The chandeliers' sickly glow lent the hall an atmosphere of decay, as if the light itself had turned rancid and viscous. Elongated shadows stretched like pooling malice across the faded grandeur of the Victorian trappings.
Genesis's footfalls carried him towards a defiant blaze of pink amidst the gloom.
She stood apart from the naive, cowering flock, a scout daring the shepherd's disapproval.
As he neared, she came into sharp relief - her bubblegum hair twisted into two girlish pigtails, offset by the single white slash bisecting her visage.
An eyepatch, pristine against the pale, flawless porcelain of her cheek.
From the neck down she was the sugary imagining of every Victorian patriarch's wet dream - a lurid burlesque fantasy sheathed in pink ruffles and lace.
Yet the exposed eye burned with impolite defiance, brimstone glimpsed in the honey-hued iris.
"Why, hello there." Genesis allowed the words to unspool with a viperous false earnestness as he drank in every contradiction that was her form. "And what delicious appellation do you favor, my dear?"
Her smile was all teeth and challenge as she extended her hand - not the coy, dipped offering of a society belle, but a blunt masculine jab.
"Jezebel," she purred in a voice meant for the boudoir rather than polite company. "Though I suspect you've gathered I'm no blushing repentant come to trade sugar-coated devotion to God."
Her grip was surprisingly firm as her palm caressed his with deliberate suggestion.
Up close, Genesis could make out the faint weal of scar tissue marbling the delicate bridges of her knuckles.
"Oh, I can preach your Gospel rites..." Jezebel leaned in until the suffocating smell of rosewater bathed his senses. "But my faith's long since turned into something less..." Her tongue flicked over her lower lip, "... god-fearing."
Those uncurtained eyes held his gaze in obvious challenge, both strong and coquettish.
"You can Keep your prayers and judgments, Father. I want no part of your vengeful God - particularly one who'd gladly dine upon His 'lambs' for want of a suitable footrest."
She released his hand but remained close enough for Genesis to feel the whisper of her exhalations. "We're but disappointments in the making, you and I. Born damned by the mere fact of our existence in His heartless, vast cosmos."
When her teeth found her bottom lip once more, Genesis caught the livid flare of scar tissue - a wound that had been worried into a deeper, more profound existential insult. Just visible beneath the fall of her corset, the skin blossomed with the faintest tracery of self-loathing.
"Your move, padre." There was a mocking emphasis on the honorific as it spilled from her. "Convince me your Scripture holds any authority over one the Almighty has plainly condemned as an unwanted mistake."
Genesis allowed a fractional pause, as he studied the flashes of emotion flickering across her face - ironical amusement, an upwelling of bygone pain, a shard of curiosity piercing through her cynical veneer.
"God's vision is not so narrowly proscribed, sweet scorpion." The sweet talk dripped from his tongue like borrowed honey as he leaned in conspiratorially. "His image reflects not just your angelic guise, but the subtle shading of delicious wickedness veiled just beneath."
She started at that, the barest flinch quickly subsumed as Genesis's finger traced the plunging neckline of her corset.
"Righteousness is subjective, forged in the inferno of our moral certitudes." His voice softened to a velvet tone against the helix of her ear. "The Good Book is a mere tuning fork, vibrating at the frequency of our truest, most profane harmonies."
Jezebel shivered against him, a mannequin pushed into sentient enslavement by his Svengali whispers.
Genesis could taste the perfume of her succumbing spirit, intoxicant and thick on his tongue - an intimacy few savored with such carnal intensity.
"Judgment is a blade best wielded by those with the stomach for its meticulousness." His fingers slid along her jaw, tipping her face until their gazes locked in an obscene parody of a lover's caress.
"And you strike me as possessing an uncommon... resolve, hellcat. A fire that consumes all it touches in ravenous ecstasy."
For a prolonged instant, Jezebel seemed calm on the razor's edge of decision.
Then her tongue flashed, wetting those full lips with a deliberate and unmistakably lustful flaunt.
Her fingers found the pockets of his cassock, worrying the coarse fabric in talon-like hooks as she pulled him infinitesimally nearer.
"Perhaps penance is in order after all, Father." Her breath scorched his cheek as she matched the low rasp of his tone. "Though my affirmations may take... unorthodox form compared to your usual supplicants."
She then left a fleeting sting in their wake as she extricated herself from his grasp.
Smoking eyes dared him to follow as Jezebel swayed towards the hall's mouth, her pace that of a scorpion calling its prey.
"My chambers await, good padre. Let sweet repentance be our binding rite this unholy eve..."
And so, they traced this lightless labyrinth of a mansion.
Each footfall seemed to issue from the pitted limestone - a pulse of sound that dissipated into the silence before the next leaden step could ripen into an echo.
Genesis felt the weight of that silence pressing on him.
Only Jezebel's measured tread beside him rent the gloom with a metronome - one, two, one, two in perfect tempo.
He risked a sidelong look at her implacable profile; chin extended, lips compressed into a thin slash of determination.
Her underskirt whispered in sinuous sways with each rolling pivot of her hips.
Her path veered to the left and he followed without checking the instinctive urge to reverse course.
"Sir Genesis." The guide sliced through the crumbling realm of his reverie with an almost physical shake. "I love your new mask. It suits you far better than the old.
Abel stood framed in a doorway up ahead, a smirking satyr poised on the precipice of fresh corruptions.
The backlight reduced his features to lean slashes and inkblots until Genesis yearned to seize a stick of charcoal and flesh out his contours in scribbly strokes.
"This is no mask, good sir Abel." He mustered a genial smile, though he felt it strain the cords of his neck until the muscles took on the consistency of a sun-baked hide. "I've endeavored to wear the cloth of simple piety and let go of my wanderings from the path of righteousness.
It's time I embraced the true self."
Abel's barking loud laugh shattered the hushed intimacy.
"Righteousness?? Piety??" He swiped away phantom tears of laughter. "Oh Sheperd, your stage is masterfully crafted... even the most gifted of actors would struggle to match such truthlikeness in their deceits."
He returned the smile, though his lacked any trace of warmth.
"You wound me with such accusations." A pause as he regarded the man's unconcerned amusement. "But no matter, I understand if you prefer to hold your own counsel. I'm content to let my role do the moralizing on my behalf."
With a mocking bow, he guided Jezebel past the silently appraising sentry posted in the doorway's mouth.
As they continued their passage, he leaned in close enough for her cosmetic's cloying fragrances to scorch his sinuses.
"What a symbolic figure, speaking in riddles.
No matter."
Jezebel aimed a sidelong glance at him through her remaining eye's glinting lash.
In the pale sweep of her throat, he caught the rhythmic bobbing of her pulse fluttering just beneath the skin like a moth's crippled wingbeats.
The rest of their journey devolved into an echoing hush that Genesis filled with the rehearsed possibilities - could she be an Abyssal Gift holder?
He could sense the spread of the game board with each corridor, the chess pieces aligning for that final gambit to commence...
At last, they reached the chambers in this vast mansion.
As Jezebel signaled him into the quiet femininity of gorgeous silk and dried leaves, Genesis dabbed his brow with the sleeve of his cassock.
He settled into a wing-backed chair and laced his fingers atop his stomach, regarding Jezebel with a paternal indulgence offset by the implacable steady of his investigation.
She returned his unwavering survey in kind - a single radiant eye shadowed by the singed strip of leather strapped above the bridge of her nose.
This dance, so far beyond the old ceremonies and flamboyance, already carried the quiver of high stakes and unseen plots.
Genesis finally broke the silence, going straight to the point.
"Well, my penitent?
How shall you unleash the demons that plague your soul upon my flock this day?"