Halloween Horror (Pt. 8): An Interlude to the Horror

Halloween Horror (Pt. 8): An Interlude to the Horror

--- Valentina ---

Operating separately from the Scarecrow was a bit of an experience, one she usually tended to avoid given how hard it was to focus when there was some part of her at the back of her mind repeatedly nudging her to pay attention to what the Demon was doing.

Normally this wouldn’t be so bad as the Demon tended to enter a sort of half-asleep hibernation when she told him to stay somewhere or protect something, only waking up when whatever part of its inhuman mind decided that it actually needed to think and act rather than simply laying in wait like a predator.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that they were splitting their attention in two directions tracking down the Whitaker kid, she’d let the Scarecrow rampage as long as it focused solely on Creeps rather than any stray the Demon came across. Something that almost hadn’t been enough to keep some of the other Hunters from attacking the Demon, but luckily the few to have spotted him seemed to recognize the Scarecrow as her Demon. (Knew picking that fight was the right call…)

(The Scarecrow pinned the struggling Creep to the ground, savoring its desperation for escape despite the fact that the creature felt even less fear than most animals. After a moment, the Demon opened its mouth wide enough for its jaw to crack before biting into the Creep and filling its mouth with a delightfully bittersweet sort of rusted copper.)

She shook her head, befores pulling her mind away from her pet Demon and turning her attention back to Artemis, Audrey, and the world around her. Her eyes briefly took note of the magenta sphere in one of Artemis’s hands as the duende stood in the middle of their little circle and the green glow of Audrey’s eyes and hands as she led them towards Jon.

A quick glance around made sure there was nothing stalking them in spite of Artemis’s spell she rolled her shoulders feeling more than a little bored as the occasional Creep Corpse did little for her beyond making her itch for another fight with Whitaker, as his body count began to rival her own even with the Scarecrow still adding to hers.

Deciding to try and combat her boredom she walked up to Artemis and asked her, “How’re you holding up?”

“I’d be doing better if we were focused on anything other than finding this… thing.” Artemis admitted, her hands never wavering as the duende continued to hold her spell engine with one hand and calibrate it with the other in a mildly hypnotic display.

“Hmm… What exactly do you see when you look at Whitaker?” She wondered, because while she felt something off about the boy from time to time she’d yet to see anything worth as much fear and protest as Artemis was displaying. (She didn’t even have this much of a problem with the Scarecrow… Or she did, but she got over it pretty quickly.)

Artemis visibly paused for a moment, even if her fingers didn’t stop moving.

“Something… big, dark, and bloody.” Artemis eventually answered. “I’ve avoided looking at him with my spell sight since, but I can still remember the way his shadow… looked back at me.”

She felt a ripple of the other girl’s fear as Artemis shivered, and she found herself once more disliking the idea of Artemis being scared of anyone other than her, before shaking her head clear.

“Well, he’s not exactly big or dark but I can definitely see the bloody.” She admitted, as they passed another Creep corpse and she took a moment to mark it.

(Any idea what it means when a shadow looks back at someone?) She asked the Scarecrow as she also put a pin in the Scarecrow’s latest kill as the Demon found a sign for what street he was on.

(“A few things… Especially when someone bathes in Madness like this kid apparently does.”) The Scarecrow answered. (“Usually it means something you don’t want looking at you is looking through them.”)

(Is he a threat?) She frowned, both at the Demon’s words and Artemis’s still dower mood.

(“No more than anyone else.”) The Scarecrow assured her, a grin to its voice as it tried to stoke something she couldn’t quite feel.

“Don’t worry.” She told her duende, gripping her shoulder in assurance. “I may not know him well but he seems to like Audrey so I doubt he’s going to try anything.”

(And if he does try anything, then I’ll just DeVoUR hIS SOuL.)

--- Artemis ---

She appreciated what Val was trying to say, but given what she could pick up in the air alongside what she’d seen hiding behind Whitaker’s ‘Nice guy’ persona, she was pretty sure he was as much a beast as he was a man. And like a wild animal she wasn’t in any hurry to get close to him, knowing that he could easily bite her if feeling threatened in any way.

The numerous dead Creep’s they’d found did little to reassure that that bite wouldn’t be fatal.

So if left to her she’d simply avoid the other teen and hope for the best. Or at least that would be the plan if her glorious leader hadn’t developed this odd obsession with dragging the dangerous boy into their midsts.

In the end though she was coming to the conclusion that she’d just have to accept that despite feeling something was wrong with him, both of her companions were content to believe that this was an exception to his behavior and not the truth beneath his mask.

(Maybe I should ask Miss Edme what she thinks?) While she’d technically graduated her apprenticeship program as far as the Arcane Association was concerned, the older woman was still her mentor and told her to come by anytime she had an interesting problem.

(And this whole mess is one definition of ‘interesting’...) She had to admit bitterly before deciding that if she wasn’t going to be able to escape the dangerous teen, then she should try to think things through with her mentor’s method by pondering the problem from a more scientific station as she maintained her projected spell.

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(Okay, so what is the phenomenon involving him?) She asked herself before answering. (He’s clearly dangerous, but everyone ignores it. That can’t be natural. Now what could the cause be?)

She thought for a moment before remembering something she only noticed tonight. (He reeks of Madness… that stuff is known to mess with the observer’s head, so that could be making him appear docile to everyone else. Perception filters are well within that energy’s domain, and they’re nothing like the invisibility spell I’ve got going given how they don’t simply bend light but outright twist your thoughts around.)

She’d read some theories on the subject and a place called Blackwell that Miss Edme had left out on her desk during one of their study sessions before taking care of something at the Witch’s Wares. Of course those weren’t the documents she was supposed to be reading and they were also mildly classified but she was a curious cat and (they were just sitting there out in the open. What was I supposed to do to ignore them? Bleh, everyone knows curiosity is the key to magical knowledge. And Miss Edme’s the one who taught me that so she’d completely understand!)

It was part of the reason she found Val’s mind so interesting since the girl never shied away from learning something, no matter how morbid, dangerous, or complex. Whatsmore it all seemed to be a natural part of her personality rather than a learned trait like her own curiosity was.

She shook her head, realizing she was letting her thoughts drift. (Right, so to summarize, Whitaker is dangerous, and people don’t realize it due to a Madness based perception filter.)

That fit what she knew, and would be a decent theory for the time being if it didn’t leave one painfully obvious question in, (why aren’t I affected by the perception filter?)

From what she’d read only people who were regularly exposed to Madness could build up a resistance to it at the price of having certain aspects of their personality underlined and emboldened, while also lowering their inhibitions in regards to those given personality traits.

But that didn’t really fit her situation given how she’d never been exposed to Madness outside of the Halloween Haunt and she knew that none of the Hunters at the meeting had given him a second look despite some of them being far more experienced with the event than her. (Meaning it has to be something else…)

She reviewed her interactions with Whitaker, and while most of them had been from an observer’s role, this just meant that she’d also witnessed other people’s interactions with him. (Or at least the interactions from after I saw him in the hall! That’s it!)

(Madness is influenced by the observer, and I observed him before everyone else. An observation that he noticed, and likely responded to by raising his perception filter. Only because I’d already seen beneath it, he can’t force me to see him as anything but his true self!) She realized as everything came together.

(Gah, I’m glad I figured that out.) She grinned to herself in relief. (That whole problem was just… Maddening.) She giggled.

--- Audrey ---

(This would be so much faster if I wasn’t the only one looking for Jon…) She grimaced, knowing that her sensory abilities were the most sub-par, but that she’d have no luck convincing Arty to help her actually find him and that they needed the Scarecrow picking off Creeps just in case this mess wasn’t enough to help them.

“How much further is he?” Said Demon’s Keeper asked from behind her.

“It shouldn’t be too much further, it feels like they’re keeping to a small area right now.” She answered, only half bullshitting the impatient Huntress about what she was picking up.

Normally any tracking she tried to do would be a complete and utter failure, but luckily even to her lesser sensory abilities Jon’s little bundle of nature magic was practically a signal flare blazing in the dark whenever she reached out with her nature magic. Meaning that she could theoretically track the two in the city so long as she had magic, making this a slow but steady pursuit.

Of course that did absolutely nothing to change the fact that when she said ‘keeping to a small area’ she actually meant, ‘probably fighting at the moment’ and that they’d probably get moving again the moment they killed whatever had caught their attention. (As he has several times now…)

She was starting to wonder where he was getting all of this stamina from, because short of Val -(who is contracted to a Demon)- she couldn’t think of anyone who could get into as many melee fights as Jon was in such a short time without needing at least a small break.

(Wonder how he’s cheating? Probably has to do with that fairy of his’s healing magic.) She figured, once more considering getting a fairy of her own despite not really caring much for the whole ‘Summoner’ thing.

Typically that branch of magic came in three flavors: ‘Something clearly shady’ as with Val and the Scarecrow. Codependent ‘sad magical cat lady’ as seen with Arty’s mentor Edme De La Croix. Or the arguably worse ‘useless in a fight without them’ Noah trying to mimic his grandmother.

And given how she had no intention of being taken advantage of, relying on, or giving up her independence to another creature she’d shied away from the topic, but between her healing and whatever it was doing to his stamina Jon’s fairy Pix was making a very solid argument for… (employing) one of her species.

She blinked as she realized that Jon had finished fighting, and really was standing still rather than seeking out another fight somewhere else.

(Huh, guess he finally ran out of stamina.) She grinned, noting how he seemed to be just down the street from them. (Great, don’t think I could’ve kept the girls from splitting for much longer.)

Picking up the pace a bit before he could catch his second wind, she told the girls, “Alright, he should be just around this…”

Her words trailed off as she took in the sight before her and froze.

In front of them was a small makeshift Sanctuary base with several metal barriers deployed all about and illuminated by deployable lights and the screens of several bulky electronic machines surrounding an old statue she could remember passing several times over the years.

On a night like this it wouldn’t be anything too surprising if not for the fact that the barriers were torn apart, half the lights had been knocked over and broken, and numerous corpses both human and non littered the ground alongside discarded weapons and splashes of crimson red.

Thankfully, none of the Creep corpses appeared to be moving, all of them having already been ripped apart and hacked into little pieces by a predator far more dangerous than any of them. As demonstrated by one Jon fucking Whitaker standing in the middle of all of this carnage, perhaps bloodied and bruised, but still standing while all of the monsters had stayed down.

Under normal circumstances she might’ve found the sight mildly reassuring, knowing that the monsters had been taken care of, the person she was looking for had been found, and her associate was still breathing. And she did, right up until she saw what he was glaring at.

A space above the statue where a bleeding hole was slowly being torn into reality by ten massive, desiccated fingers.