Dead Moon Chapel

thirty-seven

RED. RED MOON. RED WINDOW. Red blood. Red demon with red vision and a red hot pain in every part of his red body.

Jericho watched the High Priests pull Abel's head back by the hair. He screamed for him like it would fix this, like he could stop the Priestess from pressing a blade to his angel's throat. He cried his name, over and over like it would stop this, even as she sliced into Abel's flesh.

Blood sprayed and gushed from Abel's throat, and Jericho watched as tears filled the angel's eyes. He watched him struggle to speak, he watched as pain washed over his body.

Abel's angelic form glowed as though the heavens lived within him. But as his blood spilled from his body, it took with it all the light shining inside of him. A once holy, beaming vessel flickered out, dim and lightless and still.

Too still.

He couldn't get the scene out of his head. It replayed over and over and over and no matter how he tried, it wouldn't leave. This was a punishment far worse than anything he'd seen in Hell. For a moment, he wondered if he had not left Hell after all.

For a moment, he hoped he hadn't.

He hoped this was an elaborate illusion, a mind trick carefully crafted just to torture him. During his seemingly endless time in Hell, Jericho saw visions not unlike these. But whenever he heard Abel calling out to him, he was reminded that none of it was real, that it was all invented to cause him pain.

Jericho called out to him. Over and over and over, he begged to hear his voice. He begged to know that this was just another trick, that Abel was not the corpse draped over the altar in front of him.

No matter how he cried, no voice entered his mind to comfort him. All he had was the memory of it.

Perhaps the worst part of all of this, though, was that he didn't hear Abel's voice when he mouthed those three fateful words. Of all the things he could play back in his head, of everything Abel said, Jericho would never hear him speak what he most wanted to hear.

And Abel would never hear him say it back.

This was the thought that crushed his heart to completion. It was this thought that flooded him with a rush of fury, a rush which curled around his every limb and permeated every corner of his mind. It pulsed in his skull and filled the hollow in his chest where his heart once was, before his heart was bent over an altar and slaughtered.

The ground beneath him quaked. Where his screams had turned into whimpers as Jericho chanted Abel's name, those whimpers now changed to something else. As the ground shook harder, faster, Jericho's whimpers escalated into sobs. They grew even louder, turning into unintelligible wails and pleas, until finally, with all the power now surging through him, Jericho howled.

A Hellhound begging at the feet of his master, Jericho howled a cry so mournful that every Father Malachi's eyes grew wet with years. Jericho could see him now, standing beside Abel's lifeless body.

Jericho wanted so badly for him to die. He wanted to rip him apart limb from limb, watch him suffer and beg for mercy. He wanted him to devour his soul, to chew slowly so he would feel every piercing of his jagged teeth. He longed to hear Malachi's agonized screams as Jericho took his revenge.

But he wouldn't kill him. For there was no worse punishment than allowing him to live, allowing him to witness what he'd done. Nothing would torture Father Malachi more than killing his son and knowing it meant nothing, knowing that in his last moments, his son held no love for him anymore.

As for the rest of these horrible priests, and as for the gawking spectators watching Abel die like it's a sport, Jericho did not care what happened to them. He harbored no feelings for them in the dead remains of his heart, they did not deserve a place there.

Jericho's howling carried on, only growing louder with his agony. It was settling in at last, that he would suffer the rest of eternity without his angel. That he would no longer feel his warmth or relish in his touch or hear his gentle words. Such a beautiful creature, so determined to be unworthy, and yet... Jericho did not believe there to be a soul so pure as Abel's. Even he was not worthy of his divinity.

Divinity he would never behold again.

A loud crash was accompanied by a plume of dust and a chorus of screams. The ground's violent quaking was destroying the foundations of the arena, cracking the building from its base, and eventually making its way to the top. With every tremble of the earth, the building broke apart more, launching boulders of rubble to the ground.

The sounds of bodies crushing beneath the downfall were lost in Jericho's ears. Their screams were white noise against his own.

Black smoke filled the room, thick and potent and suffocating. All around him, the arena flooded with death as the smoke choked out the weakest among them, and the rest were crushed by the building as it collapsed in on itself.

Abel was gone. He was never coming back. And Jericho no longer had a heart.

There was nothing Jericho felt but pain. Nothing he saw but red. Nothing he wanted more than to rip apart anyone who ever wronged his angel, including himself.

Oh, how Jericho wished to be torn apart.

The moon was high in the clear sky when Jericho's screams mellowed out into whimpers. He was too exhausted to hold a palatable form anymore, and his body no longer held any suggestion of the shape of a man. He was a Hellish dog, pathetic and whining on the floor, a hound weeping at the feet of his companion.

He was surrounded by rubble and carnage. The ceiling was almost completely destroyed, and the red moon glared down at Jericho. The sky above him was dotted with stars, but even their vast, mysterious beauty was not enough to tear Jericho's focus away from the body of his angel.

There were only two creatures left alive in that arena, if Jericho could even be considered alive.

Father Malachi's breath was ragged. He was on his knees-whether from the force of Jericho's power or the potency of the mist or the weight of his own grief, Jericho couldn't be sure. The moon cast a haunting red glow on his face. The light from above caused his hallowed eyes and sunken cheeks to take a distinctly skeletal shape.

The body of an angel lay lifeless between two demons destined for hell.

"You will answer for this, hellhound," Malachi spat.

Jericho scoffed and looked up at him. "As will you, Father."