2 and a half hours later, night had fallen heavily over the quiet little town of Forks and its neighbor, the La Push Reservation. With the darkness came a cold, brisk, and aggressive wind off the Pacific. Microscopic water particulates floated in the air in front of two brightly glowing white-blue eyes.
Zeraphim could see them, no matter how tiny. And he loved rain.
The astral being had spent the last 2 hours forcefully screwing with reality, using his extensive and hyper-attuned senses to find every last person connected to the group here on La Push that he was here to wipe out. He'd found all of them and scattered his awareness to the 4 winds to physically locate them all. Once done, it had been as simple as embedding the proper compulsions in their minds.
He wanted them all in one place.
One didn't plan and execute large-scale murder without proper reason. And reason dictated proper planning. And proper planning said the most efficient way to wipe out a lot of people at once was to have them all standing next to each other.
Especially the two leaders of the pack.
They had clever disguises, those two. Especially the cripple. That one would require an extra bit of attention when the time came. Not that the one hiding in the woman, Bella's mother, was anything to be sneered at. Z expected a few crafty tricks from that one before the end.
Ensuring both of those would be there had been rather simple though.
He'd used a bit of "old school" demon-hunting. The creatures he was hunting were made of the same type of extra-planar material as demons and similar extra-dimensional beings and so could be drawn to and bound by an engraving of their true names. Getting those was so disgustingly easy, he'd felt dirty for doing it. Finishing up had been acquiring a couple of fist-sized emeralds with two different, but equally spidery, symbols carved into their faces. These were left under the stage in the building he sat on top of, the very same building the 100 or so people he'd laid compulsions on were headed to.
The final preparation had been putting every last cop within 20 miles to sleep; roadblocks and observation posts in and out of La Push were all still there, just empty. All the cops were crashed out in their cruisers, lights still going. He supposed he could have embedded a more complex compulsion and made them turn those off too but the more complicated the physical impulse, the more likely to be confused, performed wrong, or shrugged off entirely. Physical compulsions were finicky things.
Now came the only part of the hunt he didn't like: the wait.
He hadn't exactly lied to Edward when he'd said he didn't ever have the problem of time not going by fast enough. He didn't; he could speed time up, slow it down, stop it, even reverse it. All with little more than a thought. The problem was that no matter how much he played with time, it always moved the same speed for him.
Gave him entirely too much time to think about things.
Z didn't specifically harbor any serious desire to slaughter a hundred people. But it was part of the reason he was here. His boss had sent him on this run and said only that special care should be applied to the girl, Bella. The only other directive had been to eradicate the source of Im-Balance that was rising out of this sleepy little town.
Z never had a problem killing for the sake of the Balance he was created to maintain.
Nor did he have a problem helping the girl.
It was one of the rare moments of moral dithering Z experienced. A lot of people were going to die tonight, a lot of homes & families destroyed.
But…it was part of the objective.
Balancings were usually such violent things, violent and very thorough. All connected parties have to be dealt with. In this case, purged from Existence. Although…he suspected the real source of his hesitation was partially because tonight's massacre was going to be boring. Killing beings that can't defend themselves against him in even the meekest of ways was so insufferably dull.
He chuckles quietly at himself, breath a cloud of white in the cold light of his eyes.
Yep. And I realize again why I don't let people listen to my thoughts.
Dismissing the notion and sitting up on the flat rooftop of the auditorium building he'd picked for the 'event', he scampers like a cat over to the edge of the roof and looks down at the parking lot below. It was slowly filling up, more cars filing into the space as people tried to make the 10pm 'urgent gathering' that he'd gently compelled them to come to.
A foul scent, like that of dirty socks and manure, draws near.
Z's nose wrinkles in disgust. How do the humans not smell that?
Two vehicles pull in on opposite ends of the parking lot at the same time. A small white compact on one end and a long-bed pickup on the other. The truck had a modified door on one side. Both vehicles park near each other. Bella's mother, Renee, and a guy named Phil Dywer got out of the car. Jacob Black got out of the truck and ran to the other side, opening the modified door and helping his wheelchair-bound father, Billy Black, out. They meet in the middle of the parking lot and have a hushed discussion about the summons that brought them all out of hiding tonight.
It seems that none of them know who issued it.
Z smirks in the cool darkness. A couple of simple tricks and nonsense.
The group moves toward the building, the astral being's eyes dimmed in the night as he watches them from the roof. The auras of the two extra-planar creatures hiding within Renee and the elder Black glimmer a bright and angry red-orange in his sight, showing their fury at being forced into the open. The two humans next to them pulse with a cool but uncertain blue-green; they were being led by the noses by the two next to them and didn't even know it, yet they weren't sure they felt okay about going to this meeting, since no one knew who called it.
The doors close behind them as they enter the building anyway.
Z turns away from the edge and scampers across to the backside of the building toward a pair of luminescent purple eyes sitting in a tree nearby. He calls out to Tien.
"It's set. I'll be done shortly. Go keep an eye on Bella and Edward."
Tien meows in the night, the sound echoing eerily out of the darkness to Z. The two eyes blink shut and the shadowcat vanishes into the blackness. That done, the astral being stands and walks out to the center of the roof. Looking down at the surface he stood on, he could see right through into the auditorium below and watch all the people inside as they mill around to find seats. His two prime targets were making their way backstage to see what the deal was, who had summoned them.
Z takes his hoodie off and bounces on the balls of his feet as he waits. The pale skin on his hyper-toned chest almost glows in the moonlight. He shakes his head and his pony-tail falls free, long white hair cascading down around his face and shoulders. Flexing strong hands, glittering purple-blue razors cut the air as they pass through it, leaving faint tracers glowing in their wake.
The two make their way to the stage, along with the younger Black and Dywer.
It was finally time.
Zeraphim's eyes explode into blinding brilliance and the surface he stands on ripples like water for a split-second before the astral being falls in, the concrete rooftop splashing in a most unstone-like manner. Passing through building material as if it wasn't even there, Z drops through the ceiling of the auditorium with his hands above his head, claws leaving a glowing trail behind.
The two body-thieves on stage notice him a blink before anyone else and have just enough time to lock eyes with the astral being. As soon as they do, he flashes a fanged grin at them and his eyes flash.
BOOM
Z slams into the floor, his hands punching into the ground on impact.
A wave of force whips out from his touch and throws everything on the floor that isn't bolted to it upward violently. All 100 some odd people in the room are lifted off their feet and sent tumbling ass-over-teakettle into the air.
All except for the two body-thieves.
Z stands from his crouch and whispers a single word.
"Stop."
Everything halts.
People tumbling and screaming are suddenly still and silent, faces locked in expressions of terror. Keys, phones, makeup, the odd pistol, and other bits of assorted junk hover in suspended animation, in the middle of flying out of the purses attached to the women in the room.
All except the body-thieves again.
They were staring at the astral being with wide, terror-filled but angry eyes.
As Z pads silently down the center aisle toward the stage, the light of his eyes brightens the dark auditorium faintly and glints off the objects hung in the air. The ghost of a smirk crosses his face as he listens to their frenzied mindspeak.
"It knows what we are!"
"How can it? We're still disguised!"
"It singled us out TWICE with magical attacks! It's stopped time completely! You don't think it's powerful enough to see through these flimsy masks?"
Zeraphim's voice explodes across the auditorium, the whispering multitude of voices seeming to crawl from the superb acoustic panels on the walls. The very concrete and steel the building's made of thrums and vibrates with the growling, guttural undertone.
"You need not worry so much about it. I do know exactly what you are. And I'm here to put an end to it. Have you anything to say for yourselves before we begin?"
The woman's voice rings across the room, a voice that sounds as if it was pretty once but is now stained dark and raspy by the presence within the body.
"You won't stop us." The eyes of the woman were a dark hollow black, no longer the serene blue-green they should have been.
Z snorts and laughs quietly as he makes his way up the stage, the whispering sound of his amusement echoing off the walls.
"Oh, I don't know about that. You two need followers to have any kind of power within this shade of reality. And...well, your followers are in for the same treatment you two are about to get."
Renee walks forward to meet Z and stops, empty black eyes drilling into his glowing white-blue ones. "And what sort of treatment is that going to be?"
Z flashes that too-perfect smile at her, fangs glittering in the lights over the stage.
"Rough. Final, even."
Renee smiles up at Z, the presence inside her using her face to give Z her best Come hither look as she places her hands on her hips.
"Oh really?"
Z knew the trick though.
Even as Renee ducks and dives to the side, Billy Black lunges at Z.
Z simply ducks as well and catches the cripple's outstretched arms. Rolling backward, his feet kick upward into Black's stomach as he lets him go.
Black sails off the stage and into the auditorium.
He lands back-first on the back of one of the seats, a dull snap telling of a shattering spine.
The presence within refuses to cry out or relent to the broken pieces of body it resides within. Hopping to its feet, it screeches in this dissonant and ear-splitting manner as it leaps up toward the stage at the astral being.
The astral being wasn't there anymore though.
Even before the creature had dragged his broken-backed vessel to its feet and leaped, Z was already waiting to spring. As it jumped, Z leapt and aimed a bit high, like he was trying to jump over his attacker.
He was.
The body-thief passes directly under Z in mid-leap.
Razortipped fingers lance out and shred the skin from the man's back. The wispy, ethereal form of the creature within glimmers in Z's eyes and he grabs a big handful. As his jump carries him past Black, he drags the extra-planar being out.
Black's eyes clear and his mind reasserts itself at the worst possible time.
He screams all the way to the stage, slamming into the hard wood with the momentum of the jump his body had just been used for. His face smacks into the floorboards with a crack as his nose shatters.
His former possessor, however, didn't fare nearly as well.
As Black sailed toward the stage, Z slung the creature in hand to the floor and landed on it heavily, crushing it. Its eyes go wide as it looks up at him and croaks in a raspy voice, "How can you…see us? Hurt us? We exist on a different level of reality."
Z laughs and speaks to it vocally. If nothing else, just to be insulting.
"I'm a deity-being, genius. I exist on all levels of reality. Hell, I helped build reality."
With that, purple-blue tracers arc through the darkness and shear the creature's head off.
Z stands and turns away, the body and head both igniting into infinitely hot blue starfire and quickly burning to nothing. The astral being dusts his palms off and wipes green-yellow goop from his fingerblades on his pants as he pads down the aisle toward the stage.
Renee, a look a rage and disgust on her twisted face, lifts a screaming, bleeding Billy Black up by his head, his useless feet hanging above the floor.
"GARBAGE! WORTHLESS TRASH!" she screams.
Muscles strain in her thin shoulders and she slams her hands shut. Black's skull crushes inward with a sudden popping crunch. Brain leaks through her fingers and she drops the body in contempt. Fingers lift to her mouth and she licks some of the grey matter off before smearing the rest on the dark sweater and jeans she wore.
Z pauses at the front of the stage, glances down at the body of the elder Black, and shakes his head. He locks gazes with the empty-eyed Renee.
"Now was all that really necessary? I was at least gonna make it relatively painless." He gestures to the all the people in the air, hovering over the seats in the auditorium. "They won't even feel it when the time comes."
Renee speaks, her voice totally warped and deformed now, little more than a vaguely feminine growling rasp.
"How nice for them."
Z just shrugs a little, "So…I'm a little disappointed. I really expected him to be the stronger of the two of you." He jerks a thumb at the dying blue flames up the aisle behind him.
She steps forward, looking up at him defiantly.
"Why would a man ever be stronger than a woman?"
Z nods and shrugs again.
"Fair enough. Women are usually meaner in the end."
As the last words leave his mouth, Renee's right fist swings out toward his face, blurry fast.
Z dips at the waist and swings his head beneath the blow. The side of his hand slaps out and snaps the elbow of the offending arm with a mild strike. Renee stumbles forward and flicks her arm, the bone crunching back straight. She whips the arm back at Z again, a backhand this time.
He dips under it again, purple-blue tracers arcing out and sending the hand flying off the stage.
Blood sprays both of them as Renee snatches the ruined stump of her wrist to her chest.
Z steps back and flashes a lethal but lazy smile.
"I can hack pieces off that body all day. You wanna finish this or shall we keep playing?"
Renee lets out an otherworldly screech and leaps at Z.
A knee rockets toward his face. Z ducks his head to one side and turns, reaching out and grabbing the ankle of the leg that attacked him. He jerks downward, swinging Renee face-first at the floor. She doesn't submit to abuse so easily though.
Her other foot lashes out and catches Z across the mouth even as Renee's face slaps into the floor with a wet smack, her nose breaking.
The astral being lets her go and steps back, popping his jaw back into place. Renee stands and resets her nose with a dull crunch. She darts forward and swings a foot at Z's head again. He swings low under her leg and spins, purple-blue tracers tracing murder toward her back as she passes.
Only she wasn't there.
She'd skipped out of the missed kick, intentionally at that, and leapt up onto the time-frozen body of Phil Dywer. Her feet land on his face & chest. Kicking hard off of him, she leaps off to attack Z again.
She'd just killed Phil though.
The force from her feet transferred to his body and immediately went into stasis along with him. The immense force used for her jump would radiate through his skin, muscle, and bone as soon as Z released the time field. Internal bleeding and massive hemorrhaging would occur instantly, to say the very least.
He'd be dead, painfully, before he struck the ground.
Energy has to go somewhere.
Renee, though, paid him absolutely no heed whatsoever though. She'd struck Z in mid-air as he leapt at her and was tossed across the auditorium. Sailing through the air, she bounces off a few of the time-frozen bodies and tumbles into the seats with a thud. She groans quietly as she lay there, feeling her power start to wane as more of her followers die held frozen in time. Just knowing their lives would end as soon as the being attacking her let them all go was enough to rip their energies from her.
Deciding it's all or nothing, the presence within Renee dissolves her body for an instant and attempts to cross the planar boundary, trying to leave.
An otherworldly wail, tortured and angry, rips across the auditorium as Renee's body rematerializes.
She couldn't leave. She was name-bound to the building. She casts about, looking for the symbol of her true name. She finds it with her extra-planar senses; a huge emerald beneath the stage with her name glowing in its face.
Leaping from the seats, she steps off the top of one and sails through the air toward the stage.
Z slams into her from behind, fists coming down atop her head and sending her tumbling into the seats with a CRUNCH. Wood breaks as well as bone. The presence inside Renee senses that her body is dying and dissolves it quickly. If she couldn't leave, she could still teleport around the room. Maybe this fight wasn't over just yet.
The astral being shatters the concrete underneath the carpet as he lands where Renee just was.
SLAM
Z's face smashes into the broken concrete, his attacker leaping away immediately.
He blinks rubble-filled eyes, "Ow." Cuts open and bleed blood that sparkles and crackles with an inner energy all its own. The astral being leaps to his feet and flicks his gaze toward the presence attacking him.
Renee was crouched on the ceiling, looking down at him. Blood drips from her nose, eyes, ears, and mouth. Z's last attack had liquefied her skull. She held on with one human hand jammed into the plaster and a green, wispy claw shimmering as it holds to the roof, the emanation sticking out of the ruined stump of her severed wrist.
Z explodes out of the seats, shattered wood flying out in his wake.
The creature within Renee, expecting straight-on assault, dissolves her body again.
Z pauses in mid-air and wipes the blood off his already-healed face, watching the extra-dimensional being as it travels through the local ethers to appear on the floor beneath him. As the being re-materializes rocketing upward out of the carpet, Z was smirking faintly and waiting.
He drifts faintly to the side and the woman shoots past him. One hand lazily reaches out and connects with her face as she passes.
CRACK
The woman's attack falters and the body tumbles from the air. It bounces off another time-frozen person and slams into the floor near the far wall of the auditorium. Z scampers across the tops of the chairs and crouches on one, looking down at Renee's body.
The head was fully twisted backward, facing the wall she was leaning against.
Z just waits.
Suddenly, the body jerks and stands shakily, the muscles and nerves not sending impulses properly anymore. With a wet grinding sound, the head twists back around slowly and those hollow, black eyes lock gazes with the astral being.
Z grins.
"Is it time?"
The dead Renee just screams at him, weird rasping voice rattling the walls with the vehemence of the creature's anger.
Z laughs and shrugs.
"Guess so."
The Renee body leaps at him, slower and less precise now as the presence inside is forced to use its own waning power to hold the body alight or even move it at all, the owner dead.
Z floats up and back, keeping the body in front of him. His eyes flash and his hand closes around one of the emeralds he'd left under the stage. With a gentle gesture, he extends his arm and presses the gem to Renee's chest.
The presence within realizes its mistake and screams again, Renee's hollow eyes wide.
Z's voice slithers across the creature's mind.
"Tal'thin Zir"
Green fire erupts from the emerald in Z's hand and through the skin of the body before him. Renee's body lights a dull, sickly green from within and creature's wailing suddenly starts fading fast, rapidly becoming a mere echo of its former power as it's sucked in.
Contact with the symbol of her name and having it spoken aloud at the same time snatched the creature down into the gemstone and locked her there.
Bereft the force keeping it afloat, the now-empty and broken body just falls away from Z.
It hits the seats with a crack as it shatters another of the abused chairs.
Z holds the glimmering green rock in his hand for a moment as he looks down at the body. He focuses on her face. In death and finally free of the presence holding her thrall, Renee's eyes had returned to their serene blue-green color.
Taking a deep breath, Z zips over to the stage and alights on it. His eyes flash once and the other emerald appears in his hand, unused. He hadn't needed it after all. The creature's direct assault had left it very open to his tricks for energy manipulation.
Burning it away with starfire had been far easier and more time-efficient.
He sets both of the gemstones on the floorboards, looking down at the one that glimmers and pulses with angry inner light. Pulling a phone out of one pocket, he speed-dials a number.
"Edward."
A pause on the other end.
"Z?"
"So you did ask her about me."
The boy on the other end laughs a bit, "I did. She said she couldn't be very specific and that I'd have to meet you to understand. But…I think I already do a little."
Z smirks, "That's good. Get out to the auditorium at La Push."
"What? Why?"
"I have something here I need to show Bella. It's best she see it in person as opposed to me just telling you over the phone."
"What about the cops? Aren't they still watching the borders of the Rez?"
Z laughs and shakes his head.
"I wouldn't worry about them. Just get out here soonest, ok?"
Edward hesitates for a breath.
"Okay. See you soon."
The line clicks dead and Z tosses the phone over his shoulder, where it vanishes in a shower of blue sparks.
Zeraphim looks down at the emeralds and then around the room at the destroyed seating and blood-stained flooring. Black's shattered skull was little more than a red, soggy mess that had quit leaking awhile ago. Renee's body was twisted at wrong angles, most of her major bones broken. Her severed hand lay just in front of the foremost row of seats on the right side of the theater. And then there was the still 100 or so people frozen in time, hanging suspended in mid-air. At least 10 of them were dead as soon as Z released the time field. And their deaths wouldn't be as painless as he preferred.
He ponders what to do with them for a moment and then shrugs, heading off the stage and making for the doors leading out.
"Fuck that. I'll figure it out in a minute."
He props against the wall in the cold, pulling a pack of smokes from one pocket and lighting it with a Zippo that vanishes in another spray of sparkling energy. Leaning his head on the wall and enjoying the cool air on his bare chest, he takes a drag off the smoke and waits.