DEAD MEN PAY THEIR DEBTS.

PLEAD, SINNER.

The first thing that Jesse registers is the smell of blood. The rusty scent of old blood and the metallic tang of new blood.  He groans, his head and leg both throbbing, but he realizes that something is holding him down as he tries to stand up. Slowly, he opens his eyes, but it doesn't do him much good.

There are a few oil lamps set around the small, dingy, weakly lit square room he's in, but other than that, not much. He sits up, squinting into the dim room. The floor is cold stone with a layer of grime on top. The lamps around cast enough light on the room that he can see two figures chained down on the other side of the room.

His breathing is shallow as he looks around, his head aching. The walls are the same stone as the floor, but there are little alcoves set into them. Jesse counts two on each wall, with what looks disturbingly like human skulls in them.

A door is set to the wall on his right, black, intricately carved. A large tub sits on the other end of the room, liquid in it with something sticking up. There are stains on the outside, but Jesse doesn't want to look too closely at any of them. He cranes his neck to see what's inside the tub, when -

"Jesse?" a weak voice calls out. He sits back down, peering towards the bodies on the other side to figure out who called his name. "Jesse?"

"Sierra?" Jesse can't keep the shock from his voice. It sounds like it's coming from the tub, but he can't get close enough to figure out if it's her.

"Oh, god, Jesse -" Her voice is a sob as she sits up, the liquid sloshing over the sides of the tub, and his stomach roils.

"Is that you, Sierra? In the blasted tub? What the hell are you doing in there?"

"T-they put me in here. In this tub -" She looks towards him. "I-I've been in here since they took me."

"You've been gone for days," he says, aghast.

Sierra draws in a shuddering breath. "They took me," she repeats. "And put me in here, and..." Her voice trails off. "Why are you here?"

"They took me. Me an' Nicolas an' Casey."

"Jesse, listen." She sits up, the lamplight casting flickering shadows on the wall. "You don't know what they're going to do. You have to stop them, or -"

Before she can finish, the door swings open. In comes the cowskull, hood pooled by its shoulders. The light of the oil lamps cast an eerie glow around the hollows of its bones. It ducks, the top of the door frame too short for all eight feet of it. The other cloaked figures file in behind it.

All of them are normal heights, Jesse notices distractedly over the pounding of his heart. All of them except the cowskull. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees one of the other bodies on the floor twitch and shift slightly.

Hands shaking, he clears his throat. "Who are you?" His voice comes out thick and shaky, so he tries again. "Who are you? What do you want? Why am I here?"

"Quiet," comes the cowskull's low, rumbling voice. The figures in black spread out through the room, in a circle - but around what? There's nothing there. He can't be silent. He opens his mouth to say something, just as he sees the body move. It starts to creep towards him, slowly, ever so slowly. None of the black-cloaked figures notice, not even the cowskull.

"It is almost...time," the cowskull growls, urgency in its voice. It raises its arms up, the cloth of its cloak falling back from its arms to reveal pale flesh corded with muscle. "At midnight, we...will draw...blood." 

The body gets closer and closer as the figures in black mutter to each other apprehensively. He isn't sure exactly what they have to be nervous about, but it's making him nervous as well.