They shined brighter than humans. Even with the coloring, Vincent's should've stood out like a beacon.
Unfortunately, though the River of the Damned was contained in a narrow plane, it was incredibly long. We had a lot of flying to do.
Michael caught up to us after a little while. "Mary is keeping Jellybean for us. Surprisingly enough, she loved him. And he went nuts over her. She was feeding him treats when I left."
I smiled. At least that was one bit of good news in this horrible day...week...month? How long had it been? I'd lost all track.
Our job of finding Vincent was bleak, to begin with, but every few minutes, we'd see a soul that burned a bit brighter than the rest. We couldn't be sure it wasn't Vincent, so we had to stop and check.
The first one was the hardest. "Go ahead," I said. "Someone see if it's him." No way did I want to touch that soul. It floated very slowly as other souls passed it by. That meant it had more bad memories to relive than most of the other souls. It burned brightly, too, meaning it could've been Vincent.
"You're the Queen, you do it," Gabriel said. He held his hands close to his chest and his wings beat hard, keeping him as high in the air as the realm allowed. He truly hated being here, more than the rest of us. But he had a tendency to be empathetic, so the pain in the air that was a passing thought to me was a physical reaction for him.
"I think someone else should do the honors," I said gently. "Luc?"
He spread his hands out as his black wings beat slowly behind him. "No magic. I'm not sure I'd even be able to see if it's him."
Michael grimaced and hid behind Gabe.
"Ack." I waved my hands at them. "You're a bunch of babies." They talked a big game, but when push came to shove, they were like a child running from a spider.
I hovered over the soul and touched the tip of my finger to its aura. It was sticky, like tar. Ugh. The evilest souls felt like that. Thick and gloppy. The purest were light and like touching a spring rain.
I was thrown into a memory, and even though I only touched him with the tip of my finger, it sucked me in completely.
In my head, I knew I wasn't literally there. But the memory was so vivid it wasn't easy to keep a grasp on reality. I looked around.
I was in a small bedroom. A man was chained to the bed, naked and pitiful. He looked half-starved. The walls were dingy, and a strong stench permeated the room. My stomach lurched. Instantly, I wanted out of here. I didn't want to relive this memory, whoever it belonged to. I didn't know if it was the man's on the bed or someone else.
As I stood there trying to figure out how to pull myself from this horror, a rattling sound surprised me. I jumped and whirled around to find a wooden door, and the handle rattled again. The sound of keys on the other side told me this man had been locked in here.
I didn't know why. He was chained to the bed very well. There was no way he could've broken through the restraints, especially in this emaciated condition.
"Hello, my pet. Are you ready for our lesson today?"
The man on the bed whimpered. His legs pulled up. They weren't tied down. He tried to twist onto his side, and he hadn't even opened his eyes yet. As I stood, helpless, the man that entered picked up a knife I hadn't noticed from the table. As he moved toward the pitiful naked man on the bed, I yelled. "Stop it!"
I didn't recognize the man with the knife, but I knew neither of the people in the dream was Vincent. I didn't have to be here experiencing this, the worst of this man's obviously horrible, tainted memories. "Stop!" I ran forward and tried to grab his hand as the knife cut into the naked man's thigh. A ribbon of blood bloomed on his pale skin.
"No," I moaned.
The torture of innocence always made me sick. I could punish the worst sinner without blinking an eye. I could cut an evil person, dismember them slowly and carefully so they lived through most of it.
But the innocent? I couldn't abide their torture.
As suddenly as I was sucked into the memory, I was pulled out.
I sucked in a deep breath and wrapped my arms around Michael. "Shit," I hissed. "What took you so long?"
"We didn't want to interfere until you yelled," he explained.
"Could you hear me?"
"Yeah." He wrapped his arms tighter around me. "I'm sorry. I'll go next."
"Damn right you will," I whispered. "And we need a word."
"Bananas," Lucifer said. "There's no reason we'd say bananas for any other reason while in one of these dreams."
"Ugh, I hate torture dreams," I said. I spent another minute wrapped around Michael as his wings held us up, then I spread my own and put my big girl panties back on. "Let's keep going."
True to his word, Michael sighed and touched the next soul that looked like Vincent's. Within seconds, he yelled. "Banana! Banana!"
Gabe yanked on him and pulled him away from the souls. "Shit," he said. "Some serious fucked up shit."
"What?" I asked. I didn't want to see it, but my curiosity couldn't be contained.
Michael looked at the soul darkly. "He liked animals." He shuddered. "In a really gross way."
"Eww," Luc said. He looked disgusted. "Oh, those people are the worst."
I thought pedos were the worst myself, but that was a close second. Yuck.
"Gabe? You or Luc next?" I asked. I needed more time to recuperate from the torture scene before diving in again.
Luc sighed. "I'll try, but I don't know if it'll work."
It took nearly ten minutes to find another soul that might've been Vincent.
Luc's shoulders slumped as he looked down at the
