Hosea cut a hell of a figure, even in this macabre funhouse of a mansion.
She moved through the gloom with the effortless grace of a panther, all lean lines and smoldering elegance.
First thing that grabbed your eye was that hair - rich auburn waves that seemed to glow like banked embers in the candlelight.
It tumbled in luxurious disarray around a heart-shaped face scattered with freckles that should've looked wholesome but didn't, not on her.
Those markings were more like cosmic starbursts frozen mid-supernova, mirroring the barely-contained intensity blazing behind her wide, kohl-rimmed eyes.
But the real showstopper was what she had draped over that lithe frame.
No mere dress, but some kind of dark fairy tale conjured to somber, decadent life through baroque velvets and ancient-looking lace.
Garnet and onyx seemed woven into the very fabric itself, letting it drink in the shadows, making the ornate patterns seem to writhe and pulse like something half-alive.
Hosea looked like she'd just tumbled out of a seventeenth-century oil painting and onto the dilapidated mansion's creaking floors - a vinegary memento mori to the ephemeral nature of youth and beauty.
Yet rather than coming across as some musty, dated relic, she imbued the elaborate get-up with such simmering sensuality and quiet power that it became the most natural thing in the world.
As impossible as it seemed, the outfit's gothic allure still played second fiddle to the peculiar amulet nestled in the hollow of Hosea's throat.
It winked and smoldered with each subtle shift of her body, a ruby so dark and radiant it didn't even seem to belong to this earthly plane of existence.
The ornate metalwork encasing the gem faired no better - an intricate lattice of symbols and precious filigree that made your eyes cross if you studied it too long, as if it contained some forbidden cipher or profane incantation canted in by the devil's own hand.
Small wonder the poor saps left in Genesis's flock had fallen under her incantatory sway so thoroughly in his absence.
Hosea carried herself with a gravity and poise that made her every measured gesture and murmured phrase seem heavy with import, weighted down by unspoken depths and shadowed mystique.
So when Genesis found her holding solemn court near the antechamber's crackling hearth, it was a tableau of unlikely succor amidst the bleak decay shrouding them all - Hosea's small cluster of worshipful admirers bathed in the hellish crimson glower blooming from the amulet's inky heart, the wavering flickers of flame to their backs making it seem as though the very air behind them smoldered.
She noticed him before anyone else, those twin celosias flicking up from beneath their sooty lashes.
For a moment, not a single muscle so much as twitched across those fine-boned features. Then the slightest of smiles played at one corner of her mouth, the kind of barely-there upturning that was as devouring as it was reserved.
Genesis must've been made of steeler stuff than most because he simply inclined his head and advanced into their little demimonde without faltering.
Hosea, for her part, rose languidly from her chair and slinked through the nervous opening created by her crowd, ruby eyes locked unerringly on the priest.
Up close, the resemblance to some hallucination made flesh was even more uncanny.
Those freckles truly were like a scattering of long-cooled cosmic gunpowder resting on skin as pale and luminescent as a full moon's glow.
Enough to make you feel just the slightest whisper of trepidation before she spoke, as though you'd just stumbled upon the Queen of Air and Darkness herself halfway through manifesting into this mortal coil.
"Father Genesis." Her voice was like a plume of smoke, silky but tinged with the barest edge of lingering embers. "So good of you to rejoin us at last."
She moved closer still, that hunter's smile deepening by fractional increments with each prowling step.
Genesis, damn him, stood his ground even as everyone else seemed to shrink inward on themselves.
"I trust my...assistance wasn't too disruptive in your absence?" One finely arched brow lifted a fraction as Hosea stopped just inside Genesis's personal space, near enough to share the same heated breath.
Up this heart-stoppingly close, new details made themselves known - the faint glimmer of some subtle sheen adorning those plump lips, the soft, floral scent of roses and attar woven through with a sharper, more exotic undercurrent of spice.
Like a Midwestern garden planted over an ancient Phoenician graveyard, begging you to lean in and inhale deeper still and to hell with the consequences.
To his credit, the priest didn't so much as sway or break locked eye contact.
If anything, his chin lifted just a degree or two, an almost imperceptible reassertion of his authority as shepherd to this wayward little flock.
"On the contrary," Genesis rumbled in that deep, sonorous rasp. "I'm grateful you stepped in to provide guidance and reassurance while I was...indisposed."
One side of Hosea's mouth quirked upwards in open amusement. "Yes, someone had to rein in all the little crybabies while their shepherd was away." She punctuated the barb with another slow sweep of her gaze up and down his cassock.
Rather than rising to return fire, Genesis merely arched an inquisitive brow of his own. "We are all the Lord's flock in the end, Hosea.
All sheep in equal need of a shepherd's care and protection in these...troubled times."
His stare drilled into her then, unblinking over the steel wool rasp of his next words. "Though I do wonder after the sort of...beliefs you graze in."
Hosea tipped back her head with a sudden, pealing laugh that seemed to reverberate off every dust-caked surface in the derelict hall.
Her eyes sparkled with unvarnished delight when she let it trail off into a few muffled chuckles.
"Oh, I don't worship anything or anyone, Father.
Not angels nor demons."
Another hair-toss, silken tresses slithering over her shoulders to fully expose the delicious stretch of throat and hollow where that blasphemous pendant dangled in its cradled bed of swan flesh.
"To me, life is merely a business arrangement. And I always..." Her gaze flicked back to his in a crimson blaze, holding him transfixed like a cobra preparing to strike. "...try to do business with whoever's paying the most at the time."
Then, incredibly, she reached out and trailed the very tips of her fingers along Genesis's jawline, a feather-light caress of ephemeral intimacy that landed with the force of a boxer's cross.
"What can I say?" Those sherry-tinted lips curved in a full, sinuous smile, every sculpted inch of that body pivoting to follow the trailing path of her touch. "For me, happiness is simply being on the winning side of whatever arrangement presents itself."
Sweet suffering Christ, but she was liquid sin given form in that moment - a succulent, forbidden indulgence that made your mouth water and your extremities go numb all at once.
The casual way she uttered that sentiment while caressing a holy man's face hit like a slap and a come-on fused into the same heated instant.
To his eternal credit, Genesis didn't flinch or retreat a single step.
If anything, his squared stance seemed to solidify like ancient bedrock as Hosea's fingertips continued their whisper-soft descent to his collarbone before falling away.
"The Almighty's path is the only true 'winning side', I'm afraid." His words were precise, and measured - a rebuke delivered without overt heat or condemnation.
"But He also blessed us all with the gift of free will, did He not?
The choice is yours which road you tread going forward."
Hosea merely hummed a contemplative note, neither agreeing nor refuting his point as she turned on one booted heel.
Over her shoulder, she flashed him one final look - part impish mischief, part simmering promise that made the tiny hairs at the back of his neck prickle.
"Oh, I intend to exercise that free will to its fullest extent, you can be assured." With a last teasing wink, she sashayed deeper into the mansion's gloomy bow.
Genesis watched Hosea disappear into the gloom, that sashaying gait of hers swallowed up by the enveloping shadows as if she were simply melting back into their inky embrace.
Even after she was gone from sight, her presence seemed to linger - an intoxicating afterimage of dark promises and unspoken challenges.
Letting out a slow breath, Genesis turned his attention inward, mind racing as he tried to fit this new, formidable piece into the increasingly elaborate puzzle surrounding them all.
Hosea's casual arrogance and unshakable poise didn't seem the put-on bravado of someone merely feigning nonchalance.
No, that supreme self-assurance ran bone-deep, almost...unnatural in its utter absence of even the faintest undercurrent of fear given their dire circumstances.
It was the sort of supernatural calm and composure Genesis had only witnessed in those who carried something powerful inside them - something that made them know, in their marrow, that they held all the strongest cards no matter what hand got dealt.
His brow furrowed as he replayed their terse exchange, analyzing it from every angle like a master gem cutter scrutinizing a raw diamond for any hidden flaws or fractural patterns.
Could it be?
Was Hosea something...more than a mere civilian swept up in this maleficent carnival of carnage?
Drawing in another fortifying breath, Genesis moved toward the tall windows overlooking the mansion's overgrown grounds.
He stared unseeing at the tangled bowers and creeping ivy slowly devouring the stonework, hands coming together before him as if in mute petition.
"That confidence of hers..." he murmured under his breath. "So defiant, so utterly untroubled in the face of evil personified.
Either the bravery of the profoundly foolish..."
His frown deepened as he weighed the carefully neutral words sculpting themselves in his mind. "...or the untouchable arrogance of one who fancies herself in possession of power the rest of us cannot even fathom."
Genesis's gaze slid sideways, rolling over the haggard group of tourists and unlucky souls still huddled together nearby.
So frail, so painfully vulnerable - the flickers of barely-contained panic never far from the surface in any of their expressions.
Like shivering sheep waiting for the wolves' jaws to finally close around their helpless forms.
And Hosea, that molten vision draped in sin with all the serene gravitas of a hunting lioness...was she in fact the predator they should fear most?
Was she the Joker?
A soul who'd awakened to find themselves bound to an Abyssal gift, their very existence both blessed and cursed by powers no mortal was ever meant to wield??
Or both? Maybe a witch? Or even worse!
She was the demoness disguised as a normal human being.
His hand strayed automatically to the pocket containing his ever-present notebook as fresh doubts and permutations blossomed.
For perhaps the Joker and these elusive 'gift holders' weren't even connected at all.
What if this demented clown prince was merely some lost, pitiable wretch who'd traded their soul for what they perceived as otherworldly boons and blessings?
A hopeless, hollowed-out husk craving the favor of those depraved demonic entities Genesis had read about in the ancients' ominous accounts - malign forces that would just as easily devour their blinkered supplicants as grant them dark gifts and profane revelations.
The possibilities were infinite...
Jolting upright with a grimace, Genesis laid on a chair close to the fireplace and started overthinking per usual.
Enough waffling in indecision - this night had already claimed enough innocent lives on its stained marble altar.
If he had any hope of breaking the cycle, of solving this diabolical series of riddles and laying these evil deities to their overdue rest, he needed to shed more light on the entire danse macabre unfolding here.
Which meant tracking down the one central player who always seemed to be dancing just on the periphery, her presence both undeniable and utterly inscrutable.
"She'll have answers," Genesis growled under his breath as his long legs carried him deeper into the mansion's sepulchral corridors. "Even if I have to drag them out of her by the roots of that bloody mane, so help me God..."
The others could cower and mewl together if it brought them comfort.
He had bigger battles to fight, and greater evils to confront.
Hosea and her unfathomable secrets were simply the first, but certainly not the last, gauntlet to be run if he had any hope of becoming the light that could finally pierce and purge this shrouding pall of darkness.
Death, after all, was an inevitability for them all - best meet it head-on as a sworn soldier of the Lord rather than cowering from its cloaked approach.
Overhead, Genesis could've sworn he heard the first distant rumbles of thunder echoing across the valley, harbingers of some approaching storm that would either wash this land clean or drown it in black, billowing waves of the purest oblivion.
Either way, he had preparations of his own to make.
Let the night bring whatever fresh pandemonium it would.
He would meet it on his feet with teeth bared in defiance.
Genesis smiled to himself and thought, "No one can deceive me, not even The Great Deceiver himself."