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Post by William Doyle on Jun 10, 2012 22:53:15 GMT -5
[will]He had flown into Atlanta, Georgia early that morning and, after dropping his luggage off, had gone for a quick walk around the block. Since his meeting with his personal high-maintenance redhead, his feet had hardly touched the ground for longer than a day. He was simultaneously wired and exhausted. The need to stretch his legs before he took a nap and got ready to sit for several hours was too great to ignore. Not only that, but it gave him the opportunity to pretend he had time on his hands and that jet lag didn't exist for a little while.
One block had turned into three and he was beginning to think he should turn back. William turned to follow his own advice, but not he noticed someone staring at him not half a block away. The way they were staring made him wary immediately and he decided to take a circular route back to his hotel. He caught the wicked smile on the woman's face out of the corner of his eye and his instincts went on red alert.
Having been the son of a wealthy man, William was not new to kidnapping. However, no attempt had been made on him since he was a teenager. And the way the woman had stared at him promised something far worse than kidnapping. Feeling suddenly anxious, he had to actually force himself to keep his pace relaxed and leisurely. He was on an early morning stroll, he reminded himself. Without any security or any way to defend himself apart from his hands and feet. If the woman had a weapon, he wouldn't stand much of a chance.
He heard running feet and whirled, forearm lifting automatically to protect vital areas and taking the brunt of the blow from a pipe. "A new little toy. I haven't played in ages. Why don't you come home with me and we'll find out just how red your blood is."
William's blood went cold and he failed to defend his side from another blow. He went down as agony flared. "Who are you?"
The woman sniggered. "Your worst nightmare."
"Kind of cheesy, don't you think?" The words flowed smoothly and he'd molded his face into sarcastic amusement, but he was worried. She had hit him harder than she looked capable.[/will]
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Post by Zee Kerrick on Jun 11, 2012 0:00:58 GMT -5
[zee]Zee was on the run. She wasn't admitting it to herself, and she certainly wouldn't have admitted it to anyone else--if she'd let anybody else get close enough to her to notice it, which she wasn't. But she was running, hard and fast. The only problem was how do you run away from your own biochemistry? She hadn't yet figured out a way. The best she could manage was to keep moving. Always moving, always traveling, never pause for long enough to let herself feel her own terror and panic and tiny, tentative hope. This week it was Atlanta, always good for a ghost or ten. She was avoiding demon hunts at the moment, along with all the other things she was avoiding. She had no excuse whatsoever to get involved with the chick stalking the handsome man in the nice suit down the street. All she could figure was that it was some kind of hunter sixth sense, that woman was wrong in a way she hadn't yet identified but it was enough to keep her moving. And when she got around the corner and found the whatever-that-was beating the dude down with a pipe, it was pure instinct to pull a pistol out from under her conveniently-tattered skirt and plug a blessed silver bullet into the back of one of the chick's shoulders. At least it made her drop the pipe. "Get the fuck off of him," she growled, not caring that she had no idea what was actually going on.[/zee] |
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Post by William Doyle on Jun 11, 2012 2:37:43 GMT -5
[will]Someone shot the woman standing over him. William was beginning to think his whole 'take a walk around the block' idea had been very poorly thought out. He'd been to Atlanta hundreds of times over the years and this sort of thing had never happened. The woman's eyes flashed black. As in, completely black. Will stared in horrified fascination while alarm bells rang more insistently in his head. This was bad, his brain told him. This was very bad.
The woman staggered and screamed, clawing at her shoulder, pipe forgotten. His savior was a girl so small that the black-eyed woman overshadowed her. "Run." Overwhelmingly, William felt that it was perfectly fine if his brains were bashed in as long as the girl didn't get herself killed.
Other forms shifted in the looming shadows of the surrounding buildings and their alleys. The foreboding raising the small hairs on the nape of his neck told Will that those forms were likely his attacker's backup. And there was a lot of backup.[/will]
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Post by Zee Kerrick on Jun 11, 2012 2:51:31 GMT -5
[zee]"Fuck!" She didn't have enough silver for this, not by a long fucking shot. She'd been out buying a cup of coffee, for pete's sake, and while she was plenty hunter enough to be armed, she wasn't carrying the heavy artillery. That didn't mean, though, that she was totally helpless. Zee pulled a funny-shaped water pistol out of her knitted purse and aimed it at the bleeding demon. Holy water sprayed out in a steady, battery-pumped stream as Zee shouted to the man, "Get out!" and then began chanting in rapid Latin. Hoping against hope that she could get the exorcism out before the demons closed in on her and knowing that no, she really couldn't. What the hell, though. At least it spared her having to make a decision about what to do with her life.[/zee] |
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Post by William Doyle on Jun 13, 2012 2:07:57 GMT -5
[will]The woman screamed and tried to shield her face from the water. Will didn't really understand what was going on, but whatever the girl was doing, it was working. The other figures moved in suddenly, materializing as men and women with black eyes and dangerous smiles. Will didn't run away. Warily, he got to his feet. The sound of running feet had him rushing forward to wrap an arm around his savior, thrusting the other hand out as if to stop the oncoming crowd.
Something built up inside his chest until it exploded outward with a blinding flash of white light, dropping every person on the street. Will stared in open confusion. "Please tell me your latin did that." Because any other alternative was too alien.[/will]
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Post by Zee Kerrick on Jun 13, 2012 2:28:57 GMT -5
[zee]"Not even a little bit." Zee wrapped her hand into Will's shirt sleeve and took a good hold, then dragged him out of the alleyway and toward the Challenger at a steady jog. She had no idea what had happened back there (lie, she had an idea. It was wrong, but she did have it) but she had no desire to still be on hand when either the demons or the cops turned up.
When they got to the car she opened the passenger door for him. "In. No arguing. We need to be somewhere that's not here." Seconds later they were headed for the freeway, easiest place to lose anything that connected them to the scene back there in that alley.
As they turned a corner Zee reached into a leather doctor's case that sat tucked between the driver's and passenger's seat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She stuck one in her mouth, then took it out unlit a second later and looked at it. Put it back in her mouth. Took it out again, and this time she held it clamped between her first and second fingers of her right hand as though she were smoking it, though she never lit the thing. "So who are you and what about you is important enough for there to be that many demons all in one place?"[/zee]
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Post by William Doyle on Jul 11, 2012 0:20:40 GMT -5
[will]He let her drag him off, too stunned to protest. If he’d been more clearheaded, he might have thought to check if any of his attackers were still alive. He’s regret it later, but he was still trying to figure out what had happened. On automatic, he climbed into the car she’d led him to, silently agreeable to the whole getting away idea. As they started moving, he catalogued what he was leaving behind in his hotel room. Most of it was inconsequential, though there were a few things he’d collected as mementos of his time with Norah. He supposed he could replace those with new mementos the next time he saw her, but a small part of him was hopeful that he would eventually be able to go back and retrieve them.
“You can smoke if you like,” he offered, figuring that she was just being polite. “My name is William – wait did you say demons? As in the biblical sense of the Charmed sense?” Logic was beginning to return. “Did Jeff put you up to this? Some sort of-of prank? And I thought we’d called a truce.” Will would feel a lot better when she broke the act, but a part of him didn’t really believe it was a prank.[/will]
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Post by Zee Kerrick on Jul 11, 2012 0:51:15 GMT -5
[zee]Zee looked at the cigarette clamped between the first and second knuckles of her left hand and sighed loudly. "No, I really can't." Not until she decided, it wasn't fair. And never mind that even after two weeks without a cig her chest felt tight and shaky, she was damned close to crying with how bad she wanted it and with the maddening, nearly agonizing knowledge that she could feel better in five seconds if she'd just light the thing and take a good deep drag.
Next time. Next time there's a craving. It was what she'd been promising herself for fifteen days now, ever since she'd made herself check and found the utterly-expected twin pink lines. I can have one next time. I'll just ride out this one. I can do that. She ran through the mantra and still almost winced as she pitched the unlit cigarette out the driver's side window.
"'M Zee," she offered. "And yes, real demons in the actual Biblical real sense. And I don't know anybody named Geoff except for the bouncer at a kicker bar in Tennessee where my Santeria connection works. Thinking it's probably not the same guy." She glanced sidelong at him. "Your buddy know how to turn people's eyes black and make you burst out white light? Because if not, I'm thinking you can rule out 'tasteless prank'."[/zee]
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Post by William Doyle on Jul 11, 2012 1:05:59 GMT -5
[will]William frowned. “Point taken.” He considered what had happened, but could come to no conclusions that he felt happy with. The whole idea that he’d created some white light and everyone had promptly collapsed was a little overwhelming, but he wasn’t moronic enough to sit in Zee’s car and deny it. He’d felt it, whatever it was. “Do you know what happened back there, Zee? Do demons normally gather up like that?”
Skipping past the whole panicky-denial stage led the to the logical step of figuring out what the more knowledgeable person in the car knew. “I always thought demons had horns and were considerably more red than those people were.” He was trying to treat this practically, but the whole thing was so surreal that a part of him was convinced he was dreaming.[/will]
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Post by Zee Kerrick on Jul 11, 2012 1:44:43 GMT -5
[zee]A crooked smile. "The horns and red skin thing is a myth. Comes from the days when the Catholic church was trying to finish killing off the old religions. They were getting rid of Pan and daemons in one fell swoop, or at least trying to. Demons look like..." a funny crumpling of the brow, like she was trying to force her way past something, "nothing I can describe. Like the most fucked-up creatures in that move Pan's Labyrinth times fifty. They look like agony and bad dreams. Like meat and rot and burning steel." A delicate shudder, trying to shake off whatever it was she was remembering or seeing or imagining.
"But anyway, they don't move around the world looking like that. Up here they wear meatsuits. Possess people. But the black eyes thing is a clue. Black eyes, red eyes, yellow eyes, white eyes. You see any of those, run like fuck. Or," a sidelong glance at Will, "maybe not you. But most people."
Her fingers tappy-tapped on the steering wheel, antsy and already wishing she had that cigarette back. "And no, they don't gather like that, not unless there's some really heavy shit going down. What have you done lately to get yourself into that kind of trouble? Think hard." She was going to have to decide where she was going pretty soon here. A glance at the next sign they passed and she decided to go ahead and take him to her motel room. It wasn't all that far away, it was already warded, and she was going to be moving locations soon anyway.[/zee]
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Post by William Doyle on Jul 11, 2012 2:00:31 GMT -5
[will]He took in the information she gave him, filling it all away to be pulled out and reviewed at a later date. He liked that she didn’t edge around his questions, that she was honest, even though the whole thing still felt kind of unreal. “Why not me? I’m sorry, Zee, but this whole thing feels kind of like a dream. Still dealing with the world not being what I thought it was part.” Or trying to. Will read books, he watched movies and he was beginning to feel like one of those characters whose world had been turned inside out.
“I haven’t done anything that I can think of. I mean, nothing that warrants the gathering of biblical demons. I don’t even believe in God. And I can’t imagine that being worth the gathering of that many demons. I’ve spent most of my time on a plane for most of the last four days.” The last time he’d touched ground and stayed on it, he’d been with Norah.[/will]
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Post by Zee Kerrick on Jul 11, 2012 2:07:30 GMT -5
[zee]"There's got to be something." She pulled off at the interchange, heading for the Super 8 she was currently occupying. "It could be anything. Did you make a new business deal? Get married or divorced? Sign a contract with a company? Buy a house? It could be any of those, or a thousand other things. What's different in your life from a month ago? Besides, you know, me." She shot him a quick smile, cheery and bitter at the same time. "Not that getting rescued by a hottie and then being shoved into her car and berated with the truth isn't awesome and all. Just saying, I doubt I'm the triggering event."[/zee]
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Post by William Doyle on Jul 12, 2012 1:27:19 GMT -5
[will]William frowned while she started listing off what seemed like the most random of things. "Nothing of that sort." He paused, more of a hesitation. "I met someone. A young woman." Could it be that Norah was somehow being hunted by a horde of black-eyed individuals?
A quick smile. "You're the newest addition to my life, Zee. I'm being completely honest, other than my meeting with Norah, I haven't done a single thing. Unless changing flights could attract attention, there isn't anything. Why should something seemingly so insignificant to someone other than me be so important to them?"[/will]
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Post by Zee Kerrick on Jul 12, 2012 2:33:49 GMT -5
[zee]Her head cocked slightly to one side, thinking. "Tell me about this Norah. Where did you meet her, what's your relationship with her? If we can't figure out why the demons are after you, we'll never know how to protect you. And I'm hoping that if we can figure out that, we can work out how you did that nifty 'they all fall down' trick and then you can teach it to me." Because good goddamn would that be useful.
She pulled in to the parking lot of the motel. "Don't think I'm hitting on you or anything, we're just going where the weapons are. C'mon." She led him into her room, which was your basic two-doubles motel room with a couple of notable exceptions. Like the bullet reloader set up on the rickety round pressboard table with the half-empty sack of rock salt next to it. Or the several chalked symbols on the walls, ceiling, and the rug just inside the door. Or the jumble of mess on the long, low dresser--boxes of ammo, a brace of throwing knives, a copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting and a battered laptop computer that seemed to be running some kind of automated script as it kept flickering between several different browser windows.
"Stay clear of the windows," she instructed William as she laid down fresh lines of salt and stretched up to be sure that the Devil's Shoestring was still safely over the door. "Now. About this chick?"[/zee]
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Post by William Doyle on Jul 14, 2012 3:05:03 GMT -5
[will]He hadn’t quite finished sorting through what she’d said when they parked at a motel. Amusement flickered through him, but it didn’t linger as the reasons behind the trip to her motel room returned. His gaze roved over the interior of the room, focusing first on the weapons and then pausing at the sore thumb amidst all the gear. Something tugged at him about the title of the book, but he didn’t think about it long enough to question its presence in the room.
Following her order, he took a seat on one of the beds, feeling out of place in the room. Still, he answered when she prodded him. “I met her in Chicago. Norah Byron. She’s a singer in an up-and-coming band named Lorica. I don’t think I’ve stopped to consider the definitions of our relationship. I will admit that I don’t think of her platonically and that, despite knowing her only a short time, I see Norah as more than an acquaintance. Zee, I really don't see how she could be connected to those demons."[/will]
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