Fic: Always Darkest Before Dawn, Part One

[sunspot]

When it came time to write this one down in the annals of history, it would be chalked up to 'wrong place, wrong time.' Unfortunately, Parker had had no inclination of this when she went into the house, or else she probably would have made sure she was in a different place or at least a different time.

The con of the week wasn't anything stressful or mentally challenging, at least for Parker's part. All the heavy lifting was literally Eliot's problem this week, and Hardison was the one who had been up for forty-six hours staring at a computer monitor. Parker only had to slip into the rich jerk's house and lift the business deeds from the safe in the bedroom while Sophie kept him busy downstairs in his office.

She hauled herself up over the windowsill into his cushy bedroom and sucked in a sharp breath. "Nice," she muttered.

"Stop looking for decorating tips, Parker, and find the damn safe already!" Eliot hissed in her ear bud. Apparently getting pushed off a two storey balcony into a fuchsia bush made him more than a little tetchy.

"I'm going," she muttered, rolling her eyes at his typical impatience. She could practically set a watch to most of his behaviours and the way he got frustrated so easily when they were on a job was definitely one of those behaviours. Eliot's bitching? Must be Wednesday.

Parker went through the room methodically, checking all the most common places for hiding a safe. She found it hidden behind an ugly painting of dolphins playing poker (how, oh how, could anyone think that any animal playing poker was a cute idea?). The combination was pathetically easy to crack -- the last four digits of the guy's social security number -- and she found all the paperwork they needed right in front of her, like someone had known she was coming.

If the universe was kind and benevolent, maybe something would have tipped her off about the whole situation and she would have been able to get out right then. If the universe was even just mostly neutral or apathetic, maybe she would have tripped and knocked herself unconscious and had to endure a few days of lecturing from Eliot, whom Nate would have sent to rescue her. But as it was, the universe was one big, giant, hateful spite-douche, and so Parker heard the strange noise coming from the adjoining bathroom, and her cat-like tendency to curiosity drew her in like a fluffy blue monster to a plate of cookies.

Along with her cat-like affection for all things curious, Parker also had cat-like reflexes, which was the only reason she was able to keep her balance on the slick tile floor. She caught herself on the edge of the counter and only then noticed the water spilling over the sides of a bath tub and all over the floor, and even beginning to seep into the carpet she had just walked over.

Water was pouring over the sides of the tub and it only took a quick glance for Parker to realize why. A woman's nude body was floating face down in the claw footed tub.

Parker bit down hard on her tongue to stop from screaming and alerting the people downstairs that she was there. She clutched at the counter and tried to catch her breath. She was about to turn and run when something else caught her eye.

On the counter next to the elegant, swan shaped faucets, something shiny and red was glowing. Of course, her curiosity got the better of her and she all but slid across the wet floor to get a better look, eager to have a reason to take her eyes off the woman in the bath.

The shining thing by the sink was a necklace. Freshwater pearls, if Parker was any judge. The red glow faded and came back, almost like a heartbeat, even after she picked it up. The necklace didn't feel warm, it didn't cast any light, and it wasn't giving off a noise or a smell. Just a bright, red glow. Parker stared, transfixed, until she noticed the wet soaking through her shoes and socks. She hid the necklace in her pocket and ran for the window.

When Sophie asked later, in the van, why her shoes were wet, Parker didn't have any answer for her. She just shrugged and slipped her hand in her pocket. Her fingers brushed gently against the pearls and she didn't meet anyone's eyes. If anyone thought Parker was being strange, they didn't mention it.

--

Once Hardison dropped her off at her place, she locked herself in the closet and pulled the necklace from her pocket. She was gentle with it, because the pearls looked old and she was worried about them breaking or smashing, but also because it was still glowing, bright red and then fading and bright red and then fading. Parker lost track of time staring at it, trying to figure out why or where it had come from and why the dead woman had it.

Something flip-flopped inside of her when she wondered if the two were connected more closely. Did the necklace kill the woman? Parker thought quickly about all the reasons that was crazy and came up with plenty of them, and yet she couldn't shake the idea that the lady's death and the glowing necklace were somehow related.

Parker carefully twined the strand around her fingers, then unwound it, over and over again, watching the glow in the darkness of the closet and thinking. She knew something was strange about the necklace, obviously, but she just couldn't fit all the pieces together.

She fell asleep in the closet that night with the necklace tight in her hand.

--

Death, at that moment, was not so far away, looking over paperwork. Or maybe not. Death might have been reading, or more likely just watching things happen. No one really knew what Death was doing at the time, except everyone was quite sure that Death was waiting.

--

Eliot slammed the newspaper down on the table between Parker's cereal bowl and Hardison's elbow. "What the hell, Parker?" he demanded.

Hardison and Parker both looked up, startled.

"They found that guy's wife dead last night in the upstairs bedroom. Like, ten minutes after we cleared out," Eliot explained to Hardison, then he turned on Parker again. "How did you miss that? Were you asleep up there?"

Parker stared at him with wide eyes. "I... I'm not sure."

Eliot gave her a hard look for a moment, and then sighed and sat down with them at the table. "Jeez, Parker, be more careful. What if you'd gotten hurt?"

Parker wasn't sure if she was supposed to take that as 'what if you'd been hurt and then we'd all be sad?' or 'what if you'd been hurt and then I'd have to come bail your ass out?' but she decided to give Eliot the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant it selflessly.

"Sorry," she muttered. Eliot patted her arm.

While Nate and Sophie went over the new, improvised version of the plan that now accounted for the man's dead wife, Hardison went over some of the documents that Parker had retrieved from the safe. Eliot was reading over his shoulder and they were both reading out the relevant details, so Parker didn't have to crowd over them as well.

Nothing in the paperwork gave her any indication where the oddly glowing necklace had come from, but she wasn't surprised. They were just property deeds from some downtown properties the shady businessman had been using to house illegal workers and stolen merchandise.

Parker decided she had to go back to the house to look for answers, but she knew she couldn't very well declare her intention to the rest of the team. She wasn't supposed to be stealing for herself anymore, especially not a dead woman's jewellery.

It was two more days before she could get away. The job had gone swimmingly, as far as anyone could tell, and Nate was even promising a few days of downtime before they took on another one. Life was pretty swell. Other than the red, glowing pearls and the weird headache she couldn't seem to shake.

Parker staked out the house in a little blue Hyundai Elantra she had picked up a few blocks from her house and settled in to wait until the time felt right to break in again.

There were only a few lights on, shining through some of the ground floor windows of the mansion, but she waited until every single one went out before she slid from the car and approached the house.

Halfway up the lawn, Parker froze. There was someone else sneaking up to the house, someone who was clearly not as skilled or experienced in the art of breaking and entering as she was. She could see their bright white sneakers, almost fluorescing in the darkness. Parker pressed herself against the closest tree, trying to shrink down into invisibility. She watched the white-shoed person walking to and fro in front of the biggest bay window on the main floor and waited.

"Dammit, shit, dammit," the white-shoed person said. Parker could tell from the voice that it was a man, but she still couldn't make out what he looked like. "Stupid night time, stupid bars on stupid windows, stupid blonde girl..."

Parker's hand flew to her head of its own accord, even though she knew her hair was covered with a hat. She reached up and caught the lowest branch of the tree and pulled herself up very slowly.

The man on the lawn beneath her turned to leave, and, as he did, he looked up and locked eyes with Parker. She muttered a curse under her breath.

"Blonde!" the man called out. He immediately winced. "Blonde," he repeated, much quieter. "Come here. I want to talk to you."

Parker swung down from the tree on the side opposite the man and sprinted across the lawn. Unfortunately for her, he had predicted she would try something like that and tackled her to the ground two feet from the car she'd arrived in.

Her hands and knees burned when they scraped the asphalt, and she flipped over immediately, connecting her heel with the man's shoulder and pushing hard. He sprawled backwards on his ass and looked up at her with big, scared eyes.

"Sorry! Sorry. Jeez, I just wanted to talk to you," he said, holding up his hands in a surrender gesture, but then he winced. He looked at his palms. "Owwie," he said.

Parker paused with her hand on the knife Eliot had given her to wear in her boot. She was pretty sure a homicidal rapist wasn't going to say 'owwie'. "Who the hell are you?" she asked. If he said 'homicidal rapist', she would stab him, but not before. That would be jumping the gun.

"You took something that belongs to me. Kinda. A little. In a weird way."

"That really doesn't help me. I'm a thief. I take things that belong to a lot of people." Parker crossed her arms over her chest and continued to stare.

"My name is Paul. We've never met before, but you're the one who took the thing from the old lady."

She had the sinking suspicion she knew what he was referring to, but she played it off. Besides, with the number of old women she may or may not have robbed at one point or another, there was always room for error. "Again Paul, thief," she said, indicating herself up and down. "Taken a lot of things."

"You took something that belonged to the woman who died up there. I don't know what it was though, just that it was in the bedroom when she died and then you went in there and then it was gone." Paul was still sprawled on his back in the road, still regarding her with a mixed look of terror and attraction.

"It was in the bathroom... Oh."

Paul snorted. "Smooth. Now hand it over."

"I don't have it anymore," she lied.

He groaned and laid his head back on the pavement. "Fine. Just leave me here until a truck comes by," he said, crossing his arms across his chest like a wannabe corpse.

"Uh. Okay." Parker was already in the car with the key in the ignition before he realized what she was doing and struggled to his feet. She was gone before he could get her to stop.

--

When Nate had to stop his briefing the third time to nudge Parker awake, he got exasperated. "Parker, what is going on with you?" he asked later, when everyone had gone their separate ways to get ready for the next job.

She didn't say anything because she didn't know what to say.

" You know that if something's bothering you, you can tell me about it, right?"

Parker crossed her arms over her chest. "I know." She sounded so small, and Nate was exponentially more concerned. Parker tried to smile, which was a little alarming.

"Parker," Nate sighed again. "Whatever it is, we're here if you need us. Now go get some sleep, because we're going to steal a Malayan tapir tomorrow, and you need to be at the top of your game."

--

Parker took the red, glowing necklace to a pawn shop early one morning a few days later, after what was only referred to in the future as The Very Bad Idea Job (With Tapirs). The man behind the counter didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when he touched it, and he gave her a pretty good deal on it. Truth be told, she would have taken a lot less than what they agreed on. She just wanted to be rid of it.

"I think I'll give it to my daughter," he smiled fondly, folding the pearls across his hand. "She turned sixteen yesterday."

"Yeah. Great," Parker said, trying not to look bored. Her hands were itching to get the money and leave the necklace behind. By this point, she had decided whatever it was, it was more trouble to her than anything else. A little bit of trouble was alright, but between the scrapes on her knees from being tackled by crazy-Paul-in-the-white-tennis-shoes and the way the red glow kept her up all night (even if she hid the necklace in the bottom of her special trunk and put Bunny on sentry duty), Parker knew it was too much trouble.

"Oh, here she is now!" the pawn man beamed. "Come here, darling, I have a present for you."

The man rambled for a minute or two, and Parker barely noticed the plain looking girl, even after the man introduced them. What Parker did notice was the moment the girl touched the strand of pearls, the red glow dissipated and it looked just like a regular necklace. The girl smiled.

Parker furiously tried to think of something to say, but she couldn't. The man pressed some money into her hands and thanked her again, and Parker left without another word, mind in a daze.

--

Paul thought she was very attractive. So, she was weird, she'd kicked him to the pavement and yeah, she was a professional thief. But she was hot and blonde, so that made him forgive a lot of the other stuff. He watched her leave the pawn shop and turn the first corner she came to from his vantage point in the window of the coffee shop across the street. It wasn't even stalking, he reasoned, because he wasn't following her per say... He was only following whatever it was she had taken and presumably sold to the pawn shop.

The bell above the door jangled and the man behind the counter looked up. "Hello."

"'Morning," Paul smiled. "That young woman who just came in? She's my sister-in-law," Paul smiled sweetly. "I was wondering if you would tell me if she sold anything to you. See, I'm worried her and my brother are in some hot water, financially, and if she sold an heirloom to pay the bills or something..." Paul paused to put on his best concerned look. "Well, I just worry, is all."

The man explained the necklace and that he had given it to his daughter, and, just when he started to explain that no, he would not be selling it back, even if Paul begged, Paul saw that the necklace wasn't glowing.

He all but ran out of the store and up the street, turning the same corner that the girl had, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"Yeah," he sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. "This is definitely going to bite me in the ass."

--

Two weeks passed and Parker had almost fully forgotten the mysterious pearl necklace and the weird man in the white shoes. She hadn't forgotten how much she loved ice cream floats though, because it's easier to remember things that are delicious and creamy, instead of things that are odd and creepy.

There was a place a few blocks from hers that made great floats, and a quick glance at the clock on wall told her maybe it was still open. Parker took her favourite route to the ice cream shop -- across the rooves of all the buildings between there and her house.

When the wind rushed through her hair and the streets melted away beneath her feet, Parker always felt alive. She smiled down at the city, her city, while she jumped from the top of the one building to the low hanging roof of the next. It must have rained earlier in the day, because the roads glittered like the sky on a clear night.

Parker paused on the edge of the next roof and looked down, counting the people on the sidewalks. She saw a young couple kissing under a lamp post and smiled briefly to herself. If she were down on street level, she would be able to strip them of all their shiny valuables, probably even including belt buckles, without them ever taking their tongues out of each other's mouths. Ah, young love.

She swung herself onto the ladder on the edge of the building. She wasn't exactly planning on stealing belt buckles, but maybe she would walk by and see if they were wearing nice watches.

As Parker's feet hit the asphalt, a bus came around the corner. She noticed it, in the absent way people notice faraway music or a shadow passing overheard. She approached the amorous couple as the bus did and suddenly everything seemed to be moving very fast and very slow at the same time.

The couple broke apart while she watched. They were laughing, happy and bright, and Parker could hear them from where she stood, rooted to the spot. When the girl stepped back, her foot slipped off the curb and as she began to fall back into the street, her eyes went wide.

She must have been afraid of falling, or maybe just surprised, because Parker thought about it later and there was no way she would have seen the bus coming.

It flattened the happy, laughing, surprised girl into the road like an overripe jack o' lantern on November 9th. It could have been a passing fancy, but Parker thought she heard bone splinter.

It was not passing fancy that she heard screaming. Everyone else who was on the street was screaming. Even Parker screamed a little. She didn't run, although she wanted to, because that would draw unnecessary attention to her. Parker walked as quickly as she could away from the scene, and, just before she disappeared into the night like a good thief, she saw the pulsating red light in the gutter next to the paste that had once been a body.

Parker hid in the chaos on the street and used a spare second to pick up the keychain. She rounded the corner and was gone before the sirens even started sounding off in the distance.

--

Death was everywhere and anywhere that Death wanted or needed to be. Death was there in the street. Death was five hundred miles away at a hospital, sitting by the bedside of a single mother between her two young sons, listening to tearful goodbyes. Death was developing a fondness for good scotch. Death was watching fish swim in the deepest oceans depths.

--

The ice cream float was a wistful dream. Parker paced back and forth at the end of her bed, not stopping, but occasionally throwing suspicious glances at the offending keychain. It seemed harmless enough. Three keys and a little square piece of plastic with a picture of smiling cartoon kitten and the words 'World's Best Sister' printed on it. It was a little scuffed up, like it had been around for a while, but otherwise there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it.

Other than the fact it was glowing bright red for no discernable reason. That was something people would probably remark about.

After a few more minutes of pacing and thinking and worrying, Parker wrapped it in an old sock, put the sock in a box, used two locks to lock the box in a bigger box, wrapped the bigger box in an old newspaper and hid it under a duffle bag full of money in the back of the closet.

Then she put on a clean pair of pants and called Hardison and Eliot to take her out for a few shots of something strong. She thought the alcohol would settle her nerves and take the edge off the shock she was pretty sure she was in. She had seen a woman get flattened by a bus, after all, and that seemed like the kind of thing that would put a person into some sort of emotional shock.

The third shot went down much easier than the first two, and the fourth was practically pleasant. Parker thought, hey, maybe Nate was onto something, and then Parker stopped thinking altogether.

--

Even with a life full of questionable actions, deeds, words and people, this was by far the most suspect thing Hardison could recall. Or at least, he thought it was. All the alcohol he'd had the night before with Parker and Eliot was still swimming warmly through his veins and it was possible he was mistaken.

Pretty Blonde Girl Who Kicks Hard, the front of the package read.

It was post marked the day before, without a return address, but processed within the city. It was meant for Parker, that much was obvious (Hardison had been on the wrong end of one of those kicks once and it was absolutely not something he wanted to repeat), but with no indication of what it contained or where it had come from.

It could be something dangerous, he reasoned, and he didn't want Parker to open something that might hurt her. At the same time, if it was something that could hurt her, it was something that could hurt him, and he really didn't want to open it either. This was one of those times he wished Eliot was around. That man was indestructible -- unless the booze had killed him.

Hardison felt the package gingerly, like if he squeezed it too hard it would pop and spray him with goo. Hardison didn't like goo. It felt like a book or a stack of papers. Very carefully, bracing for possible goo or goo-related impact, Hardison slit the edge of the envelope open and tipped it over the table.

A shiny black book landed face down next to a stack of junk mail flyers. A little hand lettered card fluttered out of the envelope and just said 'congrats,' in scratchy letters.

Hardison frowned in mild confusion and flipped the book over to see the title.

The title read: The Great Big Book of Death.

--

Parker slunk into headquarters looking and feeling very sorry for herself indeed. She didn't smell sorry for herself. She mostly smelled like stale booze and terrible decisions. That's what Sophie told her, anyways.

Nate was about to start again about how worried he was and was anything wrong, and Sophie looked poised to jump in as well, when Hardison appeared from the other room, wincing and covering his ears.

"Please can we just whisper everything today?"

Sophie said he smelled worse than Parker, but she and Nate let it drop because drinking with friends was a very different bad decision type of creature than drinking alone.

Hardison gave Parker a strange look and a one armed hug. "You feeling better, mama?"

Parker mumbled something into the crook of his neck.

"That good, hmm?"

She smiled at him. It was weak and distracted, but Hardison appreciated the effort. "I'm all for trying to cheer you up anytime, Parker, but next time we should try apple juice, okay?"

--

"Kuk kuk kuk," hissed the voice in walls. It sounded like an opossum choking on a toad that was too big to swallow whole.

The thing had only just found its voice after so much time had passed and was still relearning how to make sounds. The thing with the strange new-old voice watched the woman with the golden hair. It hissed again and shrank back from the flecks of light thrown from her hair.

It did not like her at all.

--

That night, alone in his own apartment, Hardison thumbed through The Great Big Book of Death. He had absolutely not given it to Parker, because she had been quiet and sad and not like herself, and some sick weirdo's idea of a joke book was not something he wanted to subject her to.

Besides, Pretty Blonde Girl Who Kicks Hard was not actually addressed to anyone in particular, and so it wasn't like he was stealing someone's mail or anything. That would be a crime.

Hardison took a fortifying swig of orange soda and eyed the happy cartoon skeleton on the cover of the book. Little dead people were speared on each of his spooky bony fingers, like the most demented shish kabobs Hardison could imagine. The cartoon corpses were gory and each of them had an expression akin to... Well, despite the uncomfortable feeling it gave him, Hardison had to admit they looked like they were each in the midst of very serious orgasms.

It was the fact that the book was so cheery and brightly coloured and still proclaimed it was The Great Big Book of Death. It's like it couldn't decide whether it was happy or sad or something else altogether. That's what was weirding Hardison out. That and the fact someone thought Parker needed to have it.

Hardison opened the book and started to read.

'So now you're Death! Here's what you'll need...'

--

Death though the pictures were quite nice.

--

The dark, empty space between the walls was not empty at all. "Kuk kuk kukuu," spluttered the oozing, creeping blackness that had once been a thing and was trying to become a thing again. It could smell the smell of souls, could feel them pulsing in the place outside of the darkness.

The light, it was called. The world.

The dark thing was starting to remember more and more about the world the longer it was about in it. The world was a horrible place, but it was a horrible place the dark thing would devour.

But first, the dark thing had to get rid of the shiny haired nuisance who couldn't keep her hands to herself.

She was sitting alone and close to the wall. The dark creature twisted and turned in the hollow between the walls and tangled itself in the electrical wiring. It played havoc with the wires and the fuses, and then it found the right wire. The perfect wire. It was a little loose and connected to the right part of the grid. The thing twisted to and fro, and the wire came free.

When the wire came loose, the power shorted out and a big zap of electricity arced from outlet on the wall and hit the girl. She yelped. The lights flickered and went out.

Then the darkness between the walls remembered how to smile.

--

"Are you okay, Parker?" Sophie asked while Hardison and Nate examined the offending wall socket with a flashlight.

"Fine," she said, rubbing the back of her neck where the jolt had hit her. "That hurt."

Eliot snorted back a laugh. "Maybe you won't be so quick to taser everyone you meet now, hmm?"

Parker and Sophie glared. "You're mean when you're hungover," Parker told him.

In the end, they had to cut a hole in the wall to get to the electrical panel.

"Weird," Hardison said, after a brief investigation. "I can fix it, but... Looks like it's been pulled right out. But who could have done that?"

--

The hot, panting breath on her face woke Parker from a dark and twisting maze of haunted dreams and mostly-suppressed memories. Her fingers closed around the hilt of the knife that lay under her pillow before she had even fully opened her eyes. The nightlight on the wall across from the bed barely cast a glow on the tiles, but it was enough to assure her there was no one lurking in her bedroom, waiting to make a move.

No one but not nothing.

Parker would have given this awkward phrasing some additional thought, but the overlarge dog sitting on the trunk at the foot of her bed and staring intently at her gave her pause. Or rather, it gave her paws.

"Oof!" she squeaked when the dog placed its two front paws on her shoulders and jumped floppily from the trunk to the bed. Parker fell back helplessly against the mattress and tried to squirm away from the happy tongue, but she ended up with a face full of dog spit anyways.

She finally slid sideways off the bed, squeaking when she landed hard on the floor. The dog peered down at her, tilting its head like it was asking 'why are you down there now? Should I be down there too?'

"How did you get in here?" Parker asked, not expecting (and really hoping not to receive) an answer. "Whose dog are you?" She stood and backed up against the wall, hand questing for the light switch without looking away from the quizzical canine on the bed.

If possible, the dog was even bigger in the light. Parker blinked a few times until her eyes adjusted, but when her vision focused again, she confirmed that yes, it was a freaking enormous dog. Identifying dog breeds on sight was really not her wheelhouse, but if pressed for an answer, she may have said 'Great Dane', or maybe 'Medium Sized Horse'.

Parker held the door open and pointed with her free hand. "Out," she ordered.

The dog whined and pawed at her leg, but she just pointed more resolutely. "Go on, go home."

It slunk out the door with more than one backwards glance, but Parker was not swayed. She closed the door heavily behind it. She checked each lock twice before she crawled back into bed.

Parker was grateful to find that her room was empty when the ringing phone woke her up the next morning, and Nate's voice implored her to HQ for the latest briefing.

She dressed quickly and tripped over the large dog-body sleeping blissfully, stretched out across the doorstep when she tried to leave.

The dog sat up and nudged her, making a 'pleased to see you' noise. Parker grumbled and rubbed at the elbow she'd banged when she went sprawling. "Go away," she told the dog. "I don't want a pet."

She thought about it a little more on her way to Nate's. A big, scary dog would make a great companion and would not hurt her peace of mind when it came to security, and that dog seemed to like her... But having a pet was far too much like being tied down to one place, which was something that Parker did not like at all.

Wide, begging yellow eyes watched her cross the street from the alley next to Nate's building. Parker glared back at them.

--

She was worried that she would have trouble focusing on whatever exciting new job Nate had lined up, thinking only of the strange events of the last few weeks, but thankfully, Nate and Hardison got into a tense little Cold War style argument about the proper approach to their next job, and the ensuing passive-aggressive snipes were entertaining enough that Parker forgot all about puppies and pearls.

"Just imagine this, Nate --"

"No, you imagine --"

"Both of you, imagine shutting up," Sophie finally said, throwing up her hands. Parker snickered into her palm when Hardison and Nate stopped arguing immediately.

"Thank you," she sighed. "Now once more, Nate, what was your idea for getting into the mainframe?"

As Nate went over his idea again, Parker had the prickly feeling of being watched. The big dog was sitting on the fire escape, peering at her through the window with eyes roughly the size of saucers, begging and pleading.

While Hardison snorted and snarked through Nate's talk, Parker tried to shoo the animal away without drawing attention to either of them.

It didn't work.

"Parker?" Sophie said, peering over at her. "What's going on out there?"

Parker sat on her hands. "Nothing."

"Oh man... Is that..?" Eliot stood up fast enough to knock his chair back, and only finely honed reflexes allowed Parker to catch it before it hit the floor. He crossed to the window and Parker felt her stomach flip flop.

"Holy shit," Eliot muttered under his breath when he got to the window. "It is. It's a rose breasted grosbeak. He's adorable." He watched the little bird for a few moments until he became aware that everyone was staring at him.

"What?" he grunted, crossing his arms. "I'm allowed to have hobbies outside of punching and kicking. You know, this is so typical..." And Eliot went on, switching into full out rant mode. Parker saw the little pink and white bird through the window behind him.

As he started in on the part of the rant reserved for his contempt of The Man, she watched the big dog appear over the edge of the windowsill very slowly, like a child pretending to come up in an invisible elevator. Parker glanced quickly around, but everyone else was watching Eliot's monologue with rapt attention. The dog peeked through the window, checking out everyone as if gauging its audience, then it reached out its long neck and snapped the little bird up in one mouthful and ducked back out of sight.

"So you can all just go right to hell," Eliot finished with a flourish. He turned back to the window to check on the grosbeak. Two pin feathers drifted mournfully past the window.

Hardison grinned. "You scared it off with all your crazy, man."

Eliot threw a pen at him, because he didn't have anything heavier to throw instead.

--

The Great Big Book of Death was either very funny -- if it was a joke -- or very creepy -- if it was meant to be taken truthfully.

Hardison had only been able to get through the first few pages on the first night, being so tired and still a little hungover from the previous night's binge drinking. But even with the knowledge of only a few pages, it still gave him a serious enough case of the deep down shiverin' willies that he put it in the freezer overnight.

The next few days were a whirlwind of electrical home repair, arguing with Nate and breaking into a chicken farm, which was emotionally scarring in so many ways. In the chaos that was his life, Hardison had forgotten the creepy children's book in the freezer.

But when he finally had a night free and went looking for something easily microwavable for dinner, it was there, and he figured he ought to get through it once and for all so he could get rid of it.

He sat down to read, eating as he went. It was probably crazy, but he thought maybe the pizza pocket he was eating tasted vaguely of evil, as if the book was leeching into it. He made a mental note to throw everything away and get a new freezer.

By the end of chapter three, he made a mental note to get an entirely new apartment after burning everything he owned. Maybe he would just move to a different city. Mumbai was supposedly lovely.

The book, as the title would lead a person to believe, was all about death. Or rather, it was about Death. The proper noun. Death with a capital D.

There wasn't an actual Death, not anymore, said the book. Not in the last few centuries. There was still death, of course, but it was largely self-regulating. The book indicated that the whole idea that Death was responsible for collecting the souls of the recently departed was actual fact, and, since Death was out of the picture, it was the responsibility of some unidentified group of people to collect these souls.

The book made no mention of how these people were selected, or what they did with the souls once they found them, or what a soul even looked like, but from what Hardison could piece together, the book was a manual, intended for these special soul collecting people.

And any and all lies he'd told himself to rationalize stealing mail from his friend, the book had been intended for Parker. So Parker collected souls now? Sure, she had a tendency to take things, and with the sheer number of things she picked up over the course of a month, he assumed that at one point or another she picked up things that belonged to people who were recently deceased, but he didn't think she had a safety deposit box full of souls.

It was all very weird. It was weird and unsettling and he didn't like it at all. He didn't like that someone thought that this stupid book or this stupid joke was something that Parker should be involved in.

Hardison stuck the book back in the freezer and went into his bedroom to watch a documentary about boats, to clear his head and because boats are awesome, but every so often he got up to check that the freezer was still firmly shut.

--

Five days of trying to avoid the dog and Parker's nerves were on edge. It followed her everywhere, no matter how creatively she tried to escape it.

She took an all-new route to the pub one evening, sprinkling cinnamon behind her to throw off her scent and jumping through the biggest puddles to confuse her big, slobbery tracker, but the dog was waiting by the door, smelling like a bakery and muddy up to its wrists (which on any normal sized dog would be its chest). She could quadruple lock the door, but it was sleeping at the foot of the bed when she woke up in the morning, snoring like a train.

There was even a small job the team took on, retrieving a stolen safety deposit box for a destitute young single mother, and while Parker crawled through a ventilation shaft, she could swear she heard the tap tap tap of someone's nails on the metal. When the central air came on and the wind rushed by her, it smelled like wet dog.

"Leave. Me. Alone!" she shouted at the dog, when she could feel its eyes staring at her through the vinyl shower curtain late one night. She threw back the curtain and scowled at the beast, who was chewing the towel bar off the wall. Parker rescued her towel right before it disappeared down into what she could only assume was a bottomless pit.

The dog turned and wagged its tail excitedly, knocking the cabinet door clear off the bottom of the sink.

Parker sighed. It seemed like she didn't get a choice when it came to this beast being in her life, so she figured why bother fighting it anymore. "Sit?"

The dog sat instantly.

"Down?"

The dog lay down and stared at her, with very obvious 'am I making you happy?' eyes.

Parker nodded, half to the dog and half to herself. She patted his head and noticed then that his metal collar -- which he had been wearing since he showed up -- had a name carved into it. "Heller? Really?"

The dog barked happily and licked a few drops of water from her elbow.

Maybe it wouldn't be such a tragedy after all, she thought. The dog lay back down and chewed on the broken door while she stood, dripping and contemplating. Okay, maybe it wouldn't be a tragedy, but then again, maybe it would be.

--

After the fourth time Parker found and picked up one of those red light objects, she locked herself and Heller in her warehouse-house and spread the collection out on the trunk Parker kept at the end of her bed.

Other than the fact that they were glowing, there was nothing that Parker could see that connected any of them. There was the kitty cat keychain, a metal alarm clock that was missing the hour hand, an empty ceramic vase with little sakura blossoms painted on it, and a little round button that said 'I Voted Lampkin'... Aside from the necklace that Parker had already pawned, none of the things had any apparent value.

Heller tipped his head and stared between her and the things on the trunk.

"Don't eat them," Parker warned. She still wasn't convinced the red glowing things weren't irradiated. Not that that was likely to hurt him. Heller, she had learned in the last few days, could really eat anything. The bird and the cabinet door were just the beginning.

Since being officially invited into her life, Parker had watched Heller eat about fifty yards of climbing rope, a stack of back issues of National Geographic, three bottles of shampoo and their soapy contents, and the rear hubcaps off a parked car outside the Fourth National Bank. And those were just the highlights. He obviously wasn't a normal dog, but Parker really wasn't a normal girl. They got along very well.

In the middle of the twelfth night since Parker took in the dog, he woke her up with some very angry sounding growls and one low, menacing bark. She wrestled briefly with the sheets tangled around her, and, when she freed enough of her face, she realized her night light had burnt out. The entire expansive room that made up her home was in pitch darkness.

But as she looked around, she could tell it wasn't just darkness. It was something beyond darkness. It was metadarkness. It made her uncomfortable in the way that no human ever wanted to feel. It was like having someone run a cheese grater of horrid, skin prickling ickiness over all of her soul. Everything in her that was good and decent and obeyed the laws of nature rebelled at the feeling. (Parker broke a lot of laws in many countries, but she had great respect for the laws of nature.)

Something about the darkness was Not Right, with capital letters. Parker swallowed nervously on reflex and closed her hand around the flashlight she kept next to bed for emergencies. It didn't turn on, which furthered her belief that there was something evil around her. That's how evil always worked in the horror movies Hardison was so fond of.

Heller snarled again at something Parker couldn't see or hear and she shuddered at the sound. Something else snarled back, something that sounded like nothing else Parker had ever heard. Heller started to whine, low and defensive, and it got increasingly louder. Parker clutched at the blankets instinctively, pulling them over her feet like she used to when she was a young girl afraid of whatever was lurking under her bed.

The dog's whine broke off suddenly, and there was a split second of silence before Parker heard him jump. He collided with something in the air and they both hit the floor. Some sort of fight ensued, though Parker couldn't see it. It was the worst noise she had ever heard and it made her stomach turn.

Finally, the noise stopped and whatever the thing was that Heller had been fighting either disappeared or died. She could tell because the darkness lost its extra-dark, sinister feeling and was just dark instead.

The nightlight flickered back on and illuminated a small circle of floor. Once her eyes adjusted a little more, Parker could make out the outlines of most of her possessions strewn like they'd just been through an earthquake. She couldn't see Heller or even hear him panting.

"Heller?" She called out for him, but there was no big black dog to jump on the end of the bed and make the springs groan. There was no response at all.

She realized she was crying, she knew it was late, and she knew she had nothing to say that didn't sound actually crazy, but she called Eliot anyways. He picked up before the second ring.

Parker got two sentences out before he stopped her and told her to stay put because he was already on his way. She was thankful in ways she couldn't quite explain, but Eliot had already hung up so she didn't need to.

--

It slunk through the sewers, dripping a trail of viscous darkness behind it like blood. It hurt, and it didn't know it could even feel any more. The pain was bad, in the physical, where that monster dog had ripped it open, but it was good in the way that meant it was getting stronger. It could feel things now, real things, and that meant everything was going according to plan.

Mostly, the creature amended, because a big part of the plan had hinged on killing the gold headed girl before the sun came up again. She had been stupid enough to miss one of the souls, and the creature was very, very good at finding them. The soul had given it the power to take a shape, but the dog's attack had sapped that strength. It would need more souls if it was going to kill the girl. Some more souls and a way to get rid of the dog. That's all it needed. This run in with the beast and the failure to kill the girl were just set-backs.

It would use the last of the power from the lost soul to heal itself and creep out of the safe darkness of the sewer pipe to find another one. Then the plan would be back in action.

"Kuk kuk kuk," it chuckled to the rats and the slime, not having anyone else to share its joy with. The rats ran away and the slime wished it could. It tried to make itself unobtrusive and harmless looking instead, which was actually a pretty big feat by slime standards.

Under the streets and unknown to everyone on the surface, the little creature made of solidified darkness glided on with the sole purpose of destroying everything fixed firmly in its mind.

--

When she had gone to bed, the door was locked as tight as anything, but she wasn't surprised that it swung open without any trouble when Eliot arrived.

He flipped on the overheard lights and didn't react at all to the mess or the sticky pools of what seemed to be tar on the floor. Eliot crossed the room to her bed, where she was still holding the blankets protectively against herself, a little faster than someone who was being objective would have, which meant the 'not reacting at all' was his way of reacting. Parker would have thought that was kind of sweet, if she'd thought of it at all.

Just before Eliot was within range to be able to reach out and touch her, there came a low growl. Eliot stopped, and, before Parker could say a word of warning, Heller sprang at him, launching them both across the room.

Heller barked and Eliot swore, and the obvious sound of the dog's jaws snapping shut echoed off the far walls, which was scary and a bit like overkill, in Parker's opinion, given the square footage of the place. She'd seen him bite through one of those concrete parking curbs once, so she really didn't want to see what kind of mess he could make out of something as measly as a pathetic human ulna or a femur.

"Heller, no!"

Just as quickly as it had started, it stopped. Heller was still growling, but he wasn't trying to bite through bones and tendons and tissue anymore, so Parker counted it as a win.

"Parker," Eliot said with what little air he had left, considering the dog was slowly compressing him into a singularity. "What is this thing?"

"A dog, Eliot. Heller, come. Eliot's our friend. Heller! Here!"

The dog showed Eliot his big, shiny teeth one more time, then got off him and leapt onto Parker, licking the remains of her tears from her face and casting a few distrustful looks at Eliot. Eliot took a few moments to making sure all his parts were still attached and to relearn how to breath.

"What happened? Did the... did that do this?" he asked, once he was confident he hadn't been secretly murdered by the big, slavering colossus that Parker claimed was a dog.

Parker glanced around the room and realized that she'd been underestimating the damage done to the room. Everything she owned except her bed and her trunk had been destroyed in the unseen fight. "Oh," she breathed, taking in the sight. "No. No, Heller was protecting me."

Heller licked her face again and lay down across her feet and continued to stare at Eliot, like he was daring him to make another sudden move.

Eliot skipped past all the additional questions he had like 'but what is that thing actually' and 'where did it come from' and 'oh god, why are you letting it lick you' and kicked straight into protection mode. "From what?"

"I don't know."

He sighed. "So something came in here, destroyed everything but left you alone, and your... dog fought it off?"

Parker nodded and patted Heller's head. He rumbled happily and started chewing on the flashlight. Eliot watched the animal bite through the metal and shuddered just a little.

"And then you called me?"

Parker nodded again. She felt awful for multiple reasons, but she couldn't put words to any of them.

Standing in the middle of the destroyed room with his hands on his hips and still eyeing the dog like he thought it was a terrorist, Eliot felt as crazy as Parker looked at that moment. "Parker, unless you can give me something else to go on, I don't know what you want me to do."

Parker put her chin on her knees and felt the tears burning at the corners of her eyes again. She didn't know how to say that for the last month she'd been picking up randomly glowing objects and now her life was being turned more upside down than it had ever been before and something was obviously really messing with her and had tried to kill her and her ridiculously large dog once already tonight and she was too afraid to go back to sleep unless she knew there was someone watching over her. "I don't know either," she said finally.

Eliot let out an explosive sigh and started to say something, but changed his mind at the last second when he realized she was crying. "Go to sleep, Parker," he said irritably. "But tell your dog to not try and eat my arms again, okay?" He shook a ripped sweater out of the wreckage of Parker's belongings and used it to brush the debris and sticky, black sap stuff off the trunk at the end of the bed so he had somewhere to sit. He didn't even offer to turn the lights off, because he knew better.

"Goodnight, Eliot," Parker whispered.

--

"Oh, for the love of -- !" Eliot's shouts woke Parker up the next morning. Her heart was immediately pounding and her eyes flew open, expecting the preternatural darkness to be covering the room, but instead everything was brightly lit and normal looking.

More normal looking than the last time she'd looked, even. Most of the things that had been tossed onto the floor in the overnight chaos had been righted, cleaned off or otherwise fixed, like Eliot hadn't been able to sit still while on guard duty.

On the newly cleaned floor, Eliot and Heller were wrestling over something. Parker could tell Heller easily had the upper paw, but Eliot was not giving up without a struggle, which was admirable, if a little superfluous considering the dog was obviously toying with him.

"Just let him have it, Eliot," she advised.

"It's my fucking shoe!" he spat back, getting his knee under the Heller's chest. He pushed hard and the dog went sprawling onto the floor, but before Eliot could jump to his feet with the shoe triumphantly upheld like the symbolic trophy he wanted it to be, the dog was back on top of him with all four paws.

"No, damn, off!"

Heller had all but abandoned his attempt for the shoe and was now taking great pleasure in sucking on one of Eliot's braids, which made Parker laugh in spite of the weird few weeks she'd been having. "Give him the shoe, he's hungry."

"Are you crazy?"

Parker chose not to answer that particular question. "Heller," she called, getting the dog's attention before she pointed to a pile of too-broke-to-be-fixed things Eliot had piled by the door. He bounded over and started chewing on the choicest looking pieces.

"Dogs don't eat shoes," Eliot said, sitting up and smoothing rumpled dog prints from his shirt. "They... oh. Is he eating broken glass and thumb tacks?" Eliot held his shoe like it was his lifeline back to normality.

Parker shrugged. "I haven't found anything he can't eat. He ate a propane tank last week and burped like a dragon for four days after."

"Parker..." Eliot thought very carefully about how he wanted to phrase his next few sentences, lest the dog hear him and decide thumb tacks weren't as delicious as previously imagined. "Are you sure it's safe to have that thing around?"

She looked for clothes that hadn't been destroyed and he turned around as she got dressed. "Of course it's safe," she told him. "Heller's a good boy, aren't you, Heller?"

Watching the dog eat the doorknob off the cracked bathroom door in one mouthful was among the least convincing things that could have supplemented Parker's position. Eliot tore his eyes away from that disturbing sight and gave Parker one of his best interrogation stares. "What is going on with you, Parker?"

She took a deep breath and didn't say anything at all. Just like the previous night, she had no idea what she was supposed to say. "I want eggs. Can we go get breakfast? And I'll call Hardison; there's that place near him that makes those great omelettes."

--

Hardison twirled his fork around in his fingers while they waited for the server to come back with their drinks. "I, uh... Not here to judge or anything, but any particular reason you two showed up together for breakfast?" He wasn't sure he meant the part about not judging them, especially Parker, but he was going to at least make the effort to lie to them. What are friends for, right?

Eliot rolled his eyes and snatched the fork from his hand. "Making me nervous, man. And yeah, there's a reason. Parker was about to explain to me what that reason actually is, but I guess she thought you'd like to hear it too."

Parker was sitting next to the window with Heller right outside, because that's the only seating configuration they could get away with to prevent the dog from sitting on the sidewalk outside and howling loud enough to rattle the glass and terrify half the city. Hardison hadn't noticed the dog yet. Parker was staring out the window, more as an excuse not to be engaged in the conversation than anything else.

"Parker?"

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she said suddenly, turning away from the window. She startled the waitress, who blushed furiously when she set down Parker's chocolate milk and took their orders as fast as humanly possible.

"I don't know what's wrong," Parker said again, in a much lower voice. "I... It's crazy." She clammed up. There were so many crackpot theories in her head, but the second she thought about saying any of them out loud, she realized how weird they really sounded. She glanced up at Hardison and Eliot, and they both looked so concerned, so worried, that she decided she didn't have a choice but to tell them. They were both obviously dependent on her to be the stable one.

"I think someone's trying to kill me or something," she confided, leaning closer. "I got shocked last week at Nate's, then something broke into my place last night and fought with Heller, and I've had the feeling that someone's been watching me for a couple weeks now... Oh!"

She remembered something out of the blue, and it suddenly felt very important. "There was a guy, last month. He said I took something that was his."

Eliot and Hardison traded a confused look. "Parker," Hardison said gently. "You take things from a lot of people."

"That's what I said!" she fluttered her hands in a way that was probably supposed to mean something. "His name was Paul. It was right after that job we had in Topham with that rich contractor guy and his dead wife."

"You think this guy is trying to kill you?" Eliot wasn't sure he followed, but he sure he wasn't pleased with it.

"I did take something, from that house," she said. "I think he knew, and I think he wants it."

"Parker," Eliot sighed. "How many times have we gone over this? No freelancing on a case."

"You'll have to give it back," Hardison told her. "If he wants it so bad he's following you, you either have to give it back or Eliot's going to have to go do his thing."

"'My thing'?"

"Well, I just meant --"

"You meant I gotta go and clean up yet another mess that you people made?"

"Oh, 'you people'? That's just racist."

"Shut up, Hardison, you know what I meant. And no, Parker, I am not doing 'my thing', so give the guy his whatever-it-was back."

Parker took a big mouthful of chocolate milk before she broke the bad news. "I don't have it anymore. It was a necklace, and it had this weird glow and I --"

She was cut off by Hardison spilling his water all over himself. "It what?"

Eliot and Parker both looked at him like he had sprouted an extra arm while they sat there. "I know it sounds crazy, but --"

"No," he cut her off again, leaning across the table to take both of her wrists in his hands. "Parker, you need to not be messing with me right now, because I'm getting old and I don't think my heart can take it, girl. Tell me exactly what happened and don't leave anything out."

Parker explained how she'd found the necklace in the bathroom, how it had been glowing with a strange, red light, how she had met Paul the next night, and how he'd seemed to know something about it but hadn't really said much. She told them how she'd brought the necklace to a pawn shop and how the light had gone out when the owner's daughter put the necklace on.

"And now you think something's been watching you and something attacked you last night?"

Something about Hardison's intense interest nudged a few alarms bells for Eliot. "Hardison, what's going on?"

Parker started talking about the unnatural blackness and the fight and Heller at the same time Hardison started talking about evil-tasting hot pockets and creepy children's picture books. They seemed content enough to talk over each other, but Eliot stopped them.

"Whoa, whoa. Okay. Hardison first."

"I stole Parker's mail," he blurted out.

Parker was very impressed. "Basic, but still," she said, grinning up at the waitress when she brought their food. Parker felt better already from just having said her piece. She dove into her omelette. "Was it another jury summons? You can keep it."

Hardison took a deep breath and told Parker and Eliot about the book and the basic information it contained about Death and souls collection. As he spoke, the colour slowly drained out of Parker's face, and she lost all interest in her food.

"Okay, whoa. You actually expect us to believe that?" Eliot asked, finishing the last of his meal and leaning his chair back on two legs with his arms across his chest. "Hardison..."

"I know," Hardison sighed. "It's a stupid, messed-up joke. You should read the part where it talks about the big, scary hellhounds that are going to come to protect Death and Death's apprentices at the end of days."

Eliot did a strange, wiggling dance to keep himself from falling out of his precariously balanced chair. Parker wrapped her arms around herself, because she was sure the temperature in the diner had just dropped by fifteen degrees.

"What?"

When Parker didn't move or say anything, Eliot leaned over her and rapped on the window. Heller was on the glass immediately with paws the size of soup bowls and his big, pink tongue pressed against the window. There was a tense second where Eliot thought he was going to try and eat the window, but luckily it passed and the window remained intact.

"Wow," Hardison breathed. "And that's your hellhound, Parker?"

Parker nodded stiffly, her brain still trying to catch up with everything that had happened and everything Hardison had said.

"He's a... big dog. Have you named him yet? He needs a big dog name. Something fierce. Like Jaws or Spike or Arrow."

"Heller," Eliot told him. "She calls him Heller."

Hardison thought for a second. "Okay, not great, but it could be worse, I guess. Parker, you know what this means?"

"I think I'm going to throw up," she said, still hugging herself for warmth.

"It means we're going to go find this guy that thinks it's funny to mess with people like this and I'm going to throw him out a window," Eliot said, dropping a few bills on the table to cover their breakfast.

Parker gave Hardison a helpless look. He shrugged and got up, holding out his hand to her. "Come on, let's make sure Papa Wolf doesn't go overboard." She followed him, feeling very much like she'd missed out on the part where this was supposed to be funny.

--

Death was outside Paul's house that morning, in the way that Death can be anywhere Death wanted to be. Death peered through the kitchen window and wondered if anyone was home.

--

"Look, man, it's not that hard," Eliot said, stretching his legs out and getting comfortable. "Just answer my questions and then we'll get out of your hair."

Paul was taped to a chair in his kitchen with way more tape than was strictly necessary, in his opinion. Really, any amount of tape was overkill, Paul thought, because what the hell was the world coming to when people taped other people to chairs in their own homes? He was a pretty good guy and he didn't deserve any sort or amount of adhesive restraint and anyways, wasn't scratchy synthetic rope supposed to be the bondage device of choice for home invaders?

As if the tape wasn't enough, the very intimidating man had found a knife bigger than any knife Paul thought he owned and was making it look easy and fun to balance it on his fingertips.

A little voice in Paul's head chirped up 'don't try this at home, kids' in a way that would have made him laugh out loud if he had been a character in a movie, but, because it was real, just made him feel more nauseous.

"I said... I said I don't know what... what you're talking about." Paul was having trouble concentrating on which order his words were supposed to go in because the sharp edge of the knife kept catching the light and it was distracting.

Eliot sighed and set the knife down very carefully. "I know you're lying. She knows you're lying. Even he knows you're lying and he's terrible at this."

"Thanks," Hardison grimaced from where he was leaning on the fridge. Eliot inclined his head in acknowledgement.

"Let me tell you the best part, though, Paul -- can I call you 'Paul'? -- Paul, the best part. The best part is that if we were to open the door there, and let our fourth associate in... He would know you were lying, too." Eliot's wicked smile made something in Paul flip-flop. There was no way the fourth associate could be any scarier than the guy with the knife, and yet the small possibility that he may be wrong was enough to turn Paul's insides to jelly. He was pretty sure he was going to die. Soon. It was not the best feeling he'd ever experienced.

"Who are you and what are you playing at? Who are you working for? Why her?"

Paul looked over at Parker with a 'save me' expression, but she was looking at her shoes.

"I don't know what you mean, I wish I did. I really wish I did. Because you're scary. But I swear, I don't know you're talking about."

Eliot fixed him with another hard stare, but Paul had nothing else to say. Eliot nodded ever so slightly, and Hardison nudged the back door open.

Hardison's revelation that the giant animal was supposed to be a hellhound was not exactly shocking, Eliot thought. He was more massive than any dog he'd ever seen, bigger than most of the Shetland ponies he'd grown up with, too, and the first time Heller had knocked him down there had definitely been something unnatural in his eyes. But when he took his first few tentative steps into the kitchen, he looked exactly like a big, awkward puppy who was sure he was about to get yelled at for being somewhere he wasn't supposed to be.

Paul's eyes went wide and he struggled against his restraints, but Eliot and Hardison were very good at tape bondage (Parker make a mental note never to ask).

"Go on," Eliot said, pointing at Paul. "Get him."

Heller cocked his head like a confused owl.

"Heller, go."

Paul stopped struggling and looked between Eliot and Heller. "Dysfunctional relationship, hmm? Have you tried offering him belly rubs?"

"Heller," Eliot said, his tone still calm and even. "He tried to hurt Parker."

To Paul's credit, he didn't wet himself when Heller leapt on him. The chair shattered under the force and they both sprawled in the wood shards. Heller's jaws snapped dangerously close to his neck and he felt drool hit his face. Paul squeezed his eyes shut and prayed he didn't get eaten or worse.

"I'm sorry! Oh god, I don't know how it happened, she shouldn't have been able to see it glowing unless she was one of us! I don't make those decisions, I had nothing to do with it, I just followed instructions!"

Parker cleared her throat and Heller climbed off of him, growling once more to make his point clear.

Eliot helped Paul to stand up, brushing the splintered chair off him. "That shouldn't have been so hard, Paul."

Paul nodded dismally and stared at the curtains over the sink. "I got the book four years ago and I was scared of it, but I felt it was real. I missed a one, maybe two, when I first started. It was so bad. Nightmares of my grandfather's ghost yelling at me for being so lazy almost every night, sometimes when I was awake. I was hearing voices in the sewers and walls, little hissing voices that weren't speaking words, but speaking hate and darkness, right into my soul. All the electrical wiring here blew out at the same time... The book says 'the forces of darkness' and I believe it. You read the book, right?"

Parker shrugged. "No. He took it. Said it made all his food taste evil."

"Fair enough," Paul shuddered.

"You never mentioned the forces of darkness," Eliot said blithely.

Hardison shrugged off-handedly. "You want me to tell you everything that happens in my life every day, man? I'm a busy guy."

"Yeah, I'm sure you are, but you'd think 'forces of darkness' would rank somewhere up near the top of pointless shit you tell us. I mean, last week you told us, in detail, about how the 'U' key was stuck on your netbook and you thought maybe there were toast crumbs under it. But forces of darkness never came up. That seem right to you?"

Paul turned to Parker. "We're not supposed to be talking to each other, you know. The book says that makes the forces angry."

"What does that even mean, 'forces of darkness'? Like ghosts or something? Do they have a tiger? That would be scary..."

Paul didn't know. "I don't really want to find out though," he told her. "Just get a day planner or something, and the names will show up. Then you just find the object before anyone else does, and everything will work out."

"But why? How?"

"I don't have those answers for you. It's just how it works."

Parker stroked Heller's head absently while she thought about everything that had been going on. "I don't like them," she said quietly.

"Well, I don't like them either," Paul said. "I think the white guy's got major unresolved anger problems. Maybe his mother didn't hug him enough." Hardison and Eliot continued to bicker in the background, not realizing they were suddenly the topic of conversation.

Parker rolled her eyes. "Obviously, but I meant the red glowing things."

"The souls?"

"Don't call them that." Parker's hand curled between Heller's floppy ears protectively, like if Paul spoke too loudly he would upset the dog.

"That's what they are, though. That's what makes them glow. I don't like them either; they're sort of freaky, right? That's why I'm glad we don't keep them."

"... We don't?" The thought of putting in the effort of tracking down and stealing one particular item and not keeping it was more than a little off-putting.

"No, not at all. God, no that would be one of the worst things you could do, really. They have to be passed on. Like... Okay, I work at a thrift store, part time, right? So when I pick up the souls, I bring a couple to the thrift store and mix them in with the other stuff. Someone comes along, buys one, boom, they got themselves a new soul." He sighed when he saw her blank, uncomprehending look.

"Not everyone has a soul, you know. Some people are empty, waiting for the right one to come along. And that's where we help. We pass along the souls so they can find the right home. Think of it as cosmic recycling."

Parker wasn't entirely sure she was still following, but if she could get rid of the freaky glowing soul objects, she was going to. ASAP. "Wait," she said, something clicking into place on a different level. "Why would keeping them be the worst thing?"

"Forces of darkness. All they want is to get the souls, but if they get them, they destroy them and use the power to make themselves strong and then kill all humans or something. The book is kind of vague about most things, but it's abundantly clear on the forces of darkness destroying the world." Paul toyed with the sleeve of his shirt and tried to change the subject. "Do they always fight like that?"

But Parker didn't answer him because she was already out the door.

"Parker! Parker, hey!"

Hardison and Eliot jogged to catch up with her, meeting her just before the fence. Paul hung back in the doorway, unsure whether he wanted to find out what was going on or if he should just run back inside and hide under his bed.

"I shouldn't have left my place," she said, very upset. "There's souls there."

"... What?"

"Souls!" she said again, more agitated. "Paul said that the book said that the forces of darkness would do everything they could to get to the souls, and we just left them there alone!" Heller wound his way between the mess of legs and grumbled deep in his chest.

Eliot ran his hands through his hair and took a deep, calming breath. "Parker... Parker, you don't actually believe this is real, do you?"

"I have to go. Now." What she was planning on doing if she found personified darkness rummaging through her things was not exactly clear, but she ran as if the hounds of Hell were at her heels (they weren't; Heller was half a block ahead of her).

Eliot thought she was having some sort of psychotic break; Hardison wasn't sure what he thought at the moment, but he was sure that Parker thought it was real. Either way, they followed her as she ran back through the city streets to her warehouse-house. They got to the door just as she was unlocking it. When she threw it open, it was pitch black inside.

No, it was darker than that. It was the strange, supernatural darkness from the night before that filled the large room.

Hardison kicked the door open a little wider, and the darkness shrank around the edges, pulling away from the light spilling in from outside. He felt his skin crawl when he saw it. It wasn't like what happened when he got up in the middle of the night for a glass of water and fumbled around in the darkness until he managed to pull the fridge open. Because the light from the fridge just made it not-dark anymore. Nothing happened to the darkness then, it was just not there because it was light. This darkness, it moved like an actual thing; like poking a millipede and watching it scuttle away from you. He shuddered.

Before she could go charging headfirst into whatever it was, Hardison and Eliot each grabbed her by an arm and hauled her back.

"You have no idea what that even is," Hardison said.

Eliot still wasn't buying the forces of darkness theory. "Anyone could be in there. You two stay here." When Parker struggled to get free, he shoved her none too gently into Hardison's arms.

"I don't care, you hang onto her. Parker!" he snapped over her attempted protest. "Let me do my job."

He was gone again before anyone could try to stop him. Once Eliot was a few steps into the room, he disappeared completely from sight. Not an outline or even a hint of movement was visible. Heller whined and pawed at the door, but he didn't follow. Instead he ran around the corner of the building and out of sight.

Parker struggled against Hardison for a moment, then sagged against him in defeat. "Something bad is going to happen," she muttered, hiding her eyes. Hardison stroked her hair, trying to be reassuring, but his stomach was doing figure eights, and he was pretty sure she was right.

--

He could smell them. The putrid human smell clung to them. It was almost as bad as the smell that the still-breathing humans produced. The souls were close.

At least the sparkly souls were quiet. The noise! Oh, the noise that humans made. Even deep in the sewers, he could hear them above, screeching and screaming and bleating and living.

He turned around on himself, settling and waiting for the people on the other side of the wall to leave. Once the golden-haired meat-bag was gone, with the other one and the dog, he could come out of hiding and fetch the souls. They were talking and their voices felt like rough sand scraping against him. He bristled.

And he had been a 'he' for a few days now, and he revelled in his shape. It had been so long since he had a shape, he felt maybe he was abusing it. He ran his hands down his new sides and felt the last remaining trickle of power through his veins. He needed the other souls soon. Already, his strong shape was becoming soft around the edges. Soon, the humans would be gone and soon, the souls would be his.

He touched his scales, counting the sharp edges and savouring the painful sting when they cut in deeply. In the dark that oozed from his pores, he waited.

--

"Okay, let's do this the easy way," Eliot said to whoever was lurking in the darkness. "First, I'm going to kick your ass for making my life so difficult. Then I'm going to go get coffee, because I think I've fucking earned it."

There was a slight shifting noise, and Eliot knew he wasn't alone. "Look," he sighed, rolling his shoulders. "I'm not playing games here."

He took another few steps into the dark, unable to see, but on red alert. There was the barest hint of a chuckle from just beyond his elbow. Eliot started to turn, but whoever it was caught him with a quick arm up and under his ribcage, sending him flying through the dark. Eliot hit the floor and was back on his feet within seconds, but, after a moment he figured he would have been better off staying down, because that's where he ended up again with the person on top of him.

"Damn," Eliot grunted, moving to shove the other body off. There was a sudden change, something shifted or maybe Eliot just thought it did, but he was suddenly, acutely aware that whatever the thing was that was on top of him, it sure as hell wasn't a person.

Eliot was a pragmatic guy. He didn't buy into superstition or magic or mysticism or anything like that. He'd broken more than a few mirrors in his time, and his luck was never worse than usual. He sure as hell didn't believe in ghosts or monsters. Eliot was concerned with real things that affected him daily. Food, shelter, people attacking him with knives or shower curtain rods -- those were the things he worried about. Werewolves eating his face or black cats crossing his path were relatively low on the list of things that scared him, because he didn't believe in them.

But this was more real than anything in his recent memory, and it was not any animal he recognized and it sure as hell wasn't human. The instinct part of Eliot's mind, the primal, fight or flight, caveman part, panicked.

Eliot shoved up as hard as he could with his forearms, trying to get enough space between him and whatever it was to reach down and find one of the multiple knives he had on his person, but the thing gave no ground.

There was a change in the kind of darkness, he noticed, around the edges of thing. It seemed to be made from darkness, a creature of vaguely humanoid shape, but with a very super-human strength. "What...?" Eliot started.

"Shh, hush now, human," the thing whispered in his ear with hot, dank, garbage breath that immediately put Eliot in mind of corpses and stagnant air. He shuddered involuntary, trying once more to shift the thing even an inch. It laughed, a sound somehow worse than its breath, like skeletal rats skittering across his bones. "Don't struggle, you'll ruin the fun."

Anything that could possibly be counted as 'fun' to this thing was something Eliot wanted to be actual miles away from. Since jumping up, grabbing his friends, and running until they hit Nicaragua was not an option with the creature on top of him, he opted instead to struggle like a litter of kittens in a paper sack. If he wasn't having fun, neither was the monster made of darkness that wanted to kill him, or eat him, or worse.

The creature either thought its raspy, creaky monster voice was scarier than it actually was (Eliot thought he sounded a little like a rejected Muppet) or maybe it thought Eliot was a little brain-dead, because it clearly wasn't expecting Eliot to continue struggling.

It slipped, just slightly, just enough for Eliot to tighten his hand around the hilt of the knife at the small of his back. In spite of everything in him still screaming revulsion, horror, and a sense of impending emotional crisis after realizing that his neatly crafted, pragmatic, and ultimately realistic world view was inherently wrong, Eliot felt a little spark of relief.

Bad move.

The creature was made of darkness, it lived in darkness, and, when it breathed, it exhaled darkness all around it. It drew power and comfort from the darkness, suckled at its teat and made love to its soft corners. Any spark, even a metaphorical one, was the worst kind of personal attack.

When it came time to write this encounter in the annals of history, there would be debate for centuries. Was it a good thing or was it a bad thing? In that moment, Eliot had not a single question in his mind that future historians could take a flying leap because it was bad thing with a capital 'Oh Shit, Why'.

The creature hammered a closed fist down on Eliot's wrist, shattering the bones. The knife spun out of his hand. The monster poised above him, and then, all of the sudden, there was sharp, smooth pain, like an ice pick straight through Eliot's heart.

Eliot had definitely stabbed a few people in his time. More than a few. Maybe even a flock. But every time he had to stab someone, there had been resistance when the blade went in. He felt like he was made of Play Doh for all the difficulty the monster had spearing him with... whatever it was. There was no blood, none of the shredding, ripping feelings he'd associated with stab wounds in past.

All of these thoughts flew through Eliot's mind in the split second as it happened, though, because for the rest of the seconds after it happened, until he passed out from the pain, his only thought was 'this is going to end badly.'

The saddest part was that he wasn't even around to feel vindicated when he turned out to be right. The dark creature slid away, taking with it the four soul objects from Parker's smashed open trunk, Eliot's knife, and a very smug feeling of superiority.

Alone in the dark, Eliot died.


Next: Part Two