Father Morian stood over the sleeping form of Lila Vance, his sightless eyes scanning the residual spiritual energy in the apartment. The pink haze of the Lust anomaly was gone, replaced by a profound, manufactured stillness. Morian dipped his finger into the blessed water he carried and touched the woman's forehead; she did not stir.
The energy that had extinguished the miracle was a cold, decisive force, reeking strongly of the Ninth Gate, of Lucien. But the method was alien to Hell's usual playbook.
"You are a paradox, Emissary," Morian whispered, his voice resonating in the quiet room. "A pure fiend would have gorged on her pain, or immolated the source. But you simply… covered her."
He sensed the subtle signature of Lust that was responsible for the containment. The Emissary hadn't destroyed the human; he had fulfilled her desire for peace, albeit through infernal means. This suggested choice. It suggested a human moral centre desperately fighting the infernal core.
"He judges the sin, not the sinner," Morian concluded, a profound sense of worry settling over him. "A pure demon is a simple threat. But a damned soul with a righteous agenda? That is the unpredictable poison." The true Church would demand that this Emissary be purged instantly. Morian knew he couldn't do it alone.
He had to move Lila before the other hunters arrived. And they were already on the wing.
The Predator's Scent
Kane made no distinction between demons, escaped souls, or conflicted Emissaries. He relied on technology and cold, clinical efficiency.
He was an Exorcist, excommunicated for his brutal, indiscriminate methods. Now a bounty hunter, he worked for specialised occult clients, chasing down the worst infernal outbreaks. His face was a hard mask of scarred tissue and obsession, his cold grey eyes fixed on the thermal sensor strapped to his arm.
The sensor wasn't reading heat; it was reading spiritual radiation.
"Peak saturation: Financial District, 72 hours ago," Kane muttered, reviewing the spike from the Solomon Reed encounter. "Secondary emission: psychic containment near the Basilica. Not Gluttony. Something else. Too precise for a demon."
He was tracking a new kind of game. Demons were dirty; their energy flared chaotically. This new signal was focused, controlled, like a directed beam. It reeked of Hell, but smelled of Order.
"A high-value asset," Kane decided, gripping the silver-inlaid shotgun slung across his back. His mission was simple: find the heart of the signal, and burn it out. He tracked the residual radiation to the abandoned brownstone district.
The Tactical Retreat
The urgency of the message from the Pale Choir was the first thing that truly rattled Ethan. Elias hadn't used the spiritual link; she had used a disposable encrypted text, a show of panicked human efficiency.
THE EXORCIST. HE IS HERE. KANE. HE TRACKS THE BURNED.
Ethan knew the name from the dark corners of the spiritual underworld Lucien occasionally accessed. Kane was a legend of brutality a lapsed man of faith who hunted with the cold indifference of a tax collector. Ethan was broadcasting a city-wide flare.
"I need to move," Ethan said to the empty apartment.
He had just used Wrath defensively and Lust for containment. He was powerful, but untested against a dedicated celestial-level hunter. A direct fight now would lead to exposure or, worse, being contained and purged by silver or holy fire.
He had to survive, not win.
He gathered his few possessions a stolen knife, the Gluttony-soul's cash and planned his exit. He wouldn't run cold; he would bait the hunter.
Standing in the centre of the living room, Ethan pushed a controlled, steady stream of energy into the floorboards pure, focused Wrath. He didn't make it volatile; he made it intoxicating. He left a powerful, lingering scent of Hell's cold order, just enough to draw Kane in, confirm the location, and waste his time.
"Come and find me," Ethan murmured to the floor, the sigil glowing faintly under his shirt. "But you'll only find ash."
He melted the electronic locks and jammed the doors, making it look like a panicked, forced entry. He left the scent of a frightened, powerful demon running for cover.
His destination was an older, subterranean section of the city that Elias had marked on her map a dense, forgotten network of sewers and subways where the flow of human sin was constant and loud, providing the perfect spiritual camouflage.
As he walked out, he saw the final sign of his success: a faint heat signature radiating from the alley. Kane was close, and he had taken the bait. Ethan vanished into the night, the predator now hunted, forcing him to embrace the tactical cunning required of Hell's Emissary.