And now we start to deviate from the script...
Chapter II: A Merry Chase
When her mother emerged from watching whatever television show had so enthralled her, the woman was immediately confused to find her daughter unaccompanied. Alice was not in the mood for any "I-told-you-so" lectures, but knew she owed her mother an explanation. So she told her mother about Jack offering her a ring which had been in his family for years.
"Was it a diamond ring?" Carol questioned.
Alice, now splayed on the sofa, sighed and shook her head. "Why does it matter what kind of ring it was? Either way it looked liked like a pricey rock." She waited for it. Her mother was going to give her the "I-told-you-so" speech without actually saying the words.
Carol frowned. "So, after weighing all the possible cons with all the unlikely pros, you just kicked him out?" she said mildly.
The girl rolled her eyes in annoyance. "You know, Mom, why don't you just go ahead and say 'I told you so'?"
Alice's mother came over to sit on the table in front of the sofa where the girl lay. Her voice full of tender sympathy, she said, "Sweetheart, just because Daddy left doesn't mean all the men in your life will."
Though that probably was the crux of all the issues she had with men, she had not been looking forward to it being spoken aloud so blatantly. She shifted her position on the couch, which caused her to feel some hard object in her pocket rub against her hip bone. Puzzled, she reached into her pocket to find out what it was.
It was the ring box Jack had tried to give her. She stared at the object in mute astonishment. How had it ended up in her pocket when she clearly remembered handing it back to him? She gasped when she realized he must have slipped it into her pocket when he hugged her at the doorway. How she had not been able to sense that, she did not know. She was slightly angry with herself for missing it.
"It's the ring. He must have slipped it into my pocket," she explained incredulously.
Her mother cocked an eyebrow, but did not offer any comment.
"Oh, I don't think so," Alice muttered crossly, pulling herself to her feet. She stomped across the living room towards the doorway.
"Alice, wait!" her mother cried.
Alice ignored her.
She burst through the door, stepping onto the sidewalk and looking around. Hopefully, Jack had not gotten far. She was going to catch up with him and give this wretched thing back to him along with a piece of her irate mind. What had he been trying to pull? Had he not understood she did not want the ring? Was the word "no" not in his vocabulary? He better have a damn good explanation for this.
"Jack!" she called out.
She ran towards an alley that separated the building she and her mother lived in from the building beside it. Halting in front of it, she yelled out Jack's name again.
It had rained earlier in the evening, causing a plethora of puddles to form in the dips in the ground littering the alleyway. It was far colder out than it had been earlier in the day. She hugged herself as she tried to figure out which way Jack might have gone. In hindsight, she probably should not have let him walk these streets alone at night, in spite of the awkwardness which would have ensued. Cleveland had many dangers to offer; dangers which few grown men could hope to stand against.
As if in confirmation of her sudden worry, a masculine cry of pain and terror pierced the air. She whipped her head towards the dank, dripping alley towards the direction the cry had come from. She had a sinking, terrible feeling it had been Jack crying out.
"Jack!" she screamed, sprinting down the alleyway. She did not even notice the cold water soaking through her pantyhose as she heedlessly splashed through the puddles. She rounded a corner just in time to see her boyfriend, limp in the clutches of two men in dark suits, being tossed into the back of a white van.
Red-hot rage boiled through her veins. "Hey! she shouted, running towards them fully prepared to unleash a Slayer's wrath.
The double doors at the back of the van slammed shut. With squealing tires, the vehicle tore off down the road with a burst of speed. The van's high center of gravity almost forced it to tip over as the driver turned sharply down a narrow alleyway.
Ignoring the shock and anguish which made her body want to sag onto the cold, wet ground, Alice sucked in a breath of air and started to run after them. Slayers had been built for speed and endurance. She was confident she could catch up to the vehicle and subsequently rescue her boyfriend from the clutches of these strange men. She had no clue what kind of trouble her boyfriend was in, but visions of sleekly dressed Mafiosos were sprouting in her mind. Those men in the dark suits certainly fit the description of mob peons.
My god, I shouldn't have kicked him out. This is all my fault. He would have been safe from them if he had stayed with me. I knew something was wrong!
Her pursuit was halted when a white-haired man dressed in a white suit with a gray overcoat stepped into her path. The image of a white rabbit stood out starkly on his lapel. He leaned on a cane with a shiny silver knob at the top and regarded her curiously, his dark beady eyes roving all over her. His presence made her flesh crawl with distaste. Two opposing urges assailed her. One urge was to push the strange man out of her way and recommence her pursuit of her boyfriend. The other urge, which was growing stronger by the second, was to stay and listen.
"I wouldn't bother trying to run after him, my dear. I'm afraid he's gone," the man told her in an urbane voice. The voice and demeanor did not strike her as that of any mobster she knew of, and the Slayers had had dealings with branches of the various mafias in the past. In fact, the vibe she was receiving from him was almost...otherworldly.
Alice clenched her fists in fury. "Who are you?" she demanded.
The man shrugged as if the subject of his identity was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. He walked towards her nonchalantly, a twisted parody of a smile on his face. "Oh, I'm a friend of Jack's," he replied lightly.
She kept her stance poised and ready for attack, but delayed it until she was certain he was an actual threat. "What the hell kind of a friend are you? Why didn't you help him?"
"I am here to help him," the strange man said matter-of-factly. He circled her like a hawk circled its prey.
The man did not realize it, but he was treading a fine line between walking and having both his femurs snapped. The end of Alice's patience was steadily growing closer.
"You see, Alice," the man started. She felt a jolt when she heard him say her name. "Jack took something that didn't belong to him. We need it back."
Though the man had given no hint as to what it was her boyfriend had supposedly taken, she knew immediately what the strange fellow was referring to. They wanted the ring Jack had tried to give to her. She held her hands behind her back, grasping the ring box. Something whispered to her that this man could not be permitted to get his hands on the ring. Deftly, she sprung the hidden catch and slipped the ring onto her finger before snapping the box closed again. She spun the ring around on her finger so the stone faced downward.
"How do you know my name?" she asked.
The man ignored the question. "The ring, girl," he said, holding out his hand expectantly.
Alice shook her head and eyed the man in defiance. "No, you tell me where you've taken Jack first."
The man smiled coldly. "I can assure you, my dear girl, he is quite safe."
For some reason, that did nothing to reassure her at all. She cocked her head. "Okay, well prove that to me. Bring him to me and have him tell me that himself."
The man huffed. It sounded as if he was growing impatient as well. "Come now, Alice. I can't do that. He must return with us to face charges."
Her patience disintegrated. She lunged forward and snatched the man up with one hand, lifting him clear off his feet and slamming him against the brick wall behind them. His dark eyes bulged out of his head with shock and terror. His arms flailed wildly as he tried to smack her head with his cane. She kept herself far enough back so the cane could not touch her. In her free hand, she held up the ring box. The man immediately stopped struggling when he saw it, staring at it dumbly. She smothered the urge to toss the ring box and see if he would run after it as if in a game of fetch.
"Okay, you have messed with the wrong guy's girlfriend. I'm not some helpless damsel in distress. You want your stupid ring, I don't care. But you're going to have to play the game my way," she enlightened him sharply.
His eyes rolled in their sockets to gape at her, anger and surprise brewing in them. His gaze darted past her then, focusing on something behind Alice. That was when her senses caught up to her through the seething tidal wave of rage. The old man had some backup.
"Release him and the box!" someone ordered in a gruff voice. She felt what could only be the end of a handgun press up against her skull.
Idiot. Way to maintain your vigilance, Alice. Since a Slayer could not dodge a bullet at point blank range and Alice was quite fond of all her brains being inside her skull, she did as she was ordered. The old man scrambled for the ring box, snatching it up greedily and getting to his feet. The girl, meanwhile, turned around, hoping nobody would notice she was, in fact, wearing the ring.
The man holding her at gunpoint had bland features with slicked back dark hair. Two other men flanked him on each side, their hands resting precariously on their side-arms. They were attired in charcoal suits similar to the ones the men who had abducted Jack had worn. From closer up, Alice could see that the suits were oddly embellished with a gray-colored emblem in the shape of a spade upon the lapel. In addition to that, each man had a different number inscribed on his suit.
Suits on suits? That's weird.
The white-haired man seemed positively gleeful to see her in such a predicament. He chuckled sardonically while pocketing the ring box. "Well, you certainly are quite a bit stronger than I expected," he remarked to Alice.
To the men in the dark suits, he instructed, "Deal with this. I'm taking the ring back to Her Majesty. I'm already running late." With that said, he turned, twin tails of long white hair whisking around him, and limped off down the alley.
The men flanking the one holding his gun out unleashed their firearms. She sighed in irritation. She had only one guess what dealing with her entailed, and it probably involved being shot. Alice had no intention of being shot. She intended to follow that white-haired man so he could lead her to Jack. These men with the guns were only going to slow her down.
Her leg sprung out with a powerful kick, sending the gun tumbling out of the middle man's grasp. Before he could react, Alice spun, lashing out another kick that caught the man across the chin. The other two fired shots, but she had already ducked and rolled to avoid being hit. The middle man had been thrown backwards to crash into the garbage dumpster. Flipping to her feet, she decked one of the men, smashing his jaw with her strength. He hit the ground with a resounding thud. The remaining man, whether from misguided bravery or sheer idiocy, stayed where he was and fired off another shot.
He missed.
She grabbed the arm holding the gun, twisting it painfully and bringing the man to his knees. He was finished off when Alice slammed her knee into his face.
Leaving the unconscious men where they were, she skirted off down the alley in the direction the white-haired man had gone. She saw him run inside an abandoned building. Increasing her speed, she followed him. It was a large, mostly empty building with a wide, cavernous central room. Old wooden crates left from the building's earlier days littered the ground in heaps. Chains hung down from the crisscrossing metal beams emerging from the ceiling. The old man was across the room when she came in, running up a flight of stairs. She sprinted across the room at preternatural speed and completely bypassed the entire staircase by leaping to the edge of the upper landing. Flipping herself over the railing, she spotted the man's twin tails of hair disappearing down a corner. Thinking she had him, she smiled triumphantly as she followed him around the corner.
Her triumph died immediately once she witnessed something that, once upon a time, she would have thought impossible.
Standing at the end of the short corridor was a large, antique mirror with a thick, gilt edge. Instead of cursing his luck at having turned into a dead end, the white-haired man continued running as if the mirror was not there at all. Alice's jaw dropped when the man stepped into the mirror, the silver glass rippling like water, and disappeared.
"What the fuck?" she blurted aloud. Even for a Slayer, watching someone disappear into a mirror was a bizarre sight.
Once she quickly recovered from the shock, Alice realized she was left with a major dilemma. Should she follow the man into this portal and rescue her lover? Or should she wait and gather up information and reinforcements? Option two was, in her opinion, the preferred plan of action, as she had no idea where that mirror portal led and what kind of lifeforms she would encounter there. She had no weapons and she was not dressed for combat; she was not prepared for any kind of rescue mission. On the other hand, option one did not require nearly so much time. Time was a luxury her boyfriend may not have. Perhaps he could not wait for her to gather up intelligence, supplies, and reinforcements.
"Goddammit, Jack," she cursed, slowly advancing towards the mirror to see if there were any kind of inscriptions on it. "What the hell did you get yourself into?"
Like the ring, the mirror threw off its own mystical energy. It wrapped around the young Slayer, beckoning her towards it. The ring on her finger began to hum excitedly, as if it were being reunited with its soulmate. She lifted up her hand to see if the ring had started glowing, but it remained the same as when she had first seen it in the box.
Standing not even an inch from the mirror, she saw that neither the gilt edge nor the deceptively solid reflective surface bore any kind of inscriptions she could discern. The craftsmanship was excellent, she noted. Her sharp eyes could not detect a single flaw in the make of the mirror. She lightly brushed her fingers over the gilt edge. It was solid.
She frowned at her reflection. "Okay, time to make a decision, Alice," she told herself firmly.
It was plain curiosity that made the decision for her, in the end. She had merely wanted to see if the mirror would respond to her as it did the white-haired man, thinking the portal might possibly not work for her. She lifted her hand and slowly brought it towards the glistening surface of the mirror's reflective surface. Her hand slid through the surface, causing it to ripple ominously. She had intended to pull her hand out to deliberate further on her course of action. But, as sometimes goes in the life of a Slayer, intention and what actually occurs do not always agree. Once Alice stuck her hand in the mirror, she was pitched forward as if caught in a vacuum. Even with her miraculous strength, the girl could not resist the extreme force pulling at her.
With a cry of dismay, Alice was completely sucked into the mirror.