Chapter 2
Gabriel hurried down to the street, clutching his newly acquired weapon tightly. After the incident in the church, he was suspicious of everything that moved, and on a stormy night, everything moved. After a while he happened upon an alley that was sheltered from the rain, and needing a warm place to rest, he quickly ducked into it. Once inside, he searched for a dry place with ample lighting and sat with his back to the wall, hugging his wet clothes against his body to conserve warmth.
He slipped off into a restless sleep after about an hour, but was roused from it by a sound. When he opened his eyes, Tyler was standing in front of him. Gabriel was immediately on his feet, and was about to ask one of a thousand questions that had suddenly forced themselves into his brain. "Tyler, how—" Gabriel began, but Tyler suddenly disappeared.
"Go to the bus station, quickly." Tyler's voice filled Gabriel's mind, but a howl from down the alley forced it out. Gabriel lifted the gun and began firing, when he saw what it was he was shooting out, he almost screamed in fury. The Crucifix Demon from the church was galloping down the alleyway toward him. When the gun clicked empty, Gabriel turned and bolted back toward the street, with the demon close behind. When he was back on the street, he immediately began weaving between cars. He could hear the demon howl in fury behind him, and the sound of metal being smashed as it tore through cars in its pursuit of its quick-footed prey.
Gabriel was beginning to tire, and was looking for a place to escape his pursuer when he noticed the alleyway a few yards away, and a sigh of relief ran through him when he noticed the jail cell style door that covered the entrance. He ran as fast as he could for the door, and prayed silently that it wasn't locked. He grabbed at it and jerked at it as hard as he could, and he nearly jumped for joy, as it pulled opened. When he was through, he turned and slammed the door closed, then quickly turned the deadbolt that locked it just in time to shut out the demon. The bars shook as the beast threw itself against them. Gabriel turned to look for a weapon that he could use to make the beast leave, but to his surprise it left him and vanished into the darkness.
Gabriel stood for a moment, then shook his head and turned to walk down the alley. By the time he had reached its midpoint, he could no longer see anything. As he felt his way along, a warm wind blew through, and for a moment Gabriel was happy. But as he made his way back to the street, the sound of the wind changed into a symphony of pain, a noise like metal grinding against metal filled the air, and it suddenly grew hot, and the air grew heavy and stunk like carrion. The first change Gabriel noticed was the street, pavement and concrete had been replaced with rusty metal grating, and through gaps in the grating Gabriel saw a void of inky blackness that seemed to have no end. The buildings on either side of the dark alley he had just been through seemed to have changed too; brick was replaced with twisted steel and burnt cement. The entire world had changed it seemed, in only a matter of seconds.
For a while, Gabriel stood, unsure if where to begin his search for the bus station, unsure if he could trust the apparition from the alley, unsure of what was going on all together. When he did finally move he moved slowly, first testing the grating, then stepping out onto it gently. It held as good as the ground from the world before would have, so he continued on with renewed speed, not wanting to encounter anything that might inhabit this nightmarish mockery of the world he had just begun to vaguely remember.
As he walked, he looked for any sign that he was drawing nearer to his destination, but found only rusted metal grating and burnt cement. After a while he began running, and immediately tripped over something on the ground. When he turned to examine the obstacle that had impeded his progress, he had to choke back a sudden surge of nausea. A corpse lay there at his feet, arms and legs sprawled at odd angles, as if they had been snapped like twigs. The corpse was unidentifiable, as most of the skin had been shredded and torn away. The face was gone, and a skull with pulpy bits of ragged flesh sill attached to it grinned up at him. When he studied the ground around the corpse, the dim light allowed Gabriel to follow a trail of blood to a nearby wall.
On the wall there was a message, scrawled in the corpse's blood.
Gabriel read the macabre words to himself. "The dead hand points the way to the prophet. Beware those who aren't what they seem. If demon you do defeat, salvation shall you meet. Hurry while there is time." When he returned to the lifeless husk that had once owned the blood that was used to write the message he had read, Gabriel noticed something he hadn't noticed before. The right arm of the corpse seemed to be pointing to something; the arm extended fully, the hand closed into a fist with a single finger extended into the darkness.
He debated following the directions of the blood message, but the decision was made for him when a familiar howl of fury filled the air nearby. Gabriel ran as fast as his legs would take him, not caring what lay in front of him, only thinking about the beast that had hounded him for so long since his awakening in front of the massive cathedral. He ran until he could no longer run, and when he felt he had escaped, he sagged against the wall, and nearly feinted from the exertion. When he looked up again, he saw a woman.
She stood with her back to him, and when he called out to her she didn't respond. "Hey, who are you? Can you tell me how to get to the bus station? Are you okay? Do you need help?" Gabriel walked to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She spun around quickly, and Gabriel shot back in terror. What he saw first were the eyes, the same flaming redness of The Crucifix Demon's eyes. Then the face caught his attention, a twisted mass of ruined flesh. Teeth glinted in the dimness, long sharp teeth, teeth that reminded him of a shark. The body seemed to twist at strange joints. The arms and legs were disproportionate to the body, and both hands were tipped with long, brutal claws. Gabriel backed away, until the wall behind him stopped him from backing away any further. He searched for the gun and found it just in time to remember he was out of ammunition for it. He looked frantically for anything to use as a weapon against the abomination that stalked closer and closer to him. When it was close enough, the creature raised its long arms and brought them down with enough force to tear gouges in the concrete where Gabriel had been standing. Gabriel scrambled away from the demon woman, and nearly fell into the abyss. It seemed that the path he had been on to this point had disappeared, and the void gaped beneath. The creature was drawing near again when Gabriel saw a scrap of metal piping, a few feet long, lying near the edge of the precipice that had opened so suddenly. He grabbed it greedily and turned to face the demon woman.
When she raised her arms to attack, Gabriel ducked under them and moved close to her body. He used an upward thrust to drive the jagged end of the metal pipe deep under her ribcage, and stepped back as her body crumbled and lay twitching, surrounded by a growing pool of blood that seeped quietly through the gaps in metal grating. Suddenly a vision flashed before Gabriel's eyes. A vision of a man charging toward him, holding a sword, then the man was on the ground, begging for mercy, and then he lay in a pool of blood, like the demon he had just killed. When the vision ended, Gabriel stood once again in the world that he had been in before exiting the alley, the demon woman was gone, and cold rain was falling in sheets.