Chapter thirty eight

          I shredded the soul of the Atelli trying to escape his body then proceeded to the front door of the warehouse. I quietly opened the door and inside I saw a curious scene, instead of a hoard of Atelli I was expecting there were only three inhabitants out of which only one was an Atelli. The Atelli in question was the second of my mother's lieutenants , the creepy one(and that is saying something when it came to the Atelli) that looked like a living ball of smoke that I was pretty sure had trapped souls inside him. There was a glowing blue string that originated from him and connected to a circle of strange glowing symbols that formed a collar around the neck of inhabitant number two.

         On the outside she looked like a pretty sweet young lady , her body was well proportioned and she was beautiful in a girl next door kind of way, beautiful but not so beautiful that she would be unapproachable but with my sight I could see what was underneath her disguise and beneath her wholesome girl next door look was a mature woman who was an absolute knockout and looked like she was made for sin. Short black hair styled in a pixie cut , a face that was so beautiful that it could probably inspire poetry and to top it all off she had the kind of voluptuous figure that you could only get in cartoon caricatures. The only thing that kept me from drooling over her was that she had red skin, not red like she had tanned in the sun for too long red but the same shade as a fire engine red. She also had small horns on her forehead and had black wings and a tail growing out of her black. Even though she clearly wasn't human I was equally certain that she wasn't Atelli either because of her eyes, they were pitch black as if they were bottomless and burning at their center where an iris should have been was a ball of blue flames. I know that there were a lot of Atelli and they could take almost any form but when I looked into her eyes I knew that she was something else, something different.

           Which brings us to the last inhabitant of the room, Sergei.  He was sitting on the ground being petted on the head like he was a pet dog by the red woman. He still had that dopey look on his face and judging from his expression he thought that getting petted by the woman was the greatest experience in his life.

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             As I was looking at this strange scene , trying to make sense of what was going on , a sardonic voice originating from the billowing ball of smoke started to speak, "Well well well , this is surprising. You defeated Arthur? I'm guessing that he won't be joining us is he?"

             I didn't really know how to fight let alone defeat something that wasn't even solid so I decided to stall. I politely answered, "Do you mean the glass skeleton? He had an unfortunate accident. I'm afraid he won't make it back now or any other time."

           The ball of smoke pulsed for a moment then responded, "That's a shame , I had grown rather attached to Arthur over the years. You are Persephone aren't you? You know you are the reason that we had to go to all this trouble to capture the boy. At first we were just going to snatch him and have my boss control his body , but now she is terrified of you. You see , you have become something of a boogey man for the shining ones, usually death doesn't mean much to us because we could always move on to another body but anyone killed by you is never heard from again. After what happened to the last guy who tried to kidnap young Sergei here my boss wasn't willing to touch him with a ten foot pole so naturally the task fell to me and I had to cook up this crazy scheme that cost me a lot of power to try and avoid your attention but here you are regardless. I am quite impressed."

          I still couldn't come up with a way to hurt a ball of gas so I tried to stall some more. I calmly asked him, " So what was your plan? I'm assuming it involves the strange creature over there. Who is she or rather what is she?"

          The fog seemed to swirl and shake as he chuckled, "Nice try but I am not as gullible as Arthur, I know a stalling tactic when I see one, I might have many sins but pride isn't one of them. It has been a pleasure to speak to you Ms Persephone but I can speak to you all I want after I have extracted your soul."

          That did not sound very good.

          In fact it sounded very very bad.