The Sin Hunter: Double or Nothing

Trouble Brewing

As Jack concluded his call with the Angels, sliding his business card into a slot on his holster, the door into the hotel splintered, shattering on the ground while Crow rolled through cradling a snapped neck and the rest of the body with him. When his bloodied face turned to the stunned, horrified group, Crow jerked his thumb toward the hallway. "So uh, the bad guys are here," he replied before gunfire shredded through the doorway. Crow leapt to the side while Jack kicked the kitchen table backward, forcing everyone back behind him. Footsteps shuffled while dots traced around the room. Jack tucked low beneath the couch cushion, grabbing a smoke grenade from his belt.

To the surprise of the Stimpaking Trio, Jules did the exact same, and the two Sin Hunters threw their grenades over the table, showering the room in smoke. Lasers flashed with their dots as Jack lifted the table from the ground, charging it forward into the sound of writhing, scaly shrieks. "Oh, they're Demons alright!!" Deck roared, removing his surfboard keychain as the cloaked relic warped into his shield, flashing in the moonlight of the dark room. Crow scooped Deck by the back of his tank top, throwing the shield forward like a great demented battering ram as Deck cracked through riot shields in the hallway.

Gunfire exploded in the room as Jack and Jules both charged into the hallway, revolvers blazing with light while Cynthia remained in the hotel room, tying her duffel bag tight with supplies and resources. Locking her hand around the inside of her jaw, Cynthia unhinged the lower half of her mouth, forcing the duffel bag into her stomach with a slurch. Cynthia coiled her hands into tempered blades of silver, flinging them into the attackers in the room with sickening slices and piercing sounds. In the center of the battle, punching through visors and throwing bodies left and right, Deck shouted across the room to Cynthia.

"Doc!" He shouted, parrying a bullet and striking downward, spilling blood from the back of the Demon's helmet, "I need a signal!" Cynthia transformed her hand into a block of metal, smashing through the barricade in the curling smoke before turning in Deck's direction, closing her eyes. And then the telepathy began. 'Tell the group that this fight is getting too crowded. Split up and regroup at these disclosed coordinates, the gang knows how to read 'em. So does Jack.' Cynthia opened her eyes again, nodding to Deck. "I gotcha! Give the word when you're ready!" She shouted. Deck vanished into the smoke and lasers, loud crashing and clanging noises erupting from the fog.

Cynthia ducked low to the ground, slipping through the rug in a serpentine fashion, her form shrinking and sliding casually past the armed guards in the room. Once Cynthia had escaped, leaving Shrap, Deck and Crow fighting in the hotel room, she made her way out into the hallway where even more fighting ensued in the cramped quarters. Jack had found himself on one end of the room, the Withering Bite tearing through Kevlar and steel while Jules had been using the claw shot gauntlet Jack had received in Envy years ago. The gold fingers spiraled through the air and snagged through flesh, dragging bloody claw marks across the walls while revolvers continued blasting through the battle.

Cynthia positioned herself upright behind an overturned table in the hallway, closing her eyes before broadcasting the message to the rest of the team. 'Attention!' She called out in subconscious fashion, 'Deck says this fighting is getting too crowded. We need to run away and regroup at these coordinates.' Cynthia then relayed the coordinates to the team, and although the fighting did not stop, Cynthia could hear the voices of every member responding to the command. Even Jules, who silently answered, 'Wait, is that you, Mom?' As Jack leapt overhead, his hand digging into the glass lens of a Demon's visor and crumpling the skull against the hardwood floor, the Sin Hunter rose from the floor, fists caked in blood with bloodied revolvers in each hand.

"Jesus!" He shouted, blocking a right-palm strike and countering with a swift strike to the liver, knocking the Demon down for the count. "How many of these guys are there?!" But as quickly as they had arrived, the guards stopped pouring through the cracks in the walls and backed away, reloading and refreshing when the suits stepped through. Jack took a step back amid the clicking of magazines and clacking of triggers being released, a handful of Demons and Demonesses stepped through, not even bothering to mask their true forms. Fire, ice, fur, scales, wings, one eye, multiple eyes, it made no difference. But each Demon that stepped through only became more monstrous than the last.

The head Demon, stepping forward with fiery red skin and sunken pits where eyes should have been, slid a Marlboro Red into the lip of his mouth, snapping the end on the hand of a fiery green Demoness with long, blond hair and gold rings hanging from her pointed ears. Removing the cigarette, the Demon stepped forward once more, holding out a pistol in the direction of the Sin Hunter. Jack took a step backward, keeping his arms outstretched with revolvers ready and protecting Jules behind him. "If I pull this trigger, and this bullet hits you, what happens next?" Jack paused, anticipating a smug reply, then grinning, lowering his weapons to greet the suited Demon.

Jules watched with anxious limbs and trembling facial features as the smoke had subsided, and now her biological father was staring down a group of armed Demons, sticking his finger in the barrel of a gun and refusing to pull out. But worst of all for the younger Sin Hunter was the true forms of the Demons and Demonesses before her. 'I expected them to be hideous, but not monstrous. These guys and gals are crazy,' she told herself, willing every inch of her padded body to stay calm and stop shaking.

"Well," Jack coughed, kicking the head of a beheaded Demon guard across the floor, "I suppose it'd make me very angry, to be plainly honest." The Demon removed his glasses, giving way to void-like bulbs in his three sockets while a set of dragon-like teeth jutted out of his mouth. "You're funny. I like that in a Sinner." Jack nodded, coyly tilting his head to one shoulder while waving his hands in the air. "If Bile likes his enemies that way, who am I to disappoint?" Jack stepped forward, crossing his arms in front of the crew. Jack smiled, the corners of his eyes flashing with malicious energy while his ears pricked at the sound of reloading weaponry.

Jack stepped off of the body he had been standing on, stomping down on the long, barbed tail and leaving muddied, bloodied boot marks on the hide. "So," Jack continued, twisting his revolver around in his fingers while he circled the group of fine dressed Demons, "I hear you've been preparing for my return, is that right?" The suits and glasses flashed in the diffracted moonlight of the broken hotel room as the Sin Hunter disappeared from sight, a shadow against the walls. The guards all shuffled in their clustered circle, weapons raised with piercing green lasers illuminating the foggy hallway. "Well, I hope you'll be ready when I come back. Hell still has a few Sinners I need to tick off the list."

The red skinned Demon in the front groaned, loading a bolted pistol into his hand and aiming the gun straight for Jules, who took a step back in shock. The fear in her bones erased all memory of her training, too scared to comprehend the reality that Demons were real after all. And worst of all, she had gotten to see one for real. It was a sickening, twisted feeling, like gripping your insides and wrenching the blood out of them as if they were a towel after a day at the pool. Jules felt nauseous, watching as the barrel glared down at her, a frightened little teenager against the Demon with a gun.

And then Jack reappeared, standing between the gun and Jules. Then he seized the barrel with one hand, raising the pistol right to his forehead with a growl rumbling in his throat. "Now why would you point that gun at a harmless little child, when you could shoot the real thing for nothing at all?" And then the trigger squeezed, and the explosion shook the hallway.