PERVERSE - Apply Fic

31

This time when Nico screams, Clare hears the sound. They jolt up out of the bed, arms shaking. A gunshot echoes through the room. Their stomach feels warm. Radio static matches the electricity in the air, even with the door closed before then.

Nico scrambles back in the doorway from Ambrose, who stands towering over them.

His eyes are open, arguably. Ambrose doesn't have them. Dirt oozes from the sockets, melting down his face in streams of mud. Visibly, something moves beneath his skin. The flesh shifts like ripples in a pond. It's wet as well, slick with morning dew. Ambrose spits diet from his mouth, the stuff stuck between his teeth, and in that second, his teeth seem to shimmer. The reflection is starlight in a cool pond.

Ambrose bolts to the door. He brushes past Clare, a shiver of cold shooting up her spine just from his proximity. Clare follows him, and he stops in the doorway.

His fingers tap his leg, head tilted forward at something.

"We need to get everyone here," Ambrose turns his head to look at her. "Now. We still have time, but only before someone else dies."

"I don't know where everyone is," Clare manages. "They are supposed to kill the pastor."

This thing has the voice of Ambrose, but it doesn't have his slumped shoulders. It doesn't have his eyes. It goes rigid at Clare's words.

Nico can't breathe. Is this how Fallon feels, day in and out. They grip their legs with tight fists, letting their nails dig into the jeans. The floor is beneath them. The sky is above them. They might not be of earth, but they are touching it. Actually, they might be too much of earth.

"Get the ones you can," Ambrose turns his head to address Clare. Not his body. The angle is just south of normal. They are just north of civilization anyway. "Is the phone here? And the money?"

That question, one so simple, forces Nico to move. They dart across the room, snatching the phone off the desk. They pull out Kaia's tips from a drawer.

"Call a cab," Ambrose tells them. "I don't have much time to save Leo."

~~~

They could have ordered two cabs, or perhaps Clare could have gone with Ambrose to get Leo. The cab was five minutes away, and it is fifteen to get to the factories.

A third of an hour. As they run, Clare tries to count the seconds. It's hard, since their feet move quicker as they jog and sprint and jog in turns as fast as they can to get to the church. It gives Clare something to think about other than Leo, and wherever he is, and what is putting him in danger and how Ambrose could even know such a thing. Any other distraction would not work, because Clare isn't even sure this is where Kaia is. The others as well. They might have decided to visit the pastor in his home, shoot him dead in his bed, next to his sleeping wife, and Clare refuses to acknowledge that truth.

Ambrose is back from the dead again. And this Ambrose will be their salvation. Clare's specifically, hopefully.

The church tower comes to view and Clare picks up pace. Their footsteps echo through the street. Something shifts a bit, in a bush.

Kaia sees Clare sprinting ahead. She pulls herself out, not minding the noise her body makes twisting the leaves around her. The wind rustles them worse than she does, and it is the middle of the night now. She might be closer to sunrise than sunset. Kaia knows time zones. There is always a sunrise happening, and Kaia has been chasing them for years now. And as Clare gets closer, Kaia thinks maybe she's finally found it.