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witching hour

notes – nada.

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Emille stared at the door for the longest time, alternating glances from the gently curving door latch to the open window, where the night breeze still tagged the drapes playfully. Surely not that soft a zephyr would be enough to push the heavy door to Albert's study shut?

Could it?

A flurry of shadows danced along the edges of her vision, scampering from sight when her head whipped around to glimpse the disturbance. The drapes rustled as if in laughter.

"Em?" The thick wood between them muffled Albert's voice, but it was still reassuringly close. "I know I spend a lot of time in here… but isn't locking me in a bit of an 'extreme' hint?"

Locked?

Something in her chest loosened in a sort of vague panic.

Her slender hand grasped the latch and tugged upward, but the curved handled didn't budge. She rattled it lightly, and still there was nothing. "I didn't lock you in. I didn't even shut the door."

There was a pause, then, "Lovely, now we're haunted…" She could almost see the quirk of a small grin.

The cat soft tread of muted footsteps on the plush rug that dominated the floor reached her ears, just barely, almost as if it was supposed to be heard. Teasing. She whirled, a golden and blue silk blur, face to face with…

Nothing.

"Emille?"

So cold in the room now- her breath plumed upward in ghostly clouds. She was shivering both from the sudden onslaught of wintry air and a nagging feeling of unease, but she dared not move to shut the open window, reluctant to put the room to her back.

"I'm…fine, Albert." She answered with a narrow blue scowl at the window.

"Ah, and the door must be jammed, it's not opening on this side either."

A chilly finger slid up her spine, and another flurry of shadows teased her eyes from the side. "What do you mean?" Her breath floated upward, misted and disappeared.

The doorknob rattled at her back insistently. "Jammed, I think. I'll come around from the hall door." The sound of his boots reverberated on the floor under her slippers. Emille let her eyes slid slowly around the silent (like a forsaken TOMB, it was) room.

A dank breath washed the back of her neck, causing her to spin in sudden surprise, but only to all to solid door was there, then the eerie feeling of something there, behind her, taunting her in a cruel game.

"Albert…" a shaky whisper chased the phantom plumes of her breaths to the ceiling. There was a quick flicker of crimson to the side of her sight, then that horrid chill vanished with only a few lingering motes and were vigorously rubbed from her bared arms. Perhaps they were haunted…

Her mind screamed, an instinctive action to run. Without a second thought, dress be damned, Emille kicked into a sprint for the hall door.

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With an absent sweep of a hand to push an errant strand of light brown hair from his eyes, Albert jiggled the carved latch. Rattled it. Flicked it up and down as if to confuse whatever impish entity had overtaken it. His mouth slid into a narrow line of one no longer amused.

Shook it, hard. Nothing.

"Firewood." He told it darkly. Rattled it with a good violent burst. Nothing.

The door out to the hall had turned out the same as the other, jammed, or hexed, whatever the case might be, he was more incline to believe the latter.

A sharp knock jerked his head up, the voice on the other side unmistakably-

-Meru?

"Albert!" She sounded…frantic?

"Meru, what's wrong?" There was a cool draft that wafted up from under the door that adjoined his study. Too cold, even for this time of year. "The door's jammed…or something, it won't budge." He half expected her to whip out that over-sized hammer. "Emille's is as well."

Meru hit the door, hard. "I have something real weird to tell ya Al."

Bitter cold. Creeping along the floors and into the surrounding air. The candles on his desk on the far side danced wildly on a nonexistent breeze, and an almost too quick wink of red in the corner of his eyes.

"Got that hammer handy, Meru?" he asked lightly, a disconcerting feeling of nervousness invading. There! Another stealthy glimmer of hellfire red: closer than last time.

"There's something freaky going on here Al." From the Wingly girl's side, the door rattled loudly.

I'm seeing it very well from here, he thought with a shiver. The unearthly freeze had penetrated the thick shirt he wore, scampering down his spine with the arctic paws of a ghostly squirrel.

Another voice joined Meru, Emille's panicking words doing little to ease his frame of mind. Her hands tried the door latch from their side, with the same success.

"Albert! Something's here!"

Click click click

Albert spun, the frantic candles throwing shadows in writhing shapes everywhere. The study was the same as ever, books piled here and there, papers sticking out of reference volumes, notes scattered about in random order. Nothing.

Click click click

Muted talons clattered against the bared floor, somehow everywhere he wasn't looking, always a blink ahead.

From outside, Meru's worried "Move!" snapped off. There was a pounding of feet and the impossibly loud thud of a hammer biting into the door in an attempt to break in.

The tall king wheeled back to the door, hitting the flat of his palm against it. "Stop Meru, what did you say--"

Hisssark

In the immortal words of the White-Silver Dragoon…

Oh shit.

Then the candles gave a weak flicker and were snuffed out. Pitch black reigned in the study turned prison. Against better judgment, he pivoted around—

--and darkness blinked at him. This oddity was confusing enough, considering that darkness didn't have eyes in which to accomplish this feat. But his own liquid brown gaze locked with hellish crimson, and he forgot about this anomaly to focus on the fact that he was trapped in here with it!

That deep buried instinct flashed to the surface, and Albert threw himself backward, the swish of air as midnight talons ripped in place where he had stood. His back hit the door with a hard thump, and he felt his legs drop out from under him as the coaly paws swiped where his head had been, tearing into the wood of the door and gouging furrows so deep that thin streams of dim light trickled in from the hallway.

Hissark-!

Too bad the Jade Spirit is in your ROOM!

"Meru!" Nearly threw himself to the floor to avoid another flurry of dark claws, rolled up and stumbled, felt the hot warmth of blood well up along his shoulder blade. Cries from outside; the icy crackle of a dragoon transformation.

An unlikely warhammer bit again into the already damaged wood.

Talons tore into his ankle and a sharp yank had him landing rather painfully on his bleeding shoulder. Burning slits opened up directly above him, a fanged mouth sliding open into a feral grin. The errant thought of "darkness doesn't grin either" buzzed through his mind. Gathered his thoughts and kicked upward fiercely, connecting with something in the midnight of his study and heard a stack of books scatter as something landed on them.

He lunged up; clutching his torn shoulder the best he could, baring his teeth against that ungodly chill. The hammer broke through, allowing the shaft of light to pour in, and revealing something that Albert would have rather not seen.

On all fours in came, slowly and leisurely, eyes that had to be direct gateways to hell gleaming in feline hunger. Shape blurred with blackness and became indistinguishable as it passed the light beam, apparently unconcerned that the dragoon on the other side was cursing and getting closer with every swing.

The eyes flared, right in front of him, and the cold feeling of fangs stabbing deep was overwhelming…

He couldn't even scream, couldn't breath, couldn't see…but that numbing icy cold was stilling struggles, slowing the heart…

"Albert!" There was no longer a face with the name, nor a name to the voice, just the dark pulse of blood and awareness of life fading to twilight.

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