[Interlude] The Search for Vanessa Hawthorne: Revealing Conversation

Outside of the bathroom, the two guards she’d incapacitated had been replaced by a single new one. The young man gave her a quick and ill-fitting salute, “Agent Hartford at your service, ma’am. Dante told me to give you this as an apology for the inconvenience you’ve encountered today.” He held out a platinum embossed card. She glared at it.

Erica had seen them before, in the hands of wealthy nobles from abyssal families and other recurring patrons of the Inferno. They granted you access to virtually any service in one of Dante’s prized sins… provided you had enough money to pay the renewal fee. Even her generous salary was only a fraction of that cost.

“He said to tell you that all your expenses will be covered for the next two days, excepting purchases at ‘Envy’, refunding any spending you’ve already made… oh and don’t worry. It isn’t automatically renewing.” He gave her what was intended to be a ‘winning smile’, “You’re free to sin at your leisure.”

She stared at the platinum card with open loathing but took it anyway. She didn’t have the luxury to turn down a gift right now. Even if it was one that made her want to snap it in half.

“If you’d like, I’d be happy to accompany you in place of your… missing companion. A beautiful woman like you deserves company,” Agent Hartford offered.

Erica looked at him. The young man was apparently human, in fit shape and would probably be rather attractive to most women. He had a sort of innocence to his body language that he paired with just enough confidence to come across as cute. If he stood next to John, they’d be about the same height… She rolled her eyes.

After all these years, Dante should’ve gotten the idea that she wasn’t the sort to fall head over heels for a more ‘attractive’ version of her ‘boyfriend’. It would’ve been funny if she wasn’t deeply offended by it. John wasn’t simply replaceable. Besides, even if he’d sent someone more aligned with her tastes, she’d have been wary. Nothing in this place was free, not the drinks, not the pleasures and certainly not a night of lust or love. Erica had seen too many customers get hooked before.

“Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll be fine on my own,” she said brusquely. Hartford tried to interject another appeal, but she turned and walked away from him before he could waste her time any further. Thankfully, he gave up when it was crystal clear she was not interested.

Erica felt slightly relieved as she left ‘Pride’. With her head clear of anger, the enchanted music had started to linger at the edge of her consciousness, and being out of earshot was like taking a breath of fresh air. It was distinctly quieter in the central hub, even though there were a dozen or two distinct conversations happening between the wandering patrons. She stared over their assorted heights to the vibrant pink sign of ‘Lust’.

Once more unto the breach.

The first floor of the whorehouse was the same as it always was, and likely would remain until Dante got hooked on a neo-modern architectural style to renovate the place with. Kaoru stood behind the central desk, an assorted gaggle of prostitutes and clients mingled about the couches and had sex ‘subtly’ in the curtained pleasure rooms. It was… to tell the truth, ‘Lust’ was one of the few sins that Erica almost liked. The decor was nice, the employees were well treated, if they weren’t slaves, and the customer base wasn’t just fat old politicians. Unfortunately, like everything else that Dante touched… it was a honeypot trap. Not just for her and the clients, but for the nymphomaniacs working here. She’d never heard of anyone quitting.

Erica sighed. She’d be a hypocrite if she blamed anyone for indulging in their vices, and her father had always said that the best job was getting paid to do the thing you loved… it just felt… predatory. This whole place always did.

“Can I help find you a companion?” asked the sailor-uniformed receptionist as she approached. “We cater to all preferences and needs, no matter how deviant.”

“I’m looking for a female goblin. She was out here earlier?” Erica replied. She tried to remember everything she could about the salacious little greenskin. “She’s got red hair?”

Kaoru nodded and wrote something in the open book before her; the page turned to a handful of portraits of goblins of both genders, the male options quickly fading back into the page as she added other details. As the list narrowed down to three possibilities, it was rotated to face her. In the middle was a distinctly familiar face. Erica pointed at it.

“That’s her. Thanks.”

The receptionist waited as Erica pulled out her platinum card for payment and nodded at the berserker as she handed it over, “Would you like to book an hour, four hours or the remainder of the day with Miss Gearthrust, Lady Carpenter?”

Erica hid a twitch at the formal name. Dante must’ve put it on the card, the bastard. “As long as possible. I don’t want to be interrupted.”

“Of course not. We never want to interfere with a customer’s… pleasure. Enjoy yourself with her,” Kaoru’s lilting voice only made her more uncomfortable about the situation. Buying a prostitute was far enough out of her comfort zone without having that fact metaphorically slipped into her pocket.

Erica took the card back, as well as a key with a tacky pink keychain that said ‘Trynity’. It dawned on her that she really had no idea how any of this was actually supposed to work. She’d never been into ‘Lust’ herself, aside from a curious look and with John earlier. The only reason she even knew the receptionist’s name was through a… ‘co-worker’. Erica tried to recall what she remembered from that conversation.

“Do you need anything else?” Kaoru asked.

“Huh? Oh no, nah. I got this, dude. Totally good,” Erica lied, as smoothly as she could manage. It got her a strange look, but she didn’t stick around to prolong the awkward experience any further. The stairs provided a welcome escape and a possible place to use the key she’d received, so she practically ran up them until she was a full floor away from the inquisitive receptionist.

The second floor consisted of a small landing with four elevators. In place of the usual up/down call buttons there was only a single heart-shaped one, which she pressed. One of the doors opened with a ‘ding’. Erica glanced into it. Like everything else in ‘Lust’, the designer had gone wild with the hot colors. The rug had a pink floral pattern, the walls were painted a dark magenta in between the polished wood details. Surprisingly, there were no buttons for floors, only a keyhole.

Erica stepped inside and turned the key she’d gotten from Kaoru over in her fingers. She hesitated. A ‘ding’ from elsewhere in the floor signified another elevator arriving, and Erica instantly shoved the key into the hole and turned it. The doors closed right as she heard the boisterous voice of the other patron boasting to a feminine laugh. Erica let out a sigh of relief as the elevator kicked into motion. This was way more embarrassing than she’d expected. At least there wasn’t any obnoxious elevator music.

It was kind of funny. She’d been through plenty other terrifying and awkward experiences. She wasn’t a fiddling virgin and she’d stared **** down more times than she could count. It wasn’t like she was even in this for sex. She was here to interview the goblin, not fuck her. Erica laughed at the reality that despite it all she still felt anxious.

The doors opened, but not onto another landing. Instead, they opened directly into a studio apartment. Erica walked out of the elevator onto a delightfully black carpet, surrounded by caramel brown walls. On her left was a slightly open door to a bathroom, on the right was a miniature kitchen that was so spotless that Erica wondered if the owner even used it. Past the counter was a small combined bedroom-living room, with a large king-size bed covered by messy navy-blue sheets taking up most of the space. A large tv had been mounted on the opposite wall, with a goblin-sized table and a pair of beanbag chairs beneath it. An open photo album and a downsized but expensive-looking camera sat on the table. The apartment had no windows, and none of the bedside lamps were turned on, but a glass ceiling let in starlight from a foreign sky, bathing the whole scene in a quiet alabaster glow.

Erica walked into the space, looking around for the apartment’s owner. From the discarded pair of dildos at the foot of the bed and the open cabinet of sex-toys in a half-sorted state, it was immediately clear what the goblin had been doing earlier. Where was she now?

“Hello? Uh… Trynity?” she called out. There was no immediate response.

As Erica glanced around the room, her attention landed on the photobook. It wasn’t polite to snoop into another person’s belongings, but maybe it’d have something interesting… important to the case. She knelt beside the table and flipped through the pages.

Each one contained four images of men posing with Trynity, almost all of whom were naked or actively having sex with the goblin. She’d written on several of them with colored markers. ‘9 inches of awesome’, ‘Dripping cum 4 days’, ‘15 fucking times!’. It was a record of sexual conquests in a way. Several images had been circled with the word ‘candidate’ written nearby. One had been crossed out with black marker and the face scribbled over. ‘Donny…’ the rest was unintelligible. He was dressed ostentatiously in an outfit that could be best described as excessively gold. What kind of douchebag wore gold cufflinks on a gold-lined suit? Regardless of his identity, Trynity was clearly less enamored with him now if the caption ‘Gigantic asshole!’ had anything to say about her feelings.

Flipping through a menagerie of lovers of all shapes and sizes, Erica reached the last page of Trynity’s album. There, on a page all by itself was a single spot for a picture with the word ‘Master’ written above it. This one was special. It was also empty. She stared at the crossed-out text beneath it, ‘Ɛ> John Newman <3’. Her partner had a serious admirer.

“Can you leave my stuff alone?” asked a voice behind her in a miserable little tone. Erica turned to lay eyes on Trynity… and the goblin looked far worse for wear. Where any of her makeup remained, it was badly smeared by tears. Her hair was a tangled mess and she had ditched her cutely lewd attire for a nearly human-sized shirt that reached her thighs. It read ‘Pint-sized Pervert’. She rubbed at her cheek, leaving a little purple lipstick on her messy fingers.

“I’ll do anything on my contract… just give me a few minutes so I… oh,” Trynity mumbled, freezing solid the moment she looked up at Erica. Realization dawned with a look of pure horror. “Oh no. No, no, no. It’s you… I’m sorry… I didn’t… I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault!”

The goblin girl burst into tears, stumbling forward on trembling legs. She collapsed into the beanbag chair closest to Erica and curled up into a ball. The berserker stood in stunned surprise as Trynity trembled and wept.

“It’s my fault he’s…” Trynity whispered, almost **** on her final word, “gone.”

Erica stared at the girl. She hadn’t expected this. Not that she’d had any idea what to expect, but the cute whore was completely torn up about John’s disappearance. It made her feel guilty that she was so much more composed.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said, kneeling next to the goblin and hesitantly reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder.

Trynity froze, then violently pushed Erica away. “No!” she practically screamed. “It’s not!” Her body didn’t have the strength to move the berserker more than an inch, resulting only in Trynity tumbling onto the carpet. “He was perfect, and I… I took him away from you. I ruined everything because I acted like a worthless, stupid, selfish virgin!” The verbal self-lashing caused the goblin to recoil as if she’d been struck.

When she looked back up at Erica, she started pulling off her shirt with shaky fingers, “You can hurt me, if you want. I deserve it. However you want to punish me… I’ll take it. That’s all I can give you for what I’ve done.”

“Hold on a second,” Erica interjected, but the miserable girl continued to struggle her way out of her clothing. She was wearing nothing underneath. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop.”

That got a reaction. Trynity let go of the shirt, and it slowly settled back over her thighs, though her head and one arm were awkwardly trapped inside it. Erica gently tugged it down until she was looking at the goblin’s face. She looked like a mess that had been run over by a train and then waterboarded.

“You don’t need to do that. I’m not here to punish you, and I won’t hurt you.”

“But-” Trynity desperately tried to interject.

“No.”

“Then you’re here…” the goblin paused for thought, looking up at her with blinking, wet eyes, “to fuck me?”

“What? No! Not that either!” Erica sputtered. She sighed and crushed the palm of one hand against her face, pressing her fingers into her temples. “I’m not here for sex. I need you to tell me everything that happened with my partner.”

Trynity seemed to rally slightly, giving her a nod. “Ok… I can… I can do that.” She curled her arms around her waist and bit her lip. Nervously stumbling over words, she started telling Erica what had happened to her and John.

After they’d run into Trynity at ‘Lust’, the goblin had spent some time trying to appeal to other clients but couldn’t keep herself together enough to do her job. John’s rejection had badly drained her confidence, and after a while of being unable to muster up the courage to solicit visitors, Trynity had gone on break.

She’d spent a bit trying to decide what to do to clear her head, eventually settling on getting drunk. The goblin hadn’t intentionally sought out John, though Erica had a sense that Trynity had unconsciously followed them to the nightclub. Listening to her describe it, the way that they’d run into each other was right out of the plot of a bad romance novel. Out of every seat in the whole place, they’d managed to accidentally sit next to each other. Fate had a sense of humor.

While the goblin told her story, Erica did her best to make her comfortable. Something about the little harlot’s misery practically compelled her to look after Trynity. Maybe it was how small she looked when she curled herself up, or maybe it was because she reminded Erica of… a certain someone. When she wasn’t being aggressively sexual, at least. John really had lucked out…

She wasn’t jealous of him. That’d be absurd.

Erica got Trynity a glass of hot water and helped her settle into the chair, trying to ignore the occasional flash of bare pussy that the goblin inadvertently gave her. It was a bit distracting but not nearly as distracting as the girl’s recounting of her… experience with John. Trynity spared no explicit detail.

“Master was so… thick! It fit me perfectly, I could barely breathe. And then he made it bigger…” Trynity sighed like a girl in love, “You know that moment when he thrusts so hard he pops into your womb? It was like that… only here.” She touched the side of her throat with a dreamy expression.

Erica shook her head, “No, I don’t.” She was pretty sure that wasn’t how the human body was supposed to work, but then again, she wasn’t talking to a human. Maybe she should ask Trynity to skip over things… the way she was getting worked up was, well, having an impact. That and hearing about John’s dick like it was a holy relic was a bit awkward.

“It feels so good! You know you’re a good little fucktoy when you can feel it so deep it almost hurts,” the goblin shivered. “The only thing better is taking a load thick enough you’ll be dripping cum for a week. What’s it like?”

“Sorry, what?”

“Having Master’s cum inside you, how does it feel? It was like dipping my tongue in honey when he came in my mouth… I can almost feel it still sticking to my skin.” Trynity slid a hand underneath her shirt.

Erica did her best not to notice, “I should make something clear. John and I are not like that at all, dude. He’s my partner, not my… boyfriend.”

“But his cock-”

“Nope.”

“But it’s so-”

“Not interested.”

“But he’s-”

“Still not my type.”

Trynity’s expression was somewhere between confused and insulted, and Erica only barely managed not to laugh. “So… you’re…” the goblin trailed off and left the question for the berserker to complete.

“A lesbian. Yeah.”

“Oh, ok that’s good!” Trynity perked back up. “I was worried you’d say ‘asexual’. That’d be horrible. Nobody deserves that.” She referred to it as though people with no sex drive were suffering from a grand curse. From her perspective, they probably were.

“No, I just don’t like men,” Erica said. “John’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t have sex with him.”

Her words seemed to stir something in the cute goblin. A bit of excitement sparked in her eyes and she sat upright. Her fingers stopped moving under her shirt, and she bit her lip. It looked adorably slutty. “You mean… that he’s not taken?”

“As far as I know, no.”

It was as though she’d just flipped the switch on a sextoy with her words alone. Trynity let out a half-moan, half-sigh and her legs trembled. She couldn’t have… no way. Erica shoved the thought out of her head. She hadn’t gotten the information she’d come here for yet. Getting sidetracked could be literally lethal for John.

“You two can work something out once we get him back, okay? I promise I won’t get in the way. But, please, Trynity. I need to know what happened to John in that bathroom.”

“Tryn,” the goblin answered instantaneously, with the practice of someone who had spent years defining her nickname to people. “Wait,” she said, “you mean he’s not gone forever?”

Erica resisted the urge to snap at Trynity, but only barely, “I… hope he’s not. But that’s why I need to know what you saw. Actually, is there a way I can bring you with me? It might be best to have you explain in person.”

Assuming Wentworth doesn’t just kill us both to hide the truth.

“I think I can leave, I’ve just never tried. Not since…” the goblin’s expression fell and she gripped the hem of her shirt. She whispered a name, and Erica could guess who it was from the syllable she heard.

Everyone has their demons. Even beautiful birds in gilded cages. Even monsters.

The berserker got to her feet, offering Trynity a hand, “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to, and if you come with me, it could be dangerous. You can just tell me what happened, and I’ll take it from there.

“I’ll go!”

To Erica’s surprise, Trynity practically leapt to her feet, full of energy. She looked the berserker dead in the eye, and there was fire in her eyes, “If it means I can get Master back, I’ll do anything. And I mean anything.” She saluted and then grabbed Erica’s arm, tugging her surprisingly forcefully to the hall. They were almost to the door when the berserker pulled back.

“Hang on, shouldn’t you get dressed first, dude? We’re leaving the Inferno.”

Trynity stopped, looked down at herself, then rubbed the back of her hand against her lipstick-smeared cheek, “Oh, right.”