5:24am
A weak predawn glow was just starting to become visible through the curtains. Sickly yellow light filled the doorways of the kitchen and bathroom, hardly reaching over thresholds, like it knew there was nothing worth illuminating in the main room. Nothing that she could afford to keep looking at.
Salome struck a claw down her palm and squeezed a few drops of blood into the metal bowl on her knees. A vivid pink ribbon sat coiled among bits of wood, a crushed crystal, and pieces of a few other things that smelled foul. She scrawled a hurried note on a sheet of white paper from the journal she'd brought with her:
Taneth. I hope this gets to you. I need you to come to the address on this paper. It's important. I need your help.
It lit up in a rush of blue flame, and she threw it into the bowl. A moment later, the entire mixture puffed a cloud of grey smoke that sparkled.
There came a sigh from a compact mirror laying open next to it. "Now we wait."
Salome would not have to wait long because the Taneth monster was on the move and causing mischief amongst random citizens of the Rhydin town. There was no subtle knock but rather a boot to a door or window, whichever she happened upon first. And there she is standing with the very early morning behind her like a cloak.
Salome leaped to her feet with a squawk, the bowl upending on the floor at her feet. She wasn't in any condition for this, for any kind of fight, but the way she stepped forward and put out one hand was like she expected the Nephilim's body behind her to obey. Like she expected him to move, or tell her that he could take care of himself.
But he couldn't. He couldn't do any of those fucking things anymore.
She'd picked a corner unit, close to a fire escape for obvious reasons, and when she raised her hand to the window, a whorl of invisible force blew it open so hard, cracks appeared in the glass panes. Her pale, damp face was grim, black smudges under puffy eyes, and a tremble to her mouth and chin that she could not stop. "Taneth?" cautiously. Warningly.
"What, chickeybum? You called me." She pointed.
"Holy shit, it worked."
"Of course it worked, it's my spell," the voice rang again, brusque.
"Shut up," Salome snapped, then turned her gaze back to Taneth. "I'm----yeah. Yeah, you're right. Um. Come. Come, uh---in. I guess." She dried her palms on her leggings, then smeared them across her face. "I, um. I've.....I've got... There's," she huffed in exasperation and drilled her fingertips into her eyelids. "Just come in........"
"Who were you talking to?" Taneth leans just a bit and walks into the room like it belongs to her. "You are being strange and talking funny. I do not like it and will bite you."
"Nobody."
"Nobody?"
"Nobody right now," Salome hissed at the compact. "You're not making this any fucking easier."
The room was wider than it was long. Taneth's window opened into the largest room of the unit she'd rented. A small table sat next to where she'd touched down, its vase on the floor nearby, spilling its flowers into a half dried puddle. The floors were covered in a short, tufted white carpet, bloodstains like pools of solid rust marring its spotlessness. A doorway led into the bathroom. To the right, the same, but to a kitchen. There was a coffee table behind Salome, where an open compact sat among a myriad of other spellwork paraphernalia.
And to her left, a couch. An occupied couch. Sprigs of messy dark hair poked up over the couch's arm, though they did not move.
"Look, Taneth, it's been a really bad day, and a really fucking awful night and just--- You.........you knew.....knew...........Cris.... Right? You knew him.....?"
"Of course I did. Crissy and I were bestest friends because he even killed me once." Looking around, eyes pause on the compact and she wanders to peer at it. "We do not talk about that because it makes him cry." Looks over to Salome. "Why? He is my Crissy."
"Crissy?" The white face in the compact looked back, delicately amused.
She has her answer from Taneth, and she almost lets herself get taken in by it. Talking about his life, what he'd done here. Killing his friend, she wondered what that meant. Why he never told her about it? When had he started listening to her when she said she didn't want him in her life? Why did he have to start?
Salome pushed her hand back through her hair. Straight now, because she'd done it so much, it looked frazzled and brittle. A black wealth of brambles.
"You're wasting time, Salome. You need to tell her -now-."
"Give me a second!!" A tremor went through the floor. The coffee table behind her rattled, skidding a few inches to the right, so did the small accent table underneath the window.
The length of one toned, Marked arm slid from its rest on a torso until the wrist hit the floor. Long, scarred fingers remained half curled. Then, stillness. Salome moaned and turned away from the couch, pressing her hands up into her face.
Taneth is not a patient one when she had been in the midst of fun and this is definitely not fun. "I grow weary of this and I am leaving. You are being strange and keep talking about Crissy. I do not like it."
"No!! No, wait. Wait, you can't leave. You---" she spread her fingers and ran them back through her hair. "Taneth, please, can you just---just come here? Please? Just....please, come here." She waved the little blond over with one hand while the other stayed on her face.
Long sigh of suffering and she trudges over to Salome. "Yes?"
There was another, long-suffering sigh that came from the compact.
Salome ignored it and waited until Taneth came close enough for her to set her hand on her shoulder. There was a quiver in her fingers when she gripped and directed Taneth to face the couch, and the body laying there. Cris was so damn tall, he filled it, the opposite armrest under his ankles. Layers of overlapping buckles held his boots together. Black denim tucked into them. A charcoal grey shirt, short sleeves. His eyes were closed, the black feather curl of his eyelashes still, and his face was, for once in probably the longest time, devoid of a frown. Devoid of anything.
He could have been asleep, if his chest moved. But it didn't. He lay still. One with the furniture. Like a throw pillow, adding to the decor.
"Youwerehisfriend," Salome said in a rush.
"You wanted me to see him sleeping?" Stares at Salome. "Of course I am his friend and you will wake him up with all your strangeness."
"Oh, for God's sake," said the compact. "Look, call me back when she gets it? When you can move on? Because this is going to take forever, and I really, really have better things to do." Behind them, the compact snapped shut of its own accord.
"Taneth.........Taneth, he's not-----he isn't sleeping, he's---" Was she really going to say it? Did she really have to say it? Was Taneth really going to make her fucking say it? "He's, um...." She pressed her knuckles into her cheek. "He.....uh," she exhaled, watery. "He, um...........he.........he died, Taneth. He died. He's dead."
She stares at Salome a tick or two or a million. Her gaze shifts to Crissy then back to Salome. "What did you do to him?" Frowning. "You hurt my Crissy and I will now have to make you pay for his hurts." She seems pretty serious about this. Deathly so.
Of all the things she expected, that wasn't one of them. She took her hand from Taneth's shoulder and screwed up her face, the shapely line of her mouth bunched in anger. "I didn't do fucking anything to him," she spat, not to save her skin from Taneth, but she'd be damned if she'd let anybody thing she'd do this. That she'd let this happen. That she could have done anything to him at all, despite eight years of fights and threats. "I didn't do it....."
She refused to look at the couch, and now refused to look at Taneth. Anger centered her. She pressed her palms into her temples, back along her hair. "But I need your help. We've got to bury him somewhere. Somewhere where he won't----where he won't........" exhale, "where he won't------where he'll be safe. Where he won't decompose."
"If you did not hurt him then who did?" Frowning. Taneth slips a flower from her hair and places it on Cris head. "He will be fine for a moment."
"A really, really, really evil bitch." Salome drooped until she sat on the edge of the table. Further until her chest pressed to her thighs and she put her head on her knees. She smelled smoke and flowers when she sniffed and swallowed the rock in her throat. "Can you help him?" she asked her legs. "I'm not going----this shouldn't have happened. We thought-----we thought we..........we thought we---d-did it...."
"Of course I can." Eyes roll. She has gotten good at the eyeroll. "But someone must get in trouble for this." For some reason, Taneth cannot cry. But she does touch Cris' head. "He can go to ground like I did. He can have the blue flowers. The ones called angelface."
Brow cold to the touch, stiff like stone. The darkness of brows and lashes, his hair and the stubble on his jaw looked black against the dead pallor of his face.
Salome can't do anything but nod. Nod into her knees, and shudder when Taneth says angelface, as one of his easy smiles sprang to her mind and she wouldn't describe it any other way. She rocked. Back and forth on the table, a high keening in the back of her throat as one strong sob was pulled thin and quiet. She'd cried so much, her head felt like it was going to split open. Brains in her sinuses, beating and hurting.
"How are you going to get him there?" Looks to Salome.
She shook her head. "-----unno, I dunno, I," sniff. She wiped her face on her legs, tucked her hair back with frantic claws. "I don't---there's cars here, right? Like, with motors? Do you people have taxis?"
"I do not know." She shrugs. "I walk or run everywhere." She really does. "You must find out because the longer he is not there then the less I can do."
"Okay. Okay. Okay, um. Directions. Directions, how do I get to your---wherever you need me to go?"
Sticks a flower from her hair onto Cris' mouth. "How did you call me?"
"A sp---spell. It, um. I used.....the ribbon you gave me. So it'd get back to you."
"Spells." Bahs and she removes another ribbon and ties it around another flower from her hair. She offers both out to Salome. "This will show you the way and I will be waiting there. Take too long and I can do nothing for him."
"Okay." She took both, carefully, grateful for some tangible in her hands, something to do. Steps to take, a plan to follow. Something to distract her from the body on her couch. "Okay. I'll go now. I'll figure it out right now. Thanks.......thank you, Taneth. Thank you."
She nods. "My Crissy will be fine. That is why we are bestest friends." She could be deranged.
They'd both be deranged, then. Somehow, the creases on her face evened out a little. She ran her fingers under her nose. "You're fucking right, he'll be fine. Thank you, Taneth."
(Thank you, Taneth!)
