Absinthe walked  out of the meaty mound and through the gates he entered. The sky echoed thunder and droplets of red poured from the sky. Absinthe held his hand out which was covered in the liquid in seconds.
“Blood?”
He heard a cough come from a nearby corner and Cresil slouched on the ground, his eyes wide.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice high-pitched and irritating.
“What do you think happened? I killed him.”
Cresil's eyes bulged from his head and he followed Absinthe, his hands folded like a rat. 
“What,” Absinthe said, looking over his shoulder at the stout demon, “you didn't think I'd walk out of that hovel alive?”
Cresil rubbed his hands. “No, no, my lord. I simply didn't expect you to come out... unscathed.” He looked at Absinthe's coat. “or, nearly, should I say?”
Absinthe chuckled. “Right. Take me to the next demon.”

***

Unknown time of day, October 30th, 1881, Baphomet's Chamber

Absinthe wasn't sure how they arrived in the next realm, but it wasn't as revolting as Mephistopheles'
“This is much better,” Absinthe announced as he stared at a windowless, rusted steel wall. Barbed wired lined the pathway leading to blood stained double doors.
Cresil mumbled and grunted in fear, clinging to Absinthe's leg.
“Unhand me, wretch.” He kicked outward, flinging the little demon toward the wire fencing, nearly impaling him. Cresil scurried around, a thin hairless tail Absinthe hadn't noticed was resting between Cresil's legs.
“How do we get in? The doors have no handles.” Absinthe pushed them but they didn't budge. “There's no way in.”
“How do you usually enter an individuals home?”
He thought for a moment. “How do I usually go about it? Hm. I kick their door down.”
Cresil slumped into a heap of fat. “No, no, no. Knock.”
Absinthe stood in front of the door and knocked three times. He glared down at Cresil. “If you're fucking wi-”
The doors slid open, grating against the stone floor. And just like Mephistopheles' entrance, it was dark, but instead of a sweaty, pulsating wall, this was dry and cold. 
“Still not coming?” Absinthe asked the squatting demon who was picking up bugs off the ground and eating them. He looked up and shook his head furiously.
Absinthe rolled his eyes and stepped into the doorway.
He heard a slam behind him, leaving him in complete darkness. 
“Shit.”
He felt along the walls, following their path, though he didn't have a clue on where he was going.
Reaching a crossroads in the path, he made a hesitant guess and took a left.
Still clinging to the side of the wall, a light flickered in the distance. He knew he was going the right way. He jolted toward the brightness, it danced like a fire with colors of yellow and orange bouncing off the wall. The light itself moved down a hallway and Absinthe followed.
Turning the corner, the flame was already ahead of him, having turned down another corridor.
He continued to follow it as it seemingly jumped ahead of him and finally, he saw a chamber ahead and the light was nearby.
He dashed into the chamber, stopping just ahead of the light.
He heard metal grind against stone and looked at the passage. Barbed wire slithered across the opening, burrowing itself into the wall. 
“Well, that's just great.”
The flame flickered and he looked toward it, a short, hog faced goblin covered in hair stood with a torch, staring at him with small black eyes. It squealed and charged toward him. Absinthe had no patience to deal with more minions and picked the creature up by the scruff of its neck, causing it to drop the torch, through demon in the air, and drop kicked it into the darkness. It squealed again and he heard a squish before the hog went silent.
Absinthe picked up the torch and looked looked around, kicking loose rubble. Just as he walked further into the chamber, the floor came to a drop. He looked down, spikes protruded from the ground where the goblin lay.
“That's your game, is it, Baphomet?”
A deep chuckle echoed throughout the room. “It is, Gunslinger. Play my game, and I will allow you to take my soul.”
Absinthe scoffed. “Oh, really? Mephistopheles said-”
“Mephistopheles was a decrepit old fool. His vert own diseases were festering inside him, eating away at his sanity. Astaroth and I, we know know Abigor's true intentions.”
“How can I get to you if there's no way across?”
Baphomet cackled. “I will give you a hint, one wrong move will lead to your doom, but the right step will guide you to my room.”
Absinthe shook his head in frustration and thought, wondering what he should do to get across. He stepped along the center edge of the cliff and a brick slid inward. A rather wide stepping stone rose from the cavernous death trap.
He stepped on it and another stone rose. He continued onto the next and two stepping stones popped up, one to his left and the other to his right.
He grabbed a piece of the loose stone from the chamber room floor and quickly placed it on the step to his right. A cluster of spikes shot up, causing him to nearly fall off the edge of where he stood.
“This should be a pain in the ass.”
He took his hat off and filled it to the brim with stones and continued onto the step to the left. This time four more steps came up. He laid stones on three of them. One slammed into the darkened ceiling, the second plummeted to the ground, and on the third a cage filled with nails shot up and clamped over what would have been an unlucky soul.
The pathway continued the same way, each successful stepping stone conjured four more and Absinthe would have to figure out which ones were unsafe until he reach the second to last set of stepping stones, not too far from the other half of the chamber.
He placed rocks on three and two of which sprang forth a trap, but the third did nothing. He took the stone and placed it on the remaining step, but it didn't do anything, either.
Absinthe sighed in frustration and stepped onto the first step, it seemed safe but no more stones appeared. He shifted onto the other stone, but still nothing.
He braced himself for a jump and just as he was about to make his leap, the steps crumbled beneath him.
He latched onto the edge of the floor, just barely holding on until he started to slip. He thought quick and forcex himself up, sliding onto the platform leading into the rest of the chamber. 
He got to his feet and continues onward, not wanting to look back at the chasm filled with death. 
The corridor lit up with torches, casting shadows of demons watching him. As he made his way down, he heard a few clicks and something rotating when something silver and glinting in the light passed by him, mere inches from his face. It swung back, followed by another in the distance, and another, until he realized what they were, swinging axes. 
“Easier to dodge than a pit of spikes.”
He readied himself and jumped past the axe. Easy.
The following axes swinging sped up. Not so easy.
He watched the next axe swing back and forth, trying to time it perfectly, and dashed past it just as it came back. 
The following axes swung faster and he quickly ran past it, followed by the next, and the next, and he finally came to the last one which was swinging so fast that it left phantoms of itself behind every time it swayed. Absinthe took a deep breath, eyeing the axe as it slowed down, not because it was losing momentum, but because he was concentrating on its movement. 
He sped around the axe at lightning speed, something he hadn't done for a long time. 
Just like before the axes started swinging he heard another click and something rotate. He looked behind him and the axes stopped abruptly and lifted back into their pockets in the wall.
“Screw you, Baphomet,” he whispered and looked ahead of him, a large metal door, almost completely rusted, was just in front of him, though he hadn't noticed it before.
A maniacal laugh echoed. “Come to me, Gunslinger.”
“Will you still freely give me your soul?”
Baphomet laughed again. “Why don't you find out?”
Absinthe slammed the door open to see the demon sitting at a table covered with viscera, bones with flesh ripped from them, and a skull rested next to the lord of dread which he drank from. The abominable lord himself was humanoid, but there was a difference from how mortals depicted him, instead of a goat head, it was that of a bull with long wiry horns protruding from the top of his head, and he wasn't thin and lean, but rotund and lumpy. 
Baphomet let out a gasp of delight after drinking from his refreshment, a thick red substance dripping down his chin.
“Past challengers,” he said, gesturing to the mutilated bodies strewn about his dining table, “no one has championed those traps.”
Absinthe scoffed. “I guess I'm the first. What's my prize, your soul?”
“No, Gunslinger, you have to work for that.”
“Wonderful. Let's get it over with, shall we?”
Baphomet wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and stood from his chair, all the while staring at his opponent. He scraped his cloven foot against the metal floor and barreled toward him.
Absinthe leapt out of his direction and rolled on the floor. Baphomet, however, collided into the wall, his seemingly indestructible horns getting stuck. He writhed and wriggled, attempting to free himself, and just as he did, Absinthe jammed his dagger into the demons heart.
Baphomet stumbled backward but stood. He grabbed the dagger and ripped it out, laughing loudly. He began to shake, trembling violently when his face split into two heads, his arms divided into four, and his legs also separated into four. There were now two Baphomets. 
“Shit.”
They both laughed and each fled to either side of Absinthe, one blocking the exit, the other ready to obliterate him. 
Both chafing their hooves on the floor, they bellowed the sound of a bull and charged him. 
Absinthe thought that if he time it right, he could trick them just as Baphomet had been doing to him. 
He waited until they were ten or twenty feet from him and performed a sudden back flip and the two demons crashed into each other, their curled horns intertwined, pushing against one another to get free but getting nowhere. 
Absinthe walked up to them, pleased with himself. He unholstered his gun and pointed it at one demon, whose startling yellow eyes stared at him, and pulled the trigger. It fell to the ground, pulling the other down with him. Absinthe aimed his gun at the remaining demon and fired, causing it to topple onto its other half. 
The demon, or both in this case, were dead, and there was only one more left. 
“Now for Astaroth.”
The bodies of the demons quivered and a fume rose above them, screaming. Their souls, and there were two but they were conjoined. It quickly evaporated. 

***

Absinthe walked out of the chamber, Cresil skulking around this time. 
“You defeated them?”
Absinthe glared down at him. “You knew Baphomet was actually two demons?”
Cresil's eyes grew wide and he cowered. “Well, I... I.”
“You had better tell me what you know about Astaroth.”
Cresil mumbled about his master, as well as other gibberish Absinthe couldn't hear.
“Now, wretch!”
The plump little demon took a few steps back, his arms shielding his face. “You will not only be confronting Lord Astaroth. There are other demons with him.”
Absinthe grabbed him by the skin of his flabby neck. “Who?”
“I don't know. I swear, I swear I don't know!”
He loosened his grip. “Take me to him.”

***
Unknown time of day, October 30th, 1881, Astaroth's Domain.

The walls were made of a dark granite stone, hallways stretched in every direction with demonic statuary lining each of them. Yellow flames lit them, casting a sickly glow to Absinthe's skin and teeth, Cresil looked even worse like he would explode any moment.
“Where is he?” Absinthe growled caused Cresil to scurry down a hallway.
“This way. Come, come.”
As they walked he couldn't help but notice the demon statues on the ceiling staring down at them, their reflective eyes following their every move.
They came to an opening, almost like a window, where there was a courtyard. A large statue lay in the middle of it, it was humanoid but with cloven feet. Its head was destroyed, crumbles of it were on the ground, an eye here and a horn there.
“Lucifer?”
“Yes. Ever since Lord Astaroth decided on his plan to overthrow the Dark Prince, he destroy any statues of him so as to not influence others to continue their worshiping. Lord Astaroth inflicts severe punishment on those caught doing what he now considers blasphemous.”
They passed the courtyard. “I think your Lord is way in over his head.”
Cresil eyed Absinthe, his bulbous eyes almost rolled in the back of his head. “I do not question him. He will do great things.”
Absinthe snickered. “I bet.”
A shadow lingered ahead, the silhouette of a woman. 
“Who's there?” Absinthe called.
She giggled and came out of the shadows.
He gasped. “Rosemary. You've been here this whole time?”
She walked up to him, a smile on her face. Leaning against him she caressed his jawline, her lips coming close to his.
Absinthe back away, for once truly shocked as her skin melted, her face pouring down like a melting candle until a completely different woman stood before him. Her hair was long and shiny, a deep, flaming red color. Her eyes glittered bright green with thick, black lashes framing them. Her feet were cloven like Baphomets, her garments were loose, threatening to fall from her body. But her skin was a periwinkle color and glistened like satin.
Her ruby red lips parted. “Hello, Absinthe,” her voice was deep and sultry, “come to relish in my presence?”
Absinthe shivered in disgust. “I wouldn't dream of it, Lilith. I've come for Astaroth.”
“Oh.” She pouted. “You've come for his 'soul' I'm gathering. Good luck.”
He walked past her as Cresil stared in awe. She scowled at the little demon, offended by his unwavering stare. He was a creature the Lady of Darkness would never allow to indulge in her dungeons. 
“Cresil!” Absinthe barked. The fiend snapped out of his hypnotic state and fled to his surrogate master.
“I'll see you soon, my pet,” her voice came softly from behind them. 
They finally came to a solid black door with horns protruding from the sides. Cresil struggled to push them open while Absinthe watched in amusement. He did enjoy watching the squat demon make a fool of himself, but he was sure Cresil did love it when he suffered, as well.
The door was finally opened and heat escaped the room. Absinthe briskly walked in without a care, a large throne made of skulls was situated in the center of the chamber and a smaller one was set next to it, no doubt for Lilith.
In the larger throne there was a humanoid man, his feet were cloven like Lilith's, many large horns stuck out from the top of his head, but the most peculiar thing about him was that his skin was like molten rock adorned with fissures ready to burst with lava. 
“I'm surprised to see you, Gunslinger,” the demon spoke, his teeth entirely black. 
“No you weren't. You know what I'm here for.”
Astaroth's black eyes scanned him, though it was difficult for Absinthe to know where they were looking.
“You're right, I do know. But know this, Absinthe, I am not the one you want.”
Absinthe, as usual, clenched his teeth. “Abigor told me he would give Rosemary back if I took three of the demon Lords souls. I'm harvesting the final one.”
“Yes, Abigor told you that, but did he mean it?”
Absinthe walked closer. “I'm not sure, but there's only one way to find out. Besides, what's one demon Lord, huh? Mephistopheles told me-”
“That I am in cahoots with angels, right? That fool doesn't have a sane bone in his body, let alone his actual mind.”
Absinthe smiled. “You he 'didn't'.”
“Yes, yes. I heard you killed both Mephistopheles and Baphomet.” Astaroth's voice sounded bored and unenthusiastic. 
“What, you don't care?”
“They were merely pawns in my plan to overthrow Lucifer.”
Absinthe unholstered his gun. “Enough of this, you die here and now.”
Before he could even point his gun at him, Astaroth waved his hand and both the gun and his sheathed knife flew away from him.
“Don't even try it, boy. You're no match for me.”
A sound, like a roaring fire, came from behind Absinthe and a clapping echoed. He turned around to see Abigor, his disturbing smile plastered on his face.
“Well done, Tim. I had hoped you would have killed this betrayer for me, but alas, it was not to be.”
Absinthe shook with rage. “Mephistopheles was right, you tricked me.”
“No,” came Astaroth. “I know his plan. He expected you to kill me and the other two. But you must know, Absinthe, he never planned on giving you your love back, nor did he intend to tell you where Edgar is.”
Abigor laughed. “Oh, I know exactly where Edgar is, in a sack floating down a river.”
“You killed him?” Absinthe asked.
“Oh, no. You see, he was always dead. He didn't dig himself up, and neither did a necromancer. I did. I used him as bait.”
“Fuck you, than. I want my wife back!”
“Can you really still cal her your wife, Tim? You split up with her almost a century ago, and why, because your daughter was taken from you?”
Absinthe could feel a couple of his teeth crack from the pressure of grinding them. “No, because you took her. And now you've taken Rosie.”
“Well,” Astaroth said, “this calls for a duel. Absinthe, kill him.”
Absinthe's guns appeared in his hand again. He pointed it at Abigor and fired but the demon dodged it with incredible speed. 
Absinthe shot multiple rounds, trying to predict where the demon would to but he continued to miss his target. It was only when he pulled the trigger a few times that a click came and he realized the chamber was empty. 
“Shit. This is a-”
“A weapon crafted in the darkest pits of Hell. My pit.” Abigor smiled widely. “The gun doesn't work if I don't want it to, Absinthe.”
Abigor conjured a black whip and slashed it at Absinthe, lacerating his arms and legs until he couldn't walk anymore.
Falling to the ground, Absinthe's blood pooled around him and into his mouth. 
Abigor walked up to him. “You really shouldn't have taken on this task. You'll never see your wife again.”
Part of the ceiling near them crumbled, boulders of it crashing to the ground and two separate lights floated down, each in a vague shape of a man, both with large, feathered wings.
Astaroth stood from his chair, his brow furrowed. “What is this? How dare you come into my domain without my permission.”
One of the illuminated men held his hand up, bidding Astaroth to be silent. 
“We are here for that one,” he said, pointing at Abigor. “He defiled the Sacred Covenant of Mortals.”
“The what?” Absinthe coughed. 
“It is a treaty between Heaven and Hell that neither parties can use, abuse, nor blackmail humankind.”
Absinthe shakily stood up, his wounds bleeding profusely. “But I'm a vampire.”
“You still have mortal blood, boy.”
The silent angel walked up to Abigor and placed him in shackles. “Abigor of the Ninth Circle of Hell, you are hereby charged with the illegal use and blackmail of a mortal. You will be dragged before the Seraphim to plead your innocence, though I highly doubt they will call in your favor.”
The angels took Abigor by each of his arms.
“Wait,” Absinthe called. “Who are you?”
“Michael and Gabriel. You may know us from your rather distasteful scriptures.”
Absinthe looked around, unsure of what to do next.
“We will send you back to earth. And the Seraphim, knowing of your plights in recent times, will grant you your wife and daughter.”
He shook again, not in anger this time but in shock. “Thank you.”
The angels nodded and took flight, going through the hole they came.
Absinthe's vision became blurry and he fell backward.

***
Dawn, October 31st, 1881, Abandoned Building. 

Absinthe stood in front of the building where he came across Rosemary. No lights, no noise, nothing. He assumed the angels had not kept their promise.
He walked up to the door and opened it, gliding in and staring at the floor.
“Absinthe?” A soft voice came.
He looked up and Rosemary stood before him, her auburn hair no longer in curls. She rubbed her head.
He looked down and standing next to Rosemary was a small girl who was rubbing her eyes. She looked up at him and her eyes went wide.
“Daddy?”
He rushed over to her and picked her up, cuddling her in his arms. 
“Sally.”
“I'm tired,” her tiny voice said in his ear.
Rosemary took his hand. “Let's get some rest. We've all had it pretty rough.”

***

Absinthe jostled awake, the moon shining through the window. He swung his legs of the bed and stretched. 
Looking around the room his breathing stopped. Bodies lined the floor, many torn asunder, others completely drained of their blood.
“Rosemary, what happened? Was I that hungry?”
He looked over at his wife, wrapped in the sheets. He rubbed her shoulder trying to rouse her but she didn't stir.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her over to him only to see her face. It was sunken and gray, twisted into a horrified scream.
“Rosemary, no! Please.”
He pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her head, stroking her hair and he realized.
“Sally.”
He heard footsteps down the hall and a knock on the door.
“Daddy,” her voice came. “Daddy, I'm hungry again.”