The Cerast lives in the third layer of hell, a rare sight amongst the gassy surface. A demon with a body both malleable and resistant. A mostly liquid body allows for a high capacity of filtration, and its great size and regenerative capabilities allow it to survive long periods of times under stress. It is a being that can both consume live and inanimate matter, though preferring live for its higher density in energy. The Cerast, a demon said to consume all, said to be the sole reason for the caverns and holes populating the third layer of hell. A constant eater, the Cerast has earned its name as the "Idiot Devourer."

It is a being that survives from dead matter. From flesh. From blood. It is a being in constant hunger, evolved from constant brutality. The brutality of fluoride skies and toxic air and corrosive atmospheres. It dwindles and meanders and preservers with simple, nagging, hunger.

And how does a being, evolved to constantly be assaulted and deteriorated and hurt fare in the human world? Where there is an abundance of food, an abundance of ease and luxury?

It thrives, of course.

♣

Today she would remind herself what it meant to be a Wolfe. That she would protect her family like a surrogate mother. Like her older sister. That this feeling was as genuine as the pain, she felt in her severed arm or the fear she honed in the talks with Mammon. That it would not be a waste.

She had conjured the plan up the night before and to her credit, was short of time. Luanne had gotten her mark recently, Luanne who was the weakest of the bunch and in doing so, Jezebel presumed Aenea would get hers soon too. Or had. She didn’t know much of the half-brothers and half-sister (and didn’t even know much of her own full-blooded siblings), but she could speculate, and she believed herself right. Aenea would get hers soon or already had it, and if Floyd's intuition was right then, Jezebel was right to believe Aenea was also the conductor of Junior’s death. This, of course, made her a prime threat. Hopefully, with Aenea gone maybe the two Vicars would leave too, or at the very least, she could kill them off separately. So the plan was then simple as far as she understood it; separate the two entities, the heart-eaters, and Aenea.

How? To what end?

She would kill Aenea personally. The Cerast would hold the Vicars. As long as Aenea died first, the two could be handled later, at any time. To separate them, she would allow limited access to the elevator (and had paid one of the few security guards to guarantee that) Aenea would go forward on her own. She'd be coming early after all (she heard from mother that Aenea would be having a meeting today) and as such she would stalk it, wait and phase through the metal doors to kill her in the enclosed space. If the Vicars tried going up, she'd lock the doors. They'd run up and run into the Cerast. He'd pre-occupy them, or hopefully kill them.

Easy.

She sat in her room, amongst the black-painted sigil colored in the center. Below her, the rough, scraping seat of a wooden stool. Next to her, a glass box. What waited inside was fleshy and dark. At the touch of her fingertip, the box moved. Wiggled. And from one of the sides, the long yellow eye of a creature looked at her. At her feet next to the box was her arm. She took a long look at the clock, it was approaching the hour.

With trepidation, a finger so frightened it shook like a Geiger counter pin, she reached for the box. She undid the latch. The metal cracked and the glass door fell.

A thump. A slow crawl.

Then it sprawled out, like a spillage. The dark, slimy thing, gliding across the floor.

It slopped along and dragged itself in lethargic movements towards Jezebel, little hands reached for her legs, little mouths that wanted to devour her. Along the room, the pieces of furniture propped on the walls seemed mawed, half eaten, grazed upon. The creature reached for her leg, missing and getting the leg of the chair. Devouring it, she could immediately see its size increase. Only by a few inches. But it increased.

She snapped at the monster. The yellow eyes of the demon turned to her and to what she carried in her only hand, the rotting, dismembered arm. Two gaps (which she presumed were nose holes) moved up and down. And with a hum or moan, it began to reach for the dismembered flesh.

“Come on, let’s go.” She waved the arm around like a bone and from the intercom at the front of her apartment room, told every worker (however few there were left) to evacuate the front. A lone janitor answered and with a droning, annoyed sigh, said sure.

The set was clear. She went for the elevator and pressed a red button, an emergency button, that sent off an alarm. Perhaps a fire hazard. She swiped her card and held the button until it was secured for the first floor. No interruptions.

She propped her arm from the ceiling of the elevator, like a carrot to a stick and let it limp downwards. The creature ran for it, no larger than the size of a dog, and tried to reach for it. Its hands were small, pathetic for now. For now. The door of the elevator closed.

Out of one glass box and into another, the creature descended down. She hoped without her control it would simply wander around, eating and grazing, becoming a sizable threat for the Vicars.

She phoned in another number on the intercom near her elevator.

“Yessum.” The voice intercom responded.

“Has she already made it?”

“Yessum ma’am. She’s at the front. Cautious looking, I think she’ll be taking the VIP elevator.”

“Right, can’t take the general one.” On account of the emergency button, Jezebel had pressed. “Call me when she comes in and hold the other elevators until I say so, okay? We've got to wait for the Vicars.”

“The tall looking fellers?”

“Yes, them.” She said.

“Yessum.”

So it was in motion. She could feel the spools spinning and her feet taken to action. She went for her wardrobe and strapped herself with her gear, the long shirt, and the long pants and the mobility these all allowed. The hooded jacket, the straps on her arms. She attached bandages to her feet as makeshift shoes, there would be no sound. She felt her heartbeat and put her palm against her chest to feel it rise and fall as if the very movement itself was relaxing. She could not relax though.

She left the room and went back to the elevator. She sighed, and with calm (as calm as she could be) and with focus, she phased her body. Transparency, nearly. She went through the floor and reappeared a floor down.

Ten more floors to go.

Once more. Once more.

She fell and fell. Falling to each floor, descending down the lonely halls as if in a dream, phasing in and out, her body floating, weightless through the air. No wall could hold her. There were no walls, at all.

She came to a stop. Her feet touching the floor. The dreaded floor and waited by the elevator. It was simple, she’d jam her blade in the button and keep the door shut and do her business with ease. Her strength was severe, she could peel the metal doors of the elevator and run like an Olympian. The transformation, beginning with the tattoo, had been great on her body and at least the pain was worth something.

Jezebel waited by the door, only her blue eyes visible through the tightly wrapped clothes. She was keen on watching the door, watching the elevator rise and rise. But midway (which should have proved no stoppage)...midway... something happened. The lights in the casino went out. The elevator screen scrambled. The pixelated numbers fixed themselves, and she realized, immediately, that the elevator was not here.

She began to sweat.

What happened? What’d that idiot do? It’s not time to freeze the damn fucking elevator.

She waited again. It started. Then stopped. Started once more. She tried the other elevators. The same thing, as if all had been reset. And broken.

She checked the elevator that had been preserved for the monstrosity. The 'emergency'-pressed-elevator.

That too had prematurely stopped. With a screech of metal. A twist. A snap.

She stuck her head through the metal doors of the elevator. She looked down, like a voyeuristic ghost. It was too dark in that little tunnel to tell what was going on down there.

“What happened?”

She ran back to the center of the hall, amongst a bundle of lonely rooms.

The elevators were going up and down, stopping and going with a freedom that frightened her. So she stared at the wall, thinking, minutes, thinking. She cursed, and the hit the walls with her head and palms. Then punched them The dents of her fist imposed upon a wooden wall panel.

The elevator started moving again. It was fast approaching her hall (Aenea's, actually).

She felt glad for a moment. Her blade was readied, desperation led her now, gave her that false hope.

The elevator went up, approached her, went up. She could already imagine the doors and Aenea's face and the whole act of murder. Her face hardened.

She waited for the elevator, the number going up and up. She pressed on the intercom, screaming at it to stop. Stop.

She pressed on the button herself.

Then...it went past her.

It went…to the floor where the Vicars stayed.

Her whole body went cold.

She phoned her partner, the terrible security guard she had paid a couple tens of thousands to coerce. The phone answered, but there was nothing past the line. Nothing but hard breathing and a sort of suckling noise. Dripping? Something dripping?

And she was stuck there, afraid, watching the elevator go up and down and up and down.

How much time had passed? At least thirty minutes worth past the plan, a good chunk of time. Enough time to see the elevator stop at the floor and enough time for her to hear the violence from below and to feel the building shake and to see - To see! The explosion at the side of the building, the smoke pillars rising up the windows.

“What happened to the plan?” She spoke to herself. She waited a bit, gawking at the damage below. The fire, the smoke. The electricity must have turned off two more times, and by the second, all the power in the casino had gone. The elevators were not working. There was dead blackness amongst the casino.

And she was afraid. Who was fighting who? Who had done what?

So in fear, mostly, she decided to fix things.

So she ran for the electrical generators. To fix the casino.