"Bye, Gwen!"
"Bye, Merlin!"
"What am I, part of the scenery?"
"You're pretty enough to be part of the scenery."
Merlin laughed aloud as he exited the office. Arthur and Gwen's constant flirting, then Arthur's denial of said flirting, coupled with Gwen's squealing over said flirting, was endearing but exhausting. He shook his head, still smiling, as he started down the street towards Gaius's house. He pulled out his phone and pulled up the internet, clicking back to a tab he already had up. It was a listing of available apartments in the area, as well as a few ads put up by people needing a roommate. He continued scrolling through them.
Honestly, he felt bad about making his uncle take care of him. Gaius didn't deserve to have to worry over him constantly, and he had already stayed way longer than he had meant to. He was supposed to have stayed with Gaius for a few weeks at most while he found a job and saved up money to rent an apartment, then those weeks had turned into months, then years. Now that he had a steady job, he thought it was time to give Gaius his house back.
He glanced up to check his surroundings. No one was around, and the night was getting very dark as sunset passed.
He was just passing Gaius's clinic when he heard a whisper. He turned to glance quickly behind him. Living in the city had taught him that it wasn't exactly a good idea to be outside at night, and not even for anything supernatural. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he turned back to walking forward, keeping an ear out for anything strange around him.
As he passed a weirdly dark alleyway, Merlin had only a moment to reel backwards enough to keep himself from being bitten in half. A massive shape leered over him suddenly, a twisted, beastial face, looming wings, and knife-like claws ripping deep gouges into the concrete. It's snarling mouth held bloody teeth, and a lolling tongue. Pink tinted saliva dripped from it's maw, and Merlin was nearly paralysed on his fear on the huge creature.
It raised one sharp tipped paw suddenly, and Merlin managed to roll away enough to only sacrifice in shirt sleeve instead of his entire arm. He gasped at the long but shallow slice from his bicep to the back of his wrist.
The beast snarled and crouched, preparing to leap at him, but a buzzing noise erupted to their side, and it was only due to definitely supernatural instinct and strength that the beast leapt back in time for a streak of blue ish lightning go streaking passed it. It yowled it's frustration, but quickly backed up and took off into the darkness.
Merlin whipped around to see none other than Lance A. Lot in a defensive crouch that was distinctly military, holding a discharged taser and a wild look in his eyes.
"What the hell was that?!" He cried disbelievingly.
"I'm not sure exactly." Merlin said, rubbing his arms. Chills were running up and down his arms, the sun having gone completely down and adrenaline still running rampant in his system.
Lance sputtered until he noticed the slice down Merlin's arm. His stuttering immediately stopped as he went into worry mode.
"Hey, let me patch that up for you."
"Oh, don't worry about it. I'll fix it when I get home."
Lance was planning to insist when Merlin interrupted with, "Hey, I never thanked you for helping me with the poisoned cup. Arthur said I probably wouldn't have survived the car ride to Gaius's if you hadn't been there. So, thanks."
"Oh, you're welcome." he said back, surprised.
"Well I'd better get going before I freeze." Merlin grinned and waved, turning to hurry away.
Lance waved back, and couldn't help but notice that Merlin held his sleeve closed particularly tightly around the wound.
He was probably just cold, Lance reasoned, and turned to continue to his own home for the night, a slight frown twisting his lips.
Arthur arrived at the office around eight o'clock, as he usually did. His coffee was waiting on Merlin's desk, along with Gwen's and Morgana's for Gwen to pick up eventually, as it usually was.
What wasn't as it usually was was Merlin. He wasn't in his rolling chair, as he often was in the mornings, and wasn't roaming around with a duster or broom, as he sometimes did.
No, he was doing none of these things. In fact, he was nowhere to be found. Arthur frowned. Obviously he had been there because their coffee were there, but wait. Something felt different. The room felt...cleaner. Almost brand new clean. He looked around suspiciously.
He startled to find a short man standing directly next to the door. The man was completely, unnervingly silent.
"How did you get in here?" He snapped.
The man raised something g to his face, what Arthur soon realized was Merlin's phone, and typed out something. A short ding came almost immediately and the man turned it around for Arthur to see.
Arthur: I couldn't come into work today. Sorry, but have to work something out. This is George. Don't tell anyone about him or they'll think you're crazy. He'll help you out for today. I'll be back tomorrow. Love, Merlin.
Arthur leaned back when he was finished and looked at the man before him. He looked for barely a second, but he could tell the man was very boring and therefore dismissed him, focusing instead on the text from his assistant. Really, the man couldn't even bother call in and tell him he wouldn't be at work today?
Arthur huffed, annoyed, and the door to his and Merlin's offices opened to reveal Gwen. She swept in, picked up the coffees, said hello to Arthur, and left. It took Arthur a moment to realize that not only had George not moved when the door opened, when Gwen came into the room, or when she left. He had simply let the door and the woman go directly through him. Gwen hadn't even seemed to notice his presence. Really, should he even be surprised anymore that Merlin had sent a ghost to be his assistant for the day?
Merlin spent the night, the day, and a large portion of the next night as well pouring over books and websites, summoning ghosts to get information from, and researching. Finally, at around four in the morning, he found it.
"A Griffin." He whispered to himself. He grinned and dialed a number on his phone.
Three rings later, a voice answered, "This is Lance."
"Hey Lance, I found it."
"You did?"
"Yep. I can track it and everything."
"Great, what are we waiting for?"
"We? I'm ready. Just come outside."
Merlin looked up to see the curtains of a certain apartment flicker. "You found where I live."
"I learned how to track something that technically doesn't exist. I think I can find out where you live."
"Alright, I'll be right out." They hung up, and true to his word, Lance trotted down the stairs not five minutes later.
"Okay, what do we need to do?" He got down to business.
"I'll track it, and you kill it. All you have to do is use your taser on it again, and I'll do the rest."
"That's it?"
"Yep."
"Then why didn't it work last time?"
Merlin crouched down as he replied, fiddling with something.
"Because I wasn't prepared then."
Lance narrowed his eyes as Merlin drew a chalk circle around them both.
"Prepared how?"
Merlin just grinned like the cheeky brat he is and closed his eyes. A few moments later, just when Lance was starting to grow concerned, his eyes snapped fiercely open, and he swore he saw the other man's eyes flare a brilliant gold before almost instantly fading back to blue. A shiver flew up his spine at the speed of light and a strange image of a glowing blue spear flew through his thoughts. He stumbled, just barely managing to stay inside the circle.
A weird darkness seemed to seep from an alley nearby. Merlin nudged him and he shook off the weird feeling, silently pulling out his taser.
The darkness crept up to the edge of their circle and stopped. It slowly surrounded them, stopping perfectly at the edges of the circle, until neither man could see more than a few feet away.
"We couldn't have done this someplace that wasn't right in front of my apartment?" Lance grumbled. Merlin snorted.
"Technically, yes."
Lance turned his head slightly to glare at him. "Did you track this thing or did you like it here."
"Do I need to answer that?" Lance sighed.
Suddenly he was pulled into a crouch. A gust of wind above them caused him to glance up as a godforsaken truck was thrown where their heads had been and into the darkness. A screaming crash and car alarms blaring confirmed that he was not seeing things and he had almost gotten his head almost taken off by a flying truck.
"There!" screamed Merlin, and army training instantly kicked in, making him whip around and fire accurately on nothing but instinct. The blue crackling of the taser's prongs disappeared into the darkness, stopping shortly and releasing 50,000 volts of electricity into the creature. It was like a light suddenly came on as the creature screamed and feel to the ground. It wreathed on the ground before it seemed to dissipate into the air.
Lance frowned. "That seemed really easy."
Merlin nodded. "It was easy, but that definitely forced it out of corporeality. Electricity destroys most spirits, that's why it tends to flicker around them. It's a defence technique."
Lance frowned, nodding. That made sense, but he wasn't paying it a lot of attention. His mind had gone back to the strange image of a glowing blue spear, and Merlin's golden eyes. He froze.
"Wait, when you did your ghosty thing earlier, were you just luring it here, nothing else?"
Merlin cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy. "Yeah?"
"So you didn't actually do anything to fight it?"
"Not really, no"
"Merlin," he sighed exasperatedly, "if all we had to do was shoot it then why didn't we do that before?"
"Cause we didn't have a circle!" he said pointing down at the circle of chalk at their feet.
"I thought you were going to do something really cool and spirit-y, not just make me shoot it."
"You're the one that missed the first time and scared it away."
Lance threw up his hands and spun around. "I'm going back to bed. I'll see you at work tomorrow. Text me if you get attacked again."
Lance shook his head fondly as Merlin cackled behind him.
(A/N) I'm so proud of myself, this is closer to 2k words than any other chapter. I think the gap between this chapter and the last was longer, so sorry about that. Man, all I ever do in these things is apologize, huh? Woops. Anyway have an awesome day, and make sure you're on wifi!