My apologies for the stretch of time between chapters here, I hit a nice big honking chunk of writer's block with this one…well okay not just with this one but in general. I had NO freaking clue where the hell to take the story to make it interesting and I still don't but hell, it's worth a try :P So here we go crosses fingers I'll be picking up Wicked Little Town as well.
"I love Fara. She can babble on for two hours and not say a goddamned thing," Dante snorts as they step out of the office. He pauses as he gets a good look around and turns and locks the door, suddenly glad he made Fara rest in his office rather than going home.
When he'd passed through the streets perhaps a half hour ago, things had been getting weird. There were people looking distinctly nervous, a few crazies wandering around shouting nonsense and a few other things, but nothing that would cause a panic. No longer. Walking past his office right in front of him is a young couple, strolling arm and arm and laughing softly, looking up at each other. The top of the girl's head is a bloody ruin of torn skin and flesh with tufts of hair still trailing out of it, and even as Dante and Lady watch, she reaches up and rips out one of them, handing it to her lover who adds it to the handful he already has in his free hand.
They watch them pass silently. Not even Dante has a quip for this one.
Like sleepwalkers, the two demon hunters walk on the edge of the city as it falls apart around them.
Here, a man dressed in the robes of a priest straddles the body of another man, smiling benevolently, chanting in Latin as he smashes a heavy silver bowl down on the remains of the dead man's head.
There, a woman dressed in a police officer's uniform sits staring vacantly up at the sky, blood dripping from her mouth. Whether it's hers or someone else's Dante can't tell and doesn't want to know.
There's nothing overtly creepy manifesting yet, nothing like Dante's elevator or Lady's bleeding walls. The streets, as they pass them, stay as they are. But that weird creeping dread he'd gotten when the streets were changing is here now. That feeling of something waiting out of the corner of his eye, hiding somewhere no eye could see is with him now as they move through the streets.
Lady feels the overwhelming urge to giggle and stops herself, horrified, realizing with a jolt that it's getting to her too. She clamps down with that strict discipline that's allowed her to hunt demons despite the fact she's human, focusing, forcing herself to ignore the way the world seems to be going fuzzy around her. Chaos, she remembers, slowly starting to grasp what Fara, in her roundabout way, was trying to explain. This is just the beginning, dissolving order, slowly remaking reality into what they…whatever they are…can exist in.
Rubbing the boundaries between this one and some other place never meant to exist in this nice, neat, three dimensional reality.
Like demons in some way. The thought helps, fits it in a way she can understand and brings a surge of hatred and rage through her. Willing to destroy the people of this world to make it the way they wanted it to be. "Destroy the book, yeah, that's going to help," she mutters.
Dante shrugs, carrying the thing under his arm. "It's a start."
He seems much calmer than she feels and that irritates her. "We should be hunting the source of…whatever this thing is…and trying to destroy it."
"Okay," Dante says easily. "Lead the way, where do we start?"
She clamps her mouth shut and glares ahead, rolling her shoulders to relieve some of the tension building up in her muscles. "I just don't see how destroying the book instead of trying to use it is going to do any good."
"It all started with the thing…" Dante trails off, stopping for a moment, holding the book up and looking at it.
"Yes, but it's already served its purpose, basically, it brought this presence here…Dante?" She realizes he's no longer walking beside him and pauses, looking back.
It all started with the book…and the cult, Dante thinks. In the excitement and insanity, he'd forgotten about them, forgotten the streets had started changing when he'd tried to go back. Why? Just to fuck with him? Possibly. But then again…
"Dante?" There's irritation in Lady's voice now.
"Changing direction," he informs her, turning so he's striding toward Forum Blvd, unaware of Lady's glare at his back.
"I'd put a bullet in the back of your head if I thought it'd do any damage," she mutters.
"Having a head like a rock has its advantages."
Lady finds his sudden cheerfulness slightly obscene compared to the madness around them. She hurries to catch up with him. "Where are we going?"
"Back to the place where I found the book."
"With the changing streets?"
"Well, if they're doing that it was either just to be a pain or because the Whatever the Hell It Is doesn't want anyone going there, either way at least it's somewhere to start. And maybe…"
He trails off and falls silent for a few minutes. It's not like him and makes Lady study him with a hint of worry. Dante moves around so they can avoid a group of people dancing in a circle in the middle of the street, their movements jerky and erratic. He finally glances back at her. "Like you said, it came through the book, maybe that place and that book together can get us through to wherever it came from."