continuation for devildo || its terrible potential has begun

[americanvvitch]

[continued from here]

The ending came quickly, as they so often did.

Little fanfare surrounded Alastor's exit... no floating appendages, no jovial crackling of her radio. Only the quiet ringing of piano keys to play him off as he vanished from sight, the last notes of a doleful wake. It seemed an inappropriately sober outtro, in contrast to the tone of the rest of the evening.

With Alastor gone, deep silence settled over the cabin. Save for soft footsteps while the flour and whiskey were tucked away, and the creak and latch of the door. The radio show he had pulled into existence dwindled away by the time she had finished, and then all that was left was the sound of grit and sand as it blew over the horizon and the occasional pop of the fire in her hearth. Little by little each trace of him faded, unsustainable without his magic, but even as his essence seeped out of the world, Lotte felt the creature take root in her mind. The worn mattress beneath her gave no comfort or relief. The red stag and the thrill and terror of it might very well haunt her for the rest of her days.

The feeling that had long plagued her, of feeling somewhere lost between this world and another was only intensified now. Time would flow, dawn would come, nothing in her little home would stretch itself larger than its physical shape ought to have been, and the world would return to its previous state. All would mend itself now.

All but her.

The idea that she could not be the same after what she'd done followed her, like her own gauzy shadow, through the following week. The days rolled in and out, hazy with dust, fragrant loaves of fresh bread and the slow drying of the original, ordinary bottle of whiskey that predated the harvest night. Lotte had never missed anyone, so she couldn't really say for sure that the strange restlessness she couldn't quite shake was covetous. Or that it had anything to do with Alastor in particular. If she had called something else up, would it have been such a distraction? Well, there really wasn't any way to know with Alastor and his like down there and Lotte wasting away up here - and that was just how it would have to stay.

She had no excuse to call Alastor and what good sense she possessed (along with pride, perhaps) prevented her from making another social call. She was stalwart in that, or so she thought.

But Lotte was not any great mountain or a deeply-rooted tree. She was kindling, and a spark of fire and a rush of air was all it ever took to change her course.

∅ ∅ ∅ ∅

Near a week and a half had passed, before the storm hit. It wasn't a surprise - this was probably closing in on the fiftieth storm Lotte had weathered in this place. The static electricity had woken her before dawn and she'd wasted no time tugging on her boots and wrapping the bottom of her face with a double piece of old cotton before she ventured out of the cabin to check that each sigil at the edge of town was intact. The farmers had instructions on how to refresh the sigils placed at the center of their acreage and along the borders - they would be on their own with no car or horse at her disposal to check them.

Surrounding the town itself, there were three. The head of the triangle lay about two miles up the road, just off a crossroads. She'd noticed early on that most of the storms rolled in from that direction, and so she'd created the barrier's tip there with some hope that it would slice through the force of nature and help distribute the power along the sides of where the barrier ran, rather than letting it hit them head on. That one had to be checked first, then she'd double back along the fence line to the other two.

After that, things had happened fast. Dark clouds had rolled in on her way to the last sigil point, and cast a shroud over the land that turned it black in a matter of moments. There'd been no choice but to run for the last sigil and then pray the storm held as she ran harder back through the fields to the shack, sparks of blue flame snapping at her her hair from along the fence line as she went.

There hadn't been enough time to seal up the shutters, plug the cracks in the door with rags and blankets and scribble a sigil on the door as she normally might have. Instead, she'd had to disappear into the basement with little more than a blanket to shield from the dust.

Dust storms came and went quickly, at least.

The cleanup had taken longer. Several hours of sweeping the sand and dirt from surfaces, dragging all the linens out to hang outside and beat the dust from them - because the barrier couldn't keep a storm out entirely. No, it only curbed the force, mitigated the damage.

It was well into the evening by the time she'd finished that, eaten some cold stew, a piece of bread, and settled in at her table with the whiskey Alastor had given her.

She'd earned a bit of celebration hadn't she? She'd managed to get a fire going, all the doors and windows were open to air things out, and she did have a little cough that needed soothing.

Of course, Lotte planned to make the bottle to last, so she hadn't poured too much. Which was.. admittedly hard to do after tasting it for the first time. Little favors allowed her to be alone for the coughing fit that followed her first sip. It was smooth, very smooth, but also by far the strongest thing she'd ever put in her body.

But it was good. Very good, really.

So good that Lotte didn't quite notice the warm, easy slide that took her from pleasantly tipsy to quite drunk all in her first glass.

And how she'd gone from the cheery warmth of sitting by her fire, reading a book by candlelight and listening to the radio to painting a rather large, improvised sigil on the wall of her shack well.... she really didn't know. She felt warm and loose all over, and it seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to invite Alastor back for a chat and a drink. Why shouldn't she?

He had been more of a friend to her than anyone here! He was clever, had more than a bit of wit, and she missed the particular heat and bite of his magic. Like cinnamon and clove in mulled wine.

Lotte stepped back, wiping the blood on her pale green dress before her eyes fluttered closed and she called. This sigil was not so carefully crafted, but she felt no lack of magic in it, if anything, she felt like she knew how to call for Alastor better. Not at a physical place, so much as a wavelength in the magic, her intuition told her that this sigil was right for what she sought, and it was nothing to funnel her own magic through it to create a proper invitation. A door. All he needed to do was step through, because that was what she wished.

Why don't you come join me for a drink, Mr. Radio Demon?

Comments

[americanvvitch]

Lotte considered what that could mean, pure chance that they were connected, or something more? Of all the demons that played this game, Alastor had come to her, and they got on so well! Lotte hadn't specified what or who she wanted to call, but she wondered if there wasn't something about them that rang on the same wavelength. A reason why they'd locked in on one another. Perhaps Alastor was as lonely and bored as she was. Otherwise, why would he have time to come and pay her calls?

Or perhaps he simply wanted more than what the world around him had to offer. Lotte couldn't imagine that hell could be boring, but it seemed possible that it could have been as mundane to him as this place was to her.

"Am I cunning?" She hummed and turned in a circle, letting the leaves flutter to the ground and watching them as they did. Cunning was not how she would have thought of herself - after all she had no ulterior motives in calling Alastor, or allowing him to do this work. She had no grand design. Her want came and went and she indulged it if and when she was able. More so now than she might normally have, but what could it hurt? A little whiskey never hurt anyone.

"So all this... is this to tempt me to use you for something with a little more grandeur?" After all, it would make sense if he wanted to more to do.. wanted more from her. Be that blood or a soul, though to his credit he wasn't pushy. In fact, given her current state of inebriation, he was being quite the gentleman.

Lotte walked a few steps away and then turned back to him, hands clasped behind her back. Her chin stuck up a little and she smirked back at him, teasing. "If you want more blood you can just ask me, you know~"

[devildo]

Alastor raised his hand in front of himself, palm facing Lotte, and shook it lightly from side to side, in time with the shake of his head. "No, no," he assured her, "I would never presume to impugn on a lady's honor like that. Nor at all, in fact!" His smile opened up, brightened. This was the truth of both matters - if she wanted to sell him anything, be it her blood or her soul, she would have to want to do so for herself. It was a dime a dozen, crossing paths with those who wanted to sell. That wasn't worth anything, for as often as Alastor saw it.

Not, of course, that her blood was worth nothing. The way he kept it, like a precious thing, impossible to replenish, indicated otherwise.

"But say," he said, gesturing widely to the space around them with open arms, "Say you could have anything you wanted. What would you have me do? Mend this whole place, take you out of here, smite the ones who wronged you?"

He smile narrowed, turned sly. "Surely there must be someone. Your parents who won't write, perhaps?" And they weren't here, so that would be a new adventure, in itself. He spun on his heel and turned to walk the length of the row of plants he'd called up, running his hand through the air above them, fingers outstretched. The reverberation of their life force hovered in the air, rising with the warmth it possessed, to touch his fingertips. The earth was supple, now, beneath his feet, and his shoes sunk into it with every step.

"Tell me," he mused, bending to touch the plants he'd created. Touching them sent a little thrill through him, even though he could only just feel the texture through his gloves. "Let's play a little game, again, shall we? I'll ask you something, you can ask me. What did they do to you?"

[americanvvitch]

"Mend this place...." Lotte sighed and swung her arms around her. "But this place is so awful! And if I were going to kill someone... well, I think I'd want to do it with my own two hands... or at least my own magic. I can't imagine the reward is as satisfying when someone else does the dirty work," she purred.

The bitter, ragged rage of her parents' carelessness had haunted her for a long time, slowly dulled and smoothed out by the endless barrage of sand and silt. Still, somewhere deep down, it smoldered, awakened now by Alastor's query.

"What did who do to me?" Lotte watched him walk the rows of plants, touch them, saw them respond to their creator in turn, the way they arched toward him, the source of his power.

She walked along with him in parallel, boots kicking up the dust as she looked up at the sky. "My parents? They used me happily to keep their own little village alive, tending to their crops, making them remedies. It wasn't hard, the area wasn't hit nearly as badly as this place. They ended up with an excess of crop just as all the prices dropped... wheat that should have sold for sixty cents a bushel selling for ten, maybe... and then what else of value did they have other than their darling, witch child to sell at that point?"

Lotte dug her heel into the sand, crushing something under her boot that couldn't have been seen by the naked eye even if it were truly there.

"They told this town that the surplus was all my doing, that I was a miracle worker... when they came to collect me, my parents hadn't told me a thing. Dragged me out of my bed in the middle of the night with only the clothes on my back and shoved me into the back of a truck. They were kind enough to send most of my journals and supples for spellwork with me. No goodbyes. Just let me scream and scream and cry until I was out of sight."

Whenever she thought of it, Lotte felt a fire build up in her that was hard to tame. The very tips of her fingers began to turn black, and she held them up as little sparks of flame spit and hissed around her nails.

"I tried to escape more than once. State troopers kept bringing me back. They locked me in this cabin, nailed the shutters and the door closed, for about a month until I gave it up. Threatened to tar and feather me, burn me at the stake... throw me to the witch hunters to be kidnapped and raped if I tried to run off. 'Course they wouldn't. Witches are expensive... I'm too valuable to give away, but I didn't know that then. And I wouldn't damn another poor girl to live here now."

Her fingers curled closed and she extinguished the flames, smoke curling up from her hand. No one was going to touch her with lust or threat of violence. She'd made that clear early on.

"My parents did send a letter once! I threw it into the stove without opening it, and I'll likely sentence them to a similar fate if I ever see their faces again." If she saw them again... who knows what urges might overtake her good nature. Lotte looked over at him, still burning up with righteous anger, a want for vengeance deep in her belly.

"But if I could have anything... I'd go far away from here. Somewhere lush and brimming with life and magic and things like us! If such a place exists." She exhaled, could almost feel the ash and smoke seep from her belly full of embers and hot coal. "My turn! Who were you when you were alive?"

[devildo]

Well, Alastor wanted to say, but didn't, this place may be awful, but Lotte lived here. So what did it matter that mending it would affect other people, who didn't deserve it? If a person had to live somewhere, they may as well enjoy it. And so he watched her, bemused, his hands once again politely folded behind his back, while his shadow reached out to investigate each leaf of the plants he'd brought to life, in turn. Slowly, as it moved its way down the line, each leaf was gently flicked and raised, caressed by the darkness that emanated from him, and determined worthy the continue on. In one place, his shadow sprung fingers, and dipped into the dark and fragrant earth, feeling it out, nudging at the depths of the strawberries' roots.

"Yes," Alastor did say, toeing through that same dirt. He kicked at it gently, with the pointed toes of his shoes, upturning it in bumpy little rifts. Hell was all pavement, nothing you could sink into like this. Hell smelled like the exhaust of a thousand cars, a thousand bonfires, which at times had its appeal, but it was nothing like this, the dense, dark softness of fertile soil. "Your parents."

And she answered him, and he nodded along, made soft sounds of agreement where it was appropriate to do so. It wasn't until she mentioned the state troopers that he bristled, looking up from the plants to try and meet her eyes again, only to find that they and her fingers were dark. His nerves sparked, hair stood on end along his spine, to the carefully concealed tail beneath his jacket, which bristled at the thought of Lotte in the back of the paddywagon like some common criminal. What had become of this earth, while he was gone? What good could he have done, if he'd never left? He never had such cause to wonder about it as he did now, looking at her, knowing that what she said was so far out of line with what was fair.

His eyes followed the plume of smoke from her fingertips, into the sky, gently polluting the clean bubble of protected air around them. If he could have blown it away, without seeming disrespectful, dismissive of her magic, of her emotions, he would have. But her emotions were hers to feel, they were not Alastor's to take away, nor to try to unburden her.

"I know a place," he said. He was watching her intently, bright eyes glowing red and fixated on the blackness of Lotte's fingertips. "I was born in New Orleans, it's beautiful there. You'd love it! Not a speck of this dust in sight." Quite the opposite - the air there was warm and wet. At least, it was as he remembered it. A momentary streak of panic ran through Alastor when he wondered if, somehow, against all odds, his home had lost itself to some similar fate as this place, in the decade he was gone. "I was myself," he told her.

And that was true. Was anyone not? Dying didn't make you any less who you were. "I owned a bar, you know, when that was downright illegal. They never did catch onto me for that, I was quite selective about my patrons. If I said I could take you away, would you do it? Answer me, and it's your turn."

[americanvvitch]

Alastor's eyes were on the blackened tips of her fingers, and she followed his gaze to stare down at them. Lotte had long thought it an omen of her eventual fate - fire or hell or some similar type of inferno. A warning against the consequences of her own actions, but she had no proof in support or argument of that theory. No one had been around to tell her why they turned black or how, after all. It didn't happen with normal, everyday magicks. The inky blackness only crept onto her skin when she was angry, and only ever in this way.

"New Orleans?" The name slipped out, repeated after Alastor uttered it with no shortage of curiosity. She'd heard of it, seen it mentioned in journals as a hub of great magic along with places like Salem... somehow it seemed fitting Alastor was from a place like that (not that she had any real idea what a place like that was like, really). Why, she couldn't say, but it would have surprised her to hear he was from some nowhere little town like her. There was a style to him, something that could have been honed, perhaps, but not learned. Not the way it dripped from him, even in quiet spaces where a conman or someone putting on an act might not have thought to fill.

As soon as she'd digested that fact, Alastor dangled another before her, and though it was clearly meant to dodge her actual question, she couldn't help but take the bait.

"You owned a bar during prohibition. In New Orleans." A brow quirked, and Lotte grinned a little. "Sounds dreamy."

Eras and decades were defined by their highs and lows and prohibition, the roaring twenties were probably no different. Day to day life for most people was somewhere in the middle, no doubt. Still, Lotte imagined what a time it must have been, to have been old enough to enjoy the way the world changed. Alastor must have had a front seat, which was plenty to chew on by itself, but it also gave her another interesting bit of information about Alastor - he wasn't all that old, for a demon, anyway.

Lotte was quiet as she considered the question asked with his turn, watched the black seep away from her fingers like ash blown away from a hearth, like the dust Alastor had cleared from the air.

Her eyes met his again, crimson red and glowing, staining the air around them like blood in the water.

"Leave here with you? I'd do that in a heartbeat." It wasn't a hard choice. Lotte had dreamed of escaping every night since she'd arrived.

Her turn.

"What did they catch onto you for?" He had said no one found him out about the bar, specifically, which seemed to imply he'd been found out about something else.

[devildo]

With her own two hands, Lotte had said, a moment ago. Alastor thought of it, as he looked at her darkened fingers. The soot-blackness of them wrapped around the throats of her oppressors crept into his mind, and he wondered if she'd really have the mettle. Could she, truly, squeeze until there was no squeezing left, until muscle and bone and skin compressed together so tightly that nothing could get through, until she and her victim were one, the impression of their throat imprinted on her fingertips as surely as those fingertips were imprinted on the throat. He pictured them, dark like this, against the pallor he imagined her parents to possess.

"Hm," he trilled, eyes tilted skyward, no longer actually focused on Lotte herself, so much as the image in his mind. She was speaking, he heard her, but he was looking at something that wasn't there.

And then he became too aware of it, and leveled his gaze back on her, over the rim of his monocle.

"Ah," he said, "a dream itself is but a shadow, dearie, there's nothing to it. This was real, better than that." What good were dreams, anyway? They ended quicker than anything, all created and destroyed in an instant. The better thing, by far, was to live a life you chose for yourself, create a paradise you could wake to, not one you need escape to, in sleep. He'd done that. He'd done that he thought, in bitterness, his fists clenching at his sides, his fangs baring.

"Dreams are stuff and nonsense - you know that's true, or you wouldn't say you'd go with me." And she wasn't lying, he didn't think so. For better or worse, he trusted that she'd said she, too, was no liar.

But liar or not, she certainly was curious. Alastor paced around the row of plants, back to Lotte's side. She looked ordinary again, but no less entrancing, with her fingers returned to their usual color. He was almost grateful - if she'd gone on looking too strange, he might have doubted his own senses, believed himself in Hell still. "Nothing you need to worry yourself with," he told her. "Suffice to say you can only kill so many people, unnoticed."

[americanvvitch]

"Well, I guess wouldn't know. Never lived a life that felt like a dream."

There was a snap and shift in the air, and Lotte could taste the sharp bitterness of unfinished business in the air, hear the telltale crunch of leather gloves as his fingers curled into a fist. Alastor's lip curled and he insisted that dreams were nonsense, that she knew it to be true just as he did - and she wouldn't correct him because as usual, he spoke the truth.

With each question and answer she learned a little more about him, not from his words, which are as contrariwise and vague as ever, but from things like this. Glimpses of what had been, what was left behind in the form that stood before her now. The notion that he'd been a murderer wasn't surprising, really. Murderers came in all shapes and sizes, and he'd had to do something to go to Hell anyway. What piqued her curiosity was the gnawing hunch that he wanted to remain in this world. Go back to where he'd come from. But why?

Surely not to murder! He could do that in this form, whenever and wherever he wanted no doubt. It made him oddly... human. No less strange, but just a little more real than the last time, and that humanity made him all the more alluring.

"But I'm certainly tired of dreaming of the life I'd like to have." Lotte looked up at him, "Are you forfeiting your question? I'll ask another, then."

A step forward, and then another turn on her heel and she was in front of him, emboldened still by the whiskey she'd been drinking since well before she'd gotten foolhardy enough to summon Alastor to her home for the second time.

"Why would you want to go back to New Orleans with little old me? Or is it that you need me to take you?"

[devildo]

"Well," Alastor laughed, "You don't give me much choice, do you?" It was fair to say that he'd been so distracted by his own thoughts that he forgot the game was still afoot, but even if he hadn't, Lotte was so quick to jump in line, it didn't matter, either way.

That, likewise, told him something about her. She craved the answers she asked for, to get ahead of him with so little regard for what his reaction might be. For all she knew, he might have balked, might have bit at her for breaking the rules. And that told Alastor something else - Lotte wasn't afraid of him.

In one, fluid motion, he stepped, traveling farther than the length of his stride should have taken him, until he was nearly right up against her, just a few inches from her body, and bending slightly at the waist, to hover above Lotte's face. His lips were closed, but still smiling, and he blinked at her a few times in quick succession, her face blurring between blinks as he looked down his nose at her. And there, from that uncomfortably close vantage point, he laughed again, a sharp and well-enunciated HA-HA that seemed less to come from Alastor himself, as from the static around him.

"I should certainly enjoy your company!" he said, "A man is not limited to any one such mode of transportation, but I dare say it would be all the easier and more pleasant with you!" And that, without revealing much of the nature of the situation, was true. There were things Alastor could do, if he tried, to increase the odds that he would be seen, felt, pulled to a summoning in New Orleans. But even if he was, and even when he had been, it was one thing to see the inside of a house, feel the breath of the damp air, and be barred from going far enough to touch it. It would be another thing to go and be free. And since he wasn't, he didn't try. Witnessing it through a distance, unable to step foot on the streets, unable to breath the air outside the stagnant pool of the incense smoke of the summoning circle, was torture.

He straightened up, his spine cracking like a whip. "If you must know," he confessed, "being all powerful isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know?" One clawed hand raised, and he examined his nails, turning his hand over in the moonlight. His fist curled in again, his gaze flicking back to Lotte. "I can do whatever I want, but I can't go where I please. Can you imagine that? Of course you can. It's what they did to you. So tell me, this is my question - if you could take pity on the victim of a plight such as your own, would you?"

[americanvvitch]

Lotte did crave answers, didn't see any reason not to, but then she'd always been that way. Getting them was another matter, of course, and much more dangerous than simply wanting, but at least in her current state, she felt she could take whatever came of her interrogations in stride.

Easier said than done.

No sooner had the quip left Alastor than his body sprang into motion and came to a stop hardly a breath away from her. There was no helping the choked yelp that escaped her. It was the closest he'd come to her all this time, much nearer than the last time he'd loomed over her this way, always smiling all the while. A tenseness gripped her, and one foot stepped back, sinking into the sand and dirt, threatening to knock her off balance for a brief moment before steadying herself.

They stayed like that for a long, silent moment as Alastor looked down at her, and Lotte refused to let her eyes leave his. A break of eye contact felt like some sort of concession, though she had no idea if she was being measured up or if Alastor was simply attempting to throw off her nerve or her focus.

Well, he wouldn't accomplish either so easily.

But as soon as Alastor spoke it all became clear. Whether or not his descent upon her was calculated or not, the more Alastor said the more the puzzle pieces snapped into place. Alastor might enjoy her company - she certainly hoped that was the case, but that wasn't all there was to it. She represented an opportunity to him, a glimmer on the horizon much as his summoning had to her.

The realization that Lotte had more power here than she'd initially realized, that Alastor in his infinite ability, might actually have need of her was a rush akin to a shot of whiskey but so much sweeter.

However far her guest could wander from the source of his presence here, the summoning circle hastily scrawled on her wall, there was a limit to it. Alastor was no more free to move through the world than she was, and it clearly festered in him just as deeply. Perhaps more so... to possess such boundless power, but be tethered to the person and place he was called, subject to the whims or another, would have driven her mad too. It spurred an odd sensation of kinship to him, and gave even more weight to his question.

With Alastor no longer looming above her, Lotte pushed up and let her heels snap back together with a soft hum. She considered him quietly for a moment, eyes sharp and fixed on his.

"Just any old victim? I don't know about that." She hummed, perhaps for the first time in her interactions with the demon feeling like she was the cat rather than the mouse.

Alastor wanted something, and Lotte was the one with the power to give it to him.

She took a decisive step forward - one that would either have her bumping right into him or that would compel him to move.

"But I might help you, if you asked nicely," she purred.

[devildo]

The less power one had, the more easily it was stripped away. The slightest breeze could topple it like dominos, the most negligible overuse could burst the dam, crack the cup, reveal a leak in the faucet. In the early days of his afterlife, Alastor knew this too well, lurking in shadows, never quite letting anyone catch sight of him while he worked. How many territories had he claimed that way, waiting in the dark, a silent, calculating sniper, and what a shade of himself he had felt like then. The silence encroached on him. The hiding nearly destroyed his morale. Neither of those had ever been of Alastor's ilk.

In those days, any demon who got the jump on him could have taken him down. It was only by sheer force of willpower and a decent propensity for good luck that Alastor climbed the ladder of his own resolve and found himself in a position to show his face again.

This wasn't Hell, and Lotte most certainly couldn't kill him, but he would be remiss to pretend the stakes weren't there. He would be lying, too, if he said he couldn't tell Lotte was aware of the situation, before she fully answered him. He heard it in her voice, this sound beneath her words that was both a seductive purr and a solid bedrock - conviction mixed with pleasure in herself. She knew, and that, he reminded himself, was essential to getting what he wanted. One couldn't exactly get these things without ever revealing there was anything to be gotten.

He was no psychic, after all, though it might have served him better if he was, for all the warning he had before Lotte appeared in his space. There was a slight movement in her eyes, a barely perceptible tensing in her muscles, before she moved, and that was all there was to alert him. It was about as close to startled as Alastor could remember being. His face, careful as ever, stayed frozen in its grin. But his dead heart, in his chest, thudded invisibly against the confines of his ribs.

Alastor slid backwards - not quite a step, but a shift in space that left little drag marks in the dirt under his shoes. It wasn't far, but far enough. The rest of him never moved, the index knuckle of his closed hand bent and resting on his chin. It tapped there, considering. He wasn't really considering anything, except the feeling of that one dramatic thud in his chest. Near-silently, a low thrum in the static barely audible to humans, he chided his shadow for failing (or refusing?) to notify him that the girl was about to move so close. It only laughed in response, a higher frequency that, while not at all identifiable as laughter, Lotte could certainly hear.

"Hm," he said, knuckle still pressed to his chin. The pressure tugged at his lower lip, drew it down just slightly. He remained this way for a moment, before becoming brightly animated again, his shoulders loosening and arms extending from his side in a large and gregarious shrug.

"Why not?" he asked cheerily. "Miss Lotte, would you do me the honor of releasing me from this eternal torment, and accompanying me to New Orleans, as my traveling companion?"

[americanvvitch]

In life (and perhaps in afterlife too) there were moments of stasis and moments of becoming, all of which eventually settled up to the metamorphosis that resulted in what a person was meant to be. Not to be confused with some kind of inevitable complacency, but the idea that a soul eventually came into itself in its entirety, that a person could and would reach their full potential given enough time and a bit of luck - which Lotte believed wholeheartedly - it was impossible that this moment didn't fall into one such stage of becoming.

The destination was still unclear, shrouded in choices she had long yet to make, but the thrill of a destination that wasn't this place, this her was more than enough fuel for the flame that burned inside of her.

She didn't make any further move to advance on Alastor, there wasn't any need. She'd gotten him to move at all, which was all she'd wanted and hoped for, and she wasn't foolhardy enough to touch him without permission. Still, a victory unto itself, and one she would savor just as fondly as the whiskey sitting on her table back inside the house, and just as long too. Maybe longer.

Alastor seemed to chew on her request for a beat, and then another as a shrill static crackled through the air, and she found the stillness... odd. Real. He was usually such a creature of motion, moments when he didn't interact with the space around him were the rests in a bar of music, silent but certainly not still.

But then, people with the most to hide from usually were that way, and who didn't end up in hell that didn't have something following them to the grave.

Lotte hadn't really expected any of that carefully veneered facade to break, anyway - the raised hackles and spindling limbs from the blood letting had no place here. There was a moment, though, quick and sharp as lightning, when she thought she saw a shift in his pupils - a narrowing.

And then Alastor was happening again at full speed, shrugging good-naturedly as he played along with the little game she'd laid out for them.

"Well, what manners!" She hummed, pleased and not in any mood to hide it. Her hands clasped behind her, in part to prevent the eager crackling around her fingertips at the possibility such an agreement offered. "As it happens, Alastor, I'd absolutely love to."

[devildo]

If this was an agreement, then it was a deal of some kind. Alastor must surely know that. But in this moment, he'd offered nothing. That was a rare kind of thrill, the knowing that this woman was agreeing to what he asked, without setting any terms by which he must abide. That was all he could ask for, all he could want.

He looked around at the little garden at his feet, at the encroaching cloud of dust, dismal and filmy, beyond the bubble of clear air around them. There was a sort of soft focus lent to the surrounding countryside - it almost looked dreamy, viewed through the film of dust. If only it was. The reality, out there, was death and ruin. It would be a shame for something so banal, so boring, to be visited upon his summoner.

His eyes, though narrowed, were bright. "Is that so?" he asked her, craning every so slightly forward again, into the shared space between them. "It doesn't come cheap," Alastor said. "Oh no. There's a price you have to pay to ride." This was punctuated by one finger thrust in the air, and his eyes closing momentarily as if in contentment, though it was anything but.

He paced off to the side, circling Lotte, examining her. He could see every grain of silt caught in the folds of her dress, every wrinkle there well worn in from over use. She had very little to her name, that he had long since been able to tell, and what he would give to dress her up in something more befitting her station. Though rest assured she didn't think of herself as having any station at all, and that was the appeal, really.

"Halloween is coming soon, isn't it?" He asked this as if it had nothing to do with what he'd said, but in truth, it was everything to do with it. His blood boiled, his face flushed with the idea. He wasn't sure it was possible, really. But he knew how to try, and knowing how to try was all that had ever gotten Alastor anywhere. "You'll have to cut me loose from my fetters." He rounded on her again, taking in the full moon of her face. "Does that appeal to you?"

[americanvvitch]

Lotte thought it was rather bold to ask for assistance as a victim of similar circumstances and then state there was a price - but of course there was. Nothing was given without something else being taken away, and whatever creature or force held Alastor, it would not be easily persuaded to release him. Lotte claimed little knowledge into the workings of hell, or what being a deal maker like Alastor entailed, but she was certain a man such as this wouldn't be subservient to anyone if there was any choice in the matter.

They were alike in that way, too.

Lotte stood with her shoulders back, chin titled up as he circled around her, tried not to be shaken by the way his glowing, narrowed eyes bore into her, like he was looking at every atom that made her up and beyond.

"Nothing worth having comes cheap, and outstretched hands rarely come with no strings attached. I think I know that about as well as you." she hummed, "Well, nearly." Her eyes following him as he circled her.

Except that privately, Lotte didn't plan on asking Alastor to do more than he'd offered. Oddly, she found that the idea of escaping off into the night with Alastor was plenty exhilarating on its own... and she thought, too, that they'd come to some sort of tenuous and tentative agreement between them, not to play tricks. To dictate to Alastor would have been to break with that gossamer bond, and likely be considered quite rude.

Though tossed in casually, there was little to wonder about the significance of Halloween. Lotte may not have had much in the way of literature on witchcraft, but she wouldn't have needed it to identify the feeling of the veil between worlds turning paper thin every Samhain. She'd known that like a splinter deep in her bones long before she could have called herself a witch of any kind.

"It sounds like a challenge, which we both know appeals to me," she said, the words accompanied by a half smirk that curled over her lips and sparked something in her eyes, embers burning and curling through sage. "But what exactly does that entail... breaking you from your infernal bonds?"

[devildo]

Lit up, alive, Alastor buzzed around Lotte. He couldn't have stopped moving around her in his circle if he wanted to, his pace methodical and even, crushing a dented path into the newly-fertile earth. Well, that wasn't true - he could do anything he wanted to, but he didn't want to stop moving, even if it felt compulsory to do so. The grinding gear of his steps mimicked the gears whirling in his head. His shadow followed him like a plume of dark smoke. This was more intoxicating than whiskey. He almost didn't know where to begin, and the idea that something was just on the border of stumping him, of feeling impossible, made him laugh out loud.

There was almost no risk. He wasn't expecting it to work, anyway, so what did it matter if he said it out loud? What did it matter if he gave voice to things that mortals weren't supposed to hear? And why, really, did such things exist at all, if no one was meant to hear them?

He chuckled in response to Lotte's words. Yes, a challenge. That was exactly what it was, a forbidden game, a test. Alastor was so imbued with magic now, so a part of the fabric of it, he didn't feel magical anymore. Not in the way he had when he was a boy, anyway, wandering the streets at night. Not in the way one did when they stood on the veranda in the rain, hiding a cigarette from their mothers, craning a painfully human ear for the strains of music floating down from the street bands around the block, playing on in spite of the rivulets of water streaming down the gutters, down the edges of the streets. Not in the way that one felt magical crouched under the canopy of the bayou, tending a flame in a cast iron pot stolen from home. No, those feelings didn't quite come, anymore. But this was similar to it. This was enough.

"Nothing much," he said, a manic brightness in the glow of his eyes. It would be difficult to look at, just a little too bright and stinging, though the light that burned in them didn't illuminate far beyond Alastor's body. "It's a secret." He paused to look Lotte in the eye again, waggling his finger at her. "You better not tell. What trouble we'd be in, then!"

Pacing again, he went on, gesturing widely with his long fingers to punctuate his words. "All manner of spirits walk free on Halloween - myself and the Hellish host included. When the clock strikes midnight, the Queen of Hell goes riding, did you know that? I'll be with her. No summoning required."

[americanvvitch]

All of Alastor was difficult to look at, but only in the way that human eyes never seemed to want to focus on the strange and unusual for too long. Something ancient in their wiring, perhaps, a kind of survival instinct. Looking at something meant it could look back, after all. Alastor's eyes reminded her of her little stove with the door shut, flames glowing behind the bars, barely contained, really, along with the buzzing of electricity from the static almost felt like the charge in the air before a storm. He was excited, and for better or worse it was contagious.

Lotte watched his finger wag at her, amused by the performance and for drama's sake, took a moment to look around at the barren wasteland surrounding them before answering.

"Hmm... Well, I don't see anyone to talk to, other than you, so I think your secret's safe with me."

She turned on a heel, turning with him as he paced and listening to information he scattered in his wake, like seeds in the ground, taking root deep in Lotte's chest.

"She rides through rural Oklahoma, does she? Surprised I never caught that before." Lotte quipped, teased a little because Alastor was nothing if not witholding on the details of their new arrangement.

What she knew of All Hallow's Eve and spirits passing into this world hadn't included the knowledge that Lucifer himself stepped on mortal ground. Beyond that, she had little idea who the Queen of Hell might be... but confident in herself as she was feeling currently, Lotte wondered if she would actually be able to break Alastor from his binds. What might happen to her if she failed. Losing her powers, being taken prisoner, or dragged down to hell prematurely... all had varying degrees of disagreeable consequences... but the worst, more nagging notion was what might happen to him should she fail. Nothing too dire, if he was willing to take the risk to begin with... Alastor didn't gamble recklessly, she reckoned.

Which either meant that they had a good chance, or the outcome was worth the risk. To him, anyway... but maybe to her, too.

Her eyes raised to meet his, and she took the sting from the glow of them in her stride, moving to stop his circling and stand in front of him. "So on this midnight ride, I'm to... what? Drag you from your horse and abscond with you? Keep you here beyond when the veil closes? Invite the queen of hell for tea in my shack and reason with her for your release?"

[devildo]

That was true, wasn't it? Lotte had no one. She didn't even really have Alastor, though he supposed he was the closest thing she had to having someone, from what he'd gleaned of her life in the two nights they'd met. There was no one she could tell anything to, she was absolutely right, anything he said was safe with her. It might have seemed a terrible imbalance of power, but the truth was, Alastor had hardly anyone to speak of Lotte to, either. Those he did, he hadn't. Not for any pressing reason, really. It wouldn't matter, if he did. But he'd wanted to keep it for himself, when it had only happened once. Something to take out and look at on the long, smoke-scented nights, like the bottles of her blood glistening on his shelf.

To have a secret, that was something. That was magic, on its own. Judgment, what anyone else would think of him, didn't matter much, didn't really factor in. But the thrill of knowing there was something only Alastor knew, that was worth playing close to the vest.

"She rides everywhere," he said, glittering bright with energy. "All at once. It's frightfully clever of her, don't you think? You only have to know where to look."

He could see those gears turning in Lotte's head again, clanking behind the egg white milkiness of her eyes in the dark. It would take so little to pop them out of her head, see her brain at work behind them for real, not just in his imagination. One long reach of his claw, one little curve, to pluck them out. And he might let her see again afterwards, terrible, psychic second sight. But he wouldn't. He only stared into them long enough to dare her to look away for fear of being burnt out by his brightness.

"Exactly that," he hummed, pleased at the astuteness of her guess. "She will try to stop you, that's the rub. She'll turn me into all manner of horrible things, I imagine, to make you let go. A lion," he supposed, though he didn't really know, precisely, "A terrible, biting badger. Hot iron. What can your skin withstand, my dear? You'll have to find out. There's no letting me go until it's over, and it won't be over until I'm a man again."

[americanvvitch]

Alastor, bright as a firecracker, crackled with energy and magic that made all her hair stand on end. Being near him was akin to holding onto a sparkler too long, watching it quickly get too close to the skin. But Lotte was transfixed, she wouldn't look away, even if the risk was being burnt. If she could burn, it meant she was alive, that she wasn't the same as the rotting grass and barren dirt.

She had spent her years here grasping at the smallest traces of life and purpose and the thing left unsaid - the thing she couldn't yet say was that she wouldn't have told a soul about Alastor even had the option existed. He was hers, as much as anything had been hers. This game, at least, this experience was hers and she wouldn't have shared it with anyone for all the whiskey or flour in the world.

Every piece of the puzzle Alastor placed before her should have been frightening. Someone in their right mind shouldn't have considered the concept of facing off against the Queen of Hell remotely possible, let alone... exhilarating. But Lotte credited herself with a will more formidable than most, if very little else.

It had given her all the magic she'd possessed, after all, and it had given her Alastor. A chance for something different, something more than wasting away choking on dust.

There was nothing else to be done now. Lotte would wrestle Alastor free from his bonds and escape here with him... or die trying. Really, death waited for her at the end of that long, empty stretch of road one way or another. Why not wager on something better? Something brilliant and bright. Why not burn.

"Would we call what you are now a man?" She gestured to the ears with a quirked brow. If there was a bit of cheek in her voice, well, she figured he'd appreciate it if anyone would.

"I figure I've already faced up against a fair bit more than your average girl. Don't reckon I've ever seen a badger or a lion in the flesh but, well, we already know one has to spill a little blood to get what they want... and I think our little dream's a worthy enough cause."

Lotte brushed her hand on the folds of her dress to rid it of any linger wetness from the fruit before holding it out toward him, a little crackle of electricity flicking in the air around her, making her curls lift gently from her face and quiver in the air. "It's a deal."

[devildo]

One should never deal without the rules being clearly delineated. This was the first rule of Alastor's station, he knew it intimately. And there was something amusingly mundane about Lotte's words, the first mundane thing she'd done in his presence, and yet this failed to disturb him. It should have been disappointing, after all this, for her to say those words. It wasn't. It was intriguing in how ordinary it was, how expected, because it had only come now, and that was not expected.

"And what do you want out of it?" he asked, bending again at the waist to loom over her, a cloud that blocked the brilliance of the moon peeking through the clear patch of air that surrounded them. Alastor sucked in a breath again (though he didn't need to do such things, anymore), just to taste what he had created. One day, he would taste that blood in those vials, and think of it the same way - as his own creation. Something he brought forth into the world. Lotte wouldn't have done it for just anyone, he imagined.

Her hand hung in the air between it, and he looked down at it, sheltered in the shadow of his body, but he wouldn't take it yet. Not until she answered him. These were the rules, everything had rules.

"An adventure, a companion? If I am a man, and I am, I could be that for you." It might be funny, he thought. Imagine that, if he really did become ordinary again, after this whole thing was over. What would that be like, to play at an ordinary life? He hardly had, when he was living. Then, ordinary seemed boring, impossible to bear. He hummed to himself and stood straight with that familiar snap that implied his bones weren't meant to move the way they did, in spite of the apparent ease with which they did it. "Do you want a lovely garden? The finest house on the block? Tell me, I'd so love to know. A deal is a two way street, you must want something."

[americanvvitch]

Alastor bent again at the waist, which she was swiftly growing used to, the way he loomed over her like a storm of red static and radio interference. It didn't throw her off half as much as his question, because she'd thought it was clear what she was getting out of this.

New Orleans. A chance at a real life, somewhere far from here, her ticket to ride, as he'd so aptly put it. It hadn't occurred to her to ask for more. Part of it, probably, was that she'd never really thought about what more could look like before now. A life away from here had been a far, distant dream... something to nurse quietly in front of the fire or sitting on her porch on warm, somewhat clear nights. Shapeless, wavering on the horizon like a cloud of heat. Look too hard and it'd disappear.

But blindsided was the only word for how off-kilter she felt at the possibility of companionship Alastor presented, gleaming on a platter like a wax feast. The suggestion hit her hard enough that Lotte was the one to take a step back this time, eyes wide as saucers.

Alastor was a man, however she teased, and not a bad looking one. Odd-looking, to most humans perhaps, but Lotte wasn't blind. She even found the things that made him pointedly inhuman appealing, if she were completely honest with herself. Somewhere in her reeling there was an odd fluttering in her chest, an uneven thud from her heart that threatened to push her further off balance, though she wasn't sure quite call it. Desire? Longing? Fear was in there somewhere, too, more recognizable than the rest she couldn't surely name.

But as quickly as it came it went, leaving something hollow in its place.

Fine houses and gardens aside, whatever she wanted from Alastor himself... she didn't want it as part of any deal.

Lotte thought of being grounded, and it came to her at her bidding, like roots extending from her heels into the ground. She chose her next words carefully, though even she wasn't quite sure what she was trying to conceal from Alastor this time.

"Well, I certainly enjoy your companionship... but I don't see how that'd be much different from whatever chains I'm breaking you out of now. The whole point of this is that you get your freedom, isn't it?"

If it didn't come freely, it wasn't really hers.

But she wasn't foolhardy enough to think she'd have an easy time of it in a new city with no other friends, no jobs, no other deals on the table.

"But the house and the garden... I'll take you up on that, why not. With an open invitation to drop by for a glass of whiskey and good conversation, if you'd like."

[JESUS FUCK FORGIVE ME OH GOD MY BRAIN THE NEXT ONE WILL BE FASTER AND BETTER]

[devildo]

Alastor's pupils, narrow and thin like a cat's, revolved slowly in the center of his blood-red eyes. Sound rumbled out of him, low and slow, a trembling in the loose, damp flesh of the dirt beneath his feet. He felt it there, every loose clod of soil shaking against the next, right up through the soles of his shoes, such a low vibration that he wasn't sure yet if Lotte could feel it, at all.

The witch's words were fine enough. Perhaps she didn't know the freedom she gave him, by offering him entry to the house she agreed to exchange for her help. Or she did know - it made no difference. His fingers unfurled like willow branches, finally extending into the shadow space between them, to offer his hand.

"Splendid!" His voice crackled in his throat, the sound of a match hissing to life. The charred smell of fireplace ashes followed it, sharp and chalky at the same time, the scent of the corpse of some foreign wood that didn't grow here, beneath that. "Then a house you'll live in, and a garden you'll grow. And I'll be sure to see you safely deposited there," he promised, just in case she was smart enough to wonder if he meant to be tricky about it, after all.

Well, he did. But not in that way. Lotte would have her new home, the bounty and the comfort she deserved.

The slow rotation of Alastor's pupils stilled, the blackness there pulsing gently in his glowing eyes, a dead heartbeat. "This, in exchange for the winning of my freedom, this Halloween. Now, if you'll take my hand it's a deal."

[IT'S FINE. SOMETIMES YOUR DAD DIES BUT THEN YOU FIND YOUR MUSE AGAIN AT 6AM A MONTH LATER]

[americanvvitch]

There was a lingering static in the back of Lotte's own mind, wondering - like the buzz before a storm siren - whether or not she was about to step off the deep end into something more complicated and bizarre than she really comprehended. Wondering, too, if Alastor hadn't somehow tricked her into it without her knowledge. Lotte thought herself clever, but didn't any old fool think the same, until presented with evidence proving otherwise.

Something in his words, though, that little bit of poetry... felt like scattering another layer of seeds amongst the soft soil that lay beneath their feet. There was a promise in it, a real one, fertile and real as the scent of tomato leaves and strawberries that punctuated every clear breath of air that entered her lungs.

This deal was no trick. Perhaps Alastor had brought it forth into the world simply by the nature of what he was, but he'd no more lit the spark in Lotte's mind than she had in his, she reasoned. If Alastor could have arranged such a deal before now, wouldn't he have?

But he hadn't, of course, because he hadn't had Lotte until now.

Without one another, nothing they'd created on this night or any other would have been possible - and so that was the deal in its most raw, fledgling form:

Their mutual preservation or destruction, more or less.

Lotte could easily forfeit her life in the attempt to wrestle Alastor from the Queen of Hell, and if not that, then any hope of leaving this place whole.

And Alastor? Well, he stood to lose even more. What was life? Fickle, fleeting, fragile. Nothing compared to the nectar of hope, of freedom, of assuming ownership of one's own fate. If they failed, he might never find another witch so uninterested in using him for her own devices. The Queen might never let him out on the ride again, in punishment, or cast him down to a fate worse than whatever he was now. Lotte didn't imagine Alastor coping well with any less agency than he possessed presently. She knew a caged beast when she saw one.

For better or worse, they would sink or swim together, but that suited her just fine.

Her hand stretched out, pushing past the resistance of static that was their fingers coming together, and Lotte touched Alastor for the first time, the willing flame to his match.

"A deal, then."

[devildo]

They were a match and a flame, to be sure, but which was which couldn't be said. Were they not both burning long before they chanced to meet?

Alastor was sharply aware that there were no guarantees in this situation. Lotte might fail, after all, no matter what he said to prepare her. There was a delightful tingle of fear through him at the thought. What was worse than his current station? It might seem like a question with no certain answer, but it wasn't that at all. He knew, intimately, what happened to a demon stripped of its power. It became cannon fodder, a body in a heap of other ragged bodies drained of blood and brilliance. He would be no different than a thousand poor wretches he'd destroyed over the last few years, if he displeased the Queen without succeeding at wriggling free from her grasp.

She was the one who held all the power, anyway. Not Lucifer. Surely not him.

Alastor's long fingers flitted over the static field between them and Lotte's, small and fragile mirrors to his own. He could have taken her hand, shook it, but he slotted their fingers together, folded his over the back of her hand, dwarfing and encircling it with searing heat that wouldn't dare to burn her.

"It's done," he said, simply, glow radiating from his hand, ruddy in the dark evening light. The fear excited him, bubbled in his stomach. "Now." With a sharp glee, his eyes sought Lotte's, their slow revolutions slowing and coming to a still. His mark was on her, he could feel it, the brightness of her soul nestled between her ribs and pulsating with every breath she took. "Meet us at midnight, at the crossroads." She would know which - the nearest ones, about a mile up the road, past the nearest farm. He could see them quite clearly in his mind's eye, despite never having been there before.

"Drag me from my horse," he told her. "And remember what I said. I will be hard to hold."

[americanvvitch]

Little thought had been spared, to this point, toward the actual execution of the deal. A simple handshake, she expected, or perhaps another exchange of blood? But the moment Alastor's gloved fingers slid between her own, slowly splaying them wider to accommodate the sheer size of his hand, Lotte felt almost dizzy with a rush of warmth altogether more deadly than the heat that enveloped her skin in time with the claws that folded over her knuckles almost down to her wrist. A heady but somehow not unpleasant reminder of just how much space he seemed to occupy...

...more than any living creature ought to. A fact she reluctantly had to admit had always fascinated rather than bothered her.

She had no real way of knowing if it was the same for everyone who made a deal with a creature like Alastor, if this sensation was his doing directly or simply a side effect of offering a piece of herself to him. The prickling that had preceded their touch spread through her, from the very tips of her hair to the deepest reaches within her, setting each nerve aflame as it ripped her asunder. Did they all feel this way? Would it have been different if if weren't Alastor standing before her?

The questions reeled in her mind, and oh... was she short of breath? Or had she simply forgotten to breathe there, for a moment? Alastor had only enveloped her hand, but it felt like much, much more. If someone had asked her what way was up, or down, Lotte couldn't have told them with any certainty, despite feeling like she'd never occupied her body more than this very moment.

It was Alastor that had dragged her to this precarious, electric place and Alastor that called her back to the surface, voice much more steady than Lotte had any faith in her own to be.

She felt his eyes on her, seeking out her gaze. Her own snapped up, surely only a few seconds had passed, but a rush of air flooded through her that made her question just how long she'd been lost in the sensation touching Alastor and being touched by him for the first time.

His final instructions weren't lost on her - Lotte couldn't afford to not pay close attention to any guidance for both their sakes, but the rest of their interaction felt as though she were in a dream, floating through a cloud of dust.


Her sense seemed to return to her once Alastor had taken his leave, with a grand flourish and an energy that she found very flippant for the task that awaited them. Now, their deal and the details of winning Alastor's freedom occupied her every waking thought. There was no time to dwell on that one, lingering touch, and the heat that no spell or fire seemed to quite replicate. All Hallow's Eve was close at hand and Lotte knew precious little about what her task truly entailed.

If she succeeded, there'd be an abundance of time to discover whatever she wished with Alastor, she reasoned. After all, he had offered to live with her as a man. Whatever that meant, for a demon.

From the moment she woke until she slipped into sleep each evening, well after the sun had sunk beyond the horizon, Lotte practiced magic. Without any real knowledge of what Alastor might become, or what she might need for the task, it seemed wiser to simply practice with the intent of increasing her own focus and intention. While a sigil might be able to stall the queen's procession at the crossroads, she doubted she'd have the time or knowledge to craft a sigil in real time if she was to keep her grip on Alastor. Whatever she needed would have to come from herself. She could not, would not fail for lack of will.

But time waned quickly, and without Alastor in front of her to bolster her nerve and challenge her, fear inevitably settled in.

The dark shadows that settled in the deepest corners of her cabin, the whisper of the wind on the tall grasses outside her door whispered in the quiet spaces of her day.

Who was Lotte, after all? Certainly not the most powerful witch here or anywhere. Unstudied, uneducated in the ways of this world or the next, in the ways of magic itself. She'd let herself be swept straight to her own demise by a handsome face and a crooked smile, like so many women before her. What awaited her at that crossroads was nothing more than a fearful, painful end, dressed in a lovely bow. An obvious trap, to a real witch.

The fear crept through her, nipping at her heels as she tended the sigils, blew cold through her dress down to her bones, caused the little garden in her back yard Alastor had so kindly given her to wilt a little more each day.

And as she sat at her little table the evening of Halloween, nursing a dusty glass of the whiskey he'd given her, Lotte finally let her mind wander to Alastor, himself, again. Wondered what he would think of her sitting here, sorry for herself, doubting the abilities he so clearly seemed to perceive in her. He'd laugh, maybe, a little bit mocking, a little bit incredulous. Would he have made a deal so dangerous to himself if he didn't think there was a chance she'd succeed?

Lotte could hear his voice in her head, and it was almost as good as seeing him standing before her... almost, but not quite, and it was that that finally chased away the little whispers and dispelled the shadows.

She wanted Alastor.

Not pulled from the depths of hell by her summoning, not for a brief moment on Halloween. No, she wanted him free to come and go as he pleased. Free to stay, if he pleased, too.

The whiskey was thrown back in one smooth motion, before she stood and walked to her door, pushing it open without ever laying a finger on it. Only one golden, red sliver of light remained on the indigo horizon, and as she stepped off the porch, Lotte soaked it up along with the flames from the fire flickering behind her in her cabin, let the heat burn through her veins. Miles separated her and Alastor, but only for now.

Whatever monster or vicious thing the queen saw fit to transform him into, it didn't matter. She wanted him, and she would have him, even if it killed her.

Lotte was not leaving those crossroads without Alastor, and as her word, so mote it be.

[devildo]

The silence of his own living room encroached deeply on Alastor, grave dirt pressing in around him on all sides. He was both too practical and too prideful to consider his choices mistakes, most of the time. For one, they simply almost never were. He knew what he was doing, and did precisely as he meant to. For another, he was too pragmatic to think he couldn't resolve anything that did go wrong. He always had.

But most of the time, his shadow whispered to him, the things that went wrong were bound to be Alastor's own fault, and there was a mile of difference between that and letting someone else be responsible for his sink or swim.

No, he reasoned, that wasn't true, anyway. Any responsibility Lotte had was only what Alastor gave her. Maybe he'd been remiss in favouring the theatrical over sitting her down properly at her little wooden table and describing to her in more detail the path the host of hell would take, the formation in which they would ride, every trial he could possibly imagine the Queen putting her through. Ultimately, h3 couldn't imagine it would really help. There were rumours this type of plot had both been tried and succeeded in the past, but it was no more than that - rumours. He had no way of knowing what would really happen. It thrilled him to find out.

Time stretched. Alastor could be said to be Lotte's exact opposite in these short and waning days between their last meeting and Halloween night. He plotted nothing, and made no plans. If anyone had been bothering to keep tabs on him, they might have said his behavior was suspiciously lax. With an easy and knowing smile on his face, he spent his days walking the areas of Hell he hated most, to remind himself what he wouldn't miss. Ugly, dingy, steel-beamed streets with no pattern or order to them. Hideous. No green. Revolting.

In the evening, he sat outside a small cafe near to his home, one of the few places here that felt anything like the world he missed. He said nothing, spoke to no one, only watched with sharp eyes over the rim of his teacup as folks passed on the street, memorizing their gaits, their faces, the way they spit and swore and raged at one another. This, too, he would not miss, and the wider his smile grew behind that plume of steam from his tea, the wider berth the denizens of Hell cast around him.

Truth be told, it didn't occur to him much during these brisk autumn days to wonder what Lotte was doing or feeling. This was not to say that he didn't think of her. He thought of her quite often, glowing bright in his mind's eye, he imagined her picking through the snapshots of the ugly world around him, as he committed them to memory. When he dressed on Halloween night, all in plain black to match the rest of the riding host, he thought of the witch with every button he fastened, but not about her private state of mind. He only wondered if she would succeed, or not. If she didn't, he had no plan, but then again, he barely had one if she did. It would be a great adventure, either way.

***

The night was cool and sharp like pine needles digging into bare feet, the spectral horse beneath Alastor colder still, if that was even possible. Or perhaps he, himself, was burning up. Surely he looked suspicious in some way, eyes too bright, smile too smug, and the others were only afraid to question it. That was often enough the case, as surely as it was now, as the Queen's host marched over deserts, over moors, through dense forests, and finally plodded through the dusty crossroads where Lotte made her home.

Clods of dirt kicked up under each horse's hooves, strange marks that would mostly fade by morning, leaving just enough impression in the road to confuse and unsettle the farmers. And this was always so, and would always be so, but with any luck, Alastor would never be here to see it, again.


It was only in that crossroads that he finally felt the smallest flinch of nerves, like an ancient, human wound cracking to life inside him. Lotte was here, somewhere, hidden in the brush or just down the road or cleverly concealed by some doing of her own, waiting for him. And he was suddenly, vividly aware that he had no idea when the moment of her strike would land. His fingers loosened on the reins in his hands, let him lay as loose as he could. His entire body loosened from its posture - when she came, he would be ready to fall.

[americanvvitch]

Darkness lay heavy across the land by the time Lotte reached the crossroads, in full possession of wit and will, and with every intention of succeeding this night. The only light for miles around was the bright rays of the moon, dipping their fingers into the sparse, dried grasses, threading through the shadows of crooked fence posts that separated the roads from the wilds. She'd brought with her a long wooden staff, mostly useless for the task at hand except for the sigils she placed at each corner of the crossroad.

The idea had come to her earlier that evening, when she'd considered the logistics of pulling Alastor away from the procession and off of a moving beast. Nothing she could craft would have much hope of tricking the Queen of Hell or a demon of Alastor's ilk, but tricking a beast was a simpler task. The sigils were simple in design, just illusion really, and she had utilized them before to catch game on the rare occasions it wandered close to her little shack. The magic's only trick was to confuse the object's sense of direction, making them feel as though they'd been turned around. In the case of her hare's, attempting to correct the spell meant they usually ran directly into a waiting trap.

When she saw Alastor, she would activate it, and with any luck whatever creature he rode would pause long enough to try and correct its direction, giving her an opportunity to grab hold of it. She'd considered, instead, startling the whole procession, but it ran the risk of alarming the queen and having them all run off. This... this was her best bet. Unsophisticated magic that wouldn't even affect a creature more complex than a horse, unlikely to be noticed by anyone.

Once the sigils had been drawn, off the road, hidden from plain sight, all that was left to wait.

And wait she did, the desire in her burning hot and bright enough that she almost missed the chill that settled in the air as the temperature dropped.

The darkness seemed darker, the quiet of the night quieter, before finally there came the soft dusting of hooves against the dirt road.

Lotte peeked out from her hiding place, behind a mangled patch of tumbleweed caught onto several half bent fence posts. She'd chosen her dress wisely, once a pretty marigold color, it had been sun-drenched and so washed out by dust that it blended into the pale sand and dirt.

Her fingers, already tinged black from the magic rippling through her along with her own adrenaline, sunk into the dirt, readying herself for the moment the procession came into view.

The prickling at her neck told her well enough that she was witnessing something humans were not meant to see, but it didn't take much lingering to find Alastor, not quite at the Queen's side but lingering just behind. He was dressed in all black, but it did nothing to disguise the subtle, ruddy glow that always seemed to cling to his form. Seeing him again, more solid and present in this world than she ever had, steeled her nerve and when the moment came, and the large, spectral horse he rode stepped into the crossroads, she activated the sigils.

As expected, it balked, whipping its massive head around as it tried to regain its bearings. Lotte sprung from her little den and as the horse righted itself, and grabbed hold of the reins. She yanked its head down with all her strength, eyes meeting Alastor's over its mane only a moment before she reached up and grasped his arm. He came unseated easily, though she couldn't be sure if it was his own subtle assistance or if the horse had made him unstable, but it mattered not. She made enough of a show of grabbing his arm, and then his other wrist and dragging him from the horse so fiercely that they both toppled into the dirt harder than even she'd expected.

But never once did she release him from her grasp, as she scrambled up to kneel on the road, fingers clamped as tightly as she could manage around Alastor's wrists, she peered up at the Queen, who had turned to them now, and sucked in a breath before asserting her claim.

"Your majesty, I have come to claim Alastor for my own." She exhaled, pushing her shoulders back and sticking her chin up. "I will not leave these crossroads without him."