The Hunter

Little Revelations

Finn winced and swallowed. "I keep forgetting how little you know."

"How? How can you forget that I know so little?"

"You keep handling it more like someone who was born to the life than someone new to it. I keep expecting you to run away, and when you don't..." Finn trailed off and then shrugged. "I'll work on that if you work on remembering your questions." She prepped another mouthful thoughtfully.

"You were raised Christian?"

"Catholic."

"So you were taught that demons are after our souls, to drag us into Hell and torture us for eternity." Finn waved a hand in the air when Gloria opened her mouth to speak. "Essentially."

"Essentially. There's so much more to it than that though. Really, we're caught in the middle of a war." Finn chewed and watched Gloria as she explained, nodding once in a while, and listening more to how Gloria spoke than what she was saying. It was exceptionally familiar propaganda in North America after all.

Finn swallowed. "Well, what if there wasn't a war? What if Heaven and Hell weren't at odds with each other?"

"Then why would God have created us?"

Finn shook her head. "I didn't mean to start a Creation Debate. I meant what if there was no war, but both Heaven and Hell were trying to get our souls? What would you say to that?"

"Are you seriously putting Heaven into the same line as Hell? They don't just 'want our souls', they love us!"

"As they love anyone that sacrifices to save them." Finn agreed and Gloria almost choked on her mouthful.

"Heaven and Hell are like sibling dimensions to what we know, locations just to the side of our reality, but they were dying. Before known history of all three locations, someone figured out that there was a nearly infinite power source in our reality. Heaven and Hell both saved themselves by harvesting it, harvesting the energy output of our souls when we move from this plane of existence back to wherever we came from." Gloria held a mouthful of food in front of her face and stared at Finn as though she had grown another head and Finn nodded. "It's a lot I realize, let me know if I need to stop." She sipped her water and leaned back, her plate empty.

"In both cases the longer it takes your soul to leave that place the more power it generates." Finn frowned. "When I say power I'm talking similar to electricity or the power generated by our internal combustion engines, not some theoretical political power, or military might. Our souls are literally batteries."

"Wait." Gloria spoke up, her hands up and palm out as if warding off the conversation. "So you're saying that Hell isn't some torturous place where we go to be punished for our sins?"

"Well, part of it is. Some of it is dark and cold, some of it is nearly identical to here. The part I personally dislike the most is the palace, it's decorated in those geometric designs designed to throw off your sense of space. Don't think for a second that our souls are passive about this. We do choose where to go and what our transition is going to be like." Finn said calmly.

"You've been to Hell?" Gloria scoffed.

"Once." Finn said and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Can I ask?"

"I'd rather you didn't, but I won't lie to you."

"Would you answer?"

Finn shrugged. "Eventually. Some day. Probably."

"Maybe?" Gloria finished and Finn smiled ruefully. "I cannot for the life of me see demons as anything but evil."

Finn shrugged again. "That's something you'll have to work out on your own. I can't tell you how to feel, I can only tell you the facts as I know them. Now, that doesn't explain why I don't just destroy them, are you still wanting that answer?"

"To be honest I'm still not sure what the point of a 'hunter' is. So yes. Why don't you hunt?"

"That's not the same question actually, but I'll try and answer both as simply as I can without going into the history of it." Finn thought a moment. "I'm not the executioner for a judge and jury, I don't Hunt on command, and not all of my hunts end up with someone dying. The point of having someone do my job is so there is someone trained to keep the balance in our world. A long time ago Humans chose what they call science over what they call magic. They've done a lot of damage to our world by not realizing that it's all the same thing, but that's part of the history lesson." Finn sighed.

"It's not actually easy to explain without that history lesson, so I'll leave my job description as that. I will point out that I don't answer 'to' anyone though, the Council likes to think I obey them and obviously some Demons are under the impression that I do as well, but I don't. I could be called on to Hunt the Council. In theory." Finn seemed to taper off.

"Why didn't you kill Clover and Crimson? And all the other demons?" Gloria asked and Finn seemed to refocus her attention.

"Thanks, got lost a moment there. Crim and Clove have been around a long time. They had a really nice racket going on actually, but Clove was never happy with 'enough'. I never had to kill them to remind them to keep their nature a secret to Humans. They have as much right to live as we do. If they can take a little bit of power from a large source without hurting them then let them, and that was the beauty of what those two had figured out."

"A little bit?" Gloria scoffed. "You can take a little bit of a soul?"

"They figured out how to do it, so yes. A small amount of your soul generates a lot less power as it fights to return to you, but what if that person keeps coming back to trade that piece in again?" Finn asked, and Gloria felt her eyes widen.

"Their operation powered an entire city in Hell, and they were so careful never to hurt anyone. They didn't spread diseases, and in fact cured a few people of disease as I recall." Finn frowned. "Up until that last scheme by Clover. That wasn't like her."

"Wait, succubus!" Gloria exclaimed. "You called the female demon an incubus, but those are males." Finn yawned and stood up to stretch and Gloria stood to prevent the other woman from leaving. "You can't go until you confirm something that I know as being true." Gloria pleaded.

"Generally a succubus is female and an incubus is male, but for a demon their title - incubus, succubus, lamia, imp - is how they collect souls to bring to Hell." She put the leftovers into the fridge. "A succubus takes your soul, or a part of it, by having you inside them. An incubus does the same by being inside of you. Clover was an incubus, and I took her tongue so as long as I have that she cannot regenerate and come back to earth. Crimson was a succubus."

Finn wiped down the counter and faced Gloria. "I'm going to bed now, but I'll answer one more piece of the puzzle for you. Destroying a demon isn't the same as killing them. Killing them sends them back to Hell and they can come back after they recover. Destroying them takes a lot more everything from the person destroying them, and the person rarely survives the process."

As Finn left Gloria found herself feeling like she was drowning. Like she hadn't been able to catch her breath in days.