Encore

Nettle

Alucard will not admit they're right about flies but it's fine because they swiftly reach a compromise of Alucard refusing to talk to them at all.

The church is really, really not burning well. It turns out Sypha did have enough sense not to volunteer to help light the place on fire, but the only competent person in Gresit being uninvolved means actually burning it all down is taking far longer than it needs to. Trevor wouldn't be surprised if the whole mess ends up burning out with half the building still intact and needing to be re-lit. At least its lackluster flames are equally lackluster at setting surrounding buildings alight. Sypha's iced the roofs all around and that hasn't even melted through yet.

It's still pretty nice to watch.

"Wait, where did Alucard go?" Sypha asks.

"Some people pounced on him after he decided to retreat from how right we are for a sulk and they all went off that way," he says, waving his arm. "I assume they want demons, because we're in Gresit. Still."

Sypha scowls at him and starts trying to get through the crowd.

"He can't actually summon demons for them so it's fine," Trevor calls.

"You're surprisingly calm about this." Acknowledging Trevor isn't concerned does not, of course, mean Sypha stops.

Trevor huffs and follows her. "As I keep saying, dhampirs are infuriatingly hard to kill. And if he had to worry about anything around here, it'd be the church itself."

"But you said it's not really a church."

"Probably. But I don't know much about the details, Alucard's the one who'd actually be able to tell." Could holiness be tarnished by sin, so that if you scoured, or in this case burned, the outer layer off, it'd expose it again? If the bones of the building are still holy, and they're burning that to ash, and Alucard's breathing the smoke... And fuck knows Trevor can't just trust Alucard to act in his own self-interest. "Churches don't do much," Trevor tells himself, which gets him a whole lot of expressions from the crowd and he doesn't like any of them. He could explain about how the thing is it only doesn't work if everyone seeks shelter there but saying it'll protect some people if they leave other people outside as easier victims might be taken to contradict what he told them about human sacrifice not being a solution. "I mean if it's a real church, demons get hurt, but getting hurt doesn't stop them because they want to hurt you more. I guess one might die eventually if it was trapped there for a long time..." Trevor is brought up short by the thought of someone trying that. He's not squeamish, but... It would take a really long time, if it worked at all. With how slowly the ground burns a demon, and how much of a demon you can remove without it actually dying.

Could something still be holy if you used it for that?

Probably. Probably, yeah. If suffering is purifying. That's the point of Hell and all, right. Where the bishop and his dogs went wrong was doing it to people who didn't deserve it.

"How could you trap -"

"No!" The people around flinch back. Fuck off, God. "I told you how to kill them. Only good demon is a dead demon. Longer they're alive the more chances they get to kill people. Or convince people to kill people, some of the fuckers talk. So just kill them. Don't get - creative, about it."

A chunk of the church roof collapses loudly behind him. Trevor chooses not to think about what God means by that and follows Sypha.

There's still no sign of Alucard once they're through to the other side of the crowd. There are, however, voices, including what sounds like Alucard's familiar no, but in the most long-winded way possible, because being an immortal old man means you have no sense of urgency or respect for other people's time tone of voice that some people irrationally say is not that at all but is "being polite, Trevor".