THE HUNT III

Lair

Hollow and Kristina towards their destination in his motorcycle. Drizzle starts to pour down as they get closer to their destination, and the sensation of vibration due to the roaring of the thunder is felt. Kristina starts to feel anxious as they get closer, but she needs to keep a calm head. They can see the hill on which the old Abandoned Dominican Hotel stands.

"Is that a restaurant?"

"Yes, it is owned by one of the Reapers, they watch over this building and the surrounding area, places like this one has a gate that only Reapers can walk through or someone who is given a permission"

"So it's useless to go after them now?"

"Yeah" Hollow entered first and already felt the souls of the damned. He looks around and can feel that all eyes are on him, he uses his clairvoyance and can see those faces. "We're here" He said to Kristina. They feel a chill down their spine and the atmosphere around them become cold.

"Well, time to use the aether" Hollow uses the pocket watch and seems to be frozen solid. The dial cannot be moved.

"What's wrong?"

"Its frozen, this is really the place"

"A place for what?"

"A demonic lair, this place has been infested and the souls of old world war 2 soldiers fuels it, shit"

As Hollow panics to fix his stopwatch, they can hear grueling shrieks that drained them of all energy, noises around them that made the building seem alive; from footsteps, whales, cries, and screams. Hollow fixes his stopwatch but not long before they made contact to their target.

"Hollow" Kristina said, her voice shaky and her volume lowered as if she does not want to disturb something.

"Yeah?" Hollow asked, he sees slow footsteps in front of him without sound. He slowly looks up to see this nun on eye level, but the only problem is that there is no eye to be in level with. He sees in front of him the apparition of a headless nun. The nun seems harmless as it looked towards the right, and walk. The 2 is frozen in their place as the presence brought with it harsh freezing temperatures.

"Hollow, I think my mask is, frozen in my face"

"Yeah, heat yourself up, can you do that?"

"No I c-" They hear marching echoing around them and men speaking in Japanese. They look up to see the ghost of a old Imperial Japanese Soldier.

"Kempeitai" Kristina whispered under her breath.

"Hollow what do we do?"

"we follow them"

"Which one?"

"I'll follow the nun, and you follow those military police" He said calmly.

"What, no absolutely not, you and I are sticking together"

"No, we're talking off the mask, we'll attract and unfortunately its better if we go separate, it's a small place plus we can still talk through the mask, just put it on your person and do NOT drop it"

Hollow first slowly takes off his mask as it is frozen in place, he let out small grunts as he carefully rip it off his face. He puts it on his sleeve and waited for Kristina to do the same, and she followed. She hangs it on her belt and the 2 hold on to their weapons.

"Can I see your face?"

"No, you might see another demon, now go, go up"

Kristina climbed up using the trees and eventually sees the soldier manifesting and then disappearing in the same cycle. She looks down trying to see Hollow but he is already gone and followed the nun.

"Let's go" The nun slowly walks in front of Hollow and all he can do is follow. He can hear the same haunting noises from before, the voices of the people that suffered. All those noises affected him deeply but it must not affect him. The building is undergoing rehabilitation by the local government, and he feels that he is responsible to ensuring that none of them are to fall into this grim fate.

The nun stops in the hallway and slowly disappears and Hollow is left on his own. He looks around the hallway and all he can hear is his own breathing, the haunting noises stopped.

"Nothing" He was about to grab his mask to talk to Kristina until he hears more screaming Japanese soldiers. He hid behind the walls as to not disturb the soldiers, and he can hear women screaming for their life, and asking them to stop. He looks behind and sees torch lights, as if he has gone back in time everything feels real.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!" A soldier spoke in Japanese appears beside Hollow. He fires a shot but it went through the ghost, he looks beside him and hears a priest begging to be save as he prays in Latin. The soldier grabbed him and dragged him to the rooftop of the building.

Before he reach the top Hollow uses clairvoyance to look for Kristina, and stands there. "Hollow" She finally sees his face, it was handsome. Those beautiful eyes seemed dead, as if it lost everything but she did not react so loudly.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"Yes, I just saw, some priest get their, hea- cho- "

"Yeah yeah, I know, I know"

"But I think I know where the lair is precisely"

"Really?" She pointed to the military police marching through, they have been moving in the exact same pattern.

"They are guarding something"

"Can I borrow your dagger?"

"Here"

He imbues his own imperium into the dagger and uses his clairvoyance to look for the opening or at least the dark imperium that is being emitted by the lair. He stretches his right arm with the dagger and points with his left. He feels the "essence" of the dark imperium, allowing his arm to look for it.

"W-"

"There" His index finger pointed directly to one of the ground rooms of the hotel. As he was about to throw dagger, a skeletal hand grabs his arm, "Hello Hollow" and throws him out of the aether and down to the road.

"AWH, fucking, ABADON!"

He sees the aether slowly opening up and he sees the dark imperium spreading through the building. It possesses all of the souls that is near it.

"A FEAST, EAT MY CHILDREN!" As Abaddon grew stronger, so did the souls he possessed. The building starts to crack because of the overpowering energy that is bursting through the ground because of the lair.

Kristina looks down to see the ground slowly falling apart and bright lights bursting through. She hears moaning and shrieks, souls that are being used.

"Incredible isn't it little girl, all this power is for me, join me an it can be yours too. That man has no idea how powerful you are, but I do"

"No you don't" She responded. Abaddon grabs her over the opening pit. The soldiers went near the cracking ground and destroyed it themselves, revealing damned souls circling around a dark abyss.

"This body, will be destroyed, so try not to struggle"

He lowered him down to the ground. Hollow tries to get up but hands went through the ground and stops him from moving. He can feel the nails digging into him and directly touching his soul, but he pulls through. He gets up and attacks Abaddon. The demon dodges and he stabs Kristina's arm.

"Miss" The demon said. "The Ceremony will begin shortly, with the people of this city to be eaten, at least be a part of it"

"WHISPER!" Hollow screamed and it attacked Abaddon. It transformed into a wolf starts to chew on the demon's arm. "You Like bones" He said as he grabbed the shifter.

"YO-" Kristina comes flying through as she punches through the demon's ribs. His body remained afloat and shrouds of faces appear on the smoke. The shroud on the ribcage turns into a hand and grabs Kristina's hair. Hollow comes over and swiftly cuts through her hair. He kicks the rib cage back to the demon and Whisper bits off.

"Hmmm, that hurt, at least I got some of your blood, BEHOLD, A FESTIVAL OF BLOOD"

Abaddon floats up to the lair and drops the small bone with Kristina's blood. "A new breed" He said as he dropped the piece down into the lair. He looks at them down as if he has achieve the greatest thing ever. The sounds around them went quiet, the rumbling stops, the light went dark and only the moon lights them up.

"That's it?" Hollow asked, he starts to chuckle at the display.

"THAT'S IT!"

"No, this is it"

The ground starts to shake violently as if a great earthquake will hit the city. Every house starts to light up, and several horns blared around the city. An earthquake moves them. Kristina looks at the skyline of the city and everything is shaking. They held firmly onto Whisper who turned into a bird and floats up.

"This IS IT!" A loud roaring echoed from beneath the chasm, a strong hot gust of wind burst through.

"The one in Japan was stopped because Mammon's Herald got too greedy and attacked them, pathetic. Greed, so stupid"

The roaring stops, and silence took back its place.

"What is happening Hollow?"

"Calm down, we need to stop the lair from opening even further"

"How? HOW DO WE DO THAT"

"There's a catalyst within the lair, we need to find it"

"can you specify?" Kristina kept repeating as Hollow went quiet, looking for the catalyst. All he can see is imperium, and its nothing but dark. It clouded his vision as he looks for the core, but it seems to be near impossible.

"It's a person, we need to find a person within the building, and fast"

"Wh, fast why?"

"4 Roars, the first roar is the beast waking up, and the other 3, let's just say we do not want to hear it"

"Oh yeah"

Kristina jumps down into the roof and dodges the attack from Abaddon. "Its you and me, not her" Abaddon's bone starts to turn into a weapon. Hollow summons a sword and a pistol to combat the demon, and Whisper reverts into something smaller to protect him.

"Exciting" The demon said as they engaged one another Abaddon proves himself difficult to chase around as he moves extremely quickly, and when he is near he is able to spread his body around; like smoke. He lands attacks onto Hollow, and the weight of each attack feels light.

"Got you!" Hollow lands a punch on Abaddon's weaker arm. It breaks off his limbs and it turns into a clone which went after Kristina.

"Oh no" He sees the clone and tries to chase after it, but the demon grabs him and stops him. "WHISPER GO AFTER THE SECOND ONE!" Whisper transforms into a smaller animal and chases after the clone. Kristina hears the sound of the clone's drapes floating around, and she hid.

"You cannot little girl!" The hand went through and grabs her arm, the clone pulled her through the wall and stabs her.

"So this is a new breed, how did you master it without going into the Underworld?"

Despite being a clone, it proves to be stronger. Whisper tries to attack it but he is pinned down on the ground by the ghosts.

"I SHALL USE YOUR BODY, AND YOU WILL BE A CHATOTIC VESSEL"

Kristina grabs the head and breaks it with her bear fist. The ghost fell into a panic before it rushed towards her. "HOLLOW!" She screamed as the ghost wraps around her and holding her down. She thrash around trying to pull all of the ghost around.

"HIS BODY IS THE CATALYST, AND HE IS JUST LIKE MARTIN, IF HIS MAIN BODY IS TOO SPREAD OUT HIS DEFENSE WEAKENS"

"Really?" He said. He focuses imperium on his sword and it slices through he gaps of the ribs and he pulls it off. He grabs the cloak and reveals a person, his body is thin as if he has no fat.

"Martin?" He said. Martin's body falls down, drained of all nutrients and his body is withering. He can barely breath, and his eyes are the only thing that moves. Hollow examines his chest, a large cut across it and indents made his chains.

Abaddon manifests through the rib cage and mocks Hollow.

"We are demons, we are all connected by something, and nothing will go away from us unmarked, the 12 children that we stole from your people years ago, Death was confident that his Reapers would save them, but we defeated them, we forced them to break the oath"

His sword starts to rust as Abaddon's small form crawls towards his face. His cold skeletal hands grabs his head, and he went right up to his face.

"But, what will you do now, Little Hollow, Mephistopheles, or, Logan?"

Abaddon grabs his face and shows the fate of the 13 people that was with Martin's doppelganger. He enters the demon's psyche, and there Martin is in chains.

"Hello, Holl- Lo-- gan, yo-u you tried... to sa..ve .us.... th-ank you"

Those skeletal hands went through his heart and he devoured it. 13 people appear around Logan, and they all met the same fate. The darkness around them starts to turn into the house, where they were hidden.

"We never escaped"

"Is hell forever?"

"Will I still be able to find my mother?"

"I'm afraid, save us"

"Araav, will save us"

"The Archangels will save us"

"Logan, will find us to do not worry"

"This is not the end"

"I WILL PROTECT ALL OF YOU"

"Martin will not betray us"

"We're safe now, he's here"

"HE KILLED US ALL WHEN HE ARRIVE WITH THAT ORDERLY VESSEL!"

Logan falls down onto his knees crying, his sword broke down into small pieces of rust. He covers his face, and 2 people stood behind him. They too wore the same mask as Logan.

"Logan?" Remi asked.

"The 1st Roar will start soon, we need to break this catalyst with minimal damage" Logan commanded. Alucard steps up and grabs Martin's body.

"If...yo.u...de..st..roy..me"

"We understand, we will throw you in the lair, thank you, and we apologize, whoever you are"

"Kristina, that's the new member?" Remi asked.

"She has great potential, we need her"

Kristina climbs up with the tip of her dagger pointed towards Alucard. "VAMPIRE!" Remi appeared right in front of her and stopped her. In a blink of an eye Kristina's head is already on the ground.

"That is your friend, Martin"

"I know, I saw it, the demon got them already"

"Yeah" The first Roar came and lasted for 1 minute. A rumbling shook the surrounding area and alerted a group.

"The Dominican?" A woman asked.

"It seems to be, let us go" A boy replied. The figures jumped off and sprinted towards the building.