Genesis followed the swish of the lady's crimson train deeper into the mansion's labyrinthine halls.
Her mocking laughter echoed all around, seeming to come from every shadow-cloaked recess. A taunting trail of breadcrumbs luring him onward into parts unknown.
After several disorienting minutes of this exquisite game of cat-and-mouse, she finally paused before an arched wooden door. A single crimson-tipped finger called Genesis forward with a lurid curl.
He hesitated only a moment before pushing through into the chamber beyond.
The air inside struck his lungs like a fetid, noxious poison- heavy with the reek of sweat and smoke and something sweet that triggered a faint dizziness.
As his vision adjusted to the dim light, Genesis' breath hitched.
Four figures surrounded a crackling fireplace, each clothed head-to-toe in black suits that seemed to leach the light from the room. Their pale, corpselike complexion rendered their features obscenely sharp - almost monstrous in their severity.
Yet it was their eyes that ensnared him most unnervingly. Bottomless black pools, entirely devoid of iris or sclera. Soulless and baleful.
Demons? Dark citizens of infernal realms?
The sound that finally shattered Genesis' dream was a serpentine chuckle from across the chamber.
The fallen seraph stood from beside the fireplace's glow, the same mocking smirk twisting her exquisite features.
"Join me in another dance, my sweet professor?" Her words dripped with taunting promise as an outstretched hand materialized an unspoken command.
The strange black-clad demons shifted in synchronous motion, scarlet trails of blood bleeding from their nostrils and mouths.
Then the first atonal, jarring notes of chaotic, free-form New Orleans jazz began to swell from various instruments.
Helpless against the dark siren's lure, Genesis found his feet propelling him into her personal stellar orbit.
Their bodies collided with the harsh physicality of raging desire-given form. He moved instinctively against her more than-perfect frame, falling into the chaotic rhythms of their unrestrained passion.
The dance was primal and improvisational, fueled by ungodly fits of hunger long suppressed. Their forms twisting with each jarring crescendo unleashed.
Genesis could taste the end unfurling within - feel his boundaries between pleasure and oblivion begin to collapse.
The tempo quickened, and he was only peripherally aware of their shadowy presences now, utterly consumed by the way their swaying bodies moved in unison, the so-called perfect synchronization.
She suddenly twirled into him with grace, her form colliding against his with bruising force. Those crimson lips hovered very closely from his own.
Then she bridged the microscopic divide without an introductory statement.
Her kiss was overwhelming - as if Genesis could taste the pure carnal essence of sin and desire made manifest upon her tongue.
An aphrodisiac unto itself, obliterating his remaining shreds of rational thought.
He surrendered utterly to the aggressive kisses, craving more of her intoxicating venom with delirious lust.
When at last she broke away, her ruby stare pierced him with intensity. Those bee-stung lips glistened with the evidence of their unholy union.
"You taste so sweet, my little Genesis," she purred, each purred syllable dripping with alluring promise.
A strangled laugh was the only response he could muster - his mind still faltering, synapses firing wildly in a futile attempt to process reality. "This...this is some elaborate prank, isn't it?"
He forced the disbelieving words out through a gulp of air. "Did Cain and Abel arrange this entire affair? Some overwrought attempt to make me believe in the supernatural?"
The lady's knowing smirk made his shield of logic crumble.
With deft fingertips, she traced the line of his jaw, and said. "Open your eyes, sweet one,"
she husked in a conspiratorial rasp. "You've been bit by the serpent's oldest lies. Can't you taste our fallen Eden even now? What about the lambs? Do you miss them?"
Confusion and astonishment clouded Genesis's thoughts.
How could she possibly know about his dream? Had he spoken aloud while dreaming?
Dream or reality, phantasmal delusion or eldritch truth?
Any residual doubts Genesis clung to were utterly extinguished by the Devil's Muse's next deliberate act.
With a subtle flexing of her shoulders, those raven wings unfurled in a sweeping arc, seeming to grow bigger and fill every corner of the chamber, like a shadow engulfing a whole room.
"Is this evidence enough for you?" The fallen seraph's voice sliced through the soulless silence with ceremonial import. "Or must I provide more....substantive proof?"
With lightning speed, she closed the distance between them with predatory grace until Genesis could feel the molten heat radiating from her flawless skin.
Those crimson irises held him hostage as if he was hypnotized and couldn't move. She then traced a single lethally sharp nail along the line of his jugular.
"Rest assured...before this unholy night concludes, I will feast upon your body and soul both. That insatiable hunger gnaws at me even now." Her tongue flicked out to moisten her lower lip with unconscious want. "Such a pity to devour something so....exquisite. But I do so relish the taste of intelligent, educated men above all others."
Any sane man's self-preservation instincts should have been screaming incoherent desperation and impending doom by now.
Yet Genesis could only manage a subtle lift of his chin in blatant defiance, the ghost of a smile twisting his lips.
"Then be my guest," he rasped, leaning into her touch like a criminal into the executioner's blade. "I welcome your darkest hungers, my lady."
Onebeat.
Then the next,
Genesis was violently slammed back against the cold stone surface with the Devil's Muse's forearm crushing his windpipe. Her porcelain features remained disturbingly placid, almost puzzled, as she studied him through the haze of his strangled wheezing.
"Why do you smile in the face of death?" The fallen seraph's words dripped with genuine confusion. "Shouldn't you be afraid, little Genesis? Begging for your insignificant life?"
Despite the iron bars constricting his airflow, Genesis managed to hold her crimson stare without flinching.
"Because I fear nothing and no one," he growled through gritted teeth. "I can die fulfilled, having witnessed the veil finally part to reveal the occult truth I've craved my entire life. To be executed by the Lady of Sorrow's own hand...."
Something wild and incalculable flickered in Genesis' gaze then, hardening like forge-burnt steel.
"But if I should somehow be granted resurrection, I promise you this - I will return and devour you in kind, my insatiable seraphim. Mind, flesh and celestial essence alike."
The fallen lady's full crimson lips peeled back in a devilish smile that bordered on mocking. "What an incorrigibly stubborn child you are..." she purred, eyes glittering with something darker than amusement. "How...cute."
Her next words detonated like evil ordinance amidst the unearthly silence. "I am not this 'Lacrimosa' you prattle about. That Lady of Sorrows is nothing but smoke and myth."
That devilish laughter again - a sound like shattering scales scraping along Genesis' fraying sanity. "I am the Devil's Muse incarnate. The root essence of Calamity itself."
Despite the vise-grip still constricting his windpipe, Genesis somehow summoned the defiant rasp: "Then what manner of demon are you?"
Those full lips curved with condescending approval, as if lauding a dull-witted but obedient pupil. "Not just any demon, foolish boy. I am ageless, eternal - fashioned from the same primordial energies that catalyzed existence from the anti-roil of destruction."
She leaned closer, her words a slithering Promise caressing his fevered skin. "Life sprung from chaos and dissolution, not creation. We elder demons are the primal embodiments of that entropic essence. I represent Calamity itself - a force so all-consumingly ancient, it may predate even your pathetic 'god'."
Genesis felt the words reverberate through him like shockwaves, each one obliterating another incomprehensible layer of the fragile reality he thought he knew. Part of him recoiled as if scorched...while another part was indeed very excited for the upcoming events of his wicked future.
"Our...fake god?" he wheezed at last, buying time while his mind raced. "That's...impressive, Lady Calamity. An honor to make your accursed acquaintance.
May I ask, is there a way for a humble human like myself to negotiate with you, to be allowed to continue walking among men today, tomorrow, and in the years to come?"
A flicker of something almost warm ghosted across her expression at his blatant flattery. "So the little professor can turn a golden tongue when it suits him..."
Her hand fell away from his throat without warning, allowing precious air to scorch its way back into his abused lungs. Genesis doubled over, sucking down gulps that seemed to simultaneously revive and throttle him.
"No need for such grandiloquent pleas, I have no intention of exterminating your insignificant spark...yet. In fact, I'm feeling generous."
She moved with uncanny swiftness, grasping his jaw and wrenching his disoriented stare upwards until he was again hostage to those crimson depths. "I have already decided to spare you, captivated by your fearless demeanor or foolishness.
Anyway, for a human, a worthless creation, I like you, and so, here is my offer.
I shall grant you a gift—or a curse, depending on how you perceive it.
Despite the revelation held within the demoness's words, Genesis felt a sense of fascination rather than fear take root.
This Elder Demon offered not death, but a sinister gift- a perverse benediction in exchange for his mortal existence.
His lips curved into a smile utterly devoid of warmth or levity as he held Calamity's crimson stare hostage. "Well then...I must be one lucky son of a bitch." Each word seemed to reverberate through the chamber like the tolling of a cold church bell. "Your 'gift' is accepted with open arms, my lady."
Something indiscernible flickered behind those fathomless rubies. The seraph's gaze drifted, growing abstracted as though transfixed by some haunting dream only she could perceive. When next she spoke, her words slithered forth dripping with intimate disquiet.
"You remind me of someone, little Genesis..." She seemed almost unaware of giving voice to the unbidden musing. "An old lover, from lifetimes ago. He too was a smooth-tongued firebrand - all smooth words and serpentine bravado masking an alluring... vulnerability."
Her ruby stare lasered back into piercing focus, scrutinizing him with disturbing intimacy. Genesis couldn't shake the sensation that she peered straight through his physical shell, deep into the roiling psyche beneath. As if glimpsing some resonance, a haunting harmonic she couldn't quite put words to.
"He had hair like a blazing crown, just like yours," Calamity continued in a low, dreamy rasp. One clawed fingertip drifted up to toy with a stray lock of Genesis' auburn waves. "I suppose I've always harbored a particular...appreciation for pretty androgynous gingers."
That disquieting smile bloomed again, though this time it held the subtlest undercurrent of what might have been mistaken for melancholy in one not so ancient.
As if he'd inadvertently plucked some dusty, tormented string within her multifarious essence that she'd forgotten even existed until this moment.
Then the spell was broken as quickly as it had descended. The fallen seraph blinked once, slowly - her gaze instantly reacquiring its searing, piercing weight.
"How delightfully delusional you are, little Genesis," she purred in a voice that bordered on admiring despite its undercurrent of clear menace. "That arrogance of yours shall bring your doom or godhood."