Chapter Text
And I can go anywhere I want,
Anywhere I want
(Just not home)
And you can aim for my heart, go for blood
But you would still miss me
(In your bones)
— Taylor Swift, “My Tears Ricochet”
Someone write my new name down.
— Banks, “The Devil”
Hell has known many names: Hades, Inferno, the Underworld, Tartarus. Cultures all over the world call it something different, but they all mean the same thing.
Punishment without hope of atonement. Stones and fire.
Agony.
One second he was in the basement of Rosenfeld Hall with Alex and the next he was being swallowed whole and spat out into an opaque, obsidian darkness.
His body was alight with a fire he’d never felt before, with pain so sharp and hot that he didn’t think it have been would possible to experience in the world of the living. He felt himself contort and transform into something monstrous.
It could have been hours. It could have been days.
But eventually, the pain faded. He moved new limbs: wings like a bat’s that extended from his shoulder blades. He licked his lips, his forked tongue darting between fanged teeth; his eyes adjusted to the red darkness.
And he knew. He knew it down to his core: Sandow had put him here.
He’d been onto something dangerous, and the old man had thrown him away to cover his tracks, had swatted him like a fly.
He knew that soon, there would be another victim. And now Alex was alone, thrown to the wolves, just waiting to be found out.
He kept seeing her face: a phantom that haunted his dreams. He saw her standing still, staring blankly, doing nothing as he was consumed by the hell beast.
He saw the decision in her eyes, the calculation.
Resentment made a home inside his chest, curling around his ribcage like a snake.
He deserved it; he had been planning to give her up to a man who was a monster himself.
He hadn’t figured it all out soon enough; he had failed her.
And he had been lying to her, pretending that the two of them weren’t the same.
He had known many names.
Daniel Arlington, Danny, Darlington.
The golden boy of Lethe.
Murderer.
And now, something darker, meaner. He knew what he had become. He heard souls whisper it around him as they shrunk away in fear:
Gentleman Demon.