Chapter Text
A dark, confined space. It smells like dry leaves and dirt. Her heart pounds like it's trying to burst from her chest. She has to get out of here. Or maybe she has to get deeper? She doesn't know. She doesn't know anything but the immediate, overwhelming terror that consumes her, body and soul.
She tries to claw her way out, but her arms are pinned by the confines of this dark place. The panic makes her feel delirious. Her foot kicks out wildly, and hits something soft and yielding. She kicks and squirms, finding her way out onto soft ground. The forest, she knows instinctively. This is good. She knows this place.
The relief does not last long.
Resting atop the leaf litter is a carcass. Dark, red blood oozes and clings to entrails, grotesquely plump and shiny. A small shoe rests on its side near her foot, the tiny spot of blood on the worn leather the only connection to the rest of the scene. Glassy eyes and bloody nostrils, torn clothes and twisted, broken limbs.
A paw reaches out and greedily snatches the remains of its meal. Overlong, knobby fingers covered in patchy fur, they make her shudder with disgust, even as she cannot look away.
Clawed digits puncture, shred, and feed raw flesh in a slavering, fanged maw, the air steaming with foul breath. A sharp jerk of the head to sever any stubborn remaining tendon sends greasy strands of pink hair shaking like the quills of a porcupine. Wide, glassy magenta eyes stare intently at the meal being devoured, an expressionless gaze without intent or conscious thought, only hunger and greed.
It disgusts her, terrifies her, sends her body trembling with overwhelming fear.
Tonight, the creature ripping her little brother apart limb from limb is not a bear, a devil, or a monster. It is her own childish self, deformed by an insatiable, unforgivable desire to live.
Hot Pants awakens from her nightmare with a resigned familiarity, even as a more irrational panic still lingers with her. Her body is slick with sharp-smelling sweat, independent of the warm summer night, and aches from the tension it's been under. Her breath shaky and still too fast, she lights the singular oil lamp, some part of her mind deathly afraid of what the dark could conceal.
Yet, all that is revealed is the stark confines of her monastic cell. A narrow bed, a small trunk for her clothing, a wooden chair, a wash basin, and of course, the crucifix above her bed. It is a reminder of sacrifice, and all that sacrifice has brought her. Christ did not die for the righteous, she reminds herself, for they are already assured their place in the kingdom of heaven. God's lamb was slaughtered to save the wretched. The greedy, the faithless, the sinners. Mercy comes to those who least deserve it.
People like her.
Hot Pants calms down breath by breath, the grace of God providing her a small amount of peace. She moves to the narrow windowsill, and pours tepid water from a pewter jug into her enamel wash basin, both chipped and dented from passing through countless other sisters at this convent. She wipes the sweat from her skin under her shift, the basic motions of hygiene restoring a bit more of her humanity.
She opens the window, though there is little hope of fresh air. Summertime in New York City is a fragrant season, if one was to be polite about it. Horse dung, rotten food, the urine of drunkards, it all bakes in the heat and sluices through the gutters in the rain, a foul stench rising through the air.
However, the ambient noises and lights of the city are a comfort, if only because it bears no resemblance to the rural western settlement she grew up in. She cannot delude herself into believing tragedy and violence won't go unnoticed here, but in a city packed with inhabitants, certain fears seem farther away.
Yet, what Hot Pants needs right now is the peace of mind only prayer can give her. She could simply kneel at her bedside, and let the hard floorboards ground her in reality, while the ritual of repeated assertions of devotion and piety would soothe the wounds upon her mind.
But, as she looks around the four cramped walls of her cell, stifling and unstimulating by design, her heart begins to race once more. She makes a decision, greedy and unwise.
Hot Pants wraps a knit shawl about herself, over her shift, takes up her lamp, and descends the spiral staircase down to the chapel. Her bare feet make little noise on the stone floor, and she has no doubt that the convent, nearly a century old, has plenty of drafts and creaks to explain away what sounds she does make. Creeping down to the chapel to pray would be relatively unobjectionable in the eyes of the Mother Superior, and would probably net her little punishment, but only if she was dressed appropriately in her habit. Her thin nightshift and bare feet are undignified and unbefitting any place but her cell. Yet, knowing this full well, Hot Pants chooses to approach the house of God in near nudity.
Clothing has meaning, symbolism, whether it's the exaggerated mutton-leg sleeves or hobble skirts of a lady of society, or the tattered shirtwaists and fashions of yesteryear that Hot Pants once wore in secular life. No costume bears more meaning than the habit of a nun. It can also be used to conceal: scars, sins, history of the flesh. Hot Pants often feels at turns undeserving of the habit, and suffocated by it. Right now, she cannot appear before God claiming the righteousness of a woman pledged to Him. Not when she feels very much like a child, selfish and afraid.
The chapel is an impressive structure, enough to overwhelm any wayward child from Wyoming, though it pales in comparison to any of the Old World churches. The soaring stone arches and intricate stained glass panes are immense, but not the same. The ceiling is not blackened with centuries of candle soot, and there are no frescoes or mosaics crafted by an artisan's delicate hand. As old as this place is, it is still new.
But, Hot Pants feels more at ease, making her way through dark, polished pews. This is far less confining than her quarters, and already, the tall, open space puts one in a mind for prayer.
When her knees hit cold stone, the outside world begins to recede. Her pride and her stoicism fall away, leaving only the well of overflowing emotion, as if she were baring her soul in front of a parent or lover. She dwells on the things she buries within herself, if only for the sake of survival. Her guilt, her self-hatred, and most of all, the selfish greed that allowed her to murder her little brother, that almost certainly blights her soul to this day. The unfavorable comparisons flow into her head one by one. Cain, who betrayed the unbreakable covenant of brotherhood. Delilah, whose greed overwhelmed her loyalty and used the trust held in her as a weapon. Eve, whose selfishness doomed humanity to suffering. She sees her sins every time she closes her eyes.
Hot Pants knows that her faith is more than a weapon to beat herself with. It is her path to redemption. With every child she delivers from an unwed mother's belly, every spoonful of gruel into a starving mouth, every gangrenous wound debrided and dressed in white gauze, she begins to do enough good to measure against the enormity of her unforgivable sin. That is why she cannot forget what she has done. The horror of her dreams and the trembling of her hands will be transformed into the works of God, righteous acts to better the world. That is why Hot Pants will clutch her guilt close to her chest for as long as she lives.
With the axis of her world reestablished, she begins to pray. With a gentle reverence she reserves for nothing else, she murmurs the sacred words.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy-”
The chapel door screeches as it's thrown open, and Hot Pants jerks upwards with equal parts indignant anger and panic. She seizes the oil lamp, twisting the knob to shorten the wick, before blowing out the flame. For good measure, she slaps a hand over top to suffocate any remaining embers, even though the rim of hot glass burns her palm. Suddenly, the only sources of illumination in the vast chapel are the surprisingly robust beams of moonlight streaming through the windows.
Hot Pants flattens herself to the floor, hiding under a pew as she curses her own poor judgement. The only positive angle to this is that it is an outsider entering the chapel, not another sister. As a transplant from the Vatican that has had the benefit of studying in the Old World, and a young one at that, there are more than a few sisters within the convent that would appreciate the Mother Superior berating Hot Pants. To call it jealousy would be uncharitable, but Hot Pants is aware that there are those that mistake her natural stoicism and threadbare conversational skills for an inflated sense of self-worth.
However, as the stranger staggers in, Hot Pants becomes aware that they may be in need of immediate assistance. Their hard-soled shoes clack heavily with every uneven step, as if they were limping. As they move up the center aisle, their hard, labored breathing is loud and shaky. Something splashes against the floor, and from Hot Pants’ interactions with New York’s drunkest, she would typically assume urine or vomit, but that doesn't seem right. The consistency of the sound is inexplicably viscous.
The figure staggers closer, and details start to resolve. A fashionable sash-collared dinner jacket fit for a gentleman’s club that makes Hot Pants sweat just to look at. What was once a perfectly starched and rigid set of collar points, gone wrinkly and flaccid from the heat and damp. A distinguished face with thick blond facial hair, forcing Hot Pants to swallow her gasp.
The man is easily recognizable as a parishioner, and a notable one at that. Mr. Crowe, he's called. As not one person within the church has the status to refer to him by his given name, it's all but lost to obscurity.
A wealthy Tammany Hall crony, his donations to the convent have garnered significant attention, and his shadow looms tall in the community. However, many of the sisters know him just as well for his poor reputation among women. They whisper of a young, beautiful nun that abruptly left the convent mere months after he joined the congregation, claiming illness that mysteriously presented as nausea and abdominal swelling. However, no such whispers are needed to point out the bruising on his wife's face behind her towering hats, or her sallow, meek appearance, flinching away from every instance of her husband's attention. The elder nuns warned the rest of the convent away from gossip and conjecture, but the truth of the matter was clear. Whatever his sins, the nuns of the convent had no grounds to pass judgement or punish him. Personal matters were simply to remain personal.
However, Hot Pants' disgust raises its head as she watches him stumble to the altar, his face pale and wet, his fine clothes torn and dirty. Surely, the chapel will provide him enough shelter to sober up and hide from whatever misfortune he's come across tonight, she thinks sullenly. He hardly needs much more assistance than that. At the very least, she won't be offering him any help until after she's snuck upstairs to dress herself. More frankly, she simply doesn't want to involve herself at all.
As much as Hot Pants has dedicated herself to a monastic life of charity, there is no getting around the fact that Hot Pants strongly dislikes the vast majority of people, and the vast majority of people feel the same towards her. She prefers not to meddle in the affairs of others, even if it is the kinder, more helpful thing to do. If she had the choice to be completely cloistered in prayer and study, she would gladly take it. However, life as a nun would not be penance if she was enjoying herself, she remarks to herself, resigned. She supposes she must find a way to creep back to her room undetected, only to return fully clothed to assist the man.
Yet, before she can consider how to do that, there is a noise at the chapel door. Those doors are tall, heavy, slow to open and carved from hard, lacquered wood. So when Hot Pants hears the wood splinter and the door slam and rattle as it hits the stone wall, her heart jumps in her chest. She tenses further when the man turns on his heel and lets out a shaky, terrified cry of pure fear.
“No! No, get away!”
The answering sound is strange, and yet viscerally familiar. A wet snuffle of hot air, and an impossibly deep noise, the clicking at the back of a throat. Not a growl. Growls are for threat displays. Growls are for animals that don't think they can win. This is infinitely more self-assured.
Hot Pants freezes. In an instant, her body has taken away the choice to act from her entirely, every muscle locked into agonizing rigor mortis. It's not merely animals that elicit this kind of response from her. Not even rabid dogs cause such instant overwhelming fear. No, her body already understands that something much worse has entered the room, even when she has no more information than the cold scrape of claws on the stone floor. Hot Pants isn't sure if she can feel the vibrations of footsteps, or if it is merely her pounding pulse.
The man, oblivious to Hot Pants' silent witness, throws out an impotent, warning hand. His white face, contorted in fear, looks like it could be carved with wax.
“Diego, you bastard son of a whore, if you can hear me at all, you won't-”
Nothing could have prepared Hot Pants for the creature that approaches on heavy clawed feet. In fact, this creature doesn't seem to bear a particularly strong resemblance to any man or animal alive. Only the most superficial comparisons can be made, weak and unsuitable to accurately describe what she's seeing.
It walks on two muscular legs, not like a man or even a bear, but like a bird. However, the only other bird-like trait is the feathers that cover parts of its body, the oily, iridescent green feathers so long and fine they could be mistaken for fur. They are especially voluminous around the back of the head, almost like a crest of sorts.
Other parts seem more like a lizard, like the long, tapered tail lashing back and forth, or the thick, gray, scaly skin seen underneath the uneven coat of feathers.
Yet, other things seem to defy comparison entirely. Claws that are nearly the size of the large, bony hands attached to bent, hanging arms. A large head with a long snout, yet not remotely similar in shape to any dog, wolf, or bear Hot Pants has ever seen.
More terrifying is the sheer size of it. Even a charging grizzly on all fours would still only come up to Hot Pants’ chest, in spite of its overwhelming bulk. This creature can look even the tallest man dead in the eye with ease.
But whether it pauses to look Mr. Crowe in the eye is a mystery that will remain unanswered, as it charges down the main aisle far too fast for Hot Pants to see any hesitation. It makes no sound, no battle cry but the huff of its breathing. Mr. Crowe doesn't even have time to scream, attacked in the middle of that strange, inexplicable appeal to logic.
A massive foot with that enormous, wickedly curved claw collides against his chest, knocking him to the floor. The foot comes down hard on his supine form, and the claw punctures the chest wall in an instant. Judging by the gurgling wheeze forced from the man's lips, his lung was skewered. Hot Pants can only hope the initial collision of skull and stone knocked him unconscious.
Regardless, the animal, if it is something that you can call an animal, dips its head. The jaw splits wide, and it carefully, almost delicately, fits its teeth to the man's skull.
For the past five seconds, both unspeakably long and unfathomably short, Hot Pants has only been able to stare in unblinking terror. Her body has shut down, her mental faculties stifled and slowed by the overwhelming sense of unreality. She does not blink or breathe or even feel, frozen to the tip of every finger.
Yet, the sight before her is so disgusting, sensation suddenly returns, as visceral and upsetting as its absence. Nausea churns her stomach, and she chokes back bile, her skin cold and clammy.
The creature rips Mr. Crowe’s head from his body, a surprisingly slow and messy affair for such a powerful animal. Its teeth are large and sharp, but apparently not ideal for crushing or clamping. It pulls up, and Mr. Crowe's torso attempts to follow his neck, lifting off the ground, only for the beast’s claws to anchor it to the floor. The creature gnaws at the neck a bit more, worrying away at the connecting material, until the fibers of meat stretch and snap, and the head is permanently divorced from the body.
This must be some horrible, innovative extension of Hot Pants' nightmare, she tells herself. It is too unlike reality, and yet too similar to her most horrific memories. But why Mr. Crowe, a man she only holds a passing disdain for? Why such a strange creature, something she doesn't think herself imaginative enough to dream up? The uncertainty makes her sick with fear and dread. She feels lightheaded, uncertain of the last time she took a breath. Perhaps if she faints, she will somehow exit this macabre scene.
Mr. Crowe's head suddenly lands on the stone floor with a crack of bone, rolling to a stop in front of Hot Pants. She sucks in a deep involuntary breath, her head jerking sharply enough to bang against the underside of the pew.
The severed head is mostly intact, though the face itself has been sliced to ribbons by sliding teeth. Somehow, Hot Pants manages to remark to herself that this is a strange departure from her nightmares, somehow even stranger than everything else. The bear that ate her brother, as horrific and monstrous as it appeared to Hot Pants, was merely an animal suffering in starvation. Eating her brother was not a malicious act, even if her decision to sacrifice him was. After many years, Hot Pants can recognize that the cycle of hunter and hunted is merely a fundamental law of God's design.
This creature, which she cannot identify as monster or animal, doesn't seem to be acting out of hunger at all. It didn't make any effort to disembowel and consume the organs, as animals do with every fresh kill. It chose the laborious and scarcely nutritious task of ripping off the head, only to carelessly throw it aside. It seems like a strangely…impudent thing to do.
Perhaps Hot Pants was wrong to ever consider this creature an animal, or to rank it of beastly intelligence. Perhaps it is something more infernal in nature. The devil exists within every man, she knows this to be true, but can he walk on his own two feet, destroy humanity with claws and fangs instead of temptations and deception?
A shiver wracks her body, only to abruptly stop when she realizes the creature, devil or not, has gone very still, no longer mutilating the corpse. So still, in fact, that it must be thinking. She's made a terrible mistake.
Hot Pants holds her breath, but it is too late. Those enormous clawed feet are padding up the aisle, towards Hot Pants. She begins to pray, rapid and desperate and with none of the contemplation or forethought she typically devotes to the act. She prays to wake up, prays that the monster is simply retrieving the fallen head, prays that she has not been noticed.
Yet, for all the strength and guidance the grace of God has provided her in her life, it does not circumvent the inevitable. The feet stop, and the swinging tail lifts, and suddenly Hot Pants is face to face with a creature that defies comprehension.
Its eyes are a burning yellow, like sulfur, with long, slitted pupils that flex and dilate as it makes near-perfect eye contact. Its muzzle is dark and wet with fresh blood, the air from its nostrils hot and wet. Hot Pants feels a smile stretch across her face, helpless and hysterical, driven completely by fear. It’s a response like the way boiling water almost feels cold in the instant it touches skin, impulses and reactions muddled and disordered by overwhelming stress.
Whatever the reasoning, the creature seems to not only notice, but understand her frantic grin. Its jaws part slightly to reveal two rows of long teeth, sharp as steak knives. From the back of the throat, a strange chuffing noise issues, low and repetitive. It sounds uncomfortably like laughter, cruel and indifferent.
Hot Pants can see her end hurtling towards her with startling clarity. She will be ripped apart, bloody and gruesome. If she is lucky, some trauma to her head will render her unconscious early on, but for all she knows, she will be awake and aware as she is torn to shreds, until loss of blood sends her into shock. It will be extraordinarily painful, and far from peaceful, a terrible desperate end, and likely the only thing she will ever be remembered for.
In a way, this is always what she wanted. The ultimate penance. Not a suicide, but a fate awful enough to match the one she bestowed on her own brother. After all, no matter how many years of service she has dedicated to God, the church, the people of this rotten city, it has not and will not give her the absolution she craves. There will always be a part of her that believes nothing can atone for her sins but suffering and death.
This is a death so fitting, so perfect, that it must be ordained. All she has to do is accept it. Like the lamb to the slaughter, like Isaac under the knife, a criminal on her cross.
Hot Pants explodes upwards, fitting her hand tightly around the creature's throat. She pushes up as hard as she can, forcing the head away from her while she gets on her feet. That protects her from those teeth, if only for a moment. A strange cross between a squawk and a growl erupts from the creature, disoriented and caught off guard while it thrashes.
Though the teeth pose a threat to her, it's far from the only danger she's facing. Those clawed toes and fingers can gore her far more effectively than a feral hog or a buck in the throes of mating season. She has two options for evading them; running is the first one. However, aside from the low likelihood of success, the idea of turning her back and fleeing makes her overwhelmingly, blindingly furious.
So Hot Pants dives forward between the creature's legs, an awkward blind spot that gives her some metaphorical distance from those claws, if very little physical space. Again, the creature makes a strange noise, bird-like in quality but much deeper. It doesn't sound like a threat display, and Hot Pants imagines it to be something like an expression of bafflement and shock.
Regardless, Hot Pants has to move fast before she is trampled. She wraps her arms about one large haunch, which for all its feathers and muscles, is not as massive as she thought. She pulls upwards and pushes out, effectively tipping the beast over like an unsuspecting heifer on a Wyoming dairy farm. It goes down with a squawk, an ungainly flap of its arms, and a handful of iridescent green-blue feathers ripping out in each fist. The last incident elicits another high-pitched screech that can't be anything but pain.
But Hot Pants doesn't relent, straddling its torso and placing a knee at the base of its long, almost elegant throat. This part is much more familiar, she thinks triumphantly, while her fist fits perfectly into a sunken eye socket.
Just like any wild animal, it is common sense to attack the eyes first, and she does, while her left fist clamps those fearsome rows of teeth together. But, spurred on by the earlier reaction, she grabs the light green feathers in that impressive crest and rips out as many as she can. A scream comes from between those immobilized jaws, and Hot Pants can feel it thrash underneath her, tail beating madly against the floor.
And in all the unholy chaos, Hot Pants’ heart begins to pound with something almost like excitement. Her blood sings, and a laugh, dark and malicious, bubbles up from within her chest.
“I think I'll pluck you like a chicken and roast you up for Sunday supper, you damned devil,” she promises, breathless and exhilarated.
Life-threatening circumstances aside, that's not exactly something a woman of God should be saying or doing. However, Hot Pants feels a little bit out of her mind, and has ever since she made the simple decision to keep living.
She deserves to die. She knows that much. But she also knows that for her, dying would be the easiest thing in the world. And that means she cannot consign herself to it.
Penance is painful. Redemption is excruciating. Change isn't supposed to be easy. She did not devote herself to God, to this sisterhood, because she has a kind and charitable soul that craves community, she does this because it does not come naturally to her, and because it is the right thing to do. Yes, she finds peace in prayer, but she knows that peace can be found far more reliably in the bottom of a whiskey bottle or a tobacco pipe. She chose to live by suffering instead.
Hot Pants fights to the death because the world is not done with her yet. There is both more suffering and more goodness that life can still wring out from her, and she plans to start with protecting the sisters of this convent from whatever monster has landed upon their sanctuary.
The rage and the violence feel almost like a sort of righteous ecstasy, or perhaps a fulfillment of one of her most dearly held wishes. That when the ravenous beast that killed her brother approached her, she had not appeased it with a sacrifice, but fought it head on. Fought it, and won.
Suddenly, the beast convulses, drawing on reserves of strength to buck her off. But, rather than retaliating with a snap of its jaws or slitting her belly with those fearsome talons, it skitters to its feet, turning tail.
It's trying to run.
Hot Pants feels herself unconsciously bare her teeth, an unfiltered expression of joy, rage, and bloodlust. Or maybe it's something worse than that. Maybe she's just having fun.
She slams her heel down on the beast's tail, and she swears the garbled noise it makes is a yelp. Before it can turn to attack, she scrambles onto its back. Though it is roughly the size of a large pony, she can feel it struggling to right itself under her weight.
She whips her shawl off her shoulders, a ratty, homespun thing, but in that moment, she entrusts her life to it. She wraps it around the creature's throat, snug to the underside of its jaw. And then she tightens it, a makeshift garrotte. A creaky wheeze escapes it, and Hot Pants can practically feel its panic as it realizes it can no longer breathe. It bucks and rears in an attempt to throw her off like a stallion being broken, but it only pulls the noose tighter. The seconds stretch on, and the struggles become fainter, before the beast begins to lose consciousness entirely. Slitted pupils dilate, turning nearly round, before the beast collapses underneath Hot Pants.
She consciously knows that she cannot relent now, has to be certain to finish the deed, but her body gives out faster than she could've expected. Her arms become weak, her fingers numb and wooden, the impossible burst of strength she had exhausted. She becomes aware of a cold ache in her left shoulder, and fluid streaming down her arm. A deep gash parts the skin, her thin shift soaked with crimson. She can only guess at when the injury occurred, as she'd hardly felt it.
Hot Pants catches her breath, as countless overwhelming thoughts and feelings wash over her spent body. Exhilaration, so heady it borders on drunkenness, a feeling she hasn't had since she was a girl, stealing her father's applejack just to make sure she could sleep through the night. Vindictive rage, fading now but still alarming in how completely it had taken her over. Bewilderment, of course, because what on earth did she just experience? She can hardly describe what just happened, let alone decide what to do next, with either the corpse beneath her thighs or the one currently bleeding all over the chapel.
Perhaps she can just leave them both where they lie? Hot Pants doesn't consider herself wholly irresponsible, but the idea of explaining this to anyone else seems like a herculean task right now. The nuns will recognize Mr. Crowe and certainly piece together his cause of death well enough to inform his family, she knows. The more troublesome factor, of course, is the beast itself. What exactly it is, and how it died will be much more preoccupying than a dead politician. And Hot Pants could only answer one of those questions, even if she wanted to.
Against her better judgement, she's seriously considering walking away for now. After all, the convent is safe, and she's done her duty. Yet, no sooner does she decide on that, when the situation takes a turn for the truly inexplicable.
As she absentmindedly scrutinizes the monster's features, they begin to disappear. Feathers recede, the snout shortens, muscles deflate and limbs straighten, without any sort of trigger or cause. Before Hot Pants can even truly decide what she's looking at, she realizes she's no longer straddling a monster, but a man.
Corn-yellow hair, shiny as silk and just a little longer than most adult men would wear it. Pale skin, and cheekbones that remained sharp despite the swelling where Hot Pants' fists landed. Blood smears on cheeks and lips like a woman's rouge, and his body, though lean and far from bulky, is muscular and well formed.
How ironic, Hot Pants thinks somewhat deliriously, that the scaly serpent turned into such a beautiful Adam. But as amusing a thought that is, her body is cold with fear. The thing underneath her isn't just a monster or a wild animal from some dark continent. It's actively trying to deceive her. It's wholly and entirely unnatural. This is the devil.
And even worse, she recognizes him.