Bah, the uploading system is pure hate.
Anathema's Abode
Chapter 11
Despair
Regardless of Tucker's refusal to help her locate Phantom, Sam was met with no apparent difficulty in locating the midian. It was hardly difficult to follow the macabre trail of destruction wrought by his subordinates, as she pushed roughly past the panicked, stampeding crowd of citizens fleeing the scene of carnage. The stench of fear was overwhelming. In a way, she couldn't blame her tech operative. Both of them knew that what she was about to attempt was beyond suicidal. If Sam was in his situation, she knew that she wouldn't want Tucker's death on her conscience.
Soon, she was past the herd of humans escaping the latest of their dictators, entering a crumpled clearing that the ghost hunter could hardly recognise to be an uptown area of Amity to which her mother frequently delighted in bringing her shopping. Sam wouldn't miss it; not that anything ever lasted long in this god forsaken city.
The ghost hunter kept her eyes trained on the white haired ghost as his fearsome destrier roosted atop one of the abandoned shophouses that were still standing, amidst the eerie green flames of destruction wrought by his men. She had only one objective tonight, Sam scowled darkly as she closed the distance between them, and she'd be damned if she didn't complete it.
Sam would've thought that seeing Phantom in the flesh for the first time since the discovery of his betrayal would have instilled in her a feeling of despair and denial, that this couldn't possibly be the path that he had chosen. However, Maddie's apprentice felt nothing, almost as though the enlisting of the white haired ghost's services as Pariah's general had been an inevitability from the very beginning. Would their leader ever be able to forgive her if she learned the truth?
Her gaze flickered down towards the ground, where her combat boot had trodden on something soft, yet possessing a familiar solidity at the same time. She was standing on the fingers of a broken human child, no older than four. Sam blanched; despite being hardened by the war, the sight of dead children was still one she found difficult to stomach. From the look of his mutilated form, Pariah's army hadn't even needed to lift a finger. Amidst the previous chaos, the young boy had been separated from his mother, after which the stampeding masses of panicked adults stronger and faster than the child had done Phantom's work for him. Fear truly did bring out the worst in her kin.
The ghost hunter hissed in outrage, as she found herself overcome by a bout of desperation at her impotence. The toddler before her, her mentor's little Daniel, how many more innocent children was this war going to claim? She picked up the pace, her resolve strengthening as she sprinted towards the traitor responsible for this nightmarish evening, as if she could sear what she had just witnessed from her mind through sheer physical exertion.
Sam did not escape the attention of the Night Police for long. Phantom was the first to notice her presence; the white haired ghost seemed to freeze as he spotted her, a look of sheer terror crossing his features before his discomposure was hastily disguised. He still has the audacity to be worried about me, the ghost hunter's fingers curled into fists, as she found herself overcome with unsurmountable fury. After all his lies.
"What do have we here?" a member of the Night Police rasped, as the spectres surrounded her.
When faced with a demon of Phantom's strength, it was nearly impossible to fear his lackeys; Pariah's elite troops paled in comparison. The ghost hunter's fingers furled to form twin fists, the edges of her nails digging into her palm hard enough to draw blood. The ghosts were cowards, all of them, unwilling to attack even a single member of the brotherhood unless they held the advantage of numbers. The Goth allowed herself a grim smile, readying herself for the worst at their hands.
Sam made no effort to resist the spectral footmen as they materialised around her, forcing her hands behind her back as she was led roughly to their leader. After all, why should she run? She had come to confront Phantom. Her survival was of irrelevant consequence.
The Night Police hadn't even bothered to disarm her, the ghost hunter realised, cheeks colouring at the insult. They would regret their oversight, Sam scowled, determined to be the first of the brotherhood to show the spectres that their faith in Phantom was unfounded.
"The first member of the resistance we've come across tonight, my lord," Phantom's lieutenant cackled, his expression eager as the white haired ghost strove to maintain impassive, his hands shaking as he held his mount's reigns in a vice like grip, his facade betraying no trace of his discomposure.
"You, wench," the lieutenant demanded, gesturing roughly at Sam. "Defer before the general."
"Never," Maddie's apprentice snarled, her gauntlets assembling at her fingertips. At that very moment, the mere concept of fear was beyond her when compared to her rage at Phantom's betrayal.
"Defer to my lord," Pariah's footman hissed as he approached her. "Defer, or I will make you kneel."
"I refuse to defer to any ghost," the ghost hunter spat. "No matter how powerful he thinks he is."
"Insolent little girl," the skeletal ghost growled, his bony fingers outstretched towards Sam. The ghost hunter bit back a scream of outrage and shock as her knees buckled on their own accord, as an unseen weight dragging her form to the ground.
The ghost hunter fought to right herself, her arms locking as she pushed hard against the dirt, determined to defy her captor. Sam's repeated attempts to resist her assailant were met with failure after horrific failure, as she was forced to endure the mounting shame of her vulnerability as her form crumpled at his feet, her struggles yielding nothing more than the crippling burning of her muscles as she fought him for control. The spectre snarled, tripling the magnitude of his attack as Sam was slammed roughly to the ground, drawing a shaky whimper from her throat as she found herself unwillingly prostrated before Phantom.
Never had the ghost hunter felt more humiliated in her entire life, her face down in the dirt whilst she was rendered completely vulnerable before Pariah's troops, the crushing pressure forfeiting control over her entire body as the very air was squeezed from her lungs. Sam found herself overcome by a fervent desire to scream, disgusted that when she realised that she was too winded to accomplish even that. Yet, she refused to allow herself to die. Not now; not before she gathered the opportunity to show the traitorous bastard exactly what she thought of him.
"Enough," Phantom roared, the arrogant authority of his voice ringing clear in the night air.
Sam was ashamed to admit that despite her crippling disbelief and rage at his betrayal, a small part of her still desperately longed for him to turn on his footmen, for him to obliterate them in the manner in which she knew only he was capable of. At that moment, the ghost hunter couldn't care less if the white haired ghost never joined her brethren. All she wanted was to return to the awkward truce they had previously shared. Anything, surely, was better than this.
"Leave the brotherhood girl," he declared, as his troops turned to him in surprise. "She is mine."
"A-as you wish my lord," the lieutenant stuttered, immediately releasing his hold over the girl with a hasty deferential bow in Phantom's direction.
Sam started, unwittingly surrendering to a prolonged gasp as the crushing weight dissipated from above her form, wincing as the hollow sound of air rushing back into her lungs followed. The ghost hunter drew her shaky form off the ground in a failed endeavour to rise, overcome by a shaming desire to turn tail and flee from the ghost that she had once considered an ally. His destrier whickered, pawing at the ground with a clawed hoof, dreary shadows forming as it flexed its great, bat like wings, drowning out the dismal moonlight.
The ghost hunter's previous desire for confrontation seemed to have deserted her, rising to her feet as she willed herself to stand her ground whilst Phantom approached on his impressive dark steed, his subordinates parting as they kept their distance from the general; although whether if it was out of mere reverence or fear of their superior, Sam did not know, nor did she care. She refused to give the enemy the satisfaction of knowing that his mere presence terrified her.
"Tend to Arion," the white haired ghost asserted imperiously, carelessly tossing his mount's reins to a member of the Night Police as he performed an overly flashy dismount that made Sam feel sick to her stomach, as his subordinate fumbled with the strips of leather.
"I have a message for Madeleine Fenton," Phantom extended a palm towards her, his armored fingers splayed as he addressed her for the first time, the smug smirk that adorned his features painfully evocative of the expression that used to cross his features when he used to tease her. "Tell the rebels to run while they still can."
This time, the ghost hunter refused to scream as she found herself once again pinned against the ground by some invisible force, readying herself for the worst at Phantom's hands. If a single member of Phantom's liege men was capable of suffocating her without even laying a finger on her, what would the white haired ghost himself be capable of?
"Like hell we will," she rasped, fiercely defiant despite how helpless she truly felt. She wasn't about to allow the midian to dominate her as he had the rest of Amity Park. The empire would never truly claim victory while there were still those who defied the king.
Before this, Sam could not help but fervently hope that this was all some form of a sick joke Phantom that had designed in order to test her loyalties towards him. But now, as the ghost hunter found herself forcibly humiliated by the white haired ghost amidst the jeers of approval from his troops, she couldn't even bring herself to give a damn whether she lived or died.
Yet, it wasn't as bad this time, Sam noticed with a start, as she waited for the blinding pain that never came. Maddie's apprentice furled her fingers experimentally to form fists, stunned as she realised that Phantom had chosen not to rob her of all motor function. She bristled, indignation following soon after. Phantom was toying with her. Was this more underestimation on the enemy's part?
Sam's head snapped upwards to meet his gaze, determined to ask that ghost what exactly he was playing at when abruptly, at a lazy flick of Phantom's fingers, the ghost hunter found herself hurtled into the air at breakneck speed, unable to suppress her screams of undulated terror as she was levitated, higher and higher until the night lights of Amity Park and ugly flames wrought from the Pariah's troop's destructive rampage were nothing more than pinpricks of light in the distance.
As fear and adrenaline surged through her veins, the ghost hunter found herself overcome by blind rage at her carelessness, that she would die before she ever got the opportunity to ask Phantom why he had chosen to betray her, to betray Amity Park. What had the empire offered him in exchange? Glory? Infamy? Power? The white haired ghost had once sworn that such trivialities would not sway him. Sam supposed that with Pariah's influence the empire could enlist the services of any being, no matter the price. Phantom was no exception.
She was slowing down, Sam realised, her mouth dry and her throat raw from screaming as she reached the peak of her trajectory, readying herself for the gruesome inevitability of her fall to her death. She was picking up speed even faster than she could have ever imagined she descended, first through the low, murky clouds, then the city's skyline, plummeting past the roofs of Amity's buildings, her face streaked with tears as the wind tore at her vision, so disorientated that she didn't know if she was rising again or falling to her demise.
The ghost hunter gritted her teeth, prepared to meet her death as the earth lurched upwards to meet her. At least the Night Police would be denied the perverse amusement of witnessing her being crumpled on the pavement like road kill, Sam thought with grim satisfaction. Phantom's little trick was going to result in her landing in a completely different section of the city. So it seemed the general had less control over his own abilities than he liked to think.
"I'm sorry, Maddie," the brotherhood girl whispered as her eyes squeezed shut.
Sam yelped in surprise as an invisible entity lunged at her, cradling her form as a strong hand curved around her neck to prevent it snapping in half from the impact. The ghost hunter raised a gauntlet clad hand to her line of vision, her blood freezing in her veins as she realised that she, too, had been rendered invisible by her rescuer.
"I'm sorry I put you through that," Phantom murmured, as Sam's heart leaped into her throat at the sound. "It was to ensure that we weren't followed," the ghost explained, his tone apologetic.
Maddie's apprentice strove to form words with her mouth, a scathing retort on the tip of her tongue, her battered nerves refusing to cooperate as she shivered despite the warmth of the night air, hyperventilating as she drew rapid, greedy breaths, her body striving to recover from its most recent ordeal.
She didn't bother suppressing her screams of undulated terror as they picked up speed, her entire form wracked with tremors as she wrestled to free herself from his grasp as she was subjected once again to the horrifying experience of weightlessness as she was hurled into the buildings and infrastructure of the city as though she was nothing more than a rag doll, so fast that it took her moments to bring herself to comprehend that she was experiencing firsthand the effects of spectral intangibility.
Just as abruptly as he had began, Phantom slowed, flickering into vision as they descended towards the ground below.
"Let me go," Sam screamed, struggling wildly in his grasp. "Let me go you monster!"
"I'm sorry you had to find out like this," Phantom; no, the general replied bitterly, a thin smile on his lips. Sam endeavoured not to flinch his hands furled around her upper arms, lowering her to the ground with surprising gentleness. "Are you injured?"
"Drop the act, Phantom. You don't give a damn about me," her eyes flashed, as the ghost hunter's gauntlets flared to life. "You've never cared," she hissed, furling her fingers as she hurled the artificial spectral energy in his direction, finding herself overcome with nothing more than an unbridled, violent desire to hurt him, the consequences be damned.
"I attempted to forewarn you twice," the white haired ghost growled, a note of protest in his voice, and Sam was stunned as she noticed genuine hurt flicker across his expression. His fingers furled to form fists as he hastily threw his forearms across his face, shielding himself from her attacks. "You cannot truly believe that you mean nothing to me."
"Shut up. Just shut up," the ghost hunter snarled, ruthlessly quelling the small uprising of empathy for Phantom. "We both know that you've used me from the start. Just stop pretending to care. I'm not listening to any more of your lies."
"My messenger already had it hard enough without you rejecting my warning. It's been days since he's last eaten or slept," the general sighed, dropping the spectral shield around himself as he himself seemed to be overcome by genuine fatigue. "He didn't need your refusal to leave Amity Park to make his life any more difficult."
"At this rate, you're going to work him to death," Sam glared. "Or are humans like him expendable?"
"Expendable?" Phantom repeated blankly. "He is more important to me than you know," the ghost's expression hardened. "This topic isn't open for discussion."
"When is anything ever open for discussion with you Phantom?" she questioned, eliciting a soft snort from the white haired ghost.
"What I know could get you killed," he replied, his expression pained. "As you've probably already guessed, it's concept that I am rather against."
"For god's sakes, Phantom," Maddie's apprentice growled, sick of his falsehood. "Stop pretending. We both know where your allegiance has always lain."
"You think I want this?" Phantom roared, his eyes and fists flaring a deathly green as his fists met with the wall of the abandoned warehouse, the ghost hunter refusing to shrink back as his blows subjected the disused brick to such brutality that it crumbled. "I am just as much a slave to the empire as you are."
"A slave?" Sam echoed, indignation threatening to bubble over the edge as she felt herself overcome with blinding self-righteous fury. Once, Phantom's derisive comments regarding her kind would have filled her with almost familiar exasperation, perhaps even affection. Now, the ghost hunter could not bring herself to regard the ghost with nothing more than burning hatred; not that he had left her with even the slightest inclination to feel otherwise.
"The Night Police- your men," she hissed, her tone accusatory. "Attempted to compel me to grovel at your feet. Tell me," the ghost hunter demanded. "Is that your warped idea of slavery? To endure the mere presence of us inferior humans as we are forced to defer before you? I can only imagine how unbearable your current situation must be."
"You have no right to speak to me in that manner," the white haired ghost snarled, green eyes flickering with unbridled rage in a manner eerily reminiscent of his predecessor. "If not for you, I wouldn't be in this mess right now. I could've left you to die, twice over."
"Then why do you keep saving me?" the ghost hunter screamed, past caring as an edge of hysteria entered her voice. "Why didn't you just let me die that night?" she demanded. "I should be dead."
"I don't know," he admitted, his voice laced with quiet desperation.
"Then kill me," she whispered. "Anything would be better than having to live with the knowledge that I've condemned my brethren to death and exile."
"You don't mean that," Phantom growled, anger entering his tone. "After everything I've been through on your account, you cannot possibly wish this."
"And none of this was done for the sake of that woman you sent after me?" Sam questioned roughly, recalling the flamed haired female ghost who he had sent to warn her. "I thought so," she spat, as she noticed the flicker of worry in his green eyes at her mention.
"Pariah threatened Ember's wellbeing," the white haired ghost conceded. "I was left with no choice."
"You always have a choice," the ghost hunter snarled, her surging rage activating her gauntlets as she was overcome with a second desire to attack him.
"I owe her everything. What was I supposed to have done?" he replied bitterly, as his utterance was met with Sam's stony refusal to answer.
So it seemed that despite his betrayal, Phantom still seemed to maintain some perverse form of concern for her wellbeing, Sam realised, the revelation chilling her very bones. What were his intentions towards her now? Whatever they were, the ghost hunter was all too aware that she would have no means by which to stop him. It was best to keep the midian talking, she decided. Conversation with the white haired ghost, regardless of how painfully bitter, was far better than the alternatives that Maddie's apprentice feared to even consider.
"Arion?" Sam snorted softly, breaking the silence. "An arrogant name for a warhorse."
"He was a gift," Phantom ground out, his shoulders hunching as he pressed his palms against the wall, unwilling to face her. "Who am I to refuse what the king proffers?"
"I thought you were stronger than this," the ghost hunter whispered bitterly. "Somehow, I managed to convince myself that you were better than them. That you were different. I guess I was wrong."
"What makes you think that I had any choice in the matter?" the general voiced, resent evident. Whether his rage was towards her or directed at the empire, Sam didn't know. Neither did she care to know. After all, his was the face of the enemy. Why should she care how he felt? "What Pariah wants, Pariah always gets."
"I hope you're happy," she enunciated through gritted teeth, her tone biting. "You've got everything a monster like you could ever possibly want. And more."
"Why do you always assume that you know what I want?" he replied furiously.
"What do you want?" she questioned, as her query was met with a second bout of augmented silence.
"I need you to leave," Phantom said desperately. "Now. It's still not too late to get your brethren out of this god forsaken city."
"No," Sam refused. "This is my home. If we abandon Amity Park, it will fall. Someone has to protect the city from you."
"Why do you have to be so damned stubborn?" the ghost roared.
The next thing Sam knew, she was being caged between Phantom's arms as he pinned her roughly to the wall behind her, so close that she could feel his icy breath on her lips. Despite the sheer irrationality of the ghost hunter's panicked thoughts, his proximity as he held her captive seemed to invoke in Sam far greater terror than the concept of her death. "Don't touch me," the ghost hunter demanded savagely, as she struggled to free her wrists from his steely grip, striking at him with every fibre of her being.
"I'm begging you to leave," the general repeated fiercely, as his eyes flared a burnished green. "Is that what you want, Sam?" he uttered, his closeness sending violent shivers down the ghost hunter's spine. "For me to beg at your feet? Because I'll do it. If it means that I can convince you to leave Amity, nothing is below me."
"Why don't you leave?" the ghost hunter challenged. "I was under the impression that fleeing like a coward is something you're particularly adept at."
"My absence will not change the king's intentions for Amity Park," Phantom snarled, frustration evident. "You don't seem to understand just how important you are to me."
The ghost hunter blinked, taken aback. "This doesn't change anything," Sam leered, her expression pure venom.
"Of course it doesn't," the general replied bitterly. "It's always black and white with the brotherhood, isn't it? It doesn't matter that I've saved your life twice."
"And in doing so, condemned the rest of my kin," Sam added bitterly. "Why do you still care, Phantom? Pariah knows where the brotherhood's headquarters are. What else could you possibly want from me?"
"I haven't told him anything," the ghost insisted. "How could I? Even I don't know where the brotherhood resides."
"Then why should I have to leave?" the ghost hunter demanded. "Why should we fear you any more than the Fright Knight? You're both nothing more than monsters that need to be stopped."
"I refuse to stand by and watch you die tonight," he growled. "You cannot put me through this, Sam."
"Your new status does not make you immortal," she decided, finality evident. The ghost hunter looked up defiantly to meet his gaze, unflinching. "God help me, the next time our paths cross, I swear on my grandmother's grave that I will be the one to destroy you."
"If that is what it will take to convince you to leave, then very well," Phantom replied, his features devoid of any hesitation. "I thought you were different," the ghost whispered, as he withdrew himself from her small form, and despite herself, Sam could not ignore the sharp pang that pierced her chest at his words.
"Now run," he hissed.
Author's Notes: Poor Sam, poor Phantom. cackles
I'm sorry how long it took for this to be posted. Especially since I wrote most of it before I wrote the previous chapter. I just haven't had the time lately to finish this. But since I've deprived you guys for so long, I was determined to update, so here it is. I hope it didn't disappoint.
Thanks to the wonderful: aulinin, Tie-dyed Trickster, Sasia93, Chaos Dragon, bloodmoon13, kia, b4k4 ch4n, EmeraldCalling, Toyoko, Xweetok, december's morose, Musicallity, Teo20, Life is Full Of Regrets, wondergirl101, Angelic Kittens, passionateartist, FreakLevel27, CharmedNightSkye, YumeTakato, Manyara, Mimo-Sene, Raidon Phantom, luckygirl777, Sweeteen19, Nobody Famous, WinchesterPhantom, CommonSenseless24, Devilchild93, pwykersotz, Zilleniose, ERIKS PROTEGE and FunkyFish1991 for their reviews that got me all giggly.
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Hugs and kisses,
Twisted Creampuff