“Jesse,” I hissed into the darkness, holding the torch out at arms length as I entered the chamber. I tried to train the light around the walls, or at least where I though the walls should be, in search of some huddled, shivering form that would be Jesse. But there was nothing there, no one replied.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked Frank, fully turning my back to the empty chamber.

I didn't see it coming, didn't even hear it until the force of a body launching itself into me at full speed took me off my feet. The torch came down with us, the flame licking along the skin of my cheek with searing heat before it fell from my hand and rolled away, sputtering pitifully against the stone floor. A high piercing shriek escaped my lips, not only from the pain of the burn but from the shock of being grabbed out of nowhere.

We hit the ground and the air was forced from my lungs, the weight of him above me pinning me down. His hands immediately sought out my throat, and there wasn't a chance for me to catch my breath before he began to squeeze, closing off my airway. I struggled against his grip. My nails raked bloody trails down the bare skin of his arms, yet he never seemed to feel it.

In the failing torchlight his face looked crazed, mouth twisted in a snarl and his brown eyes wide, almost as if in shock. All the while his mouth moved endlessly, repeating the same three words over and over.

“Let me out, let me out...”

It began as a whisper so that I could barely make out the words, and grew in volume with each repetition until it was ringing off of the stone walls, an echo adding its voice to the fray until I felt as if I was drowning in the words.

I tried to open my mouth and call out to him, beseech him to see me, to recognise my face, and most of all to let me go. But not a sound nor a breath could get past the crushing grip of his hands as they squeezed my throat.

Where in the hell was Frank, or Lucas? Why didn't they come to help me? This couldn't be how things were supposed to end. There was a ritual to complete, blood to be spilled, that's what Frank had said, he couldn't let me die like this, not if he wanted that power. Or was it all just bullshit and he'd led me here just so Jesse could kill me in some kind of twisted sense of poetic irony.

Black spots started to appear in front of my vision, and I made one last ditch attempt to make him let me go. My fingers were sticky with blood from where I had shredded his arms, and I smeared streaks of it across his face as I reached up and pushed my thumbs into his eyes.

He had to let me go. I hoped and prayed that he would let go before I felt his eyeballs pop; I really didn't want to blind him, not after everything I'd already put him through. I felt guilty enough as it was.

Jesse let out a wail of pain. His hands let me go and flew to his eyes, and I felt his weight suddenly lifted off of my chest. I rolled onto my side and let out a loud, hacking cough as I tried to inflate my lungs and suck in a breath. They had taken far too much punishment tonight, it felt like I needed some serious recuperation time, but of course that wouldn't really matter in the end. The body was about to die.

Frank set Jesse back on the floor. He had taken his sweet time about getting there, but I supposed I shouldn't have been surprised by that, it was what he did; and he would only claim he had helped in the end.

“Calm down now. You can't kill her yet, or you'll never see the back of this place,” he purred into Jesse's ear, keeping on hand clasped hard on his shoulder.

Jesse was blinking rapidly against the glow from Frank's torch that surrounded both of them in flickering light. Whether he was just blinking away my attack on his eyes, or some haze of madness I wasn't sure, but he did suddenly seem to see us for the first time. It was Frank he really noticed first – I was still lost in the shadows on the floor having not pulled myself up further than a sitting position – and I saw the fear descend over his face as he took in the sight of the demon that had dumped him in that place.

“You!” he exclaimed, stumbling away, eyes wide in fear as he escaped the demon's grip and almost tripped over me in his haste to move away. “You stay away from me, get away.”

“And I thought you wanted to get out of here,” Frank replied in a lilting tone that spoke of his amusement at the man's suffering.

I pushed myself back to my feet an dusted off my clothes, still coughing and spluttering against the pain and swelling in my throat, a part of me was kind of glad I wouldn't live long enough to see the extent of the bruising he'd managed to raise on my skin. Thank goodness I wasn't entirely human, else I think he may have crushed my windpipe.

In a move that made me jump, Lucas handed me back my torch that took on a new lease of life now it wasn't being stifled by the dusty floor. Where the hell had he been while all this was going on? I took it with a shake of my head, so much for him getting a grip on things.

“Jesse, calm down.” My voice cracked and croaked, sounding nothing like me at all, but I supposed I should be thankful even for being able to speak.

“Rayne? Is that you?” He frowned at me, squinting through the darkness to make out my face behind the flames. “You...you left me. You let him bring me here, how...why...I don't...what the fuck is going on?”

He was rambling, struggling to put together a coherent thought which worried me, would he really be in a fit kind of state to go through with this? Not that it would matter much to Frank I knew, but it was concerning. He was already struggling mentally after being kept prisoner in Hell - not to mention having killed his own brother-in-law, watching me kill his mother and discovering she had been possessed by a demon, then sending himself to prison – there was no way he was in a good frame of mind, and now to force him into a ritual sacrifice. How would his psyche cope with this sudden influx of power. His body wasn't used to it, his mind wasn't prepared for it, what kind of effect was this going to have on the triangle? Was Jesse going to end up being another loose cannon we were going to have to worry about.

Like I didn't already have enough to worry about, this was now going to be playing on my mind the whole while. More and more of this situation was just not boding well, and what was worst was that Frank seemed to be enjoying the whole thing immensely.

I sighed. “Yes, I let him bring you here, like he gave me much choice in the matter.” Frank grinned at me from across the chamber and I could almost see his shoulders shaking in silent chuckles. I scowled at him and turned my attention back to the petrified human who was still shaking in at the centre of the three of us.

I couldn't help but see the image of that for what it was, a preview of what was to come, only I needed to be the one in the middle, looking around in fear at those who surrounded me, only I would not be shaking in fear of the unknown. Oh no, I would know exactly what they were planning to do to me, and I think I would have every right to shake in fear.

“But I told you I'd come and find you, didn't I?” I asked Jesse, trying to reason with him, to get him to reach for that memory and give him some hope again that maybe this really could all work out in the end.

“You came for me. You've come to get me out of here, like you promised you would?” His voice took on an edge of such desperate hope, like I was his last saving grace, that it crushed me to see how his expression changed when Frank answered for me.

“Well, not exactly. We've something to do first, and believe it or not you're quite a key component in in it. So it's all quite simple really, do as we say, play your part, and then you can get out of this cesspit. How'd you like the sound of that?”

Suspicion was bright in his eyes, and I really couldn't blame him much. How many times had I told Jesse to trust me over the last few weeks, and doing just that had landed him here. Trust was not a concept we understood too well, and he had certainly learned the hard way how much pain trusting someone you really didn't know could bring.

“What do you mean, what do you need me to do?” he asked, hesitantly.

Frank opened his mouth, to make another smart remark no doubt, and I scowled at him. The last thing we needed was to make Jesse even more nervous and jumpy, he was skittish enough already what was there to stop him from bolting in the middle of the ritual if that damn Whisperer didn't stop goading him?

Lucas, it seemed, had finally taken notice of my snubbing him for his lack of action when Jesse attacked me, and of my previous words, and decided to take some action. He approached Jesse, took a grip on the man's trembling shoulders and forced him to meet his gaze.

“What do you think you're doing?” Frank asked in a low growl, whatever previous words he'd been planning on saying forgotten.

Lucas ignored him, and I had a feeling we both knew exactly what he was going to do. I'd known, deep down, that it was going to come to this. There was no way Jesse was going to be convinced to join in with the ritual, to take an aspect of demonic power into himself that would forever change him willingly. No amount of talking and reasoning would convince him, even when he was in a normal frame of mind and I felt bad, yet again for forcing him into something against his free will.

We were all supposed to be about free will in our jobs. Not interfering with a humans ability to make their own decisions, merely giving little nudges into the direction we wanted them to go. I had, of course, learned along the way that this was a load of crap. Everything we did, as small as it may have seemed, had an influence on their free will. They weren't free to choose at all, not really, Lucifer's big plan had only made it seem that way, all the talk and the guarantees managed to pass it off as a good plan, when really he was working his own intentions beneath the surface. More human souls meant more power, more influence amongst the Faces of Hell, all for the greater good of Lucifer himself. I was not surprised we would resort to this again in the end, but it was disappointing that to bring about a change, to bring back the concept of free will, we were going to have to take it away from a man, just one last time.

I directed the light of my torch further forwards, so that they could clearly see each other's faces, meet each other's eyes. The moment their gazes locked I saw the glassy, calm expression descend over Jesse's face, and I knew he had fallen easily under Lucas' hypnotic power. Frank appeared mildly surprised as he watched the other Hybrid work, perhaps he hadn't known exactly what Lucas' power was, a shock to see his own power mirrored inside a human body.

“I see they not only gave him the brains, but gave his power the clout at well, love. Aren't you disappointed.”

He just had to do it, had to take one last shot at me before the opportunity was taken away from him for good. I just shook my head and shushed him, I'd never actually seen Lucas use his ability on a human before, but I knew I didn't like to be distracted and assumed he would feel much the same.

“It's going to be fine, you're going to be fine,” Lucas said, in a slow, soothing tone as he held eye contact with Jesse. “Just remember to do everything I tell you and you'll get out of here in one piece, okay?”

A few heartbeats of time passed before Jesse nodded in agreement then shook his head as the waves of control slipped away from his mind. Lucas may not have a hold on the man's brain any more, but the influence of his words would remain. He might feel as if he was acting on his own, but if Lucas gave Jesse an instruction, I knew without a doubt that he would obey it.

Lucas smiled at me and I couldn't help but smile back. “Very good,” I muttered, accepting that he had indeed finally taken some control of proceedings.

“So how do we do this?” I asked, looking specifically to Frank for direction. He seemed to be the one who knew everything, as much as I didn't want him to have the power and control, he was the one who knew what we needed to do. It was a double-edged sword, I just had to hope I had armoured us well enough against it. “What exactly does this ritual consist of?”

“Ask pretty boy there, he's the one who snagged the details out of that file.” Frank looked sideways at Lucas and nodded, “Yes, I did notice you slip that into your pocket.”

“You...Why didn't you mention you'd found it?” I frowned at him, confused about why he'd tried to hide something like that from us, especially when it so obviously hadn't worked.

“I...I just thought I'd take it out of the file, keep it safe. Then if you changed your mind, or Malick found us or something...” Lucas shrugged. “It seemed like pretty dangerous information to land in the wrong hands so.” He shrugged again.

The excuse sounded lame, like he didn't really have a reason for stashing the paper. Either than or he didn't really want to reveal his real motives. I shook my head. I couldn't start thinking like that, not now, I needed confidence in the people around me, not more suspicions. Look on the bright side, he had the information we needed to do this thing properly and Malick didn't. Stick with the positives and we'd be okay, I just had to keep telling myself that.

“Okay, whatever, at least we've got it with us. Let's....let's just get this over with. I'm feeling more and more nervous with every minute and everything that happens, so let's get on with it before something really does change my mind.”

“So eager to die, love?” Frank asked, though I knew he was not looking for a reply as he cackled and went to Lucas to collect the parchment and look over the details of the ritual.

“Die? You're...she's going to die. Why? What is going on, you still haven't told me.” Jesse piped up again.

I looked to Lucas for help. Though I wanted it to be me that would comfort Jesse, that my words might console him and explain that this would actually make everything better, I knew it was unlikely he would believe a single utterance that came out of my mouth, not really.

“Yes,” Lucas said, reluctantly relinquishing the paper to Frank. “Put it this way, this will change everything and allow you to get out of this place. She will be dead, in a way, but it won't last. That's why we need your help to do this ritual so it doesn't stick, okay, so just follow the instructions then we'll be able to get you out of here.”

Yet again, carefully avoiding any mention of the sudden power he was likely to gain from his involvement was probably a good thing, though what might happen when he did gain the power still concerned me.

I took my place in the middle of the chamber, I didn't need to see the paper to know that was where I needed to be, surrounded at three corners by my triangle of cohorts. On my way past I gave Jesse a reassuring smile, hoping to make the both of us feel more at ease with what was going on. “It's okay, honestly. So are we doing this here?” I hoped the answer was yes, I really didn't want to go in search of somewhere more appropriate. I had visions of Malick bursting through the door to the Cells at any moment , we really needed to get on with proceedings.

“As good a place as any.” Lucas was the one to reply. “The ritual doesn't need to be done anywhere special, as long as blood is spilled and the right words are said, where we do it doesn't really matter. It's not really worth trying to find somewhere different, is it? Not now.”

“No, he's right. We'll do it here.” Frank said, passing back the parchment to Lucas, “You'll need to give the meatbag his directions.”

“Right, yes. Okay, well, Rayne stands at the centre. You need to stand on the left, by her shoulder, yes about there. I'm on the right, and the demon at the front.”

“Of course.” I smiled sarcastically as Frank took up his place with a saunter and a smile.

“So we take her hands,” Lucas continued, directing Jesse to copy his lead and the man obediently plucked my hand from my side and held it within his warm grip, although all the while a confused frown wrinkled his brow. He might be obeying his instructions but he was certainly questioning why he was doing those things without a second thought. “And Frank, you, well, you know what you've got to do now. He's the one who needs to recite the words of the Requiem and start the ritual. Okay Rayne?”

“Just...let's just get on with this. And stop asking me if I'm okay or I'm likely to eventually tell the truth.” I was beyond nervous now that crunch time had actually rolled around. I could feel myself physically shaking at the knees as I tried to stand tall and confident in the face of what was to come. I told myself it was just the cold down here, the darkness, despite being so close to the burning fires that roared beneath the bedrock of Hell, was a physically chilling place. But deep down I knew this was not wholly true.

Frank stretched out one long arm and placed his hand on my forehead, skin touching skin with all three aspects, though I felt far less silly holding Lucas and Jesse's hands than I did with Frank plonking his huge taloned fingers on my head. Was he having me on?

“You're kidding right? This feels ridiculous,” I said, making light to try and ease the tension that was filling my body, but it was a noise from outside in the tunnels that drew all of our attention and made my stomach clench tight and vomit rise in my throat. My gaze snapped up to meet Frank's pitch black eyes. “Get talking, and quick.”

I couldn't be sure what it was, but the commotion from other prisoners was not normal, they'd not reacted like that since we'd come down here, even as we traversed the tunnels with the torchlight in our hands. Something was up, and the only thing it seemed likely to be was Malick. He'd caught up with us.

Looking anxious for the first time Frank began to chant. Speaking in his low, dark voice that grated like he had a handful of gravel in his throat. The guttural language he spoke I had never learned to fluency, an ancient language long dead on the surface, kept alive only by demons, and even then I had rarely heard it used. Latin was generally the common go-to for rituals and incantations, this ritual must have been beyond old.

I picked out odd words as he droned through lines of the Requiem but much of it was indecipherable. Though being a Requiem I could presume what much of it implied, but unlike your standard Requiem I could feel something happening as the words were voiced aloud. A tingling of power poured from Frank's fingers as they touched the skin of my forehead and trickled down over my flesh like a waterfall, I shivered and felt Lucas and Jesse do the same as the power seeped from my hands into theirs.

The air around us grew thick and warm, pulsing with building energy as the words poured fourth and neared their conclusion. The sound out in the tunnels, though muffled through the pulsing of the power which sent my heartbeat pounding in my ears, were drawing nearer.

“Find them now! You need to stop them, they've kidnapped a very important prisoner, you need to stop whatever it is they're planning and quickly!” The voice was undeniably Malick's, though the heavy thud of footsteps that started to shake the floor as they advanced ever closer did not belong to him.

Come on, you've got to be nearly done by now, I quietly pleaded with Frank. What had things turned into when I was actually pleading away the time so that my death would come all that much quicker, but we were fast running out of chances to do this before Malick and his Berserkers found the right chamber and put a stop to things.

The chanting suddenly stopped and Frank took his hand off of my forehead. “Sorry for the lack of ceremony on this part, love. But we probably want to be done before the funeral party crashers arrive.”

The air still pulsed with power, I could feel the magic Frank's words had enacted alive in the air and knew that it would burst in a climax the moment my blood was spilled. I nodded my head, “Just do it.”

“You two ready?” It was the first time I had heard Frank referring to the other two as equals to himself, both on par with him in their important in that moment.

Jesse looked to Lucas in confusion, not knowing what his next instructions were, and Lucas nodded. “Yes, drop her hand now, and hold her by the shoulder, hold her still and wait for the blood, you have to get the blood on your hands.”

Jesse's eyes widened in horror as Lucas directed him, but his hand still grasped my left shoulder tightly and Lucas took hold of the right. Frank stepped up closer to me, offered a smile that wasn't in the least bit reassuring and said simply. “See you on the other side, love.”

Hopefully, was all I could think in the moment before his clawed hand, shining with long sharp talons flashed towards me.