The Pleasures of Hell

Chapter 01.008

~~David~~

He woke up in a cave. That was happening a lot. What wasn't happening a lot was doing that in the middle of the day, when the fire sky burned bright and even the depths of caves got some reflected light in them. Their cave wasn't all that deep, and even with the sky out of sight around its curving insides, the amber lights didn't have to fight hard to keep it well lit with all the ambient light. It felt weird waking up in the middle of the day in Hell, like waking up after a nap gone wrong in the real world.

Groaning, he pushed himself up to sitting. Tried to, anyway. Dao gently pushed his head back down, right onto her lap, and he blinked up at the eyeless demon as she smiled down at him. Her claws combed through his shaggy red hair, her other hand against his chest beside the half breastplate. She clicked at him a few times. Stay down.

"Feeling okay?" Caera asked. "We weren't sure you were gonna wake up." She lay a few feet away, long body aimed at the cave path out, but she turned her head to face him.

"I... yeah, I feel fine. How long was I out?"

"About an hour," Jes said. She sat beside Dao, and grinned down at him as she poked his forehead with a claw. "Wanna explain?"

"Explain?" He tried to sit up again. No go. Clicking softly, Dao shook her head as she pushed him back down.

"Yeah, explain," the gargoyle said. "You're unmarked. You have an aura—that Caera says changed for a second when you were fighting by the way. A giant invisible... thing, is out to kill you. You can read the ancient language no one can read, not even spire rulers. And apparently you pass out when eating human hearts?"

He blinked. Right, the human heart. Right, the flood of memories that hit him when the person's flesh... the person's resonance, had hit him.

"Caera," he said, turning his head to look at her, "you... said humans can't absorb resonance, right?"

"Only demons can absorb resonance. We turn it into essence, the fuel we — and you — use to do stuff."

"Like a digestive tract turning food into fuel for our bodies to burn off."

She shrugged. "Close enough. But like I said, humans can't absorb resonance. You have your own resonance that you can never burn, so you need essence directly, which hearts have a lot of, too." After a big stretch that forced him to suppress the urge to say 'ooh big stretch', Caera sat up. "What's that go to do with you passing out?"

"You... fed me the heart of the woman I killed, didn't you?"

She raised a brow, and prowled closer. "How'd you know that?"

Fuck. Fucking fuck fucking fuckity fuck. Why? Why was all this weird shit happening to him? The fuck did he do? He was just a regular guy!

Apparently not.

"I saw... her sins, I guess. Took me so off guard, I guess I fainted. Fainted pretty hard, if it took me an hour to wake up."

The demons all blinked. Even Dao somehow managed it, despite the lack of eyes, and she clicked a few times, high pitched but soft.

"I don't know," he said. "I ate the heart Caera gave me, and then I was... I was her. The woman. I pushed someone into traffic. I saw some quick flashes of other things, too, other things she did. Noises. Scents and tastes. I remember what the person's shoulder felt like." He closed his eyes. "I'm guessing demons don't experience that when they eat the hearts of people, or demons."

"Uh, no, they don't," Caera said. From the sound of her voice, she'd leaned in and was now examining him from up close. He kept his eyes closed, and tried to focus on Dao's fingers combing his hair and caressing his head. "You're really not human."