Loss for Words - Act 3
“Rachel!” Logan shouted, slamming the front door closed behind him. He marched into the kitchen to find her setting down the telephone. She was dressed to go out. “What the hell is this?” he demanded, slamming the document down on the counter.
“Your notice,” she said simply. “I’ve filed for divorce.”
Logan’s mouth hung open for a moment, his mind racing. “Wha— why?”
“Why don’t you ask Niki?” Rachel shrugged, obviously hiding the supreme anger on her own part. “And once you’ve asked her, why don’t you roll over and fuck her a few more times?” She turned to the small telephone table and slid her hand into a manilla envelope, pulling out a sheaf of enlarged photos. She tossed them onto the counter towards her husband where they slid apart to reveal several intimate encounters between the blond haired man and the blond haired woman.
Logan was speechless. He slowly reached down and lifted one of the pictures to look at it. In the corner was stamped a small W&H logo. “Where did you get these?” he asked, almost more offended than angry.
“I hired someone,” she said casually. Rachel stared at him with a mixture of anger and regret as he stared at the photo in disbelief. “I told you never to see her again. I gave us another chance because Hanna deserves parents who love each other.” There was a brief pause but he didn’t look up. “With my job at the hospital, my lawyers say I’ll have no problem... getting full custody.”
It took a moment for the words to register. Logan slowly raised his gaze from the picture. “You are not taking Hanna away from me.” When Rachel said nothing, Logan’s anger and most of all his fear mounted. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you take my daughter!”
“Our daughter,” Rachel said poisonously, “whose mother alone loves her enough not to jeopardize the family by screwing around.”
Logan’s mind was racing a mile a minute now. His thoughts were a jumble of chaos and anger. Just this morning he had kissed Hanna like he always did—
“With your criminal record, I’m also getting a restraining order against you,” there was retribution now in Rachel’s eyes, a cold fury that had finally found an outlet. A way to hurt him as deeply as he had hurt her. “You’ll never see her again.”
Logan reeled. He staggered back from the kitchen and tore out the front door to his little brown car. “This isn’t over,” he said quietly as the door closed behind him. This isn’t over, this isn’t over, this isn’t—
Rachel slowly collected the photographs and slid them back into the envelope. She carefully closed the envelope and turned it over in her hands. She turned it over again. Turning it over once more she couldn’t keep from sobbing.
She tore the envelope and its contents across the middle and held her hands to her face, crying in anger and regret and at the loss of the life she had and at the cruel universe which had engineered the whole thing.
Logan sat behind the wheel of his car, swallowing hard, his face finally contorting in anguish, tears spilling down his cheeks. “This isn’t over,” he whispered hoarsely, fighting to keep from breaking down.
With a furious screeching of tires, the little brown car pulled out of the driveway and rocketed off down the street. He didn’t know where he was going, but if he didn’t do something, he felt like he would curl up and fade away. With the intensity of the power inside him, driven by grief, that is exactly what he felt would happen. So drive. Drive, he told himself.
Without thinking he turned right instead of left once he’d entered Manhattan, heading away from his office and the offices of Wolfram and Hart. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t going there. Not now.
With tears drying on his cheeks, he pulled the car onto 37th Avenue East and stopped in front of the little stairwell which led down to the most familiar place his dark soul knew. He jumped out of the car, knowing now who he was looking for.
Niki. Those pictures... they weren’t of him, he knew. It was Loki. It had to be. Niki had said — where the hell was she? He stormed down the stairs to the Nail Biter and shoved the door open. The clientele looked at him for a moment, then turned back to their business.
Not one of the faces that looked was Niki’s. The place was still packed. Whistler, in a back corner, avoided his gaze. Logan didn’t care. He didn’t want to talk right now. He wanted a drink. He wanted a drink very, very badly.
Halfrek looked out from the shadows of the darkest corner of the Biter as Logan sat himself down at the bar. She shifted her gaze haughtily back to her companion. Taking hold of her champagne flute, she raised it and heard it clink with that of her companion.
“To vengeance,” Hallie said with no measure of true enjoyment.
Anyanka nodded with satisfaction. “To vengeance.”
Niki’s hands were trembling as she walked through the crowd to the table Jessica had used as her palm reading headquarters. The gun was hot in her hand from being tight in Forster’s fist for who knows how long. It was heavier than it looked. She had never been very good at public speaking. She was the drummer – the one in the background that you could never really see, doing all the work with wooden sticks.
She passed the handgun to her other hand, wiping the sweat from her palm onto her jeans. Nervously, she stepped up onto the table. Amazingly, nobody noticed.
A little girl wearing a bright pink T-shirt skipped along beside her mother, holding her hand happily. Niki blinked. The seconds ticked by of which she knew there were a finite number.
After an indeterminate number of heartbeats and lifetimes, she raised the gun above her head and fire a single shot into the air. It was louder than she had imagined it would be.
The little girl in the pink shirt cried and was swept into her mothers arms as a sort of shockwave sent the crowd moving away from the source of the shot.
Niki blinked, her mind growing numb. It was so unreal, looking down at them like this. They were all staring at her, their eyes wide. She slowly brought her arm down and wanted to let the gun drop, but her hand wouldn’t open. She looked at it, shook it a little, but the fingers on that hand suddenly refused to accept her authority.
In seconds, a mall security guard was shouting at her. His words, she assumed, were something along the lines of “drop the gun,” and “put your hands behind your head,” but Niki wasn’t really listening to him.
She should have been staring at the man with the bomb on his chest who was ready to turn this crowd of people into ashes, but instead she was staring at the little girl in the pink shirt and time was slowing down.
They couldn’t all die here... she hadn’t fought the horned demon yet. Unless everyone died but her. Couldn’t the girl in the pink shirt live too? Wouldn’t that be okay?
“Ma’am!” the guard shouted between shouts into his radio. “Put down the gun and put your hands where I can see them!”
“I... uh... I have some things to say,” Niki said distantly, speaking to the little girl who was crying louder than the security guard was shouting.
“Everyone get away from the table!” the guard hollered, trying to shove people farther away and barking into his small radio. He wasn’t armed and was going to have to wait for the police.
“Uh, first,” Niki said, squinting uncertainly as if reading from a distant cue card. I’m not a failure. “I want to say that I’m a failure. And that I really regret having... killed so many people since I was called.”
She glanced over at the spot where Forster had been standing and it took her several seconds of staring to realize he wasn’t there any more. She looked a little to the left, then to the right before spotting him. He raised his eyebrows to let her know she was running out of time and he wasn’t impressed.
“I killed Megan Brandon,” Niki said heavily, the words coming out like the feeling of throwing up. She grimaced a little at the taste it left in her mouth. “I... uh... killed Megan Brandon.” She blinked, finally looking back to Forster to see if he was satisfied. He was not.
Niki looked down to the gun in her hand, annoyed that she hadn’t dropped it yet. Forster was right: if she didn’t drop it before the cops came, they’d probably shoot her. There was something on the butt of the gun, a string through the little hole and a piece of paper on the string. Looking up again, the security guard caught her attention. He was trying to calm somebody down. A woman.
“I killed some people two years ago,” Niki continued as if in a dream, “it was on Atlantic Avenue. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.” She swallowed, frowning as the woman by the security guard turned around.
“You have to get these people out of here,” the woman was saying frantically, her tone urgent and pleading, “they’re all going to die!”
“Jessica?” Niki said with confusion. “I thought I killed you!” This elicited some gasps and mutters from the crowd which began to back up some more from the crazy punk with the gun.
“Niki!” Jessica turned on her, “come down, please don’t kill them!”
Niki was shaking her head, none of this making sense. “What are you talking about? I’m not going to—”
“Yes you are!” Jessica shouted, the security guard pulling her back by the shoulders. “You’re going to kill them all!”
Logan slammed the shot glass upside down on the bar. Without hesitation, the barkeep filled another for him and Logan threw it back with a grimmace.
“That’s fuckin’ tough,” the young vamp said beside him, a tall glass of pig’s blood spritzer before him. “My wife was the first person I sired,” he indicated a table in the back where a young vampire woman was getting comfortable with several demons. “Biggest damn mistake in my unlife.”
“She’s going to fucking take my kid,” Logan said as he shook his head to clear the effects of the shots. “Just — out of the blue, you know? We were fine, since, dammit!” He grabbed the bottle from the barkeep and poured himself another measure.
“Invite me into your place,” the vamp offered, “I’ll take her out for you.” He laughed, taking a sip of his drink. “Thought I’d kicked human blood once and for all... you know, to keep the goddam Slayer off my back, but then I got my hands on this...” he rolled up his sleeve to show the silver IXI bracelet. “So, seriously, I could take care of the old lady, no problem.”
“Nah,” Logan sank down a little lower in his depression. “Once I invited you in, you’d just eat my kid too. You vamps are fucking predictable.”
The vampire scoffed. “Jeez Louise, I was tryin’ to help. I don’t have a lot of skills, you know? Used to be a big computer programmer for that company... you know? That big company? But they fucking fired me... So the very next night this jerkoff bites me and has the gall to let me drink his blood, like he’s Satan’s gift to—”
“I won’t let her take my Hanna,” Logan said sternly, squaring his shoulders and sitting up a little straighter. “I’m a fucking lawyer... I’ve got a firm. I can fight this.”
“Yeah,” the vamp said with a grin, “fight it! Don’t take that crap! If there’s one thing I know about women, they—”
“I could win the suit— my criminal record fits on a post-it, and it wasn’t violent or anything...” he frowned. “Well, it was vehicular manslaughter, so it was kinda violent. But the guy was a goddam watcher! He was going to take Hanna away from me!”
“Damn,” the vamp said with raised eyebrows. “Everybody’s after the bite-size, aren’t they? How come?”
Logan rolled his eyes and threw back another shot, slamming it down with the others. He knew he was far too drunk to be talking about this, but he was also too drunk to care. “I don’t know,” he said with irritation. “The British dickhead wanted her because... she’s all chosen and shit, and my wife,” he held up a finger, “is just too used to getting everything she wants... yeah...” he blinked away a little confusion. This was Rachel he was talking about, right? “Yeah... she’s got her own job... got her own friends she doesn’t tell me about... she has this investigator who’s been taking pictures of shit...” he glanced around the bar again, searching for Niki’s face. “Son of a bitch. The woman even went to my old lawfirm to file for divorce. Fucking insulting.”
“Looks like you were on your way to losing the pants in that marriage a while before the divorce,” the vamp said with a little amusement.
“You wanna see the fucking pants?” Logan grabbed the bottle of tequila from the barkeep which he had been working away at, one shot at a time, and pulled out the stopper. With a flick of his wrist, he doused the vamp with the clear liquid. “Here’s the pants,” he said through clenched teeth.
His eyes lighting up, a spark appeared before the soaked vamp, jumping onto his damp shirt. A blue wave of flame instantly enveloped him and the vamp jumped from his stool screaming and trying to brush the flame from him. Within seconds he was dust.
Logan spun back around to the barkeep, his eyes still glowing. “You better have another bottle of that back there...”
“Niki!” Jessica finally escaped the grip of the security guard and got to the edge of the table, “don’t listen to him— there is no bomb! I know what you saw — what you’re doing, but you have to stop!”
Niki looked down at the gun again. There was the little piece of paper tied to the handle. B, it said. Exhibit B. “He’s standing over there—” the Slayer looked up to where Forster had been standing. He was no longer there. Looking a little to the left, she spotted him again. He was shaking his head and his suit coat was unbuttoned again. Niki could see the timer counting down the seconds. One minute and ten seconds left.
“No,” Jessica insisted, taking Niki gently by the ankle as she stood at the edge of the table. “You’re still being deceived, there’s no Richard Forster: there’s only you with the gun, and if you don’t come down you’re going to get everyone killed!”
“Where did I get the gun?” Niki said distantly, trying again to drop it. It wouldn’t go.
“You stole the gun,” the seer insisted. “At the trial, don’t you remember? When the demons attacked, you went to the bench and took the gun.”
Niki looked down at the little tag on the gun. Exhibit B. This was the gun used to shoot agent Harrison. Snakeface’s gun. She looked back towards Forster with a frown. Again he wasn’t where he had last been. Now she couldn’t find him in the growing crowd. People were pushing and shoving to see the spectacle.
“Niki, put down the gun,” Jessica pleaded. “All these things you’re saying... you don’t need to say them— there is no bomb.”
Niki swallowed. Looking from the gun to the seer, her eyes caught the red of the timer. Forster was standing right behind the security guard. The guard was talking hurriedly to another officer in uniform.
“She’s trying to talk her down,” the guard was saying. “The police will be here in a minute.”
Niki watched the timer. Less than a minute. Less than a minute and all these people would be ashes. She looked down at the gun which shot Harrison. Had she taken it? She didn’t remember. Ashes. The Cremator strikes again.
“I can’t put the gun down,” Niki said honestly. “And we don’t have much time. I have to say—” she swallowed. “I’ve killed hundreds of people, and if I don’t hurry the hell up, I’ll kill you all too.”
“No!” Jessica shouted. “It’s all a lie! Just get down from the table and everything will be fine!”
“I’m really...” she frowned as her throat tightened. The little girl in the pink shirt was whimpering now, unsure of the danger. “...really sorry about everything. I just wanted to live my life. I didn’t know how much I’d hurt other people... I wish I could take it all back. I wish I had never been called as the Slayer.” She looked down at the gun, then tried to think in her head. How many seconds were—
With a loud bang, a gunshot scattered the crowd again. The two security guards dove to the ground and people began running here and there, unsure about anything any more. The little girl in the pink shirt was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Niki looked down to see Jessica’s face become blank. The seer’s features melted to the scaley visage of the demon Niki had killed in the warehouse. It took a smug step back from the table and crossed its arms, flashing a little smirk.
“Fine, you win,” with a little nod of acknowledgment, it dissolved into thin air before the Slayer and the bustling crowd’s eyes.
Most of the crowd, however, were not looking at the Slayer anymore or the demon. They were looking at the short, balding man in the brown suit. The crowd parted and Niki hopped down from the table to get a closer look.
Richard Forster lay on his back, his mouth open and a pool of dark blood behind his head where the bullet had exited. The gun was still clutched in one hand, but the timer on his stomach had stopped at five seconds. Niki swallowed, her face pale. She felt a little dizzy.
Assimilate later, she commanded herself, leave now. As the crowd pushed and jockeyed for the best position from which to see the dead bomber, Niki slipped away, finally pulling the gun from her trembling hand and dumping it in the nearest garbage can. The irony of it failed to amuse her.
She shook her head. What the fuck had just happened? Forster was real... he was a corpse on the floor. The gun was real... Jessica. Was Jessica real? Was she— had she been a Deceiver the whole time? Richard Forster... With a frown, Niki recalled having seen the name before. On the wall... in the cave. She was judged for the death of Richard Forster. And his wife.
The Slayer slowly lowered her head into her hands. She wanted to cry, but she felt too miserable to conjure up the energy necessary. All she wanted to do was forget. Forget today, forget yesterday and forget the memory she had of her death. Forget it all.
“It’s not fucking fair!” his hand came down on the bar and the multitude of shot glasses jumped.
“You give and you give and you give,” the vamp girl was nodding. “I was his perfect little wife for three years, then the little geek gets fired and sired in the same weekend! Am I free? No! He comes home and then it’s all eternity and scourge of New York—”
“I fought to protect them,” Logan said his eyes on the little glass mayhem on the bar’s surface. “I risked a hell of a lot to keep them safe and... happy. Hanna would be dead so many times over if it wasn’t for me...”
“But even undead, he’s still a geek!” the vamp girl, widow to Logan’s earlier drinking buddy, was sharing the last of a bottle of Jack Daniels with the ranting conjurer.
“And Rachel,” Logan scoffed. “If I hadn’t enchanted her wedding ring, she would be so dead right now. I mean seriously. There is so much crap going on that she doesn’t get... but no, a couple of Polaroids and flush: fourteen years of marriage down the toilet.”
“Who could blame a girl for getting around? Fun is fun and it wasn’t as though he was destined for anything but Slayer practice anyway.” The girl grimaced as the shot went down. “I’m glad he’s gone. I’m glad you finally taught him a lesson.”
Logan raised his glass to that. “To lessons.” He drank. “Damn, I wish someone would teach Rachel a lesson. You know she doesn’t know the first thing about surviving in this world... I mean, what would she have done if she’d found Hanna outside with those vamps?” He scoffed. “Call the cops!”
“It’s amazing people like her are still alive,” the vamp agreed, pouring herself another. “And she has the audacity—” she struggled over the word, “to call you unfaithful. Take everything you have!”
Logan grimaced, but not from the J.D. “Someone should make her pay,” he said under his breath, his voice trembling. “I’d give anything if someone taught her a lesson.”
The vamp raised her glass again. “To giving anything,” she toasted.
Logan looked up at the girl for the first time since she sat down. “To giving everything.”
Tossing back her drink, the vamp slid down into unconsciousness, laying her head on her arms on the bar. Logan patted her on the back and stood.
“I gotta take a piss,” he said a little woozily. Staggering to one of the doors at the back of the bar, he didn’t notice as several of the demons began arguing in raised voices.
Michael took a little breath, running his hand over his short hair and adjusting the collar of his white shirt. He had found another tie for the occasion — not the blue one, but a subtle grey and he wore a pinstripe suit coat over it all.
With a little nod to himself, he raised his fist and rapped on the door. After scant seconds, there were sounds of movement behind the door and a few seconds later the door opened.
Rachel Kilpatrick forced a pleasant smile onto her face. It was clear she had been crying and was busy trying to hide it. She opened the door wider and forgot to speak for several seconds as she took in the sight of Michael in his suit.
“You’re early,” she said at last, glancing at her watch. She had obviously been waiting most of the day to go out, considering she was already dressed and nearly ready herself. She wore a long black skirt and a sleeveless burgundy blouse. Her brown hair was arranged stylishly around her shoulders. “Come on in, just let me get my things and we’ll go...”
Michael nodded gratefully as he stepped over the threshold of the house. He glanced to the left and saw Hanna sitting in the living room in baggy jeans and T-shirt watching television. She waved to him with a smile, but said nothing.
“Our reservation isn’t till seven thirty,” he said as she went up the stairs. “We don’t have to leave just yet...”
“You’re going out on a date?” Hanna called from the living room. “With my mom?” She sounded a little appalled, mostly at the thought of romance at her mother’s age rather than the threat to her parents’ relationship. Even though they had tried to hide it, Hanna had known from the beginning that her ‘happy family’ was a front for her sake. It touched her that both her mom and dad went to such trouble to pretend everything was fine in front of her, but seeing her mom with Michael made her just a little uncomfortable. “Does dad know?”
“Hanna,” Rachel called scoldingly from the top of the stairs. “This isn’t a date. We’re just friends going out for dinner. Your father’s busy tonight.”
“Yeah, right,” the girl said under her breath, turning her attention back to The Twilight Zone.
Rachel at last came down the stairs, imperceptibly more ready than when she had gone up. She moved to the kitchen and took hold of her purse, hurrying back to the door where she stopped and frowned. She glanced into the living room, then back up the stairs. “Michael?” she said uncertainly. There was no answer.
Something heavy pounded into the door and she let out a little yelp. Hanna jumped up from the couch in the living room and ran to her mother’s side as the pounding continued.
“Mom..?” Both mother and daughter stared at the solid wood door, an unspeakable shape moving behind the small frosted window.
Rachel stood in her nicest clothes, clutching her purse as some unidentifiable shape pounded on the front door. After staring at it, frozen, with wide eyes for several seconds beside her daughter, the pounding stopped. Rachel slowly opened her mouth. “Hanna... call nine one—”
The door exploded inward and they both screamed.
Logan staggered out of the washroom feeling weak and tired. He just wanted to curl up in bed and go to sleep for a year. He straightened, however when he saw the ruckus which had erupted at the center table and around the bar.
Two tall, vaguely lizard-like demons were shouting and threatening each other, occasionally slapping the other’s drink off the table between them. Logan moved around them and the spectators who were gathering in case a fight should break out.
Logan sat himself down at the bar and a little bulldog of a demon kept fingering the barkeep and hissing that he wasn’t doing his job. The vampire chick Logan had been drinking with was sulking now that no one was paying her tab.
“What’s all the heat about?” Logan asked her, reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniels. She merely sneered and slipped off the stool, finding a table farther away. Instead, Logan took the barkeep’s arm and asked him. “What’s going on?”
The demon with the dishcloth over his shoulder opened his hands apologetically. “Sorry, pal, they’re usually more professional about all this, but you were kind of nonspecific.” He pointed to the two fighting demons at the center table. “See the M’fashniks were trying to decide what qualified as the ‘anything’ you’d give... and then they started one-upping each other, and now we’ve got a full blown price war going on.”
Logan frowned. “Wait... what? They’re arguing about anything?”
The barkeep nodded. “And this guy,” he thumbed the bulldog demon and the three other similar demons who were hissing and muttering angrily at the bartender himself, “he and his friends are pissed because where they come from it’s my job to put you on a list and contact everyone and shit like that. They just don’t like that the Werlech took it first.” He looked at the little pug faced barflies. “But it’s not my fault that they’re a little slow.” The demon growled.
Logan closed his eyes and shook his head trying to make sense of it. “Wait... go back. The Werlech took the what?”
The barkeep blinked. “The hit. The Werlech demon took the hit you put out.” He began to pour Logan another drink. “Personally, I would have done it a little more discretely, since the Werlech demon isn’t exactly cheap. You did say you’d give anything so I wouldn’t want to be you when that son of a bitch comes to collect...”
“I said I’d give anything?” Logan said with confusion. “Wait... a hit on who?”
The demon nodded. “I agree — it was a poor choice of words, and now you’ve got my customers breaking my glasses. Thanks a lot.”
Logan turned around as the two M’fashnik demons overturned the table and began shouting and shoving each other. Suddenly Logan’s eyes widened. He spun back around and took the barkeep by the shirt collar, pulling him in close and breathing hard.
“A hit on who?”
The demon with the Jack Daniels frowned a little. “On your wife. You did say you’ve give anything... What kind of a bar did you think this was? Half the people here are hitmen and everyone here is open for business.” Logan slowly sank down on the stool again, his mouth hanging open.
Just then a sulking Slayer slid into the stool beside him. She snatched one of the many shot glasses and tapped it for the barkeep to fill.
“Hit me.”
The sun was now setting in the West, bleeding and staining the sky bright red. The sounds of screams and demon snarls had died away. Hanna hid behind her bedroom door, her eyes wide, her breathing fast and shallow.
The big thing —she hadn’t spent too long looking— had chased them up the stairs and had taken a swipe at Rachel. Hanna had ducked away and had heard the chase continue down the hall to her parents’ bedroom — but she had been too terrified to move or even call out.
Now everything was quiet. Was it too quiet? Wouldn’t mom have called out if everything were alright? These thoughts, swimming around and around in the girl’s mind kept her frozen behind the door, her eyes searching its bleak surface as she scanned the silence.
After several minutes, she slowly pushed the door away from the wall and stepped out of the corner, walking on the edges of her sock feet to avoid making noise. She looked out of her bedroom doorway down the hall and saw the orange light cast out of the other doorways from the setting sun.
Swallowing hard, she started down the hall to her parents’ bedroom at the end. She could see the door was slightly ajar and a wedge of red-orange light fled out into the hall. Her feet stepped as gently as she could make them, avoiding the places in the floor where it creaked.
When she reached up to brush a strand of hair from her eyes, she realized her hand was shaking. It was moving almost as fast as her heart as she moved inexorably forward. Unable to either make a fist or keep her hands still, she let them tremble at her sides, wiping the cold sweat onto her jeans.
The silence screamed at her. When she finally reached the end of the hall, her gut was churning. Everything was wrong. She couldn’t possibly find beyond this door that everything was okay. With a shaking hand, she reached out and pushed the door open further, looking into the bedroom lit with the bloody dying rays of the sun.
The back of the creature was turned to her, its leathery skin the color of charcoal. It held the body by its shoulders and was inhaling deeply from the mouth, its eyes rolling back in pleasure. With a thud, it dropped the corpse to the floor and snorted in satisfaction.
Hanna’s eyes widened in horror and she clapped a hand over her mouth to cover the scream. The little sound that did escape caught the attention of the massive Werlech demon as it finished collecting its fee from the body at its feet.
With a snort from animal nostrils, it turned its great head and its two pronged horns scraped the ceiling. Looking at the stunned girl for the space of a heartbeat, it opened its eyes wider and bellowed a blood-curdling animal call that gripped Hanna’s heart like a vice.
The girl turned and dashed back down the hallway as fast as her legs could carry her, tears of terror clinging to her lashes. It was instinct which made her turn back into her room instead of taking off down the stairs and out the door: the privacy of her bedroom seemed to promise her the most impenetrable protection.
Slamming the door closed with a sound of panic and terror, she realized she was trapped here and the footsteps of the thing down the hall were growing closer. Her hands trembling furiously, she searched her room for a hiding place and her gaze settled on her closet.
She pulled the door open, throwing aside the outfits which hung like a thick curtain behind it, and slid as far back into the darkness as she could, pulling the door closed behind her. Wriggling back behind a tall box, she pulled her knees up to her chest and cried silently in terror.
It was in that darkness and terror that she came to realize that she was not alone in the closet. With a little yelp, she felt movement next to her and looked up to see in the near blackness the familiar outline of the face.
“Michael?” she said, her voice trembling. He took on of her hands in both of his and held it tight to keep it from trembling.
“I’m here,” he said gently, a little sadness in his voice.
Hanna was still breathing fast her eyes searching for his in the inky darkness. From behind the fabric and the closet door, Hanna could hear the sounds of the demon entering her room. It tossed objects here and there, slamming its fists through her furniture.
“Are you going to save me?” she asked in a desperate whisper, her hand shaking despite Michael’s comforting grip. She felt both his hands on hers and she could tell he wasn’t scared at all.
In the darkness, as the demon approached the closet door, a wing of silky white feathers drew around Hanna and held her close as Michael laid her head on his chest. She felt his steady, strong heartbeat.
“Yes, I am.”
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