CC: Chapter 2 - The Witching Hour

[ellet]

Gina pulled her blade free from Robert's stomach with something like manic satisfaction plastered across her face. She switched hands with the knife and then wiped the slippery blood off her hand and onto the thigh of her pants.

"Don't forget about her," she said to Todd, pointing at the apparently unconscious girl with the knife. "I'm going after the witch."

Gina took a deep breath and ran headlong and knife first into the kitchen.

[Usdrothek]

Up until Gina spoke, Todd had been frozen in horror after the man's head was destroyed utterly by his pistol shot. Although he was around guns often, and his gang friends liked to wave them about with a great deal of machismo, this was the first time he had shot anyone......and killed anyone in such a violent way.

Gina's words snapped him out of it.

The Witch! The Kitchen!

Tightening his grip on the gun, Todd is driven by fear and ignores the unconscious woman and rushes after Gina towards the kitchen.

[Mort]

Gina and Todd walked over broken glass, milk, and blood to get to the kitchen. The kitchen was dark . . . filled, in fact, with an unearthly blackness, and at the center of that blackness stood the witch. They couldn't see her, not exactly. They could see the glinting blade of the long kitchen knife she was holding, and they could see her eyes, pale and glowing. And they could feel her presence, big and old and entirely malevolent.

The witch spoke, and her voice was a monstrous croak now. "It's not too late for you to leave. Run away, run far away, and I will show mercy."

[ellet]

Gina froze in her tracks at the words. Her hand clenched the knife so tightly her knuckles were white, but she was paralyzed by a internal tug-of-war playing out in her head. All at once, more than anything else, Gina wanted to stab the witch to death with her knife, and more than anything else, she wanted to run away from the monster and her blade as fast as she could.

[Usdrothek]

"You've shown us your kind of mercy already...." spits back Todd, now filled with a mixture of fear, anger and adrenaline.

Todd raises his pistol to aim just below those glowing eyes he could see in the unearthly darkness, at where he guesses could be the witch's chest. All the people involved in this mess flash through his mind, many had died horribly......and he didn't want to be the next one to go.

".......Here's mine!" he shouts as he squeezes the trigger.

[Mort]

Todd's gun went off with a BANG. The muzzle flash illuminated the kitchen like lightning, revealing the witch in all her pathetic glory. She was the same old woman from the Comfort Towers, dressed in a shabby housecoat, but her face was screwed up in a monstrous snarl and she cast an abnormally long shadow.

Todd's struck the witch right in her forehead. She stumbled backward against the kitchen counter and then sank to the floor, trying to mouth something.

[ellet]

Sanity crept slowly back into Gina's skull, now that she saw the witch dead and gone. She dropped her arms and stared dumbly into the kitchen. After a few seconds of silence, "We should go," she mumbled.

[Mort]

While the "hunters" contemplated their next move, a low moan reached their ears from the living room. It was the girl . . . she was waking up.

[Usdrothek]

Todd couldn't believe it was over that quickly. After all the tension over these past days, it couldn't be over just like that...could it?

He stares at the fallen body of the witch for what seems like an eternity, before the stirring of the young woman snaps him out of his stupour. His instincts kick in. All those times doing 'jobs' with the gang hit home.

"$%&@! lets get out of here." he says nervously, edging for the door, taking a last look at the witch.

He knew that that girl could ID them, and that he had put a bullet in someone she cared about. Witch or no witch, Todd was scared she would hold a grudge.

[ellet]

Gina raised the knife and stared at it for a moment. Then she stepped back into the living room and looked around, like she was looking for something. In fact, she could only hear a TV announcer-style voice screaming in her head, "Don't leave any clues." She had the knife in her hand, and she didn't think she'd touched anything except for the girl. Maybe she hadn't left any clues.

"$%&@! lets get out of here."

Gina snapped out of the endless loop that was playing in her head. She stuffed the bloody knife in her purse and followed Todd out of the hallway.

[Mort]

Todd and Gina stepped out into the hallway. The hallway was still brightly lit but empty. It was long, straight, and lined with doors to the various apartments. The carpet that covered the hallway floor was made of brightly covered squares and showed sings of excessive wear. The doors to the apartments were decorated with "welcome" signs, wreathes, and other homey touches. From where they stood Todd and Gina could see their way back to the elevator and to the stairwell beyond it.

[ellet]

Gina pulled her purse off her shoulder to free up her shirt. She grabbed her shirt by the collar and pulled it up over her nose, making a make-shift mask and then headed for the stairs without waiting to see if Todd was behind her. 

Reality was starting to set in, the ugly reality that they had just committed a triple homicide, and the frightening reality that they might be caught. Gina broke into a panicked run as she got close to the stairs.

[Mort]

By the time Gina and Todd had hit the stairs, they could hear voices behind them. People were in the hallway. By the time the were in the alley, heading for the car, they could hear sirens in the distance.

While they were in the car, Gina's phone rang. It was the little man . . . their contact. He gave them directions to another warehouse that served as a make-shift hunter emergency room. A doctor was on call there--a tall black man with prison tattoos--and he began to triage their wounds and treat them. He didn't say much.

In the middle of sewing up Gina's arm, the little man arrived with more coffee. He was pleased with their efforts and assured them that if they didn't leave any physical evidence behind (and they were sure they hadn't left any except maybe some blood), there would be nothing to connect them with the crime (he used the word "hunt") or to their dead companion left behind. In fact, the little man reassured them, their fallen comrade would probably be blamed. Sure, the girl could identify them on sight, or maybe produce a sketch of something, but as long as they kept their heads down, they'd probably be fine.

"Well, I'll leave you two to be doctored," he said as he turned to leave. "I'll be in touch."

His parting words seemed to imply that this hunt was only the beginning.