Friday, October 3, 2008

Chapter 104: No Place for Contemplation

~ While Andrew fished the keyring that Takyle had given him out of his pocket and began fiddling with the lock, Jaden turned around to keep watch on the hallway. The seconds ticked by as Andrew tried each key on the door, muttering his irritation under his breath as each one successively failed to disengage the catch.

"Andrew!" Jaden hissed. "Hurry the hell up, I think I heard something." Takyle immediately lifted the hand that she held her knife in and stepped around to Andrew's other side to defend if necessary. The latch clicked quietly and Andrew slipped through the door.

"Clear," he whispered out to Takyle and Jaden, and they followed him into the room. After pulling the door shut Jaden turned to look around the room that they had broken into. A huge mahogany desk filled a good bit of the floor space, and its own surface was nearly covered with stacks of papers and files. Andrew stepped around the desk and gestured for his teammates to join him.

"Guys, I found our packs."

"Fantastic," Takyle answered, coming around to pick hers up off the floor. Andrew handed Jaden's pack across the desk to him and set his own up on the desk chair to unzip it.

"Better check and make sure that your stuff is still actually here," he advised his teammates, quickly rifling through his own supplies. Takyle nodded and knelt to do the same as Jaden lay his pack on one of the only clear spaces on the desktop. For a moment all three people were silent as they took a quick inventory, but then Jaden looked up at Andrew.

"My journal is gone."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. It was right here in this pocket. It was the only thing in there."

Andrew looked over at Takyle and began to open his mouth to say something but whipped his head around when there was a quiet laugh from the door. Jaden spun to see the woman that he had taken to referring to as Ms. Scarlet in his mind there. She stood with her feet set wide, one fist resting on her hip, a scowl making her eyes look dark and vicious. Dried blood stained the front of her dress and all across the bridge of her nose and the undersides of her eyes was already taking on a sickly purple-green bruise. In her left hand she gripped a small leather-bound book.

"Looking for something, Sweetie?" she asked, her voice cutting the silence like an edge of steel. Jaden felt the core of his being flood with fiery heat and his vision narrowed. Of its own accord his hand moved to grip the knife that he had lain on the desk beside his pack. The fire rushed through his limbs and as a distant and ethereal thought in the very back of his mind Jaden heard himself make note of the fact that he had never in his life felt the kind of rage that was now threatening to take him.

"Give it back." To his own ears Jaden's command sounded as far away as his thoughts had and he wondered for a moment if he'd actually spoken it aloud.

"I don't think so," Ms. Scarlet responded, drawing her hand in to let the book rest against her stomach.

"Give it back to me now!" Jaden hissed, incapable of even thinking of holding the menace from his voice. Every second that she held his journal in her hand, against her body, his rage escalated further, and he did nothing to stop it.

Jaden could feel her hands on him all over again, pressing up against him, choking him, her body wrapping around him, her lips on his neck, her teeth, her fingernails biting into his skin. Trapping him, suffocating, hurting, killing. For a split second Jaden's vision went completely dark before one thing snapped into crystalline focus.

Her neck, bare and white, mere feet away. Whole. Not for long.

Jaden felt his hand lift, felt his fingers release his dagger on the upswing, flipping it in the air 180 degrees, grasping it once again, but lightly this time, barely caressing it, holding it only by the tip, only just enough pressure. His arm came up. He took aim.

Satisfying wouldn't be the word. ~

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