[Cookie]

    Eros had a look of amusement on his face despite what the previous conversation he just over heard meant for him. Viane nearly slithered out of the council room, brooding shadows already accumulating around her rotten female frame.
    As she passed Eros he did nothing but simply follow behind, doing little to hide the small smirk on his face. She only showed this form when she was pissed with no reprieve. Her parasite demon was either lively with excitement for what their new task was or it was tapped into her own livid irritation as it writhed around, tasting the hall’s frame. From what he’d heard of the conversation, admittedly only the parts Viane remembered to share her ears for, the second circle was missing not only a soul, but a demon as well.
    The details weren’t shared as Viane was apparently too focused on her rage to remember her brother listening outside. Eros could guess what the task was, pick up and clean up. It was their rank in Hades’ Hell, they were low class demons here, only used for such errands. No matter how much training Hades offered to his sister with promise of raising her rank when she proved herself, she was still a small fish here. The question was, what demon helped a soul escape? The second circle wasn’t an easy ring to escape, it was constantly beaten by raging storms and cruel winds that bit viscously at the hides of the many souls trapped there.

[Cookie]

"It looks like you have a new assignment." Eros teased, being entirely unfazed by the glare his sister shot at him.
Her long finger nails traced her collarbone, leaving pail pink marks along her skin. "How dare he! I thought I proved myself on the last task!" Viane was seething with anger, “These errand-boy tasks are for the bottom feeders.” Her parasitical leeches pulsated from their perch on her back, feeding on the hatred she was oozing. She worked under Hades for long enough to know that this was to be expected.
"You know, as well as I do, this is the only way you are going to get where you want, these tasks aren’t something a bound “bottom feeder” can do." Her brother's voice was low when he said that, a thought shared only between the two of them, “He sees you as invaluable, most of his demons can’t even leave Hell with out help. You just have to show him you have other uses no one else can fulfill.”
Her rage calmed a bit after that as they made their way to their empty council chambers, though, a small thought stayed in place, Hades already knows my uses. While they were still low ranking demons in the eye of social classes here, Viane was in good standings with Hades; A twisted sort of trust allowed her permission into most halls of the inner circles and so she lead her brother to one of the less known, smaller meeting chambers.
"Who was the soul that escaped?" Eros asked her as the  dark room echoed their entry and the heavy door gave a condemning boom of closure. She took her seat at the end of the long, black table, a pale blue chill of spirit fire creeping from the ground to light the room as she walked. Of course Eros would want to know that before anything about the demon, what if it was one of his old toys? Such details Viane failed to allow her brother to eavesdrop on. She had been too angry at Hades to even consider sharing her ears during her meeting with the bastard.
Resisting the urge to tell him how unimportant the soul was, how some lower demon should be handling this job, she sighed, "Angellique Duval, she was a prostitute from France during the Bohemian revolution."

[Cookie]

"The name doesn't ring a bell with me, is she of any importance?" Eros asked, taking his place across from Viane at the long table. Only a shrug answered his question, and so the human’s significance was dismissed. "Well then, how do we find her and her demon?" Presuming they had some sort of connection if the demon helped her escape, they would probably still be together. The woman would have taken a mortal body from some unsuspecting victim, and they would be trying to keep as low as possible right now.
"The only place I can see them going right now is the Slums, likely in France, and if not france first, Angellique will be drawn there eventually....” she drummed the table’s surface with her fingers, “and besides, scummy mortals tend to flock to scummy places, why shouldn't these two seek their refuge where they would fit in most?” her dead blue eyes smiled at her brother, the pale glow of Hell’s lighting system playing in a trance upon her face. “Send some of your ravens to scout out, seek a woman in red with an old French dialect. " While Viane made it seem so easy and simple, Eros had a hard time believing it would be so.
Leaning forward with his elbows on the table, lacing his fingers in front of his mouth, he thought about what needed to be done. Finally he asked one of the most important questions to finding the two, "What do we know about the demon that helped her escape?"
"A Snake Incubus by the name of Bielzen. From what Hades told me, he feeds off of lust. That explains why he's with a prostitute, I suppose." While Viane did almost the same thing, she didn't really feed off of lust. But, she understood the power, and knew that a prostitute would be heaven for a demon that fed off of raunchy sex. “If we have no luck finding the woman, we’ll summon Bielzen in a witch circle and...” Eros watched her chest rise and fall with a sigh, knowing she was suggesting something costly.
Something crawled beneath his skin as the room fell silent for a few moment. Finally, Eros spoke up, “ I don’t think that we should resort to that. You don’t need to get the Celts involved.”
Viane didn’t respond, only staring at the table in front of her with a furrowed brow, she was thinking back to the last thing Hades had to say to her before she was dismissed, another thing she left her brother in the dark about, but this time on purpose. 'And when you're done with this task, we need to have a long discussion about you and your brother.' The look on Hades face when he said that... She couldn’t place it, but she didn’t like it. She also didn’t like sitting on simple tasks with something like the God of the Underworld’s imaginary patience hanging in the air.

[Cookie]

Eros observed his sister, her expression meant there was something else on her mind. He knew that if it was something she wanted to share, he would already know about it and what ever it was, he did not know about it. The cause of silence urked him. He was in no mood for troublesome demons and souls today.
Biting his tongue before he asked about what he was apparently unenlightened on, he pushed his chair back slowly and stood up, clearing his voice to get her attention, "I'll begin the hunt." The last raven he sent off had an arrow shot through it, so he was more careful these days with what he actually used his scouts for.
Nodding, albeit absentmindedly, Viane looked up to her brother with a crooked smile. "Do that, and I will meet with you later." Pushing back her chair with ease, she sauntered over to her brother for a second, giving him a peck on the cheek. As she opened the door, a hiss of shadows dispersed. The chambers were protected from demonic nosiness but peeping shadows still had a tendency to hover by their doors. The better known chambers would often be heavily surrounded by the pests. She made her way out of the chambers, the door booming behind her and leaving Eros alone.

[Cookie]

The spirit fire dimmed as Eros climbed onto the granite table, his black wings flexing and then folding back as he adjusted his posture and stretched his arms before him. The shadows that crept in the tall ceiling danced down to him like smoke before solidifying into their true forms, “You know your task” he said to the seven black ravens that flapped to their perches. They took to a line from his shoulders down to his hands. Stretching his arms out to his sides, he turned so to face the edge of the table and spoke the words, “Make way dead man.” as he allowed himself to fall back on the long face of the table. But a peculiar thing occurred right as he should have hit its surface-- he did not. Instead, the table coughed a black soot and Eros and his Ravens were gone.