Why yes, I'll take your soul

Vaggie had learned the hotel’s rhythms. The little patterns that made everything function. She had poured everything she had into making Charlie’s dream a reality, sanding down rough edges, stepping in when Charlie’s optimism met Hell’s teeth. It was the least she could do.

Lately that rhythm had changed. Changed in a way that doesn’t quite fit. 

Every night, Charlie disappeared to help with “Overlord Politics” with Alastor. At first, it had seemed perfectly natural. Someone had to handle that mess, and Vaggie had been proud of Charlie for standing up to Alastor and insisting she be part of it. Charlie had squared her shoulders, put on that determined smile, and said she wasn’t going to let him decide things alone anymore. But night after night, Charlie slipped away, looking nervous. The set of her jaw got tighter. Her smile looked more like something held in place. And when she came back, later and later, she was quiet. Tight-lipped about what, specifically, she was doing. She deflected questions, said it was “boring overlord junk,” promised she’d fill Vaggie in another time, then changed the subject.

Charlie had never had a problem sharing with Vaggie before. Never had a problem involving her in her work. They’d planned the hotel together, argued about paint colors, discussed every guest, every risk. 

Of what, exactly, she wasn’t entirely sure. Only that something didn’t add up. Maybe she was worrying over nothing. Maybe she was being overprotective and paranoid. But Alastor was a snake who’d ensnared Charlie the first chance he got, and Vaggie trusted him as far as she could throw him.

That’s why she was currently knocking on Alastor’s door. She was going to get some answers. 

The door opened.

Alastor stared down at her, filling the doorway. He wore one of those smiles that looked perfectly polite at first glance but somehow was also telling you to go fuck yourself. His eyes slid over her, amused and disinterested all at once.

“And to what do I owe this disturbance, dear Vagatha?” He asked.

“What are you doing with Charlie?”

One brow ticked up. “Pardon?”

“Cut the crap!” she snapped. “You know what I'm talking about. What are you doing every night?”

Alastor’s smile widened by a fraction, “My dear, your princess has been quite insistent on forcibly inserting herself into matters that do not concern her. I’m not dragging her into anything.”

He paused, then stepped closer, closing some of the space between them. His finger tapped her chest, a quick, precise little jab.

“Now, if her absence bothered you,” he added lightly, “then you can try to convince her to give up this fruitless endeavor of hers. I would appreciate it. It’s my business, not yours.” He tilted his head, mock-thoughtful. “And not even hers, frankly. She’s lucky I’ve allowed her to participate at all.”

‘Allowed’

Heat flared in Vaggie’s chest.

“Listen here, fuckwad!” she shouted, jabbing a finger up into his face in return. “You don’t allow her to do anything. This is her hotel. You’re lucky she even tolerates your presence here.”

Alastor started laughing. Wild laughs that had him throwing his head back and going cock-eyed. The polite act peeled away, leaving something rawer and much less human.

“How quickly you forget,” he said when the laughter died, his tone dropping into something colder. He leaned in until they were a hair’s breadth apart, close enough that Vaggie could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin. “I̶ ̸o̴w̶n̴ ̵h̴e̵r̶.̴” As he said it, the lights overhead flickered.

Vaggie’s stomach twisted in on itself. This. This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted him in the hotel in the first place. He wasn’t just an asshole who liked to hear himself talk. He was a psychopath, and he would only bring pain and misery wherever he planted himself.

Vaggie forced herself to breathe through the nausea and met his eyes without blinking. “Maybe we should see what Lucifer thinks about that.” She retorted. 

She’d love to see Lucifer put him down. Smite him. Tear that grin off his face and wipe every trace of satisfaction out of his eyes. The only reason she’d kept the deal a secret for this long was because Charlie had begged her to. Because Charlie had looked at her with those earnest eyes and asked her to trust her, to trust that she knew what she was doing.

But if Alastor was using the deal to abuse her… Vaggie would do what needed to be done.

“Trust me dear, you won’t appreciate the c̶̩̺̭̎̆o̷̘̜͇͒̕n̸̟̆̈́ŝ̷̼̫̔é̴̮̗͎͒̕q̷̥̟̣̉ū̶̺̣́̈e̸͇̥͂n̸̨͚̬̿́͝c̵̼̍̑́e̸̢̍̋́s̵͓̍̓ of such an action. Charlie’s soul is potent, but if I needed to fight the king of hell…” His grin sharpened, going thin and hungry. A line of blood slid slowly down from the corner of his mouth to his chin.  “Well I might be forced to start another broadcast.”

Alastor finished penning the last sigil and lifted his hand, careful not to smudge the fresh ink. The blueprints for a ritual circle lay on his desk in a tight, complicated sequence. Nested symbols and interlocking lines that take a keen mind to design.

His first idea had merit. Flood his own soul with the violent backlash of sacrificed sinners and burn the celestial filth out from the inside. Maybe, if he’d done it earlier, when he still had the strength to hold himself together, it would’ve worked.

But as he was now? His frayed soul would be torn asunder by strain. At best, he’d lose control and the rot would persist, killing a weakened Alastor.

Fortunately, Alastor was a master of the occult. He didn’t have one plan. He still had ideas. More than that, he had options. 

Instead of flooding himself with power, what if he removed himself from the equation entirely? What if his magic could be separated from his flesh. Stored in a vessel outside his body, left there long enough to be cleansed before returning to him? ‘Or desecrated I suppose’ he thought wryly.

He could slowly siphon his power into the vessel, bleeding it out in small, controlled amounts. Slowly enough that the rot embedded in it would not overwhelm the new container, which, coincidentally, would also reduce the strain on him.

A small fraction of angelic taint would be cleansed, and over the course of several days, his power would be rid of that wretched light. Then, once it was purged, Alastor could rip his magic back out of the vessel in one decisive pull and wield it unimpeded once more.

The idea wasn’t dissimilar to one of those fancy “dialysis” machines that showed up after his death. Cycle the blood out, run it through a filter, return it. Alastor wasn’t fond of all that frivolous new technology, all those blinking lights and humming boxes, but this was only conceptually similar, and therefore acceptable. He gave it a pass.

Your average sinner wouldn’t last. Not with the kind of raw power Alastor carried. Power that rivaled an archangel. Pouring even a moderate portion of his magic into some pathetic, low-tier demon would shred them from the inside. And when they popped, that backsurge of power would slam straight back into Alastor’s already fraying control. The rot would have a perfect opening to dig in deeper, riding the recoil straight through his defenses.

He tapped the edge of the parchment with one finger, considering.

Only an overlord with real substance would have the necessary capacity to hold what he needed to offload without breaking under it. Someone sturdy enough to endure the weight of his magic for days at a time, while it was being steadily stripped of its contamination.

Clicking his tongue, Alastor forced his attention back onto the circle. Back onto the lines and symbols of the occult, the way the outer ring connected to the inner sigils, the placement of the containment runes that would keep his power from seeping out prematurely. He adjusted a mark here, added a stabilizing glyph there, refining the design one stroke at a time.

And like that, the hours slipped away.

Alastor was pulled from his work by a knock on his door.

‘Has it been that long?’

He’d been fully absorbed, the way he always was when he was hunting an answer. When the world narrowed down to symbols, structure, and control. 

His previous plan was, unfortunately, not going to work.

The only Overlords he knew could survive hosting the sheer might of his magic were Rosie and Zestial. Rosie was… not an option. And Zestial, well Zestial was too powerful. Even at his prime Zestial would be an engaging fight—well no, his prime was just after making the deal with Charlie and before battling Adam. But even before this sanctimonious rot had gotten a hold of him, Zestial would have put up a fight. Alastor couldn’t subdue him as he is now.

He had briefly considered Lucifer as a vessel, then dismissed the idea almost immediately. Lucifer was a seraphim, angelic by nature, carrying power that was cleaner, sharper, and far more potent than anything even Adam had been capable of. Even if he could subdue Lucifer—and that alone was laughable—there was no guarantee the magic would come back taint-free. More likely, it would return worse.

Charlie, on the other hand… Charlie was more feasible.

She could certainly handle his power. She was distinctly demonic in nature, even if she had the potential to manifest more angelic powers.

The problem was her power.

More specifically, her power made up a good deal of his power now. As long as he owned her soul, he couldn’t simply divest his magic into her. It would be like trying to fill an aquifer with water from the well.

Still, if things prove dire, it would be easy to use the deal to subdue her before releasing her and using her as a vessel.

The knock came again, and Alastor grumbled under his breath before pushing himself to his feet to answer it.

He opened the door to find Charlie waiting as usual, hands clasped behind her back. She wore the same tender smile that warred with the guilt in her eyes.

If there was one silver lining to this whole ordeal, it was how broken up she was about her repeated betrayals of Vaggie. If he had simply ordered her to betray Vaggie outright, Charlie would have resented him. She would have pulled against her chains, strained with every step. But this? With his wound, with the visible damage chewing through him, she placed little to no blame at his feet, which meant she felt all the worse when she lied to Vaggie. It was the one source of joy for him in these trying times.

He let out a long, theatrical sigh. “Must you continue to disturb me while I work?” he asked, laying a weary inflection over the words. It was important to stay in character. “Come in.”

He stepped aside, letting her pass, and as she moved into the room, he noticed an energy pervading Charlie. She still had that familiar look of conflicting guilt and determination that she always had here,but layered over it was something brighter.

Eagerness.

Excitement.

Charlie was subtly bouncing on her feet. Like she had some juicy piece of gossip that she absolutely had to share.

he almost skipped into his room. As he closed the door behind her with a soft click, he asked, “What has my little princess so excited?” He punctuated the question with a light pat on her head, causing her to blush in embarrassment.

“I was in the library, trying to see if I could find anything useful, and… I did it!” Charlie burst out. She actually jumped in place and clapped repeatedly.

Alastor just stared at her. He was excited by the prospect, even a tad hopeful, but he had his doubts. His own research had turned up nothing but dead ends, and Charlie… Charlie wasn’t what he would call studious. She was earnest, determined, and stubborn, but not scholarly. Still, he would hear her out.

He gestured with an open hand for her to continue.

“So, as I was saying,” Charlie rushed on, words tumbling over each other. “I was in the library, reading everything I could find about angels, demons, or cosmology, and one thing led to another and I ended up asking Dad—”

A whirring scream tore through the room as lights overhead flickered sharply, shadows stuttering across the walls. Their deal forbade her telling others. Unfortunately, it didn’t fix stupid.

Charlie flinched and threw her hands up defensively,”Okay! Okay, I know how that sounds,” she blurted, panic edging into her voice. “But I didn’t tell him anything. I promise.”

She swallowed, shoulders bunching, then forced herself to slow down. “He saw me reading and asked what I was doing, so I told him I was worried the angels might come back and wanted to see if we had anything about treating angelic wounds. He believed me. He taught me how.”

Alastor let out a low chuckle. He honestly didn’t know whether to be furious that Lucifer, of all people, had ended up being his salvation, or whether to revel in the irony. Either way, it made his teeth itch. He looked back to Charlie, grin changing to something almost proud. “Good girl,” he praised.

Her blush deepened, her gaze dropping for a second before she rallied.

“So,” Alastor continued, “what is this fabled solution to my problem?”

Charlie rambled on excitedly, how the rot latched onto magic, how it could be tricked, how thin threads of power could be woven through it and then yanked free, dragging the contamination with them. She talked fast, animated hands flailing with enthusiasm.

It sounded tedious. It sounded unpleasant. But it also sounded feasible.

Alastor felt his shoulders slump in relief despite himself, the tension bleeding out of him. He would continue his own research, obviously. He wasn’t foolish enough to stake his survival entirely on this, no matter how promising. But it seemed that his greatest problem at present had finally found a workable answer.

He moved to sit down in his armchair, already angling toward it, but Charlie interrupted him with a quick, nervous, “Oh, uhm—”

He paused, looking back at her.

“Because this takes a lot more precision and control than just pouring my magic into you,” she said, twisting her fingers together, “I can’t spread my reach too far. I’ll need to touch your wound. You’ll need to take off your shirt.” The last part came out sheepishly, her gaze darting briefly away.

Alastor paused.

It was sensible. 

Honestly… he might prefer it this way.

He wasn’t particularly fond of disrobing in front of others, even partially. He was a private man. But it might be more tolerable than the sickening handholding they’d been doing up until now.

Alastor sat at the foot of his bed. The armchairs weren’t really conducive to something like this. The armrests would interfere. So he sat at the foot of it, back straight, shoulders squared. 

He slipped off his jacket first. The fabric slid off his shoulders smoothly, and for a moment the cooler air hit his skin in a way that made him feel exposed. He folded it neatly by his side.

Then he unbuttoned his shirt. His gaze flicked to Charlie, who was politely feigning disinterest. She was bad at it. 

He peeled the shirt off his shoulders and folded that too, placing it atop his jacket in a tidy stack. His chest felt exposed, the golden veins marking him out in stark relief against pale skin.

Charlie hovered a few steps away, nervous energy practically vibrating off her. Her eyes stayed locked on the wound as she shuffled over to him. This was the first time she’d seen it since the radio tower, he mused. Since she’d dragged him back from the brink.

She swallowed once. Then again.

“Okay,” she murmured, presumably to herself. “Okay. I can do this.”

Charlie stopped directly in front of him, looking contemplative. She hesitated, weight shifting from one foot to the other, then made a decision.

Slowly, gently, she swung one leg over and straddled his lap.

Alastor went perfectly still.

Alastor expected her to sit beside him. That would’ve made sense. That is what a normal person would have done.

He had expected her to sit beside him. That would have made sense. That was what a normal person would have done.

His spine locked. His hands didn’t move. Even his breathing narrowed, becoming tight and controlled, measured out in careful increments.

He stared at her like a deer caught in headlights and hated himself for the comparison even as it fit.

His brain catalogued everything automatically. The soft silk of her pajamas where they brushed against him. The warmth of her body through his pants. The faint scent of her—lilac layered over ozone and sulfur, sweet and sharp at the same time—curling into his lungs as she settled her weight.

Charlie’s face was locked in concentration. Her brows furrowed as she stared at his chest with intense focus, like she could make him better through sheer force of will. Which he supposed, she could, to an extent. 

By the time he managed to drag his thoughts back into order, Charlie’s hands were already on his chest.

‘Warm.’

Her palms settled carefully, flat on either side of the wound. Her fingers splayed, the tips of her index fingers barely grazing the damaged flesh. It wasn’t weeping, fortunately. He was in better shape tonight than he had been before.

Alastor’s jaw tightened. He hated how intimate it felt. He didn’t know what to do with himself. What to do with his eyes, his hands, anything. He started to fold his arms in his lap before realizing there was a Charlie in the way. Should he rest his hands on her thighs? No. Absolutely not. That was ridiculous. Eventually he settled for planting his palms on the bed behind him and leaning back slightly.

Charlie drew in a deep breath, steadying herself. “I’m… I’m going to start.”

It didn’t crash the way it had before. This was no violent surge. No tidal wave. He felt it instead thread through him, forming a loose lattice inside the gold, weaving through the contaminated channels.

It made his stomach twist. Not from pain, though there was some, but from the sense of violation. 

As Charlie focused harder, her brows furrowed further, carving a deeper line between them. Her hands tensed against his chest, fingers digging in just a little as she followed whatever she was feeling under his skin. Then she leaned forward, shifting her weight against him.

Alastor still hadn’t decided what the proper thing to do with his eyes was. He didn’t want to look away and advertise discomfort, so he’d settled on staring straight ahead, blankly, over Charlie’s shoulder.

And now, with her leaning forward, his vision was completely dominated by her breasts. Two mounds of perfectly white flesh filling his line of sight.

It was downright scandalous.

How, exactly, had he managed to end up in this situation? Sitting half undressed on his own bed while the Princess of Hell straddled him, staring at her chest.

Alastor wanted to avert his gaze. It was the gentlemanly thing to do. More importantly, Alastor had no interest in the pleasures of the flesh. He didn’t care to debase himself so. This was nothing but proximity and necessity dressed up in the worst possible staging.

He tried to look away.

He couldn’t.

Something inside him stirred like a reflex he’d forgotten he still had. A strange but familiar hunger crawled up through his gut, a burning, unclear desire. Something he only has a vague recollection of ever feeling before.

He went rigid. His claws shredded through the bedding as his hands balled up into fists. A sharp grunt of shock slipped from his lips, and his eyes squeezed shut.

Charlie jerked back a fraction, “Sorry!” she said quickly, “I didn’t mean to—are you okay? I’ll be more careful.”

Alastor opened his eyes. She was staring at him, concern and guilt marring her face. Above all else, she looked tired. Sweat pooled at her creased brow, and she was breathing hard, not quite panting but close. Clearly, this was a more strenuous exercise than either of them had anticipated.

“We can’t all be good with our hands,” he remarked wryly, lifting his right hand and waggling his fingers.

But she hadn’t hurt him.

Alastor had made a mortifying, shocking discovery. Something that mired his mind in a slow, sinking horror.

He was aroused.

He had an erection.

For the first time in who knows how long—at least the first time since he’d wound up in Hell—his body had decided to betray him.

Alastor took a few deep breaths and forced himself to center. 

In. Hold. Out.

It was natural, he told himself, even if it was debased.

In. Hold. Out.

Charlie was an objectively attractive woman, even he could admit that.

In. Hold. Out.

He was sick. He was weak. She was straddling him, hands on his bare chest, easing his pain with careful warmth while he sat there half exposed.

That was all it was.

Soon, he assured himself, it would be a distant memory.

Soon, he’d be healed, standing tall again, and none of this would matter.

Fortunately she was positioned in such a way that she couldn’t feel it.