She couldn't remember how long she'd been running, now. It felt like forever, and the hot weakness in her legs and in her lungs was coppery and clamping. She hadn't realized she had bleeding for quite some time, until the drying blood had pulled on the fabric of her pant leg. Fortunately it had clotted, because she didn't know if she had time to stanch the shallow graze.
Anne had shaken the Thing for some time, now, but still heard the occasional hunting howl. It was more than enough to make her stumble on, through a nightmare montage of storefronts, passersby and the occasional honking car nearly running her over as she kept to the light as much as she could. Things at least seemed less likely to attack her here. At least there were fewer broken streetlights, bums, and maniacs. But that was just window-dressing compared to the occasional howl she still heard out of the darkness. It drove her on, painfully, through a section of genteel 18th century houses, towards a distant stand of trees. Peace there....wholeness there...singing in the darkness, for a mind where nearly all rationality was stripped down by the onslaught of fear and panic. The lights of the storefronts beckoned, but there wasn't peace there, no healing or hope...
She kept stumbling onward, away from the lights, for the trees, the mercury vapor of the streetlamps playing frostily over her and her dark ragged-cut hair. In the end, she sagged against a large hickory, gasping, closing her eyes as the breeze whispered a lullabye in the tree's leaves to her, silver still glimmering over her in a dewy shimmer, then slowly fading.
She dozed, exhausted, unaware of the muted thunder approaching.
She opened her eyes groggily at something, then they opened wide, a scream squealing its way out of her throat.
Her body rolled out of the way for her, ignoring any impulses from her brain. This saved her, as a warped hand closed around where she'd been a half second before. For a sickening eternity of a few moments she couldn't get legs to respond, and instead ended up scrambling back on her ass, bruising and dirtying it as her brain was seared with an image, rearing against the distant glow of the city lights.
Muscle glistened wetly, red-black in the darkness, slashed with pallid sinew along the body of the monster as it reached the top of its arc of rear. Its equine body poised; flipperlike, hooved forelegs tensing to cut down, black veins pulsing, flaming eye rolling above a fanged muzzle dribbling spittle. From the back a humanoid torso protruded, arms obscenely long, a huge head rolling on a neck that didn't support it, the entirety a maniac's nightmare of a centaur by way of Picasso.
It made another howl from both throats that no human or horse could have produced but which had hideous echoes of both at once, the dragging hand reaching for her again.
The hooves descended with a slash.
They hit nothing but dirt, as Anne rolled in a tight ball, ignoring bruises and rocks, trying to get away mindlessly with the speed of the panicked. Heels dug in, jackknifing her legs out into a standing stagger, then she stumbled as a foot caught a root. She gagged as the thing's stench hit her; rotting fish and salt crossed with a garbage midden that grabbed at her gut with physical force. She couldn't help fighting the urge to vomit, and it was a nearly lethal pause.
A giant, raw hand crunched not six inches from Anne into the hickory's bark, and adrenalin swept away nausea into a shriek of fear. She dodged away, and time slowed down suddenly into a stand-still, air and space turned into clear molasses as she saw the other hand sweep in towards her throat, the mercury vapor glistening on the naked muscle and tendon tensed to grasp....
Anne screamed, rage and fear and desperation loosed in one primal noise, her mind narrowing down again to one drive...
The white blaze of light branded itself onto her retinas, their blood vessels afterimaging in violet pain in her memory and counterpointed by another dual-throated shriek from the....Thing. Anne's throat was not grasped, and she dove and rolled, still reeling from a sudden loss of...something, but wanting to get away so badly she didn't ask what was going on. She turned to stumble and run again, not understanding the white fire that had burned into her eyes but had shed little true light or warmth, which had been enough to stun the monster after her. She was so tired....knew that it would be after her again, not sure if she cared anymore. Distantly, she peered over her shoulder at the hideous form, already gathering its massive haunches underneath itself to launch at her again.
There was another shock of light, this one hot and bluish with a reek of ozone overlaying the stench of the Thing. Then a cooked stench and an electrical firestorm broke loose with a fresh scream from the monster. This time, it was a noise of pain.
There was another shout....blessedly human, seeming to be male, and a figure rolled aside, popping up again with lightning crackling around it, coat flapping with the movement.
"C'mon, try something your own size!" the voice barked. "Whassamatter, horsemeat, don't like stuff biting back? C'mon, asshole, tiiiime to plaaaaaaay!"
The Thing snarled gutterally at the taunts, hooves slashing out. So did a monster broadsword from the other figure, electricity snarling around it. The light played violetly in the silver streaks of Anne's eyes, as she watched in distant shock, still trying to get her breath back.
The Thing squealed again, as the man rolled under its rearing, slimy underbelly, driving up hard with the blade. The squeal turned into a shriek, as naked muscle and tendon were sliced, loosing a gout of black ichor that splattered into face and red leather and silver hair.
"Jeeeezus!" the man spluttered again almost absently after getting out of range of hooves, wiping blood out of his eyes and weaving sparking blade in a defence pattern one-handedly with his free hand. "I've killed some weird shit before but this takes the damn cake." His booted feet braced again as the monster wheeled for another attack, spurting ichor from a nasty belly wound that had almost but not quite managed to disembowel.
A wound that, as Anne watched, was already starting to seal. This was also not lost on her defender, who skipped back a few yards, trenchcoat flapping around his legs, sword still sizzling, more cautious.
"This.....*couuuuuld* be a problem," Dante muttered to himself.
"....Dante?" Anne said softly, disbelief at the appearance of the unlikely Galahad giving way under having gotten her breath back.
Dante didn't turn to face her, eyes still on the monster, putting himself between it and the exhausted, cowering woman. "You're good. Knew you had some admirers, babe, but this one's kind of pushing it. Must be your perfume."
Anne tried to straighten herself. "No, my blazing stupidity for God's SAKE Dante what *are* you doing get away from it *now*!"
Dante feinted a hoof, which darted back as he jabbed. "What, you want I let you have Ugly here date you? I mean, this is what do you call--RAGH!--it, Beauty and the Beast? Come on, you can do better than THAT!" The last word was punctuated by a snarling, driving jab at the creature's equine neck, landing it home and loosing another gout of blood.
"Are you MAD?" Anne shrieked, her fear for herself washed out by shock and fear for Dante.
"FUCKING NUTS!" Dante roared back, then giving a yell of pain as a hoof scored his right thigh just below thigh holster, tearing leather. "Shit! THAT WAS A THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR PAIR OF PANTS! DIE, YOU FLOCKER!"
"Oh, hell," Anne moaned, watching Dante engage the Thing again in a crazed ballet of bloodshed. By this point, she wasn't sure what was freaking her more; the Thing, the fact it was Dante fighting it, the fact he was doing it with a gigantic sword, the fact it was a gigantic sword that had arcs of electricity dancing around it from tip to stylized dragonhead hilt, or the fact Dante was wielding it with a grace and speed that betrayed he was no novice to it. Occasionally one-handedly. Anne was no good hand with weaponry, but she was fairly sure in the portion of her mind not gibbering in fear that a broadsword that looked that heavy would be an effort for anyone to heft two-handedly, let alone with one.
Private investigator. Riiiiight....
Dante muttered to himself again as he saw fresh wounds on the monster mend even as he moved in again with Alastor, with no apparent cumulative effect other than making the creature madder. For his own part, the extended run here and the blows the Thing was scoring on him were making themselves felt, even with his more than human metabolism. He couldn't help it with the power brimming over in him; he flared violet as diabolic energy coursed through him, the exhaustion and cuts fading a bit. He then rolled away from downcutting hooves again, light whirling off metal as the two .45s twirled into gloved hands.
"Boys, don't fail me now," he muttered, and opened fire.
Bullets ripped from the twin barrels, launching into pseudo-equine and pseudo-human chest with a roar of recoil and muzzle flares. For several seconds the area was a hellish strobe of flying blood, flares, and electricity.
Then there was silence, and blinding darkness.
Dante blew a puff of smoke away from one weapon, before reholdering it. "There, that oughta do it. C'mon, Annie, we need to get Trish on the horn--"
There was a choking growl, and a single flaming eye popped open from the ground.
Dante....slowly....stepped...back, his ice-color eyes widening in the gloom, reflecting the streetlights. Not fear, no, but caution. Caution which only deepened when he saw the Thing stagger again to its feet, lead ejecting from its body, and a general attitude that even through its general hideousness and prior bad mood conveyed a severe anger.
Dante looked at the Thing, machismo warring with pragmatism and at a loss on what to do next. He then looked at the frightened, exhausted, obviously wounded Anne, then at the creature again, who was advancing stiff-legged towards both of them, saliva hitting the ground and its stench even worse if that were possible.
"Well, shit," Dante said.
Then Anne found herself grabbed up by one scarred wrist and yanked after Dante, who was running like hell.
"NO, YOU STUPID BASTARD, I DO *NOT* WANT TO SWITCH MY LONG DISTANCE PLAN! I NEED TO HOLD OPEN THE LINE, GOODBYE!"
Trish slammed down the receiver, nearly cracking it with the force she used, before sitting back and glaring at it viciously with sapphirine eyes, on the way to maiming yet another defenseless pencil.
"Dante," she said between gritted teeth, "the next time you 'forget' to bring your cellphone with you on a mission, I'm going to take it and shove it up your--dammit!"
The pencil snapped in her hands, so she firmly sat back and glowered at the map on the table some more.
"I really hate my life sometimes," she growled.
Anne had shaken the Thing for some time, now, but still heard the occasional hunting howl. It was more than enough to make her stumble on, through a nightmare montage of storefronts, passersby and the occasional honking car nearly running her over as she kept to the light as much as she could. Things at least seemed less likely to attack her here. At least there were fewer broken streetlights, bums, and maniacs. But that was just window-dressing compared to the occasional howl she still heard out of the darkness. It drove her on, painfully, through a section of genteel 18th century houses, towards a distant stand of trees. Peace there....wholeness there...singing in the darkness, for a mind where nearly all rationality was stripped down by the onslaught of fear and panic. The lights of the storefronts beckoned, but there wasn't peace there, no healing or hope...
She kept stumbling onward, away from the lights, for the trees, the mercury vapor of the streetlamps playing frostily over her and her dark ragged-cut hair. In the end, she sagged against a large hickory, gasping, closing her eyes as the breeze whispered a lullabye in the tree's leaves to her, silver still glimmering over her in a dewy shimmer, then slowly fading.
She dozed, exhausted, unaware of the muted thunder approaching.
She opened her eyes groggily at something, then they opened wide, a scream squealing its way out of her throat.
Her body rolled out of the way for her, ignoring any impulses from her brain. This saved her, as a warped hand closed around where she'd been a half second before. For a sickening eternity of a few moments she couldn't get legs to respond, and instead ended up scrambling back on her ass, bruising and dirtying it as her brain was seared with an image, rearing against the distant glow of the city lights.
Muscle glistened wetly, red-black in the darkness, slashed with pallid sinew along the body of the monster as it reached the top of its arc of rear. Its equine body poised; flipperlike, hooved forelegs tensing to cut down, black veins pulsing, flaming eye rolling above a fanged muzzle dribbling spittle. From the back a humanoid torso protruded, arms obscenely long, a huge head rolling on a neck that didn't support it, the entirety a maniac's nightmare of a centaur by way of Picasso.
It made another howl from both throats that no human or horse could have produced but which had hideous echoes of both at once, the dragging hand reaching for her again.
The hooves descended with a slash.
They hit nothing but dirt, as Anne rolled in a tight ball, ignoring bruises and rocks, trying to get away mindlessly with the speed of the panicked. Heels dug in, jackknifing her legs out into a standing stagger, then she stumbled as a foot caught a root. She gagged as the thing's stench hit her; rotting fish and salt crossed with a garbage midden that grabbed at her gut with physical force. She couldn't help fighting the urge to vomit, and it was a nearly lethal pause.
A giant, raw hand crunched not six inches from Anne into the hickory's bark, and adrenalin swept away nausea into a shriek of fear. She dodged away, and time slowed down suddenly into a stand-still, air and space turned into clear molasses as she saw the other hand sweep in towards her throat, the mercury vapor glistening on the naked muscle and tendon tensed to grasp....
Anne screamed, rage and fear and desperation loosed in one primal noise, her mind narrowing down again to one drive...
The white blaze of light branded itself onto her retinas, their blood vessels afterimaging in violet pain in her memory and counterpointed by another dual-throated shriek from the....Thing. Anne's throat was not grasped, and she dove and rolled, still reeling from a sudden loss of...something, but wanting to get away so badly she didn't ask what was going on. She turned to stumble and run again, not understanding the white fire that had burned into her eyes but had shed little true light or warmth, which had been enough to stun the monster after her. She was so tired....knew that it would be after her again, not sure if she cared anymore. Distantly, she peered over her shoulder at the hideous form, already gathering its massive haunches underneath itself to launch at her again.
There was another shock of light, this one hot and bluish with a reek of ozone overlaying the stench of the Thing. Then a cooked stench and an electrical firestorm broke loose with a fresh scream from the monster. This time, it was a noise of pain.
There was another shout....blessedly human, seeming to be male, and a figure rolled aside, popping up again with lightning crackling around it, coat flapping with the movement.
"C'mon, try something your own size!" the voice barked. "Whassamatter, horsemeat, don't like stuff biting back? C'mon, asshole, tiiiime to plaaaaaaay!"
The Thing snarled gutterally at the taunts, hooves slashing out. So did a monster broadsword from the other figure, electricity snarling around it. The light played violetly in the silver streaks of Anne's eyes, as she watched in distant shock, still trying to get her breath back.
The Thing squealed again, as the man rolled under its rearing, slimy underbelly, driving up hard with the blade. The squeal turned into a shriek, as naked muscle and tendon were sliced, loosing a gout of black ichor that splattered into face and red leather and silver hair.
"Jeeeezus!" the man spluttered again almost absently after getting out of range of hooves, wiping blood out of his eyes and weaving sparking blade in a defence pattern one-handedly with his free hand. "I've killed some weird shit before but this takes the damn cake." His booted feet braced again as the monster wheeled for another attack, spurting ichor from a nasty belly wound that had almost but not quite managed to disembowel.
A wound that, as Anne watched, was already starting to seal. This was also not lost on her defender, who skipped back a few yards, trenchcoat flapping around his legs, sword still sizzling, more cautious.
"This.....*couuuuuld* be a problem," Dante muttered to himself.
"....Dante?" Anne said softly, disbelief at the appearance of the unlikely Galahad giving way under having gotten her breath back.
Dante didn't turn to face her, eyes still on the monster, putting himself between it and the exhausted, cowering woman. "You're good. Knew you had some admirers, babe, but this one's kind of pushing it. Must be your perfume."
Anne tried to straighten herself. "No, my blazing stupidity for God's SAKE Dante what *are* you doing get away from it *now*!"
Dante feinted a hoof, which darted back as he jabbed. "What, you want I let you have Ugly here date you? I mean, this is what do you call--RAGH!--it, Beauty and the Beast? Come on, you can do better than THAT!" The last word was punctuated by a snarling, driving jab at the creature's equine neck, landing it home and loosing another gout of blood.
"Are you MAD?" Anne shrieked, her fear for herself washed out by shock and fear for Dante.
"FUCKING NUTS!" Dante roared back, then giving a yell of pain as a hoof scored his right thigh just below thigh holster, tearing leather. "Shit! THAT WAS A THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR PAIR OF PANTS! DIE, YOU FLOCKER!"
"Oh, hell," Anne moaned, watching Dante engage the Thing again in a crazed ballet of bloodshed. By this point, she wasn't sure what was freaking her more; the Thing, the fact it was Dante fighting it, the fact he was doing it with a gigantic sword, the fact it was a gigantic sword that had arcs of electricity dancing around it from tip to stylized dragonhead hilt, or the fact Dante was wielding it with a grace and speed that betrayed he was no novice to it. Occasionally one-handedly. Anne was no good hand with weaponry, but she was fairly sure in the portion of her mind not gibbering in fear that a broadsword that looked that heavy would be an effort for anyone to heft two-handedly, let alone with one.
Private investigator. Riiiiight....
Dante muttered to himself again as he saw fresh wounds on the monster mend even as he moved in again with Alastor, with no apparent cumulative effect other than making the creature madder. For his own part, the extended run here and the blows the Thing was scoring on him were making themselves felt, even with his more than human metabolism. He couldn't help it with the power brimming over in him; he flared violet as diabolic energy coursed through him, the exhaustion and cuts fading a bit. He then rolled away from downcutting hooves again, light whirling off metal as the two .45s twirled into gloved hands.
"Boys, don't fail me now," he muttered, and opened fire.
Bullets ripped from the twin barrels, launching into pseudo-equine and pseudo-human chest with a roar of recoil and muzzle flares. For several seconds the area was a hellish strobe of flying blood, flares, and electricity.
Then there was silence, and blinding darkness.
Dante blew a puff of smoke away from one weapon, before reholdering it. "There, that oughta do it. C'mon, Annie, we need to get Trish on the horn--"
There was a choking growl, and a single flaming eye popped open from the ground.
Dante....slowly....stepped...back, his ice-color eyes widening in the gloom, reflecting the streetlights. Not fear, no, but caution. Caution which only deepened when he saw the Thing stagger again to its feet, lead ejecting from its body, and a general attitude that even through its general hideousness and prior bad mood conveyed a severe anger.
Dante looked at the Thing, machismo warring with pragmatism and at a loss on what to do next. He then looked at the frightened, exhausted, obviously wounded Anne, then at the creature again, who was advancing stiff-legged towards both of them, saliva hitting the ground and its stench even worse if that were possible.
"Well, shit," Dante said.
Then Anne found herself grabbed up by one scarred wrist and yanked after Dante, who was running like hell.
"NO, YOU STUPID BASTARD, I DO *NOT* WANT TO SWITCH MY LONG DISTANCE PLAN! I NEED TO HOLD OPEN THE LINE, GOODBYE!"
Trish slammed down the receiver, nearly cracking it with the force she used, before sitting back and glaring at it viciously with sapphirine eyes, on the way to maiming yet another defenseless pencil.
"Dante," she said between gritted teeth, "the next time you 'forget' to bring your cellphone with you on a mission, I'm going to take it and shove it up your--dammit!"
The pencil snapped in her hands, so she firmly sat back and glowered at the map on the table some more.
"I really hate my life sometimes," she growled.
