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Gothic Spook: Wow. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone believe the sole purpose of hot coffee was to throw it in other people's faces. Imagine all the burnt flesh and the crazy amount of money spent on hospital fees. Wow. I'm afraid (hides under computer desk and twitches).
"I realize you're afraid,
But you reject the whole world.
You can't escape…
You won't escape…
You can't escape…
You don't want to escape…"
Evanescence, Where Will You Go from Origin
Chapter 17: Inevitability and Any Minute Now…
Meredith was fast, despite not only her age but her body size. She was agile as well coming from her time spent running through the woods behind their house with William. She treated the situation like a game she and William would play. Starting at the edge of the woods, the two would bolt down different trails, keeping the other within sight. Whoever could run the farthest without stopping, slowing, or turning back to the house would be claimed the winner. In the beginning, William had claimed the glory as victor. But as she grew, she had developed a winning streak that up until that point had lasted for seventeen rounds.
She treated the current situation in much the same manner, her mind reinforcing the fact that this was only a game, and that she was just running to keep up from William. She was looking over in the corner of her eye and seeing his red hair fly by like the wind, stopped temporarily by a thicket of trees. She imagined she was a horse or a cheetah, speeding after her prey with extreme swiftness and speed.
The street was so close to her now. She could hear the cars and the sounds of the people on the sidewalks, the noisy music blaring from the clubs her mother claimed with distasteful and evil. She ignored the leather clad women and their chained and leashed boyfriends as she took to the right and down the street.
Her heart was beating so quickly she felt like it could jump out of her chest at any moment. She didn't look behind her to see if Louis was still coming. She could hear his ragged breaths coming up her rear.
And she could hear someone cocking a gun.
She looked over her shoulder, eyeing the dangerous barrel of metal with a frightened look in her eyes. Meredith didn't reach to wipe away the tears and took to the left, across the street as the light turned green.
The cars honked at her and swerved to accommodate her tiny frame on the street. Glass shattered in the parked car next to her and Meredith screamed at the explosion of bullets from the other side of the street. She dove behind the car and clutched her knees together with her arms, hearing the cars honking and screeching as Louis no doubt came across the street. Meredith buried her face in her thighs and she shook gently, praying to God that they would stop chasing her.
A hand hit her shoulder. It caused an immediate reaction. Meredith grabbed the person's wrist and bit into it so hard the person screamed.
"OW! GET HER OFF ME!" The male screamed. Meredith didn't recognize the voice until she opened her eyes and released her bite on the flesh of the man's wrist. Brian grabbed the tender and bruised flesh, grimacing in pain at the tooth marks she had left behind. He bit his lower lip as Phoebe arrived across the street.
Meredith didn't even recognize her babysitter with her hair streaked black and make up covering her entire eyelids. It was like looking at a completely different person. Day Phoebe with Tarot cards and chamomile yielded to night Phoebe with eye shadow and dark, gothic corsets just as the sun yielded to the moon. She and Brian were dressed to match, since he too had assumed very much that same attire.
"Christ, I hope she doesn't have rabies."
"Watch your language, Brian." Phoebe warned him. "Meredith what the hell are you doing here?"
"Is he still following me?" She demanded quickly, looking over the roof of the car.
"Is who still following you?" Phoebe asked suspiciously. Her question was answered as Louis shot out another of the car's windows as he tried to hit Meredith.
"God, who else have you been biting?" Brian asked.
Meredith didn't have time for a witty comeback. She took off down the street in the opposite direction to the man with the gun.
"Shit." Phoebe said, chasing after her, running awkwardly because of her heeled shoes. Brian looked back at the man with the gun and shrugged, running after the two others and quick on their heels.
Ridder got into the car and started it, backing up and driving out into the street. He was completely furious with himself. 1: He could not hire even half decent people to do a half decent job for him. This included, of course, his bloody billion dollar assassin who was God-knows-where, buying her time with Agents. And then there was Louis, who was certainly not the sharpest crayon in the box, who could not even keep an eye on a seven-year-old girl they had kidnapped. 2: Most of his plans in the past 24 hours had all failed miserably, first with the assassination attempt, then the 'rescue' mission, and now his kidnapping scheme was going the way of all the plans before it. 3: He had lost Ryan Trent's assassin, something that was even more unforgivable than losing his own, considering Trent could have him dead in less than 24 hours if he wanted.
Ryan Trent was not as dumb as many assumed he was. Ridder knew a couple of things about Ryan that were privy to only him and a select few of his staff. The first thing was that Ryan was not without various other weapons. Morgan was just the first of 7 assassins trained specifically for him. Although it was never confirmed that the other 6 were in existence, there were rumours of what most called "Trent's Wives", an elite assassination squad that were only used in the most important circumstances. None of them knew the other existed, and that was the way Trent liked it, or so Ridder assumed.
When he sped down the street, it was easy to follow where the girl had fled too. Louis had left a trail of small car accidents and broken windows like bread crumbs on a trail for Ridder to follow. Expertly, Ridder rolled down his window and extended the gun out the window, the sight of the white pajamas coming into view not far from him. It was followed by three others: one female, one male, and Louis trailing up the rear. His gun had been dropped after her ran out of bullets. With his expert eye he hit the girl in the leg with a dart, watching her fall quickly to the ground. He swerved the car around, just in time to roll down the other window, switch guns, and aim the car at the other female who had skidded to a position at Meredith's side.
"Don't move." He ordered. Phoebe slowly raised her hands into the air and Brian stopped running, the two frozen still. Louis gasped for breath as he finally caught up. Ridder did not even have to give the order for him to make a move for the girl. He did so without being asked.
"Get off her!" Brian shouted, moving forward.
Ridder wasted no time. He fired two bullets into Brian's shoulder.
Louis grabbed Meredith off the ground. Phoebe was torn, looking at Brian on the ground, unmoving. Ridder kept the gun trained on her at all times as Louis tossed Meredith into the back seat and got into the passenger seat.
They sped off into the night. Phoebe grabbed her cell phone, making a mental note of the license plate numbers before calling an ambulance.
Her second call was to John Doggett.
John wasn't expecting the call as he ushered Darcy back into the house. He pushed her into the kitchen and sat her at the table, his gun to her head before grabbing the phone.
"John Doggett."
"Your daughter's been kidnapped John." Phoebe said, leaning against Brian's shoulder heavily, her leather coat doing very little to sop up the blood. If anything, it was making it worse. "The car had the plate LL8Y 643."
"Where are you?" He demanded.
"Outskirts of town near a club called Blood Rush. She was running away from some guy with a gun and got drugged or something on her way down the street."
He felt his heart skip a beat for a moment and his eyes burned. He resisted the urge to pull the trigger at the woman in front of him.
"Did you see where they were going?"
"Not really. The guy sped away pretty quickly." Phoebe gave up with the coat and began ripping pieces of her cloth shirt, wrapping the pieces around his shoulder like a tourniquet before tying them tightly. He heard her groaning as she tightened them.
"I'll be there in a few minutes."
"Just follow the sirens." She said. John had no idea what that meant. She hung up quickly and shoved the phone in her belt.
"Get up." He commanded. Darcy did so slowly, watching his eyes instead of his gun. She was unusually attached to his eyes for some reason, searching inside them. John couldn't hear her heart beating. He couldn't hear her breathing heavily. Every muscle in her body was tensed except for her face. She could have been doing anything at that moment but she was fixated on his irises, watching the way they grew and shrank quickly as he walked her out to the foyer.
"You better pray that she's alive." He said quickly. "So help me God, I'll kill you over and over if she's dead when I find her."
"Disfigurement isn't death."
"If he touches her…"
"You're too late for that, John." She spat his name as if she were mocking it. "Knowing Ridder he's probably removed a limb by now."
"You bitch." He said. "We're going for a drive."
"To where?"
"Follow the sirens." He replied quickly.
There were plenty of sirens to follow. Already, an ambulance was pulling out of the lot and off to a designated location, the patient within critical enough to put the sirens on. Police were surrounding the area, taping off cars and labeling piles of shattered glass with yellow numbers. John didn't take the handcuffs off Darcy. He just expected her to behave herself, although it wasn't to be expected seeing as how just hours earlier she had been trying to kill him. Darcy seemed to finally want to be realistic, and actually waited for him to escort her into the travesty of police officers.
"Special Agent John Doggett." He flashed his badge to the officers on duty. The officer shone a flashlight, comparing the picture to the face before nodding him through. Immediately his attention was on Darcy, the light in her eyes making her growl with primal fury.
"She's a suspect in a case I'm working on directly related to this." The officer hesitated, and then nodded as John gruffly pushed her ahead. His hand on the cuffs immediately made her want to defy him. The effect assured the officer on duty of his intentions and actually reassured him somewhat.
Darcy's muscles tightened as he pushed her through the crowds of officers. He finally found who he was looking for, although didn't recognize her at first glance. Phoebe did not look like Phoebe at all. Her face was sunken and pale with the make up applied to her eyes and cheeks. Her lips were dark with liner and her hair was lined with black streaks that were rushed to be applied. She breathed deeply to herself and looked up at him before getting to her feet, standing up slowly from the curb.
"Phoebe?" He had to ask, just to be sure. She nodded mutely. Darcy was completely silent and went ignored by Phoebe.
"I already told them everything I know." She said. "I saw her running down an alley being chased by a mad man and screaming. By the time I caught up to her she was on the ground on the verge of a nervous break down."
"What did the men look like?"
"The guy with the gun had brown hair." She closed her eyes, trying to remember. "Brown eyes, his nose was too big for his face. He was clumsily shaped with square shoulders and a lean body." Phoebe didn't open her eyes. She focused on the car, the sound of the bullets that erupted from her memory. "The guy in the car was more blonde. He was muscular, baby faced almost with thin lips and puppy dog eyes."
Her eyes opened, streams of salty tears running down her cheeks and leaving small lines of mascara down her cheeks. She breathed deeply.
"That's it." She finished, wiping her eyes quickly. She rubbed her fingers on her pants before wiping away the other eye, fixing the lines of make up on her lids. John nodded.
Darcy was never much of a talker. She had learned through years of experience that talking gets you nowhere. So much time was wasted on speaking that it left no time for pulling triggers or stabbing blades. It was just easier to act what you mean than say it, at least in her world. She refused to say a word to Agent Doggett anyways and fiddled with the handcuffs as they drove in silence down the road.
He couldn't bring himself to say anything to her. He was too angry with her and himself to say anything that wasn't a threat or an insult to someone with a reputation as disgusting as hers. He didn't know where he was driving. He just knew for some reason or another, that she would tell him where to go.
Any minute now…
On the best of days, John Doggett didn't have much patient with criminals, especially ones with a reputation like Darcy. He would trust her as much as he needed to, and after that, he would most likely kill her for her trying to kill him. She wasn't able to be trusted, but he imagined a government trained assassin would be quite useful to have on one's side, considering she could slit someone's throat in over thirty different ways simply from the position she was placed in.
Any minute now…
The streets were passing by in a haze of colour. They were starting to blur. He wiped his eyes and continued on as he glanced occasionally at the passenger seat to see that she was still there and not trying to break out of her handcuffs. The silence was deafening.
Any minute now…
His patience was beginning to wear thin. Her silence was purposeful. Was she trying to piss him off or just being her genuine self in not speaking? Whatever she was doing it was beginning to take large chops at him like a rusty blade. He was beginning to feel as if her behaviour was deliberate.
Any minute now…
"Turn left here." She finally said. Doggett did so, turning down the street of quaint houses and slowly his speed, looking carefully from one side of the road to the other. The parked cars morphed into enemies at every side.
You're getting paranoid, John.
"Stop here." She said. He pulled to the side of the street she was looking at, stopping quickly and leaving the car running. Darcy waited, believing she got her point across when she shook the handcuffs irritably. He finally released her.
Darcy grabbed the handle of the door and gestured her hand for her to follow. They walked up to the house together, her arms crossed over her stomach and her coat drifting on the wind. She looked like a shadow, and her footsteps were convincing him that she was just a mirage in the darkness, something that was there one minute and gone the next.
However she did not disappear. She stayed on course, reaching down to the 'WELCOME' mat in front of the door and snatching up a key. She slid it into the lock and opened the door. Again, she gestured for him to follow, and instead of refusing, Doggett continued, his hand resting on his firearm.
He didn't know what compelled him to enter the house, but he knew for some reason she didn't mean him any harm.
So, I suppose now would be a good time to, I don't know, review, or, review, or review or I've heard reviewing is a good option too.