"The door's locked."

"Oh of course it is." I rolled my eyes and sighed in frustration. Yet another obstacle in our way.

It was probably an observation that didn't need to be made, we should have known the door would be locked as soon as we got there. There were all manner of magical and supernatural locks and guards at Malick's disposal, but there was nothing quite so simple as a few mundane security measures thrown on top. Of course the door would be locked. Luckily I knew a way around that.

"Stand back." I took a deep breath, summoning the power was easy now, but I needed to throw a lot of force behind it if I had any hope of opening the door. I could do it, I knew I could do it, the splintered remains of the door to the Shadow Cells was evidence enough of that, I just had to believe that I could summon that kind of power.

The power rippled and tingled down my arms to the tips of my fingers, but I held it in, letting it build and build until the force of it was like a searing burn in the palms of my hands. When I couldn't hold it in any longer I thrust it outwards, towards the door with both hands, all the while envisioning the effect I wanted to happen inside my head.

There was a loud back as the force of my will hit the door. It didn't explode quite like the Shadow Cells door, I don't know why that's what I had been going for perhaps it was made better, or was newer, or Malick had any number of other enchantments protecting his own personal corner of Hell. But it still had the desired effect. The lock and hinges cracked, the metal snapping and breaking as the door was forced inwards. It moved a few feet into the room where it toppled over and smashed through a table that had been strewn with paper.

"What the Hell is going on! Jesus, Rayne, what the fuck are you doing here, are you trying to kill me? Because y'know if you are you're going to have to try a lot harder than dropping a door on my head."

"Really? That's what you're leading with?" I shook my head. Perhaps there was some residual pieces of the Fury's power still lingering in my body leaving my temper short and my patience stretched to breaking point, but I wasn't in the mood for playing these pointless word games with him. "You sound like a bad imitation of a super-villain. Give it a rest."

Lucas and I entered the room and I pulled off another swift bit of telekinesis to prop the door back in its place – the fading fury still in my veins made the movement easy I barely even had to think about it. The door would never hang properly without some new hinges but at least it was out of the way, the table on the other hand was beyond saving, I did however scoop up the loose pages that had fluttered across the floor and folded them into the pocket of my borrowed jacket for future reference. They might be irrelevant rubbish, but if they were in Malick's personal room, they might just have something interesting on them.

I was aware of Jesse watching me curiously. Surprisingly he'd taken my advice and had shut up, the verbal power play wasn't going to fly with me right now, and the fact that he'd taken my words on board actually gave me some hope that he might be responsive to what we had to say.

"So why are you here then? Weren't things clear enough the last time we spoke?"

"No, they were clear. You've taken up with Malick, he'll do anything he can to try and make sure we don't succeed in our plans. But it's not going to work, they've messed with this whole prophecised destiny too many times already, and still it keeps on working its way back around. So, you can either realise this now and come with us without issue, or we'll just have to force you out of here and find a way to make you see sense."

"Oh, straight to the point, well I suppose that is a refreshing change coming from you."

The sarcasm didn't suit him. Sure he'd had his moment back when he was a regular, normal human, before my influence on his life had corrupted him beyond recognition, but this was something new and cold, and I could see Malick's fingerprints all over it from a mile away. I knew he'd changed, we'd all changed and perhaps it would not be for the better of us as individuals, but we were all about the greater good, right? The big picture was always more important, there was never any time to be selfish and all of his wallowing in bitterness and resentment was nothing but selfish.

"Isn't it. Unfortunately not all the changes around here have been for the good. Now what do you say, are you going to willingly leave this prison Malick had you locked in, or are we going to have to drag you out kicking and screaming?"

"He's not holding me prisoner."

Lucas scoffed, making a sound for the first time since we entered the room. "Oh really, not a prisoner. So the locked door and swarm of Furies guarding the corridor outside were what? Coincidence?"

"No, they were obviously there to stop you lot bursting in here."

"Hmm, and look how effectively that worked. No, if he wanted to stop us, Malick would have been more clever than that, they were set up to keep you in, that much is clear." I watched Lucas roll his eyes in disdain, I already knew he had little time for Jesse – he had little time for most humans in general really – and now he couldn't see him for anything more than a pretender. Like a reverse of the old cliché, a sheep wearing wolf's clothing, a human pretending to be something much more deadly than it really is.

"Well unlike all of you, he's actually been helping me. Do you so easily forget that it was you, and that huge monstrosity that brought me here to be a prisoner in the first place."

I sighed, "No that...I didn't have a choice then and you know that. We didn't even know everything that was going on when Frank dragged you here, now we do, and Malick is right smack in the middle of all of it." I took a deep breath to try and stop myself from ranting or shouting or doing something else rash, I had to try and stay calm.

"Look, this is how things are. Lucifer wants to take sole control of Hell, which to put it bluntly is bad they're a collective of power for a reason. And if that wasn't bad enough, Malick cottoned on to the idea and think he might quite like to stop being Lucifer's dogs body and have all that tasty power for himself, and he'd quite like to use you for his own ends. You won't benefit from this arrangement, Jesse, not in the slightest."

I was summarising mightily, but I knew there was no way Jesse could fully comprehend the implication of what was going on around us. He wasn't born in Hell, he was human – or had been until very recently – and had been brought up with all the stories and legends that came with various religions and history, stories that we actively encouraged humans to believe so that they might never fully figure out the truth. They were far better off not knowing the truth, it left us free to do our jobs as we needed to. Although even that was being called into question now given Lucifer's practice over the last few centuries, however that was an issue to consider later. Jesse was at a severe disadvantage, and we didn't have the time to catch him up, not there.

"Just trust me, Jesse. You want to come with us, we can fill you in as soon as we're out of here, but for now we have to go."

"Trust you? How the hell do you expect me to trust you?" Jesse shouted, slamming his hand into the large bookcase against which he had been leaning, hard enough to send a few of the heavy, leather-bound tomes thudding to the floor. "You've done nothing but lie ever since I met you, I don't believe a single word that comes out of your mouth. And you." He turned to face Lucas, a look of pure fury contorting his formerly handsome face. "I still remember what you did to me, what you made me do..." He didn't go on, even though I had a feeling there was much more left unsaid it was as if he couldn't bring himself to let the words escape from his mouth.

"Good, because that was just the beginning of things." Lucas stood up, drawing himself up to his full height and squaring his broad shoulders. He moved towards Jesse, staring down at the shorter man until they were almost nose to nose. "And if you think that was bad, then you're in for a serious shock, because things around here are only going to get a whole lot worse. Killing Rayne was for the greater good, and look there she is again perfectly in tact. You think your a demon now? Well you're going to have to get used to having a little blood on your hands. And trust me, the things Malick will have you do will be a whole lot worse, and they won't be for the good of anyone but himself. So are you going to see sense? Or are we going to have to knock that sense into you?"

Jesse shook his head, he was nervous under the stern glare that Lucas was casting him, but he had much more confidence now than he might have had before. He wasn't a mere human any more, and I had to wonder exactly how the touch of my Hybrid blood had warped him physically, to what extent had the changes taken hold of him? And, perhaps most importantly, what kind of power did he now possess?

"I'm not going to be convinced so easily. You must all think I'm weak and stupid if I'm going to be won over with that pithy excuse for an explanation and some idle threats, I'm not. No, you are all going to have to come up with something extraordinary for me to ever think you trustworthy again, now go on, get the hell out of here, I'll take my chances with the one demon who so far hasn't lied and used me for their own ends." Jesse turned his back to us and folded his arms like a petulant child and I reached the end of my tether.

"If you believe that Malick isn't lying to you, or using you for his own ends, then you're an even bigger fool than I thought," I snapped.

This wasn't going at all how I'd wanted it to. Had I really managed to warp Jesse's trust so badly with all of my lies and half tales? I'd filled him in on everything that I'd known to be true right after that bloodbath of a funeral – though granted I'd known very little of the truth myself at that point – and since then I hadn't lied to him about anything. I did however let him get dragged from one prison straight into another one by Frank, back before working alongside me was the better option for the Whisperer. Maybe I could understand the trust issues, but was he really dense enough to think that Malick would be better than the rest of us? We were all demons, we were all liars, destroyers of lives, it was in our very nature, the whole purpose we existed for, to balance out what was good with what was bad, and for once my team was landing on the side of the good.

To keep the natural balance of the entire world we first needed to make sure the balance could retain itself down here in Hell, Lucifer and Malick were tipping the scales, and if they won an all out war would be waged that could bring the entirety of existence trembling to its knees. We had to stop that from occurring. We weren't really good, but we had to damn well try to regain that balance.

"This isn't working, we don't have another choice," I said, looking directly at Lucas, hoping he realised what I was implying with my words.

He nodded at me in agreement, though with no way of communicating what we might do without alerting Jesse to the plan, I had to take the initiative and just go for it, or we might never catch him by surprise.

Reaching out with my telekinetic power I grabbed the biggest of those leather-bound books that had fallen to the floor and hurled it hard at the back of Jesse's head. The blow struck at the base of his skull, just as I'd intended it to and he stood stunned for a moment before his body gave way and he tumbled onto the floor.

"Crude, Rayne. Was that really necessary?" Lucas asked, wincing as he gingerly brushed the wound on the back of his own head.

"Well it was the best I could think of on the spot. I wasn't sure your hypnosis trick would work on him now, not when you're all preternaturally connected in a way. It wasn't worth the risk trying. Now come on, let's get out of here."

"Right, and how exactly do we get him back to our hideout? And what about Frank? Those Furies will be on him the moment I unfreeze time in the corridor."

"Oh shit, yeah, I'd almost forgotten about them."

I thought hard for a moment, there had to be a way out of there, but there were just too many Furies for us to fight them all off. It seemed like there was very little choice, we were just going to have to run for it.

"Okay, drag him out into the corridor, we're going to have to carry him back, leave him by the stairs until we get Frank. When you unfreeze time I'll do my best to throw as many of them away from his as I can, hopefully we can clear a path and just make a run for it. I'd imagine Malick gave them orders to guard his quarters, I'm going to go out on a limb and expect them not to come after us, at least not too far."

Lucas puffed out a breath of air, he didn't look very confident in my plan, but he grabbed Jesse by the ankles and hauled him towards the door all the same. "I suppose it's the best and only plan we really have."

He dumped Jesse unceremoniously by the head of the stairs as I stood in front of Frank and the swarm of Furies, frozen in the midst of their battle like some kind of commemorative statue, and gathered my power. I let it build and build, past the scaling burn that seared my palms until my arms began to shake from the effort of trying to hold it back. All the while picturing in my head the swarm of Furies scattering like the wind away from the Whisperer.

"Okay." I nodded, "now."

Lucas flicked his wrist and suddenly the hallway was flooded with noise once again, as if it had suddenly released a breath it had been holding. I let go of the power and it tore from my body with immense force that I cried out in pain, seeing the red hot burns on the skin of my hands as real injuries and not just metaphysical ones. I directed it into the centre of the Fury swarm intending to split them apart, whipping a stream of force from each hand in opposite directions so they would part like the red sea and allow Frank a path to escape.

It caught them all unawares, Furies flew backwards, torn away from their prey with angry cries. Some hit the walls, others recovered their balance and flapped their wings in earnest rushing to get back to their victim. They could sense his weakening and were eager to go in for the kill. And we were running again.

"Let's go!" I yelled to Frank, making a run for the stairs, ducking beneath grabbing claws and hooked feet as the Furies raged above us. We had to get away before they could gather and reorganise themselves fully.

I gestured to Jesse's body as we went past, and Frank picked him up, slinging him over one shoulder as if he weighed nothing, and we ran. We ran through the halls and stairways of Hell, retracing the route we had taken and ploughing our way through only a couple of very surprised and confused demons who happened to get in our way, and we didn't stop until the comforting, enclosed darkness of the Inquisitor's quarters had closed in around us.