Chapter 1
I'm very curious as to what the prompt for the story was, since all I could think at first was "a vampire, a werewolf, a sucubus and an angel walk into a bar..."
I was actually getting kind of tense during this first chapter, since each one of the girls seems to be out to enslave everyone else, but then an undead serial killer crashes the party. The whole thing made me chuckle.
Also, serious props on not making the girl named Lupa be the werewolf.
Chapter 2
And now, a live presentation, as best I can remember, of my reaction while reading this chapter.
I love Kate's reaction, partly because it's funny, but also partly because it's believably animalistic; the immediate fight or flight response is very wolf-like, which is pretty amusing.
The Seraph was bound vertically spread-eagled, her fiery sword reduced to cooling air.
On the one hand, that explains the difference between Seraphim and lower angels: a Seraph can't drop his/her sword; it just kind of goes poof when he or she isn't holding it.
On the other hand, I just had kind of an unpleasant flashback.
"Release me, demon. I will not cast you back into the pit, but instead grant you the peace of oblivion.
Well, Seraphim aren't supposed to interact with mortals much, so I guess that's why her people skills suck.
The speaker had seemingly appeared just behind Kizzy. Dressed in a fine suit of the latest cut, he would have fit in at a Wall Street board meeting. Shannon knew the demon instinctively. He was Eparlegna, whose mortal-birthed incarnation on a parallel Earth had caused terrible suffering before his defeat there.
Unpleasant flashbacks intensifying...
While Kizurial silently called for aid from her comrades that would not come, for she was fairly caught.
No, no, no. I will not go through this again! You are not making me read this again, JayDee!
"The Seraph is mine now. Her comrades of the light won't send help for one captured in this way!"
FFFFFFFFFFFF—
She released the bracelets with another command.
Kizurial's sword ignited as she swung towards the shocked Eparlegna.
—FFFUUUU oh, okay. Um...false alarm.
Chapter 3
I am of two minds about this chapter, because for most of it, I was extremely amused. I love the idea of sections of Hell where terrible puns are actually weaponised (for the record, "window pain" is my favorite, although a getting "his Bach up" was noteworthy as well).
The ending, though, does present some moral problems, at least in my opinion. Now, on the one hand, turning a rapist into his own victim is brilliant in terms of karmic punishment. However, the execution runs into two issues.
First and simplest, "His sins were stripped away." Admittedly you didn't use the F word, but generally speaking, you don't get punished for your sins after they're forgiven (that's kind of the point of forgiveness), but a larger issue is that of punishing an amnesiac. To me, memory loss has always felt kind of like wiping the slate clean. Psychologically speaking, our decisions and experiences shape who we are, so removing both of those frees the self to act completely differently, relieved of the conditioning of past experience. Punishing an amnesiac Eparlegna is almost like punishing a separate individual.
It's even more pronounced in this case, because it wasn't just a memory wipe; everything changed: memories, sex, base personality, everything. As a result, if we are to assume that what happens to Luzurial in Whore of Heaven is punishment for what Eparlegna is doing to her at that very moment, then it runs into a serious snag because the punishment is being inflicted upon a completely different person.
The other way to interpret this ending, of course, is to say that Luzurial is not considered responsible for Eparlegna's sins, and that torture, rape and 100 trillion years of agonizing pain (at minimum, mind you, as that's assuming somebody's nice enough to crack that statue open on Judgment Day instead of just leaving it there) is a just punishment for her Pride and her Pride alone.
On that concept...I'mma have to say no. I'm not a religious scholar or anything, but I can't help but feel that there's Pride and then there's Pride. Luzurial experiences Pride, but I feel that there is a real and powerful difference between Lucifer's "I'm going to lead a rebellion because I'm better than God and I deserve to run this show!" and Luzurial's "I understand my orders, but I can't just sit here and watch them suffer and die; I have to do something." The former is Pride and nothing but Pride (maybe with an assist from Envy), while in the latter case, Pride greases the wheels, but the root motivation is her compassion for mortals. In fact, that compassion could be considered a form of Charity, which is one of the three theological virtues (and as a result one of the seven Christian virtues), making Luzurial's motivation a mixture of sin and virtue, making her a more complex character and thus making her more relatable and sympathetic.
Given the more tempered motivation, perhaps she needed to have her ego deflated a bit, but that's not what she got.
Granted, I could be totally wrong about all of this; it's just my opinion. Please don't take this as a personal attack, as that's not what it's meant to be.
I thought it was delightful that each girl had some "special" quality. When the first one is revealed, I think, "uh-oh, there's gonna be trouble." But after the second one, I caught on that we would see each have a secret. I think they weren't aware of each other because their 'power' was not exposed when in human form, but they may have kept their friendship going due to an unexplainable attraction to the paranormal. I really enjoyed the first two chapters, you kept the plot of the story going even though you were writing in response to a word prompt. The third chapter deviated from the slumber party and I was more interested in the fallout of the events on the remaining girls than on Eparlegna's punishment. He is an antagonist and having an entire chapter devoted to him left me disappointed. I don't know if you'll ever come back to this story as you said you'd continued Kate's in another story, but if you do, I'd like to see more of the slumber party aftermath.
I hope you don't give up on the prompts. Come on, we're tougher than these words! Or more twisted... or both!
The speaker stank of sweat and shit and bloody death.
best line in this story