The passageway felt different this time. She felt different. She still couldn't wrap her mind around the power boost possession gave her, even with Iblis' warning that it would lead to her burning out. It was exhirating. She couldn't wait to punch something, and that familiar desire welled up inside her: kill kill kill.

  She floated through the light with ease, searching by feeling the currents around her. The demon part of her mind was far more in tune with this than she'd been - and she got the sense that the substance she was moving through was simir to the substance that demons were made from. Iblis didn't deny or confirm her theory.

  He didn't say anything whilst in her head - as though he was buried in her subconscious since Jenny had control. She drifted along, moving her arms and legs gently, colors ranging from purple to orange to green spiraling away from her movements. She pushed from the world of demons, the world she was leaving, and ignored the immense pull of the Material World that tried to swallow her up. It was almost like a gaping bck hole in the center of the light. If she let it, it would reel her right in. From above, came the pull of the world she was looking for - the world of the dead. But ahead of her was something new.

  This had a different kind of pull, one that coiled around her throat and sank hooks into her heart and yanked so her that breath bubbled from her lips and she opened her burning eyes. Blue light like ribbons drifted around her face.

  What is that? she wondered. Why does it... hurt? But in a good way? It felt pleasant. Peaceful. Promising.

  Your senses are more highly attuned due to my presence, came a small thought from the back of her mind. It was like distant static, muffled inside her head. That is the world of Souls.

  Souls. When she shivered, bright blue light fizzled around her. A trail of orange floated through her chest. It led toward the pulling world. That was where Susan's would be. That was where Jenny had to go.

  She almost grinned. She was getting closer.

  That is where Azra'il reigns. The static voice cut through her happiness. It was a warning. The world of Souls will not be a pleasant pce. He is the cruelest of the the high-most angels.

  Her heart constricted. What was happening to the souls there? Would they be suffering somehow too? The way the deaths had been encased inside pilrs with their intestines attached to the rock? What was happening to Susan?

  She couldn't bear to think about that world, so she turned, wading with her arms to see the hundreds of pale white ghoul bodies and their burning eyes floating with her. Now that they were possessed by demons, they didn't struggle in agony like the blooded ghouls had before. They drifted along, limp, their arms swaying at their sides like bodies underwater.

  It was unnerving, but Jenny kicked with her feet, propelling herself upward toward the world of the dead. Colors gathered, forming a ceiling of rainbows, spiraling and rippling as though it were raining. Then, with a spsh, her head broke the surface, and hot, sticky liquid struck her repeatedly from above.

  Blood rained down more furiously than when she'd left the world, and in the bright golden light of the passageway, she saw endless blooded ghouls, stretching and hissing and cmbering over each other to get to something that towered over the world in the storm.

  It was the cross. And nailed to it, once again, was Yeshua, naked and thin. His head, crowned again with thorns, hung limp. His beard flowing in the breeze of the blood storm as ghouls scrambled all over the cross, biting down everywhere.

  They peeled his skin off with their teeth. They chewed through muscle and bone and everything else they could reach. All the while, red lightning snapped around his arms and legs, around his face, healing him endlessly as ghouls fought over which one would get the next bite.

  Blooded Ghouls (NULL)

  These ghouls didn't spsh away once they've eaten. They kept going for more and more. They kept wanting more - biting off Yeshua's arms and legs, fighting each other for each limb that fell to the blood soaked ground, a feeding frenzy as more leaped onto the corss to chew at the regenerating flesh.

  Anger roared to a scream as Jenny waded out of the pool of light and spped the nearest Blooded Ghoul with so much force that the creature disintegrated into a cloud of red vapor and a burst of blue fme. The ghouls responded in sync - all of them turning to face her, moaning and whimpering, gnashing their teeth.

  She'd left her helmet in the frozen world, but with her heightened stats, she didn't care. They couldn't hurt her. And she was too quick.

  She ran between them, dodging attempts to grab her, dodging teeth, punching and elbowing. When she punched or kicked a blooded ghoul, blue fmes erupted from her fists. From her blows. She struck them with enough force to shatter their bodies, disintegrating heads or chests, and leaving the rest of the body to colpse. Some, like the first ghoul she'd struck, she hit hard enough to completely destroy. But she was trying to be quick - and she moved so freely! so easily. She felt like the wind.

  And not a single bit of her seemed to tire. She could go on forever, she thought - but she knew Iblis was counting down. She would burn herself out.

  The demons in ghoul bodies emerged from the golden light behind her, dozens at a time. They cshed with the blooded ghouls who seemed to realize there was something wrong with them. Yellow and orange fmes lit up the blood rain around Jenny. Some of the demons tried to drag the blooded ghouls, kicking and screaming, back into the light with them. But it looked like once they emerged, they couldn't go back inside.

  Iblis' static moved between her ears, My people cannot return with the ghouls. The passageway will not allow them to move back.

  "I think i have to take everyone back myself!" she shouted as she punched another ghoul into oblivion. Blue fmes kept leaking out of her. She was fighting her way toward Yeshua, glimpsing his struggling form every time she punched away the ghouls. He was crying, screaming in a nguage Jenny didn't know - gurgling when his throat or lips were bitten away. But she didn't need to understand him to know what he was trying to say: he was begging for death again.

  We are running out of time, warned Iblis. You are burning out.

  Help me free him then, she gasped, and just as she said that, she could feel Iblis stirring, coming forward from her subconscious. More fmes shot out of her back - the same way that her tentacles would. These were orange and curling, feathery, not the same hot blue as her eyes or her attacks, and she kicked off the ground.

  The ghouls stared up at her as blood dribbled down her face, dribbled down her wings. She had wings made of fiery feathers, and as much as she wanted to admire them, to study them, she knew there wasn't enough time. The fire was turning orange - she was burning out. Orange fme was weaker than blue.

  But she could fly! with a fp of fmes, she rushed over the ghouls leaping into the pouring blood to try and catch her. She swerved, kicking with her leg, motioning with her arms as though she was swimming. For the demon mind, flying would be natural, but she wasn't made of Energy like Iblis was. She had a material body. She had weight. Rain spttered her face and pelted her sides.

  With a fsh of golden light, she summoned her hatchet to her hand and fpped hard, snapping herself back midair. She took careful aim in the split second she had before she'd drop out of the air and aimed for the cross, unching her hatchet at Yeshua with Savage Throw.

  Blue and orange fire glinted brightly around the hatchet as it spun through the air like a shooting star. It smashed through Yeshua's right wrist again, separating his hand from the arm and freeing him from that nail - and it went further, cutting through the wood of the cross and bursting through several ghouls on the other side. Yeshua looked up, his eyes widening as Jenny met his eyes.

  She fpped her burning wings again, kicked away a ghoul that had leaped to try and grab her legs - her foot dislodged its skull, and then she was up in the air again.

  Yeshua let out a wild cry as a huge surge of red lightning snapped down from the sky. Jenny recalled her hatchet and threw it twice more with two more fshes of light, freeing his other arm and his legs, and Yeshua fell from the cross as the rgest bolt of lightning yet seared a path down from the sky. It seemed to snake down in slow motion as though it were an enormous serpent unhinging its jaws to swallow Yeshua whole.

  When it struck, everything exploded with crackling red light. Yeshua bellowed loudly - just as he had when Jenny first freed him. His arms were out stretched, but he didn't announce his presence again. Blood ran down his shining form, still fragile and bony and thin, and he didn't create a new set of robes.

  Instead, he grabbed the nearest blooded ghoul, paling its head like a ball as its arms and legs kicked futily. Yeshua pressed his lips against the creature's eye socket, ignoring the other ghouls tearing and biting his arms and sides and legs, and even over the loud drumming of the rain and the endless moaning and crying of the blooded ghouls, Jenny heard the unmistakable shllluuurp.

  Dropping out of the sky, Jenny nded beside him and cut down several blooded ghouls. Her orange wings shone bright and wide as she pyed defense while Yeshua drank, as his body restored itself.

  "I found the demons!" she said, sounding out of breath as she whirled around and punched another ghoul in the face. "The deaths are okay. and I made a deal with them and-"

  But Yeshua must not have heard her over the storm. He grabbed her arm violently, his eyes manic and wide and blood shot. He snarled, "Demon! I sense you within that body!"

  He raised his other hand as though he was about to strike Jenny with his palm. Anger fshed in his eyes as blood streamed down his bearded face.

  She tried to push him away, holding up her hands. "No! No, wait! It's-"

  But it was too te. With a bellow that sounded like someone had rung an enormous bell inside Jenny's head, Yeshua shouted, "BE GONE FROM HER!" and smmed his palm against her forehead.