II. Gods and Monsters

13. Poison

After many near misses and a couple more stalls, they managed to finally make it to Oli's house. The old man and her dad rushed out to meet her, the old man's face becoming even more worried when he saw the state Oli was in. Chalk-white, Oli had bled all over the seat, the golden dart still protruding from his shoulder.

"Help me get him inside!" the old man barked, "NOW!"

Both he and Andrew hauled Oli into the living room, laying him on the sofa.

"Find me a first-aid kit," Carter ordered.

"I left it in because I didn't want him bleeding more than he needed to..." Charlotte tried to explain.

"Unfortunately; that's the worst thing you could have done in this situation. Holy weapons are toxic to the servants of Hell. It's like giving a human small doses of cyanide over a period of time. The more he's exposed, the worse it will get."

Her dad came back in with the equipment.

"Ok, help me get his jacket off, I can't exactly cut through that with a pair of scissors."

Charlotte and her dad held Oli up as Carter unzipped the jacket, manoeuvred Oli's right arm out of it, brought the loose end around and slipped his left arm out, careful not to yank the dart.

Once it was removed, the situation became even more serious. Now his collar was out of the way, it was possible to see a deep black colour running in strands up his neck.

"Is that what you meant by toxic?"

"No, this is another problem. Hold him down, now!"

Oli had no idea what was going on. One minute he was in the car, the next minute, the world was pure darkness. He could think clearly, he could feel the cold, he could hear his own breathing, but that was it.

"Hello? Anyone? Hello!" he called into the darkness.

No reply.

Where the hell was he? And more importantly, how could he get out?

"You stuck in here too?"

Oli whirled around to see the flaming head of Zarathos stood mere feet away from him.

"Thank God you're here," Oli sighed.

"Don't thank that asshole, thank me! He's the reason we're in this mess!"

Oli rolled his eyes.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"I don't know, all I know is that something made an impact in our back that caused me to wake up here. You?"

"Metatron whacked a gold dart-thing through our shoulder and I passed out."

"Great..."

"What?"

"If what you say is true, we have about an hour left to live from when it hit us. And that's if Metatron didn't leave us any surprises."

"If he did?"

"We're as good as dead."

Blood coated the sofa as the old man tossed the dart to the side. He'd cut through Oli's t-shirt to get a better look and found that his entire chest was a patchwork of black lines running along where his veins were. Removing the dart hadn't been the smoothest of processes and it had probably done more damage to his insides, but apparently, it was better than leaving it in him.

"Now I need some boiling water and for one of you to fetch me the satchel on my horse," the old man told them.

"Why?" Andrew asked.