A Light in the Dark (Post Eleven)

[B][COLOR="DarkRed"][JUSTIFY][FONT="Book Antiqua"] Carter ducked and moved back, grabbing a pipe from the ground and throwing it at Vincent’s occupied hand. It batted the syringe out of Vincent’s grasp, skittering farther down the alley. Vincent gritted his teeth, reaching for one of the many shadows, but Carter ran forward and smashed into him, knocking his breath away. Bringing his knees up, Vincent shoved Carter away, gasping and struggling for his syringe. Carter shook his confusion away, leaping forward and grabbing Vincent’s arms, wrenching them behind his back. Vincent wriggled his right hand free and spun around, pushing Carter and grabbing his hair, tossing him to the ground as nothing more than a sack.

Vincent bent down and scooped his syringe up, turning back to his victim who he had left lying on the cobblestones. But Carter had gotten up and had pulled what appeared to be a cloth belt from his waist with a black stone tied to the end, which he threw at Vincent. The stone struck his hand again, whipping the syringe into a box not ten feet away, but Carter leapt in front of it. He threw down the belt and stood his ground, but the expression on his face was not that of anger or an intent to kill Vincent. It was apologetic. But he thought it could just be a cover. He had seen the man kill before. Jamming his hand, stinging from the strike of the stone from before, Vincent extracted his jade rosary.

Carter stared at it as though dumbfounded by its presence, as though he could hardly believe someone like Vincent could hold such a thing without burning. Taking the moment to his advantage, Vincent rammed forward with the rosary in both hands, knocking Carter to the ground and levering his knees onto his chest, pressing the jade onto Carter’s neck with a shuddering, sudden strength. Carter grabbed Vincent’s wrists and pulled them apart, his hand vanishing quickly and a sharp stick hit Vincent’s side. Almost immediately, his joints seemed to turn to water, and his thoughts were clouded with confusion. In that moment, the world had flipped, and Vincent found himself staring at the dark sky. A sharp stinging sensation emerged from the fog of painlessness pressing down, something wet coating the right side of his face. Reaching up, he felt it, thick, a coppery scent twanging in the still air. Blood, from a light cut running from below his eye to the corner of his mouth.

He heard footsteps scraping the loose stone ground, Carter’s shoes passing in front of his gaze. Fighting through the fog of weakness, he summoned the dark out of his soul and brought it to the surface. It leaked into his veins, strengthening his rubbery joints, staining his skin black. A stinging pain spread through his body, making his bones lengthen, popping out and back into place, stretching his skin tightly over his frame. His clothes seemed to meld to his skin, forming to him, his eyes turning gray, filling with a swirling black substance darker than his skin. He stood, legs popping into place, looming over Carter as the yellow-headed man stumbled back, blue eyes wide.

Vincent resembled a shadow come to life. His face was completely black, the only defining feature his dark, deep eyes. He towered over Carter, raising his long hands and grasping him by the shoulders, lifting him and smashing him into the nearest wall. Carter gasped, losing breath, fumbling in his jacket for something. Vincent growled at him, shaking his arms. “Stop! Stop looking for more weapons. It’s over now. Just take your fate.” His voice had deepened, becoming more beast-like, and when he opened his mouth, his teeth shined long and sharp.

“My fate isn’t to end here.” Carter panted. “I still have my life to live.”

“Whatever prophecy you have been listening to, you should have gotten another opinion.”

“It’s not a prophecy. It’s a feeling I have.”

Vincent laughed, a sound much like a landslide of heavy stone. Pushing Carter up with one hand in his stomach, Vincent used his other to reach into his chest. His fingers started to vanish, passing through Carter’s clothes in a screen of smoke that poured into the air. He gasped, fidgeting, grasping something from his pocket and thrusting it forward, hitting Vincent just below the ribs. With a hissing cry, Vincent shuddered backward, ripping his hand out of Carter’s chest and reaching to feel what had been stabbed into him.

His hands grasped the sharp edges of what felt like a large shard of glass, but it was opaque and gave off a white glow that seemed to sap the cloak of darkness around his body away. In a moment his bones compacted, returning him to his normal height as his clothes gained more substance, dripping free of the dark that had leaked into its cloth. His eyes brightened back to their silvery tone, the shadow draining from his skin as though being sucked back up by his soul. On shaking legs he went back, falling over a collection of boxes and grabbing the shard of glass, wrenching it out of him and tossing it at Carter. He gritted his teeth, biting back the pain that spread to the rest of his body and made it hard to breathe. He saw Carter move forward, toward him, but could not lift his arms to react. His vision swam, blurring the world, and a cover of dark and silence fell on him.[/FONT][/JUSTIFY][/COLOR][/B]