This takes place in the same universe as Writeanon's
A Peaceful Afterlife,
Helluva Job, and
Only the Results (still in progress). I strongly recommend reading those first.
Sinners
Chapter 1
Dirty Deeds
Pick up the phone
I'm here alone
Or make a social call
Come right in
Forget about him
We'll have ourselves a ball!
--
Hell possessed no shortage of torments large and small, but the one that always disturbed Mary the most was the sky.
It was a small thing - miniscule, really - but at the end of the day, she could get accustomed to the disgusting heap she now had to call home. She could get used to having hooves, horns, and purple skin. She could even get used to being perpetually surrounded by the very worst that mankind had to offer throughout the species' history.
But the sky?
Mary was a country girl. Raised in Alabama, lived in rural Oklahoma most of her adult life. She didn't have nearly as much as a southern twang as one might expect, but speaking properly didn't make her any less at-home in the backwoods. And for the entirety of her life, the sky had always been what gave rural life that little bit of magic that she loved so much. Skies so clear and blue they seemed to draw you into their infinite expanse. Black nighttime skies so full of stars you could count them forever. She even liked those booming stormy days, so long as they didn't happen too often.
The skies of Hell had none of that. They were all
wrong. It wasn't just the gigantic, omnipresent pentagram that loomed in the sky every night. Even during the day, the blue light up above seemed...paler. Colder. Lifeless. And at night? There wasn't a single star to be seen on the clearest nights, creating a complete blackness that couldn't just be explained away as the result of Imp City's horrendous pollution.
The skies of Pride were a neverending reminder. A reminder of where she was and her complete and utter inability to do anything about it, of the injustices visited on her, of the absolute
gall that led a so-called "loving" deity to
dare-
Mary dug into her purse with shaking hands, drawing out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter with as much care as she could in her anger. Didn't want to crush them again. By everything unholy, the little shits were expensive. She'd made the wallet-killing mistake of wasting them too many times to do so again.
Part of her wryly wondered if they were so expensive on the Other Side. Mary didn't know herself, having never smoked - cigarettes or otherwise - until after her death.
The demon known in life as Mrs. Mayberry popped a cigarette between her lips and lit it, cupping one shaking hand around her lighter to protect it from the breeze passing through. She took a long, deep drag from it and exhaled slowly. As the menthol-infused gray smoke left her lungs, she felt the white hot rage within begin to fade once more, and her quivering hands began to steady. She took two more drags from the cig before removing it, keeping it pinched between her middle and index fingers. The demoness' red eyes remained narrowed, glaring at nothing in the distance.
Eight years later, and she still dwelled on the Other Side. The satyress knew it wasn't a good idea. Rage was always where it led; unproductive, self-destructive rage, and lingering stress that stayed long after the anger subsided. Princes knew, Hell gave Mary a plethora of things to be pissed off and stressed out. She didn't need more.
Perhaps she just needed more time to get used to things. In the grand scheme of things, after all, her tenure in Hell had been a blink of an eye so far. Maybe in another decade or two…
The satyress' expression fell into a thoughtful scowl for a moment, then she scoffed.
Yeah right.
Mary shook her head and turned on her heel, facing the small office building. The street around it was filthy, of course, as Mary was fairly certain there wasn't an un-littered sidewalk in all of Hell. She ignored most of the trash, however, in favor of the mirror shard propped up against the brick building. She didn't know why such a thing would've been left on the sidewalk like that. A botched theft, perhaps? Didn't really matter in the end. The mirror had a spiderweb of cracks across it and looked as if it were broken off from a much larger whole, but it provided a clear enough image for Mary to assess her appearance.
The demoness ran her cigarette-free hand through her mane of bone white hair, flattening the strands that had flown loose when she fought down her anger a few moments prior. With that finished, she regarded the rest of her reflection. Her clothing - a pink turtleneck with visible sewing seams all across it, as well as a black skirt with a frayed, hole-filled bottom rim - remained unmarred.
A small but genuine smile touched Mary's lips. She was quite proud of the outfit. It was her first outfit, from back when she was still a "newbie" in Hell. She had no money for actual clothes at the time, so she'd taken cloth scraps and what must have been some kind of tarp or curtain out of a dumpster and just...sewn them together into clothing. Quite good-looking clothing, in fact. It'd been surprising to her, how well they turned out. Mary had never considered herself a "goth" or a "punk" or anything like that, but the seams and frayed ends added a hint of
savage to her appearance that she couldn't help but adore. Quite amazing what could be accomplished with literal trash and a skilled sewing hand.
Smile fading, the satyress took another puff from her cig, and looked up at the sign on the front of the building. It wasn't a very ornate sign. No neon lights or anything of that nature. It didn't even seem to have any spotlights to illuminate it at night. Just a simple, large board with the words
Wolf's Eye Private Eyes emblazoned on it in simple, professional-looking font. The building it was attached to was run down, with cracked bricks and a visibly damaged foundation, and it didn't seem to have any windows whatsoever. The place had seen better days, and she was absolutely certain that the place was not built with the intention of serving as an office.
The demoness sighed and tapped the ashes from the end of her cigarette. The demon she had talked to over the phone sounded professional enough, and she had hoped these PIs would be more pleasant to deal with than the disaster that was IMP (and virtually every similar place of business she had visited thus far), but now that she was in front of their office, her hopes weren't high.
She tapped her cigarette again out of reflex, though it hadn't burned long enough for anything else to flake off of it.
Delaying things more wasn't going to improve her opinion of the place either. May as well get it over with and hope that appearances were deceiving. It wasn't as though walking away was really an option anyway.
With a sigh, she picked up her briefcase from the sidewalk and stepped forward towards the building's door, grasped the handle, and opened it without further ceremony.
The sight that greeted her as the heavy, solid metal door creaked open was a pleasant surprise. Where she expected a disaster of a reception area, what she saw instead was a remarkably clean and bright foyer. Fluorescent light bars hung overhead, giving the room a bright if sterile feel, while the foyer was enclosed with surprisingly high-quality - if clearly erected in haste - drywall partitions. The poor quality of the building itself was still apparent; the incredibly ugly wallpaper covering the primary walls was peeling and all around decayed, and a long, jagged crack from the damaged foundation snaked across the floor. However, the tenants seemed to be quite interested in presenting a professional face.
Directly ahead from the door was what Mary assumed to be the secretary's desk. That was ordinary enough, though the satyress' view of the secretary was obscured by a pair of demons conversing with one another and the desk's occupant.
Likely hearing Mary enter, the two demons turned towards her in unison. Both were wolf demons - not hellhounds, so far as she could tell, but regular wolf demons - of identical build and height. Twins, Mary assumed, though while they had very similar features, one had tan-colored fur, while the other had fur that consisted of black and purple patches arranged in a bizarre quilted pattern, and a metal postiche jutted from his jaw. Their attire, however, was identical. Both wore open vests that seemed to do more to draw attention to their (admittedly impressive) musculature than conceal it, as well as pairs of khaki shorts that looked more akin to bicycle shorts in length, and neither wore shoes. Bizarrely, the two were also wearing two neckties apiece. As if to highlight their rather skimpy attire, the two demons stood in mirrored supermodel-esque poses; with hips cocked to the side and one hand resting just above their hips.
The demoness suppressed a cringe, thankful that the hellhound behind the desk - a rather grouchy-looking female with cream-colored fur and a ridiculous mohawk-like hairstyle - looked semi-normal and was wearing a normal dress with a skull pattern on the chest area.
Mary was accustomed to the often uncouth dress patterns so prevalent in Hell, but that did nothing to decrease her dislike of it.
"Mary, here to meet with a 'Hush'," Mary directed her announcement at the hellhound as she approached the desk, though she gestured to the wolf twins. "I'm not interrupting, I hope."
"Not at all," the tan wolf demon offered his hand with a friendly smile. "Hush."
For a moment, Mary regarded the wolf demon with a slightly surprised expression, though she had the presence of mind to shake his hand. Up until that moment, she assumed that he and his twin were clients. Why in all the Seven Rings would a private investigator dress like...
that?
Well whatever. She supposed she could at least be thankful he
acted professional. Not even five seconds interacting with him and she already preferred him to Blitzo.
"And you've spoken with my partner already, Highway Star," Hush indicated the postiche wearing wolf demon standing abreast of him.
"We spoke over the phone," the quilt-furred demon shook Mary's hand in turn. His voice was nearly identical to that of Hush, but slightly deeper and spoken in a near monotone, and he may as well have been made of stone based on his expression. It was completely unreadable.
"And my secretary, Crymini."
The hellhound gave a grunt of acknowledgement, not sparing a glance from her laptop as she typed with one hand and rested her cheek on the other.
"Charmed," Mary deadpanned, not even bothering with a fake smile. If the cream colored hellhound noticed, she didn't react. The demoness turned her attention back to the twins.
"Look, I'll get straight to the point." Mary put her still burning cigarette back to her lips, hefting her briefcase a little to draw attention to it. "I'm here to offer you a job."
"Missing persons?"
"Something like that. It's a little complicated."
At that, Highway Star and Hush gave one another a look. The former's expression remained unreadable, but a note of annoyance was visible on Hush's face. It seemed to catch Crymini's attention as well, the hellhound looking up with an expression that screamed 'are you fucking kidding me?'
A small, white hot flame ignited within Mary, but she quickly squashed it. No, no anger. Not now. Not yet, at least. She needed to let things play out a bit more.
Hush glanced at his twin, then at the hellhound, then pointed at the wooden door behind him with his thumb.
"My office. We'll discuss there."
--
Even by Hell's standards, the building looked on the shabby side. It certainly wouldn't have been considered safe for human habitation back on Earth. Mary would have even argued it was on the lower end of quality by Imp City's standards. The brick two story apartment building was visibly tilted from its damaged foundation, with several poorly patched holes in the roof, broken windows, and even a few haphazardly plastered-over holes in the outer walls. Made worse was the complete lack of artistic care in the photo itself. It was just a straight shot from what looked to be the middle of the street. Several cars parked in front of the building marred the shot, and it seemed to have been taken in the mid-evening, causing the apartments to be cast in unflattering shadows.
It all served to make the cheery, brightly colored text around the photo advertising vacancies in the building rather darkly amusing.
The next photo Mary took from her briefcase and put on the table was less amusing. It was a photo she had taken herself of the same building, though one would struggle to recognize it as such. The entire top floor of the structure was gone as was half the bottom floor, while debris littered the road around it. Two cars - the same two pictured in the ad, in fact - were entirely ruined by whatever had blown the structure apart. One had been flipped on its side, while the other had its roof caved in by chunks of the apartment's outer wall. Bizarrely, wisps of smoke wafted from all over the structure despite there being no evidence of a fire. An explosion, certainly, but not a raging fire.
Hush's expression was neutral as he looked at the "after" photo of the apartment building. Mary appreciated that, whatever he'd been annoyed by earlier, he seemed to be taking her seriously.
"That was taken four days ago." The satyress tapped the ashes of her cigarette off in the ashtray on the wolf demon's desk. "The place looked like a bomb went off, and it's not the first time."
An envelope dropped open onto the desk. Dozens of pictures - some with notes scribbled underneath - were contained in the folder, jostled slightly from being dropped.
Aside from a handful of clear "before" images made mostly from advertisements, every photo depicted a date stamped disaster of a different kind. Most were buildings - apartments, houses, stores, and others - blown to pieces. Others were more bizarre; a house that seemed to have
melted down until only the attic and roof remained, a convenience store that had folded in on itself as though the walls were made of rubber, and another that had been sliced in two diagonally so cleanly that the severed half of the structure had slid down onto the ground.
Each and every photo had one thing in common, however. The ruins were smoking as if a roaring fire was present, despite a complete lack of visible flames of any kind.
"Two weeks ago. This one was a month ago. A month before that. Last summer. Almost exactly a year ago."
Mary pointed at the relevant photos in turn, the wolf demon following along before drawing his attention back to her with a visible crease in his brow.
"Miss Mary, I…" Hush pinched the bridge of his snout. "I'm very sorry, but I'm failing to see what you want from us, here."
The flame almost reignited within the satyress.
Almost. The demoness fought her anger down before it could begin to resurface. Meanwhile Hush continued
"I have no intention of getting involved in a gang war. That's not what we do. We're PIs, not hitmen."
Mary took another folder from her briefcase and set it open on the table.
"Then we're in luck." She popped her cig back into her mouth. "None of this is gang activity. I checked."
It took a moment for the content of this new folder to register, but the wolf demon's brows rose once it did. Most of the papers consisted of text alone, but there were nearly a dozen photos as well.
The photos were of demons; mostly imps, but with a few hellhounds and sinners as well. Some were clearly yelling and raging at the photographer, while others seemed silently afraid for their lives. All of them looked to have been put through a much more personal Hell than the one they existed in normally. Bruises, lacerations, black eyes, and torn clothes were present in every photo.
Mary indicated several flash drives among the photos. "I recorded my interviews with them, just in case you wanted to double check."
The demoness allowed herself a smile as she puffed away at the cancer-stick in her mouth. Hush's expression as he examined the photos and notes was nothing short of incredulous. It was a good minute before the wolf demon responded.
"...Alright I'll admit it; I'm impressed." The wolf examined one of the flash drives for a moment, then put it down. "Our clients don't normally put in anywhere near this much legwork."
The wolf's expression changed as he turned his attention to Mary.
"The only question is;
why?" Hush folded his arms and regarded the demoness with mild suspicion. "You've clearly put in days - if not weeks - of work investigating this on your own, enough to at least eliminate gang activity as the cause behind the attacks. But why? And if you can do all this on your own, why bother hiring us at all?"
"Because it's way above my pay grade." The demoness' response was cool and even. "The demons who did all this might be random fucksticks, but look at what they managed to do
.. You'd think the Radio Demon or Prince Von Eldritch himself paid these places a visit. Demons
died here. I don't mean 'torn to shreds', I mean
dead. Someone in Imp City is handing out angelic weapons like candy, and not the bog-standard seraphim steel kind. I don't know who's handing out this shit, but if they have that kind of firepower then they're out of my league."
"That only answers one question. Why do all this?"
The white-hot flame reignited. It was small, more of an ember than a full fire, but persistent. Mary found herself unable to quench it completely. Her eye twitched, though her expression remained neutral.
"Why the Hell wouldn't I? This shithole of a city is unpleasant enough. The last thing I need is the worry that at any moment I might end up with a holy explosion splattering me over half the neighborhood."
The demoness removed the now mostly burned-up cig from her mouth and quenched it on the ashtray.
"Alright, fair enough." Hush looked and sounded unconvinced, but he didn't press further. "But what exactly do you expect us to do once we find these arms dealers of your's?" His eyes narrowed. "
If we decide to take this job in the first place."
"Kill them."
At this, Hush gave an exasperated sigh.
"Miss Mary, we are
private eyes, not hitmen."
Mary's eyes narrowed.
"Two hundred thousand, guaranteed."
"This isn't about money. We. Are not. Hitmen." The professional tone in the wolf demon's voice was deteriorating. "And we don't make exceptions."
"Funny, that's not what I've been hearing." An edge was creeping into the satyress' voice as well. The flame in her gut grew. "So what, you'll hunt down and slaughter some random imps and it's no big deal, but throw in a few angel bombs and you pussy out?"
At that, Hush was silent for a moment. He didn't seem to expect Mary to have done that much digging on Wolf's Eye. But he remained defiant.
"That was different. A favor, and one that didn't involve big time wingmen. You and I both know
someone big is in on this, whether it's gang-related or not."
The white flame grew to the scale of a bonfire.
"So that's it?" Mary growled. Her breathing was uneven, and her blood red sclera had begun to take on a noticeable glow. "You
are just pussying out."
Hush crossed his arms once again.
"We're private eyes, ma'am. You want to call in a hit, there's plenty of other options."
For a handful of seconds, Mary just stared at the wolf demon. A soft hiss began to emanate from the satyress, like the sound of an angry rattlesnake. Her hair began to flow as if caught in a nonexistent wind. Her hands, now balled into fists, shook in anger as her furiously glowing eyes remained fixed on Hush. The fire within blazed like an uncontrolled wildfire.
The demon was unmoved.
In an instant, the fire collapsed inward, and Mary's fearsome aura went with it. Her shoulders slumped and her hair followed suit, draping itself over her in wild strands, some of them across her face.
What good would her rage do here? What was she supposed to do, attack him? Even if she managed to overpower him - and the sheer musculature that his stripperesque attire showed off made her doubt she could - it wouldn't convince him to help.
With her shoulders remaining slumped and her face largely hidden from view by her now-unkempt mane of hair, the satyress began silently gathering up the contents of her briefcase and putting them away. She did so largely without care, and several photos were folded as she forced the folders closed. As Mary tossed them into the briefcase, several pages of her notes fluttered out and to the ground.
The briefcase slammed shut. Mary hefted it off the desk and turned, preparing to walk back out of the office.
"Who did you lose?"
The demoness stopped, having taken a scarce two steps toward the door, but she didn't turn around.
"That's what this is about, isn't it?"
Mary spun at that, appraising the other demon with a steady, steely glare through the wisps of hair in front of her face, but she did not otherwise respond. Hush sighed.
"You did all this yourself, didn't you? You went on a one-demon crusade, beating the shit out of at least a dozen demons on your own in the process,
interrogated them, and overall did at least a few weeks' worth of investigation on your own. That's not the mark of someone who is merely acting in self-interest."
There was, Mary noticed, a very odd look in Hush's eyes. A look that she was unaccustomed to seeing on anyone in Hell, least of all from a fellow Sinner. Having gone so long without seeing it, she couldn't help but question if it was there at all, or if she was just mistaken.
It was a look of compassion. Or was it? How many other demons had tried - with varying success - to pull the wool over her eyes with false concern? The demoness remained wary.
"Maybe." The satyress brushed the hair out of her face, her tone guarded. "Or maybe I put a premium on my own well-being."
Hush quirked an eyebrow.
"A two-hundred thousand soul premium?"
Mary swished her hair with a slight snap of her head, getting the last few strands of it out of her eyes.
"Donations from concerned parents."
Hush's incredulity was palpable.
"'Concerned...parents'," he repeated.
A beat passed as the demoness tried to think of something to come back with. Eventually, she threw her hands up in exasperation and surrender.
"Alright!" she exclaimed, more than a little anger in her voice. But the anger instantly faded. Mary's face fell as she sighed. "Alright. Fine. You got me. I don't want this done for me."
The demoness reached into her purse, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it. She took a long drag from it before speaking again.
"Five kids," she started in a low voice, down at the concrete floor without really seeing it, looking beyond it. "
My kids. Not...not like that. Not literally. They were my students. I work at the school over on Sixty-Sixth."
Lifting her gaze, the demoness locked Hush with a steely gaze that wasn't truly directed at him.
"First one was last year. Lyla was her name. Great girl, had a better family than you'd think was even possible down here. Pretty well off, too. She loved school, never missed a day of it for anything. So when she didn't show up one day, I got worried. I came by to check on her as soon as I could, and…"
A moment of silence. Mary's stern gaze wavered.
"The house was...I'd never seen anything like it. It looked like it was
melting, like someone had turned it into ice cream and left it out in the sun. The walls, the roof, what was left of the ceiling, it all turned into
slop that you could scrape up with a spoon, and all of it was smoking like it was on fire. But you couldn't touch any of it. I tried searching the place, but I couldn't. Any part of it that I touched...
burned. Not like a fire, it was a different burn. Harsher."
"Like an Exterminator's spear," Hush added. His voice was quiet, and Mary could not detect a single hint of mockery or impatience in it.
"Yeah. Whatever it was, it was angelic, that much I knew. I would have torn that place apart looking for Lyla if I could anyway, but the moment I felt that burn...I knew."
Mary clenched her fist as she remembered, nearly crushing her cigarette.
"She was gone." The satyress' voice wavered slightly. "Lyla, her parents, her brother, all gone. It tore me apart, but I didn't do much about it at the time. Losing kids here and there is a given down here. I can't say I'm used to it, but I've come to expect it."
Reaching down, the demoness tapped ashes from her cig into the ashtray on the desk.
"I mourned, then I moved on. Then a few months ago it happened again. Twins, both star students. Their apartment was cut in half, and it was the same story. The whole place burned if you touched it."
Mary's expression went from mournful to wrathful, and her voice hardened.
"
That was when I started snooping around myself. It started out light. I didn't get into anything myself. I just took pictures and notes, and tried going through a few other PI agencies in town. None of them gave a shit. They didn't care about small fry like me. They wanted big clients, juicy 'game', and blackmail material. I didn't have any of that. The more of them rejected me, the more aggressive I got in my own investigation. Then...then I started losing more of my kids."
Another pause. This one was longer, nearly a full minute. The demoness closed her eyes, and took a deep, long inhalation through the cancer stick in her mouth, slowly breathing it out through her nose, or rather through the slitted nostrils where her nose would have been if she had still been human. When she opened her eyes again, they had taken on a soft glow, while the fire in her belly had reignited, albeit this time in the form of a raging but controlled flame.
"They're not like us, you know. The kids, I mean. Imps, hellhounds, incubi, salamandrine, or any of the others. They're just
kids. They didn't choose to be born demons, they don't deserve any of the horseshit we all have to go through down here. Thrones know, I can't protect them from everything, but I'll be damned if I let wingrunners add to the shitpile that my kids have to deal with already."
She tapped the cig again out of reflex.
"So now you know.
That is why I came to you, though I can't help wondering why the hell you care."
The passive-aggressive note in her voice was obvious, but she was a bit surprised as she took in Hush's expression. The wolf demon was barely looking at her. He looked pensieve. Was he reconsidering?
"That first photo you showed me," he said abruptly. "You said that happened four days ago, correct? Tomorrow morning, nine sharp. Meet me there."
"...What?" Mary blinked in surprise, taken aback and struggling to maintain her indignant facade. "S-so, what, a sob story is enough for you to make an exception?"
Hush gave a huff in response.
"Don't get ahead of yourself. I haven't said 'yes' to anything yet. My crew and I will take a look at the place tomorrow.
If we decide to take it, we'll discuss from there."
The wolf demon offered his hand.
"Deal?"
The satyress regarded the tan-furred, outstretched hand for a moment, then gave its owner a suspicious look over the rim of her glasses.
"Not like I have much of a choice. Deal."
She shook his hand.
-------------
A/N:
"Donations from concerned (demon) parents." - To be fair, wouldn't
you be rather concerned if a howling, angry demoness wielding a fire axe was looming over you?
Bit of a disclaimer: I said at the start of the chapter that this takes place in the same universe as Only the Results. This is true, but a bit more complex than just that. This is a fanfic of Writeanon's fanfic, but this is not a full on collaborative effort between us. The two will most likely diverge at some point since Writeanon and I almost certainly have different plans for the overall worldbuilding of the setting, and I'm sure as hell not going to expect him to include the events of this fic into his universe. Best way to look at it is this: the events of A Peaceful Afterlife and Helluva Job are canon to this story, and assume that the events of Only the Results are canon until/unless contradicted. On the flip side, assume that nothing in this fic is canon to Only the Results unless Writeanon says otherwise.
This story takes place roughly around the same time as Only the Results, so assume that OtR - or a version of it that fits this story's canon, if the two diverge in worldbuilding - is happening more-or-less parallel to this.
Big thanks to Writeanon, too. He gave me a few pointers on writing this that I greatly appreciate.
To clear up any potential confusion; Hush is Yuya Fungami. Highway Star is...well...Highway Star, the Stand. No, Yuya doesn't have a twin. Mary just assumes that. Yuya's Stand situation in Hell is...weird.
