clapping lightly, sound crisp as a twig. "This batch isn’t all Void Sect believers. Their bishop isn’t here."

"And she’s disguised as a Vampire," Lilith followed, thought flowing like water. "She’s hiding inside Morris. We just don’t know where."

"We also don’t know what power she holds," she added, a frown like gathering clouds. "A zealot’s words aren’t reliable. We need more on that bishop."

"Right. We can ask the Demon little princess once we’re back," Elasha nodded, eyes flicking to Abaddon standing by the severed hand like a statue.

"What matters now is to leave," she said, tone steady as a drum. "Getting back to Morris gives us far more leverage."

"You’re right," Lilith agreed, gaze sweeping the room like a broom. "And there are plenty of dangerous types here that need to be locked up."

She squatted, wary as a cat, and poked a Void Sect believer’s cheek, the skin cold as river stone. "They won’t suddenly wake up, right?"

She really didn’t want to chat again with a lunatic who could tear off his own arm, madness buzzing like hornets.