Work Text:
“Y’ know I don’t blame you for this, Jazzy.”
“Stop it.”
The Devil tugs on her leash and demands she pull the trigger.
Jasper’s hand quivers violently, moving the revolver’s sight erratically across the weary, pained face of a sinner traitor gentleman.
His expression is eerily calm, bright silver eyes leveled on the face he loved so fondly.
The face of his last living daughter, his own likeness contorted by anguish. Her fiery hair crowned by the laurels of the Damned and the Dead – a consort to Lord Hades of the Underworld. A crackling rope of embers tied tight ‘round her throat.
Jasper’s solitude among the raging flames of Tartarus has made her the Devil’s junkyard mutt, her hair long, unkempt and greasy. Deep bruises beneath her eyes betray the exhaustion hidden beneath her stubbornly squared shoulders, trying to hold the weight of a curse she didn’t ask for.
Julien’s eyes are too bright for death, by any mortal doctor’s measure. Though he was bedridden by immeasurable pain, a whooping cough last seen in the age of the plague, not one physician could provide a diagnosis. His heartbeat was strong, sturdy as his cadence had once been a mere decade ago. His lungs, while tired, were still the same set of lungs which allowed him the breath to sing sweet melodies, and his fingers still precise enough to coax the most pleasant sounds from a guitar.
No one could divine the cause for his accelerated deterioration, except for Julien himself.
And Jasper.
Clever, bright, hapless Jasper.
Julien had spent nineteen years running from this fate. From the Devil who twisted a dastardly promise like a verse, pitched it to a newly made man desperate to find something precious. A treasure to flaunt, a legacy to pass on.
It sounded so simple, back then. Give up one precious thing for a lifetime of riches beyond imagination. Wealth one could only dream of holding.
The Devil had made Julien a father, and damned him to Hell in the same breath.
Now his own daughter would pay the price of his greed, and he remained too cowardly, too powerless to end her suffering.
“It ain’t fair,” Julien says. He coughs violently, the death rattle in his chest causing Jasper to visibly shudder. He holds a hand out to her, offering to hold her one last time, but she refuses. “It ain’t fair that you gotta carry this on your own. An’ it’s no one’s fault but mine.”
The Devil’s wicked fingers clench tighter around the length of Jasper’s noose, tugging hard enough to make her gag.
“You’re overdue t’ claim your first, Cerberus,” He sneers, a voice like crackling fire. “I’d hoped you’d be done with your stallin’ by now.”
Julien reaches for her as Jasper staggers back a step, gritting his teeth in pain, in fury.
“Leave her outta this an’ take me yourself, y’ fuckin’ coward.”
“That ain’t part of her contract,” Hades drawls, his tone matter of fact as his red-ringed eyes shine beneath the brim of his hat. “Yours is null an’ void. Remember?”
“Daddy,” Jasper chokes on the name, her voice roughed by emotion. The rasp of someone who’s inhaled too much smoke from a house fire. “Daddy, don't let him make me do this.”
Julien’s heart aches seeing the tears stream down her face.
He wants so badly to take her face in his hands, to cradle her like he should have the past nineteen years, but it was no longer his right to do so.
“It’s alright, Darlin’,” He tries to reassure her instead, a broken smile cracking his face as he lifts his head with what little strength remains in his body. Julien presses his forehead to the barrel of his own revolver, places his left hand over Jasper’s to keep her fingers around the grip. “It’s just like I taught you. Keep your aim steady, follow through.”
He can feel Jasper attempting to pull from his hand, but even as he lays on Death’s doorstep, he finds the strength to keep her still.
Jasper tries to hang her head but Hades pulls tighter on the burning rope, squeezing a pathetic whimper from her throat, denying her the opportunity to look away.
“I can’t.”
“My precious gemstone,” Julien murmurs. He squeezes his thumb into the trigger guard, pressing against Jasper’s index finger.
“Julien Dedalus Daemon,” Hades’ voice warps with rage, an inferno roaring to life on his tongue as he wraps another loop of the rope around his hand. “Your time is up!”
“I’m sorry.”
BANG —
***
Jasper wakes with a violent start, gasping for breath.
The coughing fit scrapes her throat raw in seconds. One of her hands grasps at her neck, flush against the uncomfortably warm, scarred texture of her skin. She nearly pulls back from herself, a gasp sending her already staccato breaths stumbling, mind and heart struggling to focus on what emotions she should feel first.
Disgust eventually surfaces, dripping from her fingertips like black ichor, dribbling down the front of her throat as she’s subject to the bare scarring where leather should be.
Jasper’s vision swims as their head moves on a swivel, the movement stopped short by a sudden pulse of deep aching through their skull. The vague, blurred outlines of furniture and walls double and float across each other. Two transparent sheets on an overhead projector, but one of them is also filled with silent, flickering flame.
They release a pained groan as their body folds in half at the waist, head nearly coming to rest against their knees. Their stomach is doing flips, and everything in her being hurts.
It’s so far beyond physical pain. Something in her very soul burns, a scalding heat she hasn’t felt since —
“Jas,” A voice calls to her, echoing like it comes from across a canyon.
Jasper swallows the tart saliva pooling on her tongue. “Gimme a minute.”
Something cool and wet presses against their side. The temperature sends another ache rippling through her torso, painful in the way cold is against feverish skin. Even so, Jasper doesn’t move as the cold thing shifts and nuzzles into the tight space between her abdomen and thigh. It releases a short whine, which manages to make them chuckle.
“I hear ya, Smudgey,” They answer the canine’s distress, slowly pressing their hand into Smudge’s coarse fur.
Smudge’s whine turns into a low groan as she presses her head more firmly into Jasper’s stomach, as if to make them sit upright.
Jasper matches her groan, simply wishing to dissolve into the mattress beneath them rather than endure the excruciating pain of existence, but eventually they manage to return to a sitting position.
Riley watches the apothecary’s sluggish movements from the end of the bed, half-sitting on the corner but looking eager. Her bouncing leg jostles the mattress, making Jasper just the faintest bit more nauseous than they were already.
“You’re awake,” She states. Relieved, but utterly exhausted by the sound of her voice. Jasper watches her rub at one of her eyes with her sleeve, irritating the already red skin. “How’re you feeling?”
Jasper closes her eyes, body swaying faintly.
“Stop,” She croaks. Her fingers begin to clench at the front of her throat, blunt nails scratching across the scar. “Movin’ the fuckin’ bed. Where’s…?”
Riley pushes herself back to her feet before even realizing what Jasper’s looking for. She reaches the front of the nightstand just as Jasper’s sighted it; the leather collar meant to keep her scar hidden, secure. Both of their hands bump together, then Jasper weakly slaps Riley’s away.
“Can get it my Goddamn self,” They growl, followed by their body quaking from a coughing fit. Jasper fists the collar in her hand tight. Frustrated. A few droplets of blood drip from her mouth onto the hardwood floor.
She can feel movement through the mattress as Smudge begins to wiggle and crawl closer, pushing her shoulder and chest into Jasper’s back. The hound whines, then releases two distinct barks that echo through the room. Riley continues to edge closer, the expression on their face a clear, desperate plea for Jasper to accept their help.
“Jas, slow down —”
“I don’t need your FUCKING HELP!”
Jasper’s palm connects with Riley’s sternum and shoves, hard, forcing their body back three steps. Their feet thump loudly against the floor as they struggle to keep balance.
Through her lashes, Jasper catches a glimpse at the gunsmith’s face, their eyes, and the hurt etching itself across their features from Jasper’s behavior. A distinct, high pitched ring echoes through their mind as Riley’s eyes are drawn into focus.
But they aren’t Riley’s eyes.
Why are their eyes suddenly gray…?
***
“Don’t fuckin’ touch her!”
Jasper reels back from the shove, gritting their teeth in anger.
It was always so frustrating getting into arguments with her sisters. Why the fuck was it so hard to argue with their own face?
Ruby had always been more muscular than Jasper; frames nearly identical, though her shoulders had grown the slightest bit broader, fuller in the triceps from the physical work with Daddy. She may have had an inch or so over her twins, and she flaunted it at every opportunity, whether she meant to or not.
Emmie looks like a soaked vermin in comparison, thin, lithe limbs and skittish movements. Doe-eyed, she stares frightened over Ruby’s shoulder, filled with anxiety and unease as she tries to calculate Jasper’s next exasperated move.
Jasper responds with a shove of her own, palms pressing against Ruby’s shoulders. She barely moves.
“Mind your own business, Punchy,” Jas spits through gritted teeth. “Don’t gotta come in bein’ her bodyguard. Em can fight her own fuckin’ battles.”
“I don’t wanna fight , Jazzy,” Emmie quickly cuts in. Her fingers anxiously twist strands of the longer hair dangling by her shoulder, braiding them together before letting them unravel seconds later.
“Why’s it always gotta be a fight with you?” Ruby follows up, accusatory. The anger seems to fall from her face for a moment, and beneath it there is only concern, and a desperate desire to understand what was going wrong in her sisters’ lives. “Always tryin’a make us an enemy.”
Jasper scoffs, her eyes flickering between her twins.
Ruby was strong, determined. An immovable object no matter what hardships collide with her mountainous form and personality.
Emerald was intelligent, with a strong sense of logic that could debate against the most learned people in the world without so much as a stuttered word.
Jasper fell perfectly between the two. Hearty, but not the strongest. Precise, but without the spoken grace of a scholar. Always a marker for comparison to people who shared her face, her hair, her eyes.
Why was she so insignificant in comparison?
Jasper begins to walk past her twins, shoulder-checking Ruby hard on her way to the door.
“Goin’ out,” She mumbles under her breath.
Emmie reaches towards her, fingers skating down the length of Jasper’s sleeve as she passes by. “Jazzy.”
“C’mon, Jas,” Ruby sighs as she turns. “Don’t be such an ass. Jasper!”
***
“Jasper!”
The shrill shriek of a dog’s bark shatters the memory’s hold on Jasper’s consciousness. She watches — Saddened? Horrified? — as Ruby’s face disappears, the color of her fiery red mullet dulling to dark brown, striking silver fading to a similar color.
Where Ruby and Emmie once pleaded for their sister to return, Lauren and Riley now stand, asking much the same of her in unspoken voices.
Lauren, with bruises blooming across their young features, still soft in the cheeks with the remnants of baby fat and youthful naivety. Their hands – wrapped in sloppily wound bandages – squeeze desperately around Jasper’s shoulders, worry and uncertainty furrowing their brow.
Riley hovers only a few steps behind Lauren’s taller form, face visible over their left shoulder and looking to Jasper with a wounded, yearning expression she identifies too strongly with.
She releases a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, attempting to heave out all of her anxiety in one enormous exhale. All of it comes rushing back in only seconds later in her next breath. Panic threatens to overtake her as Jasper’s hands — one still tightly gripping the folded leather collar — lift to her neck.
“It’s okay,” Lauren says, their voice growing quieter as they watch her grapple with anxiety. Their fingers squeeze tighter, bunching up the fabric of Jasper’s shirt. “Just take a breath —”
Jasper shoves an elbow directly against Lauren’s sternum. Not hard enough to bruise, but it earns a surprised exhale alongside the haphazard falling of their feet as they stumble back into Riley’s chest. Riley catches them easily with two hands against their back.
The two stare, utterly confused as Jasper struggles to loop the collar around her neck, hurriedly covering the angrily flickering flames beneath her scar. She pulls the end through the buckle so quickly she nearly chokes herself, a gag spit violently from her throat that makes Riley surge forward again.
“Jas, please calm down.”
Jasper pushes forward, stumbling past the two to walk further across the room. She faintly hears the click of nails against the floorboards as the dogs — Smudge now alongside Shadow, who must have come with Lauren — hurry to return to their owner’s side.
But Jasper doesn’t make it very far.
She only makes it four or five struggling steps away from the bed before the sight of a mess of random shit strewn across the floor stops her dead.
Old, weathered pages ripped from a ledger. Various knick-knacks which hadn’t seen the light of day in nearly ten years, now weathered by trapped moisture and the chill of a dark box. Faded polaroids, marked with even more faded writing. A barely preserved script to commemorate what must have been milestones, once precious memories.
One photo sits in a bronze frame, though the protective glass overtop has cracked, a wound spidering across the scene of a man with three red-haired children, centered on the child in the middle.
The room grows tense with silence as Jasper takes two heavy steps towards the collection.
Lauren gulps, their eyes flickering to Riley, then back when Jasper’s voice cracks through the air.
“Thought I told you both,” They begin, each word carefully measured, but still heavy with barely restrained anger. “Never t’ go through my things.”
Riley inhales a shaky breath as she watches Jasper struggle to kneel at the edge of the pile.
“We—” She begins, stopping in an attempt to not fumble over her words so much when it felt like they mattered so much. Her face turns to Lauren, looking for something; comfort, a look of reassurance, anything that would give her the courage to respond. “We were just looking for —”
“Answers.” Lauren cuts in to finish her sentence, their voice more definitive against the roar of blood rushing in Jasper’s ears. “We were looking for anything that could give us some kind of answers while we waited for you to wake up. Something to tell us… Why?”
Jasper reaches towards the scattered remains of her past life, her fingers grasping around the edge of the bronze frame that once greeted her mere hours after her father’s death. It’s the heaviest weight she’s ever lifted, the most burdensome possession she couldn’t bear to part with despite the grief it brought.
A mirthless huff falls from the precipice of her lower lip as the frame trembles in her hand.
“Why?” Jasper parrots the word with an air of mocking. Her eyes drift across the splintered glass laid over the photo, following the jagged lines which devour the entire right side of the child to the left, the precise cracks bisecting the leg of the child to the right. “You think I don’t ask myself the same fuckin’ question?”
Why had her Daddy been selfish enough to risk a binding pact with a Devil, of all beings? Why had he been foolish enough to not fulfill his end of the deal?
Why had she been such an asshole to them that day?
Why hadn’t she stayed?
Why did she survive while her family did not?
Jasper doesn’t notice the trembling in her legs until they give out, and her body falls unceremoniously to the floor. Shadow and Smudge whine in unison, their cold noses nudging against the uncovered skin of her arms, a scalding burn against her feverish skin.
She sighs heavily, watching as the translucent flames of Tartarus flickered at the edges of her vision, surrounding the mementos of her past life.
“My Daddy had an affliction,” Jasper’s voice croaks out after another long bout of silence. “A heavy greed that ran down t’ his bones, so much a part ‘a him not even the scripture could tame it. Bet everythin’ that wasn’t nailed down against people with the right cards tucked up their sleeves. Lost everythin’ eventually. Didn’t know when t’ walk away.”
Lauren and Riley share a saddened glance, then at once begin to approach where Jasper sits on the floor. They flank her — Lauren to her left, Riley to her right. The dogs whine in sympathy, but eventually settle against each other in tightly curled circles, both with one shoulder touching Jasper’s back.
“Til he met my Mama.” She can’t help but chuckle, wipes two fingers roughly under her nose as she sniffles. “You’d’ve thought she came outta the Army a decorated officer the way she gave orders. Was a nurse of all things, but ain’t nobody ever raised a hand or a word t’ her badly the way she ran triage for a bunch’a trigger happy morons desperate t’ prove their worth to a government that didn’t give a damn.
“Happened t’ meet by chance after Daddy made a bet he couldn’t pay. Group ‘a guys gave him what for. Pounded on him ‘til they paid the debt in blood, left him in the streets stumblin’ over his own feet in the early hours of the mornin’. The way he told it, next thing he remembers is wakin’ up t’ this firecracker of a woman holdin’ him by the face, cusses spillin’ outta her mouth like a stream while she wiped the blood dribblin’ from his lip. He’d never met a woman that could make a sailor blush with just words ‘fore he met her.”
Jasper’s other hand reaches into the memories scattered across the floor, fingers clutching the edge of a weathered polaroid of a couple standing before a small, dinky chapel. Their clothes weren’t anything fancy, probably thrifted and nearly threadbare, but their faces were alight with happiness as they walked hand-in-hand.
“Normally wouldn’t’ve gone anywhere afterwards, ‘cept for the fact that Daddy was a gamblin’ man. Put his heart in the pot an’ went all-in on her. They were content for a while after. Mama convinced him he didn’t need t’ keep bettin’ everything to his name for something greater. He could be happy with the love they shared, an honest day’s work.”
The photo crinkles at the edge as Jasper’s fingers hold it tighter. She taps the bottom edge against the floor twice before tossing it back onto the pile, watches it slide to a stop a foot away.
“Then the Devil came knockin’. He wears a face up here, works under the guise of a man, all grease-slicked charisma an’ promises of fortune. For a price.
“Give to me what it is you find most precious, an’ I’ll make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.”
Jasper’s expression twists with disgust, anger and sadness all at once, each emotion flashing vividly behind her eyes as the flames in her vision flare.
“That was Daddy’s pact. Where me an’ my sisters came from.”
Riley and Lauren both lean forward, catching each other’s eye across Jasper’s lap. They exchange a hesitant look, Lauren giving Riley a raised brow as she lifts her eyes to meet Jasper’s red-ringed stare.
“Sisters?” Riley questions gently.
Jasper inhales deeply, then exhales a heavy sigh as they nod. There’s a deep, monotonous sadness in their voice as they continue, “What greater fortune to be blessed with than bein’ a father to triplets?”
Lauren and Riley’s shoulders sag almost in unison. Neither had ever discussed much of their past with each other or Jasper, yet they both could identify strongly with the sadness which comes from the loss of a sibling.
It was strange, really, how the universe brought these three together.
Lauren hesitates briefly before letting their shoulder press gently against Jasper’s. They peer at the image beneath the frame’s broken glass, melancholic curiosity giving them the courage to ask, “What were they like?”
Jasper releases a short hum, something between acknowledgement and amusement as their head tilts, bumping softly against Lauren’s crown.
“Daddy named us after precious stones,” She remarks, sarcastic and bitter tones woven through her words. “A product of his greed, still. Kinda ironic in hindsight.
“Ruby was the ‘oldest.’” She gestures to the child on the far left, the face full of a gap-toothed grin. The man behind her in the photo sits a heavy hand atop one of her shoulders, as if to keep her still. “Could sum her up as a walkin’ knee-jerk reaction. Act first, ask questions later. Could be both a help an’ a hindrance dependin’ on the situation. If you wanted backup, she’d only ask what for while runnin’ her busted knuckles under a faucet. But for more diplomatic shit, you’d be better off askin’ Emmie.”
Jasper tilts the frame the opposite direction, lifting the right side to draw attention to the child on the far right. Longer hair done up in twin braids that barely laid over her shoulders. Her smile is less enthusiastic, though no less genuine than her sisters’. Even in a photo, her eyes held a certain depth that was difficult to explain. Some might consider it distant and dazed, while others might see it as broad focus.
“Emerald, but we always called her Emmie. Technically the baby outta us three, but she was the sharpest. Real good with readin’ people. No one ever had a bad thing t’ say ‘bout her, but she was always puttin’ on one act or another based on the people she talked to. If she had it her way, she’d prefer readin’ an entire library’s worth ‘a books. Some people thought she was spacey, that blank look in her eyes, but ain’t nothin’ ever get past her without notice.”
The top of the frame begins to tip towards the floor as Jasper’s grip on it loosens. Her eyes fall to the final child in the middle of the photo. A younger image of herself, falling perfectly between her sisters, her posture even then rigid with contempt.
“We had a fight the day they…” Her breath hitches suddenly, and Jasper’s other hand rushes to cover her mouth as emotion begins to overwhelm her. She squeezes her eyes shut as the flames around her swell to a horrifying crescendo, static and cries of agony drowning out Riley and Lauren’s concern. “I was so stupid.”
***
It’s the summer of 1992 when the Devil comes to collect.
The smoke spirals towards the heavens in thick, black ropes, billowing from every window blown out by the house’s growing internal pressure.
Despite their sweat-slicked skin, despite the bellowing rage of the flames consuming everything they had ever held dear, emitting a heat rivaled only by the deepest pits of Hell, Jasper’s entire body feels ice cold. Their eyes, doe-like, huge and terrified by what they could only rationalize as a terrible nightmare, constantly bounce between portions of their home where fangs of flame pierce through.
Jasper had only left an hour ago.
The heat from their argument with their twins had pushed her to leave, find space in the open forest surrounding their home, skipping flat rocks across a nearby lake until the wrath in her belly burned itself back to ashes and embers.
And now, the only place she had ever called home was doing the same.
No rational thought passes through her mind as Jasper bolts through the burning threshold. No pain registers as heat and flame lick at her outstretched hand, leaving a large red burn across the side of her palm and wrist.
The only thoughts that come to the surface of her mind are Ruby, Emmie, and their parents.
“Ruby!” Jasper calls, her voice a mere crackle against the roaring flames surrounding her. She watches as they skitter across the walls, devouring photos of their family, memories erased quick as they had been made. Jasper coughs, halfheartedly covering the bottom half of her face with the open fabric of her flannel shirt. “Emmie?! Where are you?”
The house groans in pain as fire begins to gnaw at the load-bearing pieces of its foundation. Jasper watches pieces of the ceiling fall away and crash in fiery heaps to the ground floor, narrowly avoiding crushing her in the process. She stumbles further into the blaze, once again calling out.
“Mama? Daddy!”
“Jazzy!” Emmie’s shrill voice manages to sound above the roaring of flames. “We can’t get out!”
Jasper presses further towards the stairs. “I’m comin’!”
Another creak, then a crash as more of the burned ceiling gives out above her. Jasper hears the impact, feels the quake of the floor beneath her feet, and then heat.
A sweltering heat she’s never felt before, so intense it was cold, climbing the side of her right leg as flames begin to engulf her pant leg.
There’s nothing to catch her as Jasper’s body falls to the floor. It only takes mere seconds for the fire to overwhelm her, licking at her skin as she struggles to pull her foot free of the fallen debris.
“Agh!” She cries out as panic seizes her heart and senses. “Fuck!”
The sudden heavy thud of footfalls cuts through the sound of burning, quickly approaching her prone form.
“Jasper!” The deep, panicked voice of her father calls out. He drops to a knee behind her, wrapping his thick arms around her torso. Jasper struggles against his hold out of sheer panic, watching and kicking frantically in an attempt to rid herself of the flame.
“Daddy, they’re trapped upstairs!” They whine, reaching to try and pry themself out of his grip. “Go help them!”
“Jasper!” She hears her sisters call out again, their voices overlapping and forming into a single plea for salvation. “Jasper, help! Jasper!”
Julien drags his daughter away from the fallen debris, back the way they came to the threshold of their front door. Jasper kicks the whole way back, more desperate to climb the stairs to their sisters than to extinguish the flames at this point. Tears gather in their eyes as they watch the staircase grow more and more distant, the fire growing wilder and hungrier.
“No!” Jasper cries as Julien manages to drag her to the front lawn. No sooner has he patted out the fire on her leg does Jasper attempt to stand, tripping as she lunges back towards the burning building.
“Jasper, no!” Her father calls, grabbing hold of the back of her loose flannel to pull her back towards safety.
“We can’t leave them!” The anguish shreds through her throat, desperation making her holler herself hoarse. “Daddy, please!”
“You listen t’ me, God dammit!”
Julien’s bellowing words paralyze her. He takes the moment to pull Jasper into him, turns her around by the shoulders to look her in the eyes. She can see his face now, boiling red and soot-stained from the fire, tear tracks rolling from his eyes. He struggles to breathe, coughing and gasping between his words.
“This is my fault,” He begins slowly, raising one hand to cup Jasper’s cheek. His thumb skims across her skin delicately, deeply regretful fondness filling his eyes as they look into her. “I’m sorry I can’t explain. I’m sorry I’ve done this t’ you. To our family. But I need you t’ run now.”
Jasper blinks, tears rolling down her own cheeks. “Daddy?”
Julien’s voice hardens, rises in pitch. “Now. Don’t stop. Don’t look back for anyone. Keep. Running. Hear me?”
She nods. Numb, not understanding why, but she understands that tone in his voice.
Her father nods once, then moves to the side and shoves at her back.
“Go!”
Jasper runs.
Her right leg burns. The loose, singed denim of her jeans slap against the burned skin as she picks up speed, sending jolts of pain up the length of her leg, but Jasper continues to run.
They don’t get far.
Something catches around their neck. Like a lasso. Something textured, burning hot against her skin.
It completely robs Jasper of breath as it closes around their neck, both momentum and whatever held the other end pulling their body to an abrupt halt.
Jasper lands on her back, gasping for breath, hands scrambling to grab at the offending rope now binding her.
She hears her father cry out.
The clink of spurs.
“Not so fast there, Mutt.”
The voice is closer to her than she realized. Almost as if whoever it belonged to had just materialized from nowhere. A deep, smokey rasp of a voice so impossibly close to her ear it almost sounded like it was in her head. When Jasper whips her head to the side to look, still dazed and panicked by the impact, the persistent burning around her throat, she’s face to face with the bane of all evils.
He’s a stouter man than one would expect, though imposing all the same thanks to the thickness of his build. Barrel-chested, stance like a bull about to charge. Looks like he came from the depths of a coal mine.
His laughter is slow, rough like a smoker’s yet eerily melodic in a way that made all the hairs on Jasper’s body stand on end. His chest rattles as he inhales deeply, a sound she knew was typically followed by the swift executioner that is Death itself.
Jasper only manages to wheeze as she watches the man kneel down beside her. He tips the brim of his large ten gallon hat, hiding his eyes in the shadow it cast.
“Gotta tell ya’, I am impressed,” The man begins, his drawl playfully curling around his words.
“GET AWAY FROM HER!”
Julien’s voice rings out almost as sharp as the gunshot that follows it. A forceful clap of an explosion, followed by the high-pitched scream of a bullet aimed directly for the man’s head.
He simply raises a hand, a flick of the wrist redirecting the bullet off into the far distance to his right. That sinister laughter rings again, echoing like a church bell calling the start of a funeral. The man’s head shifts slightly to watch Julien approach, gun drawn and shaking violently in his hand.
“I see you an’ your Daddy share a stubbornness,” He remarks under his breath, then continues louder, “We had a deal, Julien.”
“Fuck your deal,” Julien spits, cocking the hammer of his revolver. “You tricked me.”
Jasper props herself up on her elbows, her eyes darting between the man holding the lasso and her father. “Daddy?”
“Give to me what it is you find most precious, an’ I’ll make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.” The man recites the words like a verse, something of a sarcastic bite behind them as he rolls his head, loosening a kink in his neck. “Nowhere did I say they couldn’t be one in the same.”
Julien’s finger puts pressure on the trigger. “You wicked Devil.”
Jasper feels her heart sink. She looks back to the man beside her just as he finally lifts his head properly, letting her gaze into his eyes. Yellowed, bloodshot sclera accented by burning red-ringed pupils.
“You made a deal with him?”
Julien’s hand loosens. Panic, guilt, hesitance making the tension in his body go soft.
“I didn’t,” Julien stutters, meeting Jasper’s gaze only to look away immediately. “I didn’t know.”
Jasper’s teeth clench. “You wagered your life with a Devil?!”
“Actually,” The noose around Jasper’s neck tightens as the Devil tugs, pulling her attention back to himself. His mouth curls into a grin, too pleased by the choked sound spat from Jasper’s mouth. “He wagered yours.”
Everything around them slows to an agonizing crawl.
Suddenly their mind is drawn back to a lifetime of memories, behavioral patterns she’d noticed in her parents but decided weren’t worth questioning. Her father’s head was always on a swivel, even in the remote forest where they’d built their home. Hushed, intense conversations between their parents in the far edges of every room. That deep, undefined look Jasper had always seen in her father’s eyes as he watched her and her sisters grow and rise to their potential.
A look she now knew as shame.
The same shame he looked at her with now as she sat in the open palm of the Devil himself.
A thousand thoughts race across Jasper’s mind in a second, all of them halted by the pull of the burning lead affixed to her neck.
The Devil fixes her with an intense, unwavering stare. “Much as I’m keen t’ see your family drama play out, I have grown mighty impatient chasin’ you down. You have somethin’ I want.”
Jasper quivers beneath his gaze. Her throat strains with the effort of swallowing the spit building in her mouth. “What?”
“I was promised somethin’ precious to your Daddy,” The Devil continues, looping the length of the lasso around his hand. “A life to serve as my faithful Cerberus. Now, since your Daddy so lovingly failed to provide his side of our bargain the past nineteen years, I was content to just kill you an’ your sisters in order to collect.”
Jasper tries to break eye contact, to look over to Julien for some reassurance that he wouldn’t let this happen to her. All she can see is a shell of the man she called her father, his head hung as if he were already sent to the gallows. His shoulders quake with silent sobs.
The Devil yanks on her lead again, disciplining an untrained dog with pain. Jasper’s torso lurches forward, and he catches her face in his other hand. His touch is insidious, greasy and sweat-slicked, skin smelling of sulfur, ashes and gasoline.
“He can’t help you no more,” He growls, putrid breath invading her nostrils as he pulls her close to his face. “I can see you got a lot a’ life in you. I can offer you somethin’ much more than I was gonna do if you’d stayed in that house.
“Submit to me, Lord Hades of the Underworld. Serve as my Cerberus. Remove the sinful from the mortal world and bring their souls to me, an’ I’ll let you continue to live as you mortals love to.”
The Devil’s fingers curl and stroke kindly across her skin as his grip loosens and gradually lifts from her face. His hand remains extended towards her, open and waiting and expectant.
Jasper looks at the hand offered. It looks nothing like it feels; pleasantly clean, sun-tanned skin sporting rough calluses. Fingers of a six-string picker, just like her father.
“And if I say no?” Her voice quivers as the question leaves her lips.
Hades smiles. A wicked smile only fit for the King of the Dead.
“Then I collect your soul as it was once promised to me.”
Fear and tension makes her breath quiver as she exhales hard.
The moment her hand slips into Hades’, the noose around her neck burns hotter against her skin, branding her with the flames of Tartarus.
***
The picture frame drops from Jasper’s hand, thudding dully against the hardwood floor. Some smaller pieces of the broken glass shake loose from the cracks and fall to the floor, nearly invisible.
“Every wakin’ moment, I can hear them screamin’,” Jasper babbles, her body sandwiched by Lauren, Riley and the dogs. They rock her gently as tears she’d let build are finally shed. “Almost eight years later, all I hear is them screamin’. Always screamin’.”