Highly Dangerous
By:
Emmeline's Embers and Dee Dee's Box
"My ability to hunt is not hindered by my mother's illness, you're being ridiculous." Genie ran her hands through her long, dark hair in frustration before returning her busy hands to the task of quickly packing their belongings into the nearly worn out back packs that had been accompanying the two girls for as long as they'd been friends. "We will stay here and finish this hunt, just like my Dad wants."
"And then we hit the road." Genie watched as she folded her clothing neatly but hurriedly into her bag as her closest friend threw her own belongings into a torn, shameful excuse for a back pack, uncaring if what was dirty touched what was clean. "Can you at least try to pack neatly? And you probably need to change out of the pant suit, that's what they'll be looking for us in."
The girls packed at lightning speed. Though they had not informed any of the officers where they were staying or even used the same alias to book the room, being caught and delaying time towards getting to Genie's mom was not a risk they were going to take.
Laney picked up a pair of jeans from where they lay on the bathroom floor, wrinkled and already torn, before unbuttoning and dropping her black dress slacks to the ground to kick them off her slender ankles. "Happy?" She uttered between her teeth, her hands busy with fastening the clasp on her dark wash jeans, before continuing to throw random objects in the overstuffed bag.
The mixed woman didn't have to look up from the outfit she was choosing to know that her friend had not only just put on a pair of dirty jeans, but forgotten to change out of the blouse and blazer of her suit. "Shirt, Laney." Genie tried not to let her annoyance get the better of her. "We need to finish this hunt and get out of here. Let's go over the case once more."
The tall woman ripped the shirt from her shoulders and huffed a sigh, "We've been over this a thousand times. We have all the facts from the bodies we could possibly gather. What we need is to find out which demon is doing this, summon his ass here, and send him back to Hell."
"Will you stop being so negative and focus? Put on a shirt and shut up!" The last part of the sentence came out in a hiss, a dare to not follow the command. "In order to find this demon, I think we're going to have to lay a trap. Figure out how he's finding these girls."
Laney pursed her lips in thought, pulling her shirt over her head and trying not to focus on the static electricity tingling in her hair. "I should be bait." Her tone was light, simple, and indicative of her thought process. For her, it was the only solution that came to mind. Before her friend could argue, because she could practically see the "no" in Genie's facial expression, she continued on. "Think about it, G. This demon has a fetish for innocent looking blonde girls. I'm blonde. I'll know he's coming, and when he does," Laney pantomimed pulling the trigger on a large gun and pretended to stumble back from the force of its kick back. "Bam!"
"That's officially your worst idea yet, and you've had some awful ones, so that's saying something." Genie once again ran her hand through her hair before zipping up her neatly packed, but full, bag. "But it might be the only thing we've got. We'll find out where all these girls went that might have caught this things attention. You'll be bait, but…Laney?"
The blonde stopped tying her shoe to turn and look at her friend, a soft look in her eye, expecting her friend's speech on safety and a tender acknowledgement of their love for one another. "You can't look innocent wearing a shirt that says "smokin' hot badass"."
Walking to the back parking lot of their motel with watchful eyes, the two female huntresses walked silently and swiftly towards the black Audi sedan, the key fab at the ready. "Did you remember to pack the Cheetos?" Laney finally broke the silence, her need for the cheesy snack heightened.
"Yes," Genie would've rolled her eyes at her friend if she hadn't been so stressed. "Where are we going to go? They know our car." Now at the trunk of her car, Genie pushed the button to raise the hatch so that she could gently arrange her back pack beside her duffel that had remained in the car.
The blonde, after having quickly checked the car over for any flat tires or damage, came to a stop beside her friend at the trunk, throwing her unzipped bag into the dark recesses of the car's storage compartment. "We're going to hide the car first, then we're going to locate where the demon is finding these girls by looking at the files and narrowing down any common locations they might have gone to in the days leading up to their murders."
"And then," Genie sarcastically stated as she slammed the trunk to a close. "We're going to make you look innocent and serve you up to this thing on a silver platter."
A passerby caught Laney's attention, the expression on the young teenager's face one of speculation and disgust. The boy stared at the two women, analyzing their clothing. He noted that the blonde one wore a "Smokin' hot badass" shirt, the words forming a circle around a Pentagram made of pizza slices. Her shirt didn't quite meet the hem of her high wasted dark wash jeans, exposing the knife wound scarred flash of her stomach as she placed all her weight on the one hip and hand she rested on the trunk.
His eyes also roamed to her shorter, well dressed companion. The girl had a deep tan and long, dark tresses that flowed past the shoulder of her loose maroon floral patterned shirt, black leather jacket, tight black jeans, and fashionable steel toed combat boots placed defiantly on the ground in a wide stance. Her body language, with her crossed arms and matter of fact tone, made the girl appear strong, despite her small stature. "The Hell you looking at, Kid?"
Laney caught the kid's eye, forcing his to stop hungrily roaming over her partner's form. "Run along, before I make a mold of your face in the sidewalk." Returning the middle finger the kid threw at her, Laney turned back to her friend. "You attract more attention than we need."
Genie looked at her friend unbelievingly. "What?" Continuing to stare at her friend, she walked to the front of the vehicle to climb into the passenger seat. "I attract attention? I'm not the one walking around looking like Gwen Stefani circa 1995!"
Laney smirked to herself when she folded her tall body into the driver's seat. "You're too…Hot." The words were difficult for her to utter seriously. "I mean, you're straight up main stream beautiful." Cranking the car with one hand, Laney used the other to gesture to her friend. "The lipstick and heels don't help, either."
"Thanks for the tips, Ru Paul, but I'll stick to my fashion so long as you stick to whatever this grunge thing is you've got going on." Genie grabbed the handle bars near her door as Laney reversed all the way out of the parking lot and into oncoming traffic. "You have no idea how to act inconspicuous, do you?"
While ignoring the honking, Laney simultaneously threw her friend a look and the car in to drive. "Why would I do that?" Weaving through traffic, the vehicle was guided to the main highway out of town, racing past the city limits. "We're going to hide your car in the next town over so they can't impound her if she's found."
In an effort to remain calm, Genie checked her phone. There was a missed call from her father, the notification displayed on the screen. She thought about her mother, about the cancer that was slowly taking the life from her firm grasp. The doctor's said they have never seen a person out live a diagnosis so long. If there was one thing her mother was, it was stubborn, a quality she passed to her daughter both genetically and through example.
Genesis closed the phone without calling her father, allowing herself to stare out the window for a moment of self-contemplation before forcing herself back to work. There were girl's lives in danger and she needed to finish this hunt before she dared show her face back home. "Not all of the files have reports of the victims last days, only the recent ones."
"Well, the girls didn't all live in the same city," Laney stretched her neck. "The demon wouldn't stay in one place for too long, he'd probably get bored. So, only the recent cases should matter, anyways."
Genesis reached for the files resting on the back seat, starting the process of pulling the more recent files from the stack. "Hey, I was thinking," she started. "What if Mary Margret was a hunter, too?"
"The medical examiner said she had the markers of a solider in a war." Genesis scrunched her brows in thought. "But…he wouldn't have the term hunter, not the way we know it, in his vocabulary." If Mary Margret Hughes was a hunter and she lost against this demon, what were the chances of Laney being able to get the best of him?
Flipping through the files, Genie retrieved the recent cases. Pulling the papers she needed from each file, she tossed the files back into the back. With her highlighter, the brunette set upon the mission of picking apart common locations for the last four murdered girls. "Hm," she breathed. Her highlighter, when she wasn't using it, rested on her lip so that she could chew its cap in concentration. "There isn't a single common place, but they all went to an address on the same street in the market square…"
"If it were a street vendor, wouldn't the girls have to pay cash? Which means there wouldn't be an electronic record of them stopping there." Laney drove into the city limits of the neighboring town, looking for a parking garage or hidden spot to stop.
"With that logic, you could also include window shopping. Going into a shop and not buying anything." Genesis stopped chewing on her highlighter cap, a bright look on her face. "We need to have you walk through the market place. Finding the single street vendor or shop they went into but didn't buy anything in is going to be difficult, so you're just going to have to parade around this place."
Laney parked behind a boarded up Auto Body shop, the Audi just barely fitting between the building, another tarp covered car, the wooden fence, and the dumpster. "I don't think she'll be disturbed here." Going to the trunk, the blonde dug towards the back, in a tote filled with jumper cables, head light bulbs, lug nuts, and a jack until she found the tarp she was looking for.
The two women covered the black sedan with the tan tarp with a quickness after they grabbed an assortment of weaponry from the tote next to the car parts. "Your crazy organization skills sometimes come in handy." The blonde elbowed the brunettes' arm, her arm then coming to rest against the gun holstered at her waist. "Let's find a ride."
"Something inconspicuous this time, Lane!" Genie called out after her friend, still adjusting the gun she'd tucked into the inside pocket of her leather jacket. The one holstered to her boot, covered by her jeans, slightly bothering her as she walked.
Eternally grateful for making Laney put on a jacket, Genie watched the outline of her friend's gun peep through the thin material, moving with her hips when the girl picked up her pace to walk quickly towards the large parking lot outside an office building. "You take the fun out of it!" She called over her shoulder.
Now seated in a three year old Toyota Camry, Genie was careful not to make a mess in the car they'd stolen. If at all possible, she wanted the car's owner to get his vehicle back in the shape he left it. "Do you own any clothing that isn't borderline profane?"
Laney snorted ineloquently. "No."
"We're going to have to make a clothing stop. My clothes aren't going to fit you." Tan fingers flipped through the pages of an Old Navy ad, mentally noting clothing that seemed interestingly feminine. "What about this sweater?" Holding up the ad, Genesis examined the eye roll her partner graced her with. "You hate it?"
"Most definitely!" Delaney sat back in her seat. If only her mother could see her in the clothing Genie was sure to pick out for her…She would nearly pass out. Her mother always wanted a little doll to dress up, to take places and show off, to behave in an impressively polite manner. Instead she got Harper and Laney, both as masculine as one could imagine. Laney never allowed her mother to drag her anywhere, misbehaving enough to prove to her mother the hassle would be too great.
"Then it's perfect." Laney twitched her nose in annoyance, turning the car in time with the flow of traffic, blending in with four other Camry's.
Hissing while smiling, Laney walked through the street, pretending to look at jewelry on yet another street vendor's table. Eyes carefully looking at the people around her, the girl did her best to keep the expression of innocence on her features that Genesis had worked so hard to teacher her. "Your jewelry is beautiful," she told yet another vender, making eye contact.
The man was in his late fifties and rather thick in the middle. "Thank you!" His accent was quite thick and his eyes slightly confused. Laney noted that the man was most likely Egyptian, with a joyous twinkle in his eye. She smiled at him truthfully, the first real smile she'd given anyone at the market today. "Have a good day!"
Waving, she stepped off the curb, heading across the street to the next stand. Brushing her hair out of her face, the woman scanned the area around the grouping of tables selling pottery, and to the man that stood behind it.
He stood at an incredible height, Laney knew because she could tell he was taller than her by looking, even from across the street. "Woah," she breathed, her cheeks dusting red for the first time in years and her eyes opening wide. She stopped in the middle of the street to stare at the specimen.
The man was surrounded by women, ranging in age from teenage to geriatric. If she didn't see him for herself, she would've never believed such a man existed. The man's long brown locks were piled into a bun on top of his head, a few strands escaping to lay softly on his facial hair, which spanned a thick line from his jaw to his hair under his ear.
Thick muscles bunched on his arms and expanded to his chest. The muscles were not the kind one could achieve from a few hours in a gym, but the brand hard won from battle. Inwardly, Delaney pictured the man in a Knight's armor. "You can save me any day, Mister," she whispered to herself. Knowing she had to approach the man, the blonde found herself shy for the first time. She'd never experienced the butterflies in her stomach feeling until now. She didn't know how to start a conversation with him, or if she could ever remember words when the beautiful vendor suddenly locked his crystal blue eyes with her own green ones.
"Are you looking for something in particular, Ma'am?"
"What?" Laney suddenly found herself no longer standing in a street full of people, but in front of the pottery filled tables, close enough to the man to smell his breath, a mix of scotch and ocean driftwood. "Oh," in confusion, Laney looked around, finally realizing there were women staring at her. "Sorry, I just…"
The man smiled at her, a light of something she couldn't describe in his eyes. "What's your name?"
"Delaney Johnson," she smiled. Startled, Laney processed that she'd just given this man her full name, instead of the alias she and Genie had agreed on. The name she has giving all the other vendors the whole day. "I mean, Laney." She stated, an effort to cover up the surprise that must have been clearly written on her features. She smiled at the man, not knowing what else to do. "Well, you have a beautiful table, here, but I have to go."
Backing away, Laney decided that this new development was worth reporting back to her partner. If he wasn't the demon they were looking for, he certainly was a man worth gushing to her best friend about.
"Wait!" The man called out, a smirk on his full lips. "Is that your natural hair color?" The other women, all brunettes, at the table threw her disgusted looks.
Delaney smiled wide with her own brand of elation, nodding. She waved, returning to her previous route away from the table. "Gotcha!"
Genesis drank more of her coffee, still hot in its banded cup. A paper was spread out in front of her, hiding her face from most prying eyes. Luckily, there was plenty of material to appear as if she was reading, her teeth bothering her lower lip in worry.
Her partner, decked out in a pink "love" sweater and boyfriend jeans, was out hunting for a predator. Could she hunt the hunter? The demon, it must be old if it has managed to keep the same meat suit since Medieval times. In her studies, she found that most demons couldn't keep a body long, due to damage or the need to remove itself from the cavity in times of distress.
If the body was as old as the Medical Examiner said it was, this demon is old. And powerful. So long as the demon was in the body, it wouldn't age as a normal human would. Genesis wondered if the possessed was aware of the thing in his or her body, wondered at what it must be like to be trapped in your own body.
Would the body, if they could get the demon out of the body without further harming it, be able to live out the rest of its natural life span in the present?
The paper was ripped out of her hand and her mind out of its contemplation. "I think I found it." Standing over her, Laney propped both her hands on the table's cold surface. "And I think it made my ovaries explode."
"Ew, Laney." Shaking her head, Genesis stood from her chair. "Are you sure?"
"About the demon or my ovaries?" Laney shook her head, "Yes. To both."
Genesis pulled her friend from the table by the wrist. "Did you act the way I coached you to? Tell me everything."
"Everything went as planned, except…that I told him my name." Laney held up a hand to stop her friend before she could utter her disapproval. "Look, if he's not the demon, I'm going to tie him up and put him in the trunk, anyways."
The women busied themselves preparing for the demon all day, having already picked out a house that was vacant while its owners were on vacation. Under the large living room rug they painted a giant Devil's Trap, just as Bobby described over the phone.
Genesis hid herself in the cupboard under the stairs, watching through the slats as Laney sat in a chair in the living room, appearing as if she was reading a book. She still wore the pink sweater but had since changed into a pair of black running shorts with an elastic waist band.
Her legs crossed out in front of her, feet bare. The clothing wasn't the best for fighting a demon, but it would be odd if she was still fully clothed at eleven at night, cuddled up with a book. The girls waited as the hours passed with no results.
Finally, Laney pulled out her cell phone to send a text to her friend in the closet. "I don't think he's going to show up, it's one in the morning."
Laney's phone buzzed with the response. "You were sure this guy was the demon? Maybe you got it wrong."
"Trust me, my vagina and I are very disappointed." Laney laughed and stood to stretch, her balance resting on the tips of her toes as her hands clasped and her arms raised to the ceiling.
Before the tall woman could finish her stretch, the lights started to flicker in the house, the bulbs all shaking from some unknown force. "Seriously?" Laney questioned, her hands coming to her hips in disbelief.
"Seriously," the voice came from behind her, caressing her neck in a way that made tingles spread down her spine. The demon placed his wide hands on the blonde's sides, pulling her towards him until his lips came to nuzzle the expanse of smooth skin on her neck. "I love the smell of fear on a woman."
Laney, battling through a mix of anger and lust, finally pulled herself mentally together enough to process his words and place a smirk on her lips. "Your sniffer must be broken, Pooch, because I don't smell of fear."
The demon inhaled at Laney's jugular, his hands tightening at her waist. "Brave words from a woman." Turning the girl in his arms, the whole of his eyes started filling with a glowing bright purple until the color crept into the veins surrounding his eyes. "You modern women," purple stared straight into Laney's green orbs. "Think you're all so tough with your talk and your pathetic attempts at learning to fight."
Delaney brought her knee up to force the man off balance as she head butted the offending creature, finally managing to move free of the living room rug. "Now, Genie!"
Genesis came tumbling out of the cupboard under the stairs, her large body of hair going in multiple directions to match the wild look in her hazel eyes. "Jesus, Lane. You weren't kidding." Taking in the vision of the male Adonis currently staring both the girls down with bright purple eyes and a dark sneer on his lips, the women both breathed in admiration of his appearance.
"Do you even remember the name of the man you're wearing?" The emotion in Laney's voice caused Genie to tear her eyes from the specimen to look in surprise at her best friend. Never once had she seen Delaney become emotional with anyone other than herself, so for her to see the concern in the green orbs was a shock.
Had Laney been having the same concerning thoughts for the man possessed that has plagued her own mind? Was her friend capable of caring for someone not in her close circle of loved ones?
Watching the demon meet the edge of the Devil's Trap with a look of confused irritation out of her peripheral vision, Genesis confidently wrapped her pinky finger with Delaney's. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio
infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica."
The demon let out a scream that showed his host's back teeth. "You can't send me back to Hell, Ladies, you're not strong enough!" The voice the demon used was no longer that of the host's, but of something from the deepest fires of Hell.
Laney held up her middle finger before she started reciting the long, ancient and powerful exorcism. "Ergo draco maledicte, et omnis legio diabolica, adjuramus te. Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare." The demon did not start to smoke out of the body as they expected but appeared to be splitting in half, vibrating with an intensity that shook the entire house.
Plaster started falling around the girls, shelves coming off the walls, and pieces of the floor buckling under their feet. "Vade, Satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis. Humiliare sub potenti manu dei, contremisce et effuge, invocato anobis sancto et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt."
Even with the house falling in around them, the partners turned friends held their ground and onto each other for support.
"You're going to kill him!" The demon's voice was no longer coming from his host's mouth, or second mouth, because the separation of the creature into two pieces was nearly complete. The voice was emerging from the cracks in the floor, the depths of which reached far below the foundation of the house. The words caused the girls to pause only slightly. "You take me out of this body, and this human will turn to dust!"
Laney moved her head to the side, a single tear flowing from her right eye. "Fuck you!" The force of her words moved her forward until she was in the demon's face, forcing him to lose the footing he barely held through the pain of exorcising. "Keep going, Genie!"
"Terribilis Deus de sanctuario suo. Deus Israhel ipse truderit virtutem et fortitudinem plebi Suae. Benedictus deus." The demon completed his splitting, forming a copy of the man laying prone on the floor. The original man finally lay still, not making an attempt at a sound, his eyes staring at the ceiling with blood pouring out of his nose.
Under the second man, whom was still writhing in what must have been agony, the ground tore even the carpet, slowly growing large enough to shallow the being whole. "Gloria patri!"
The women uttered the final words with such strength, that the ground finally opened large enough to accommodate the clone and the shadows that rose steadily from its depths sucked the being completely down the hole.
Amazingly, before their very eyes, the crack closed as quickly as they had appeared and the shaking finally ceased.
Laney dropped to her knees next to the now completely human male, reaching out both hands to grasp either side of his face. "Hey! Just hang on! We'll get someone to help you." Tears ran steadily down her face now, even as she felt her friend, the entirety of her emotional support system, kneel close beside her. "Just hang on…Please!"
Genesis ceased her examination of the man, having found no external wounds to attempt to stop the blood flow from. From what she could tell, the bleeding was internal and there was no amount of spells or ambulances or miracles that could help the man at this point. "Laney," she called, a hopelessness in her voice. "Laney, stop."
Looking down at the handsome man, she saw a light, however faint, in the young man's eyes. He was finally going to die, something he had wished for many a time inside the prison of his own mind.
He enjoyed his last moments of life having full control of his torn and tattered body as it internally turned to dust from the years of abuse, of defying the rot that sets in all organic matter. "My name is Audric." He smiled, his teeth covered in thick blood.
"What?" Laney removed one hand from his face to move her hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. Her blonde locks are covered in a mix of tears and Audric's blood. "What?"
Audric brought his hand up to grasp her own, his eyes moving towards Genesis. In the reflection of his clear blue eyes, the girls can see each other as if staring into a mirror. "You wanted to know my name," the light started to leave his eyes but they never wavered, even as his body started to shake violent. "I get to die with my eyes full of my heroines…"
The smile remained on his face for a moment after he stopped moving, the light completely gone from his unseeing pupils, and his hands still grasping Laney's.
A terrible scream rips itself from Laney's throat and she folds over herself to lay her torso on her knees, bloodied blonde hair falling onto Audric's now lifeless body as she rocked herself in the sadness she felt. Genesis hated herself for the tears running down her own face, for the onslaught of feelings for both the man and her friend.
She hated that she didn't know what to do to make the situation any better, but she knew Laney wouldn't be able to hear the approaching sirens through her grief. So, in order to deal with her grief, she stood, forcing her closest friend up with her.
The girls, with one last look at Audric, ran out the back door of the residence they'd unfortunately ruined. In the back yard, Genesis fought to see through her tears and grief to see clearly and think quickly.
There, in the back portion of the yard, there was a gate leading to the neighbor's property. She grasped Laney's arm harder than before and forced them both into a run. The sirens were getting closer to them as she forced the gate open and shoved her friend through the opening.
Genesis closed the gate behind herself and came to a stop beside her friend. Being that there was a full moon that night, the tree they stood under offered further cover from any unwanted witnesses. It was there that Genie reached up and slapped her friend with force enough to disorient the tall blonde. "Snap out of it! We need to run!"
Righting her skull on her neck once more, Laney finally managed to remove herself from the unspeakable feeling of loss long enough to see the importance of their escape. "Go!" She hissed, the one word weighted with sheer agony.
For a moment, the girls stood in the pitch dark under the massive Oak tree, only able to see each other's eyes. A silent utterance of determined sorrow passed between the women before they both started at an all out run for the street where they had parked their stolen Toyota Camry earlier that night.
Wow. Big chapter, right? Took all day to write! Did Audric's death break anyone else's heart? (We imaged him to look like Brock Hurn. Google him. Thank us later.)
REVIEWERS:
Suz Singer: You beautiful soul you! You've been with us from the beginning and we truly appreciate that! We're glad the last chapter was what you wanted it to be. Did you enjoy this one? Thank you for your review. May you days be filled with love and wonder!
xxDreamWalkerxx: Laney and Genesis remind you of your best friend and yourself? We're glad to hear it! It's an amazing thing, to be blessed with a truly best friend. They're a soul mate, in a way. Not a romantic one, but one that meshes with you just the same. May you friend ship be enduring! And thank you for your review.
CAMMIE: WOW! You reviewed almost all the chapters in one day! I'm not going to lie...that was the sole reason we sat down to write this chapter! You're great! And we look forward to your next review. THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts, we are eternally grateful for the support you showed our story. Be blessed!
Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Please, if you feel so inclined, leave a review letting us know what you think!
