LadyOfThieves – Lost doesn't creep you out? I adore that show, but all the creepy numbers are terrifying. The only thing with scarier numbers is the Matrix! Yes, I'm obsessed…
Lovely – Oh good, I aim to please! I love writing creepy stuff, but it never seems to come off that well. I'm glad this did though! Thanks for reviewing!
Starscar – I think so too, but then again, I'm biased! I love the graveyard scene, John/Angela…ah, one of my top three couples (you can tell I think about this a lot, can't you?)
Yay! I finally worked out how to insert a link to my LiveJournal into my profile! Go check it out, I talk plenty of crap, but I like to hear from my readers, so feel free to leave a comment.
I haven't had time to properly check this chapter over, so I apologise for any mistakes. I actually quite like this chapter, but it does delve into some religious-y stuff, so if you're liable to be offended, don't read. You have been warned!
Ah! I'm severely scared about my mocks next week. Seriously. I feel pretty terrified, and I don't scare easily. Please, retain my sanity and review! A review can pull me out of my spiral of depression more effectively than chocolate, and that's saying something…
Chapter III: Atonement
Angela walked through the mist, feeling shrouded by it. In a strange way, it felt almost refreshing to revisit her old memories, both of her sister and her father, but it also made her feel absolutely exhausted, wrung out by her emotions. Thankfully her apartment wasn't far away, otherwise she'd have called a cab. She'd been in the police force too long not to see how many muggings and rapes and all sorts of crimes could have been prevented if the victims had paid a few bucks more and taken a safe route home. And there was no part of Angela Dodson that ever wanted to be a victim.
Her soft shoes made no noise as she walked, feeling the rough concrete through the soles. It was a shock to the system, a wake up call when she left the wet, cushioning grass of the graveyard and stepped onto the pavement. It was like she had to leave her memories behind her when she closed the iron gate.
The night was a dark blue, almost black, only bluish around the golden edges of the sickle moon that hung in the sky perfectly, like some part of the grand design. Somehow it made Angela feel less alone, looking up at the moon.
No matter what happened to her, some things didn't change.
A neon light from a random bar on a side-street flared fluorescent pink, cutting through the mist like a blatant knife. Despite neon lights being a sign of people and business, somehow they always conveyed a sense of abandonment to Angela. Like people just forgot to turn the lights off, and no-one was really home.
Still, this was home.
She'd always lived in LA. When she was a kid, it was because her dad was with the police force, and he liked it here too much to move. And then, when Isabel was committed, and her parents died, she hadn't wanted to move away. Well, that was a lie. After her father had died, and she was at college, she'd never wanted to return. There was a whole world out there, and Angela could finally get away from it all, the mental institutions, the futile, one-sided conversation with her mute sister, and the endless meetings with accountants just to sort out her and Izzy's inheritances from their parents. She could be free. She could escape, spread her wings and fly away…
But no. She was Angela Dodson, the good little Catholic girl who always coped with what life threw at her, who everyone assumed could cope, who no-one ever asked if she was alright, because she just naturally got on with matters, didn't complain and of course, prayed every night, thanking God for her blessings.
Except that was all a lie. When she was about to leave home, when she was eighteen, everything had fallen apart. She'd lost her parents, Isabel never spoke to anyone, a phase that lasted a little over three years, something they thought she'd got over since she was ten, when she hadn't uttered a sound for almost a year, and Angela suddenly had to worry about bills and money and the necessities of life that she'd always taken for granted, and still try to cope with her grief. It was impossible.
Everything had seemed to go to wrong there. Angela had literally struggled alone for a month, trying to keep up some semblance of normality, when without warning, she'd just stopped, hands wet and wrinkly from doing dishes, she'd started to cry. She'd thought that as soon as her father was in the ground and everyone else had forgotten, the pain would dissipate, but it just festered and lurked in the dark, and then jumped out to surprise her.
It had only gotten worse. For so long, Angela had been angry, at Isabel for not being there for her and for not suffering like Angela was, at her father for dying and letting all of this happen, and at God for letting her languish in this torment.
Why? She used to ask Father Garrett every time she was in the confessional booth. Why does God abandon me now?
After a few months, she decided to do the same. Right. Two can play at that game. And just like that, an instant decision made in a moment of anger and passion, God was cut out of her life, as though he'd never been there to begin with.
It was amazing, how easy it was. But as Angela lay in bed at night, somehow feeling like she couldn't get to sleep because she hadn't prayed, something that had been part of her evening routine for as long as she could remember, she realised that nothing was different. If praying to God had brought her nothing but bad luck and a feeling of spiritual abandonment, then stopping believing and cutting Him out of her life entirely had done nothing different, except that she felt even more alone and lonely than she had before.
Better to be damned and feel like you've done something to prevent it.
As time went by, her faith had returned, and though it had been hard, it was supportive, especially when at times she felt so detached from everything. She calmly went to her job, ready and prepared to kill people, visited her sister who barely recognised her regular as clockwork, and then came back to her sister's cat and an empty apartment. It was comforting to know that there was a place for her, a haven for her.
Angela suddenly froze in her tracks, hearing a metallic sound behind her. She'd been so caught up in her memories that she hadn't heard it, the object moving behind her. Too big to be a stray cat, her cop's brain summarised quickly, and too organised.
Only one conclusion; something was following her.
Quickly, like a reflex reaction, she began to run, finding her feet once again. At the worst, this was a mistake and she'd just look foolish running like a madwoman through the streets of Los Angeles, but quite frankly, she had given up caring about looking stupid right now.
A sudden movement behind her told her that she'd been right to run; the thing, whatever it was, had started chasing her. She put on a burst of extra speed, diving across the road and severely pissing off the driver of a red sporty convertible, who let his middle finger do the talking for him.
Angela barely noticed as she darted across the road, almost running into some late-night trick-or-treaters and ran down one of the streets near it, taking a little-used route towards her apartment complex. As she ran, she tried to sense the object, feel it psychically, but she required concentration to do that, and whilst she was running around LA, she couldn't afford to stop and meditate. She could hear it though, as it chased her.
It was all around her, the echoing of footsteps to her left, hoarse breathing to her right, the flapping of clothes directly above her.
No – wait – that isn't possible…
Her mind tried to make her stop, find out what was going on, solve the mystery, play the detective, but Angela's body kept her moving.
Still, she couldn't resist just looking over her shoulder, just one little peek, just to see what she was running from…
The concrete kissed her cheek with a bang as she tripped over someone's discarded binbag, obviously forgotten about for too long. Her whole side ached from the sudden and brutal contact with the ground. Stupid mistake, she chided herself. You don't turn around. You don't look back. You focus on what's ahead of you rather than what's behind you.
It was a stupid mistake, and now she was going to be paying for it.
Her fingers clawed for the ever-present gun at her side, but she couldn't get a hold on it before a hand was put over her mouth, and another hand scrabbled for her purse.
Angela struggled, trying to break his hold on her, but she was in an awkward position, and she couldn't get free. She quickly took stock of her situation. Her assailant probably outweighed her by fifty pounds, he was using his body weight to keep her pinned down, she couldn't reach her gun, and he appeared to only be interested in the contents of her person.
So it was fairly safe to assume that he was human.
Then she saw a red light flare in his eyes, and she changed her mind. That was why she'd used the qualifier 'fairly'.
She resisted more violently, but the half-breed looked at her, and it was like a weight descended on her mind, like someone was using a sledgehammer to crack into her brain. She cried out, and as soon as her limbs fell passively, the pain disappeared, and the demon turned back to her purse.
Though Angela's mind was aching and sore, her thoughts were fast and erratic, the main one being Why would a demon possess some poor guy just to steal my purse? And what in hell did he just do to me?
Then she remembered. The purse…she'd used it that night on the rooftop, to carry the Spear of Destiny in. The thing probably reeked with the dregs of a spiritual object. If she got out of this in one piece, she'd take it home and burn it.
An idea sprung into her head. Do possessed humans feel pain? If they did, she could use that to her advantage. She was willing to bet that the demon inside wouldn't be banking on that.
The half-breed howled, realising that the Spear wasn't there. He threw his head back, and whilst he was blinded, Angela's foot shot outwards, hitting the mugger in sensitive parts of his anatomy. He buckled, his hold on her slipping, and she took advantage of the moment. She wriggled out of his hold, and reached for her gun before remembering how pointless that was. Instead, she ran, leaving the half-breed behind with the scattered contents of her tan-coloured purse.
She ran through the streets, using some of the shortcuts and secret paths she'd learnt growing up here. It was a battle between her higher brain telling her to stay with people and her lower brain just wanting to out as much distance as possible between that thing and herself, and her lower brain won just barely. She counted the blocks as she ran, just trying to get some sort of focus and concentration back into her brain, which still ached and pained from the demon's invasive contact.
Angela rounded the corner of the twelfth block, and then forced herself to stop and breathe. When she'd been a junior cop, she'd made herself faint by running for longer than she really could. She knew she had more stamina now, but she'd sense it if the half-breed came close. Her psychic sense worked like a burglar alarm or a tripwire; if something demonic came into her range, she'd know about it.
She took in gulps of refreshingly sweet-tasting air, which she knew, it being Los Angeles, was unlikely but at that moment, it felt sweeter than anything else she'd ever breathed in.
Leaning against the brick wall, she felt her lungs inflate and deflate regularly, soothing her body and her pounding heart. She played with a strand of her dark hair, thinking. Could she keep the demons away? Isabel had been the psychic, not her. She doubted whether she could be as strong as her sister. Despite her Catholic feelings that suicide was a sin, her sister had taken her life for the greater good, to keep the word safe. Surely that was strong?
Sighing, Angela stood upright and started to walk down the street. On the other side of the road, kids poured out of a 7-11, clutching cans of beer and wearing garish plastic masks that were practically luminous in the darkness of the night. Half of them would probably be at the hospital tomorrow, the other half at the station. Normally, Angela would have a private inner rant about police time being wasted by drunken idiots, but at that moment, she couldn't even summon up one feeling. She felt neutral, without emotion or purpose.
She'd never felt more detached from this world.
There was only one person in the world who could understand what she was feeling right now.
Angela turned around and started to walk away, heading down a familiar route towards a familiar apartment.
I'll give you three guesses where she's going, and the first two don't count…Some quite fluffy John/Angela stuff next chapter, which I'll upload next Sunday, but the more reviews I get, the faster I update…so subtle, I know. Ah well. Let me try the unsubtle method. Review please!