Chapter 7 Crossroads
Note: updates will probably be about once a week since between a new baby and accelerated classes that leaves very little personal time.
Note: Thank you to all of you that have reviewed and decided to follow this story. It really does help to keep the juices flowing. :D
Note: also, if the formatting stays as I want it this means voices.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Duo snarled in the man's general direction.
"Looking over my crime scene." Once again, there was great emphasis on the word "my". Duo noticed that when Heero spoke, Zechs glared, and Wufei was trying not to smile.
"Well, shit," Duo so aptly put it. "And what do you mean, look again?"
"Get closer to where the crime originated. You should see signs there." Heero waved his hand towards the center of the room. Duo swallowed hard and slowly walked over towards the sofa, where it looked like the original blood pattern seemed to have started.
As he walked closer, the pressure grew. Ssssss Ssssss. Duo shook his head to clear his mind. It was like a high pitched sound mixing with a low moan. He glanced around the room and it didn't look as if anybody else had heard anything.
Inssspectorrrrr.
"What did you say?" Duo asked, glancing back at where Heero stood. Heero gave him a funny look.
"Nobody said anything."
"Duo, do you feel anything differently from where you are standing?" Wufei asked, unable to keep a chill from crawling down his spine.
"I don't see any of you walking any closer to this shit," Duo exclaimed. "Why the hell am I the only one over here?"
"Zechs made it clear that your expertise was required," Heero drawled out sarcastically.
"What damn expertise," Duo muttered under his breath as he turned back around.
"What was that?" Heero asked sternly. One could tell that he was on the edge of getting pissed.
"Nothing," Duo muttered, a bit louder this time.
"While you are saying nothing, what can you tell me about what you see over there?"
"They were sitting here, but why would they just sit here when somebody came through the front door," Duo said aloud as he was trying to talk his way through the process. "Did they- no they did not know the person that came through the door."
Duo placed his hands out in front of him and ran his hand over the top of the couch, inches from the fabric. "They were spelled to not have felt the intruder's presence."
Inssspectorrrr. Ssssss Ssssss.
Duo hurriedly looked around the room. The only ones that were paying any attention to what he was doing were Wufei, Zechs, and Heero. The rest of the cops paid him no mind. He brought up his hands to rub at his eyes.
Inches from his face he saw that his hands were dripping with blood. He jumped backwards with a yell. Wufei rushed forward and grabbed Duo by the shoulders and turned him around quickly.
"What? What did you feel?" Wufei asked, surprised at such a harsh reaction. Duo frantically rubbed his hands on his pants, trying to get the blood off. When he looked to Wufei and back to his hands, there was nothing there.
"I, uhm, I-" Oh what the hell was he supposed to say to that. "I- nothing. I didn't feel anything. It's nothing," Duo told him, trying to reassure him and himself. Wufei looked at him funny, but took a step back to stand near Heero and Zechs. Duo walked away from the couch and over towards the hallway. He had a hard time not stepping in the blood and gore, but he carefully managed so that nobody would get on his case about disturbing the crime scene.
Ssssss. Ssssss.
He wondered what in the world that noise was. He tried to push it out of his mind as he got closer to the corpse. What looked like random blood spatters, were actually made into a pattern that he did not see at first.
"Do you guys see this?" Duo called back to the people he really wished would stay closer to him. Luck would have it that Heero came to stand beside him.
"The spray forms a pattern. It is not neatly done, but I can see it too," Heero stated.
Duo leaned over a particular part of the pattern and lost his footing. He reached out to grab the nearest doorjamb to save himself from falling into the untouched blood. He caught his balance, but hissed as he brought his hand away from the door frame. A large splinter had gouged (1) the middle of his palm. He pulled it out and blood welled up in the hole that the splinter had made.
"Let me see," Heero said sternly.
"It is nothing," Duo told him, shaking his hand to ease the pain. For some reason, the drop of blood that got flung off his hand caught their attention and what happened next seemed to go in slow motion.
That one drop of blood arced through the air to land on the center of the corpse that laid there in the hallway. Zechs and Wufei screamed, Heero's mouth dropped open as he made a grab for Duo, and Duo stood there looking dumbfounded. The drop landed with a small little splat. Nothing happened for a moment, and then all Hell broke loose.
The body shot up in flames, creating a back blast that threw Heero back towards the kitchen with its immense heat. The flames and heat seemed to part around Duo as he just stood there.
Inspector, how nice of you to join your blood with ours. Duo looked around frantically, but he could have sworn the voice was coming from the corpse in front of him. Through the flames that he could not feel, it looked like the body was slowly reforming.
The blood that was on the walls oozed down to the floor. The puddles along the hallway coagulated into one puddle, then began a scooting or crawling motion to enter the corpse's stomach. There was a roaring in Duo's ears, his eyes were wide, his body frozen and unable to move away from the sight in front of him.
Blood of your blood, our blood, HIS blood. Little child of mine. Duo found that he could move his head as he realized that it had been moving back and forth. Somebody, he realized with a start that it was him, was saying the word no in increasing volume. What the hell was this thing talking about, and is it moving!?
The body that lay in front of him was slowly becoming whole right before his eyes. Some small part of his brain made him want to turn around and see if anybody else was seeing what he was seeing, hearing what he was hearing, but he was too terrified of taking his eyes off the now standing corpse that was still on fire.
Nothing around the corpse caught fire. Duo thought this was a little strange, but couldn't see what he could do about it at the time being. The walls and the carpet were clean of most of the blood, leaving behind only the minutest traces behind. The fire danced along the corpse, fueled by something that he could not see.
The thing took a step towards Duo and lifted its arm so that the palm of its hand was outstretched towards him. Duo scrambled back, not going very far as the wall was right behind him. In the distance, he thought he heard somebody call his name. But, he couldn't hear much through the roaring in his ears.
Little child. Our child. The thing – he couldn't think of it as a body anymore – took one step closer to him and laid his hand on Duo's chest. Duo screamed as the heat instantly soaked through his shirt in a searing pain. A dreadful stench of burnt flesh filled his nose as his screams escalated.
Suddenly there were gunshots bursting through the air and bolts of energy sizzling, shining brightly, and blinding Duo as the thing in front of him was hit repeatedly. The roaring that filled his ears seemed to have vanished in a sudden motion. The thing in front of him did not seem to be fazed in the slightest as it held its palm to his chest, marking him.
We will return for you.
Without warning the thing screeched, maybe something vital was finally hit. Whatever it was, the thing reared back its head, let out a horrid screech, ripped its hand away from Duo's chest and disintegrated before their eyes.
"What the hell?" Heero yelled, just off to Duo's right. All that was left were the small traces of what used to be blood and dark ashes floating through the air to land on the hallway floor.
Duo, for his part was still screaming. Wufei ran over to him and pushed Heero to the side to get to his friend.
"Duo. Duo!" With no response Wufei grabbed Duo by his wrists and pulled him over to the kitchen where a medic was fast coming through the door. He sat Duo down on the floor. Between him and the medic, they were able to cut away most of Duo's shirt without pulling the skin off. Duo's screams, by this point had lessened to a wheezing whine.
The skin on Duo chest was blackened and peeling already. The medic looked worried as she pulled out some forceps with a swab of something smelling strongly of disinfectant. She waved Wufei back from Duo's wound and lightly soaked the charred skin. She frowned as she realized that the black bits of dead skin came off right away. She gasped by what she saw underneath.
The wound was sealed with baby pink scar tissue. There was a perfect print of a hand with the five fingers outstretched, all in that baby-pink color. She glanced over to Wufei as if she could not believe what she was seeing, but by his expression she wasn't just seeing things.
"How am I supposed to explain this?" she asked quietly. Duo glanced down and said a few choice words about the matter.
"Calm down Duo," Wufei consoled. He took the scraps of cloth that used to be Duo's shirt and threw them into the nearest trash bag that was meant for discarded gloves and shoe booties.
"What the hell do you mean, calm down Wufei? That thing, that corpse, did something to me. Did this! And you want me to be calm?"
"I'm sorry that we couldn't stop it sooner," Wufei replied.
"Who was throwing the energy blasts?" Duo asked. "I've actually never seen them used so aggressively before."
"That would be Zechs. I told you that he is rather strong, magic wise."
"I guess you can say that." There was a pause while the medic finished cleaning off the black pieces of dead skin off his chest. The cool air felt weird on his chest, but he wasn't sure what he could really do about it at the moment. "Did you guys hear anything coming from the corpse?"
"What do you mean?" Heero asked, walking up to where they were sitting on the floor.
"Keep your chest uncovered for the rest of the day," the medic told him softly. "If it starts to feel weird, as in hot, cold, or anything else, get yourself to the emergency room as fast as possible."
"Alright. Thank you doc," Duo told her and was interrupted as Heero repeated himself. "It was talking about my blood with its blood. It called me a child and said that somebody would be coming back for me."
"After the backlash, I didn't hear anything but the sound of something burning up. I definitely did not expect the thing to reform itself." Duo looked over to Wufei for confirmation, the Chinese man nodded in agreement.
"Who was shooting at the damn thing?" Duo asked. Heero looked indignant while Wufei had the decency of looking chagrined.
"Well, what did you expect us to do?"
"Not take your sweet ass time if such a thing were to happen again!" Duo said loudly. He stood up, much to Wufei's disappointment, and shoved himself away from the wall. "I can't believe you guys were letting that thing crispy critter me before doing anything!" Duo felt rather indignant about that part of the situation.
"Don't you remember us yelling your name?" Wufei asked him, following Duo as he went outside to smoke a cigarette.
"What do you mean?" he asked, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and searching for his lighter in one of the many other pockets his pants had to have.
"As soon as that drop of blood landed on the corpse and it went up into flames, I started yelling for you to get back out of the way." Wufei looked his friend up and down, almost like if he was seeing the other man for the first time.
"Why didn't the flames send you back towards the kitchen like they did Heero?"
"I have no idea," Duo told him after releasing an impressive amount of smoke rings.
"You know those things are going to kill you someday, right?" Duo arched an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders. "Can you explain anything that happened back in there?"
"Nope. Same as last time. I have no idea why things are reacting to me like they are. Never happened before," Duo replied.
"I think it is because you are a chimeric," Zechs literally chirped as he walked up to their secluded little corner of the yard.
"What the hell ever," Duo replied, taking another long drag on his cigarette to finish that one off. He scraped the embers on the bottom of his shoe and threw the butt over the fence.
"Does he always talk with such language?" Zechs asked Wufei.
"Just about," the Chinese man replied.
"Can we go back inside to talk things over with Heero?" Zechs asked politely, given the situation.
All of a sudden, the sun was almost blocked completely by an overwhelming shadow. Each man glanced up to the sky and was surprised that a large portion of the sky was covered in black birds. They were swooping and pecking and diving. It looked rather unusual.
Duo was about to suggest that of course they could go inside so they wouldn't get pooped on, but then something fell out of the sky and landed with a wet plop at Duo's feet. He bent over to look at what had fallen and was almost sick to his stomach for the second time that day.
It was an eyeball. It was too small to be human, but too large to have been a bird's eye. It still had bloody tendons attached to the back of it and almost seemed to pulse with life.
"What the-" Wufei started to say. Suddenly something else fell nearby. From what they could tell it was another part of an animal's anatomy. A tongue, maybe. Suddenly, there were things falling out of the sky two, three pieces at a time, and all the while falling in a circle around Duo as if they were an offering of some sort.
Duo was disgusted and quite unnerved by the whole situation. He tilted his head upwards towards the sky and had the very misfortune of something red, wet, and slimy land on his forehead. He let out an undignified squawk, and clawed at his face to get it off and then started running for the front door to go inside the house.
The droppings followed him. To keep the birds from following him into the house, he had to slam the door shut, almost shutting Zechs in the door in the process. The three of them were panting heavily as they watched the birds dive bomb the door and the windows at the front of the house.
Heero came to see what all the commotion was, and was surprised to see the mark on Duo's chest. He was even more surprised by the birds' behavior. He turned to Duo with a look of almost horror on his face.
"Just what the hell are you?" Heero so aptly asked.
Yes, splinters can gouge. I got a bad enough one in grade school that I had to get stitches.
Note: Thank you for your patience in waiting for the next chapter to come out. The baby needs fed every three hours really gets to us sometimes and then I had major writer's block. I hope to have the next installment out a lot sooner.
