There are -
There are ways this is supposed to work. An order to things. A fucking -
She isn't the one who gets snatched, not anymore. She isn't supposed to be. This is wrong. All wrong, like goody-two-shoes and a smile wrongThe tension spidercracks up her arms until she has to shake her shoulders to shake it off; she hisses in misspent
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Her next shot misses - three - but the next one connects - two - and then she has one bullet left.
They can probably smell it on her, judging by the way they regroup slowly, leisurely, like they have all the time in the world (and maybe they have, this place is befucked enough in just the short glimpse she's had of it).
Dust swirls at her feet and the trickle-down glow peeks out from under the cuffs of her jacket. Tara sets herself, licks her lips, and waits for the wolves to come.
And come they do, looking like an onrush of inevitability and rage, right for her, right for her throat -
That's it, you bastards, that's it, come right fucking at me, the scared little girl you'll tear apart, that's it, run -
Her forehead feels light with sweat, and she drops the gun when they're not more than seven feet away -
Her hands close in a vise grip around the air and with a CRACK, the earth punches up through the broken streets and right into the waiting faces of the wolves, fast enough it lifts them off the ground higher than Tara's five-foot-nothing height before they're thrown backwards by yards.
Tara - Tara laughs, then kneels to pick up her gun before grabbed Stranger again and making a run for it.
If her hunch is right, there should be a mostly-serviceable hotel with a lobby two blocks down and to the left.
Spiderweb fractures in the ground. Things walked here and broke other things till they couldn't be used anymore. Everywhere tells a story. Every story can be used.
Wolves. What does she know about wolves?
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CAN SHE DO IT AGAIN?
Yeah, Stranger's just sort of staring. And trying to clap her hands gleefully some more, but considering Tara has her by the arm, that doesn't work so well.
It takes her until they get to the hotel to sort out this highly puzzling dilemma.
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"Don't suppose you're paying enough attention to the universe to tell me why the fuck there are wolves running riot over the Las Vegas Strip, are you?"
Don't tell her, let her guess - you don't have a fucking clue. She hates rescue ops.
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"They're here for the carnival," she says, rolling her eyes and digging in her pockets. "See?"
Stranger's search for her ticket is doomed from the start, since neither ticket nor carnival actually exist. But the first things she pulls out are a crisp new twenty-dollar bill and an assortment of brightly coloured origami paper, all of which she discards on the floor like litter.
"I know it's in here somewhere..."
The amount of stuff she can pull out of one seemingly empty jacket pocket is nothing short of inconceivable.
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"All the buildings are dead," she says, hissing to keep her voice low. "There is no carnival. Why am I here? Why are you here? Where is here? Do you know the answer to anything I just asked?"
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Then, in an uncharacteristically serious tone: "I don't think there has to be a why. There usually isn't."
Throughout her life there has been exactly one constant: nothing ever makes sense, at least not for long.
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Something caused this insanity, and Stranger is the only fucking thing in the situation that seems willing to share. "But there's a fucking what, isn't there? Do you know what it is? Do you know anything?"
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Stranger is not used to people relying on her for information. Most of them give up before this.
"I know there are bugs, and monsters with tentacles, and bright lights all over the place with people in them, and sometimes they talk to me-- I met a god in the desert, his head was on fire and he sent me where there were flowers--"
It sounds like the ramblings of a madwoman, because it is.
It's also at least partly based on reality.
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"There are gods here?" Here, too?
Those wolves should be getting up right about now.
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It has all the terrified authority of a precognitive vision, because Stranger believes she can tell the future.
But it's nothing more than a wild guess with some rare common sense behind it.
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She shuts her eyes tight; she's not willing to exhaust herself on just. On just five fucking wolves, and she doesn't have a very sizable ammo supply on her person.
"I will not die like this," she whispers. "I will not die likes this. I will not die like this."
Just as the wolves start to step inside, the ground shakes and Tara clutches one hand close to her breast. And then the hotel floor explodes upwards, sealing off the lobby from the outside world completely and catching one of the wolves on the jaw hard enough it gives out a yelp of surprise before disappearing behind a wall of stone and concrete.
She misses one, though. One makes it through. She can hear it sniffling about, pawing at the wall first, then settling back into the dedication of the hunt.
Spiderweb cracks in the ground, up the spine of the building now, growing, spreading.
Unstable bases.
"Fuck."
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Stranger wishes, very hard, for her seven-league boots.
They do not show up.
So instead she starts pulling things out of her pockets.
Lint, a very forlorn chocolate bar, an impressively large diamond (which goes back into the pocket, because it is shiny), two rubber balls, four dollars in quarters, a fork, a hard-boiled egg--
--A fork.
A silver fork.
"Werewolves," she says, holding it up for Tara's inspection. "They could be werewolves."
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Her brow furrows tightly. "Are there really gods here?"
... this question does have some actual relevance to the situation at hand.
Very pressing actual relevance, since the wolf can hear, after all.
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"Hades, Lord of the Dead."
In case she'd forgotten: "His head was on fire."
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"All right," she says, then presses down hard on Stranger's shoulder. "Stay the fuck down and don't move."
Clutching the fork hard in one hand, she uses her other hand to heave herself up over the desk counter just in time to meet the wolf mid-leap, catching it with her shin in the side of its face and sending it sprawling through the air. It lands with a yawp and gets to its feet, and they circle, Tara adjusting the fork in her hand, the wolf baring its teeth, ears pinned back so hard they almost vanish behind its head.
Which is when Tara stomps the ground with her foot and two chunks of floor warp as the rock underneath forces them to bend into a tight cylinder around the wolf's midsection before lifting off the ground high enough that the wolf can no longer gain traction on the ground.
"Hot diggity dog," Tara says, with a manic little grin through the slight sweat dotting her face, and slams the fork home through the wolf's ear, grabbing its jaw and digging in tight.
She keeps digging until it stops moving.
Then she leans in close and whispers, "Take that, you mangy son of a bitch," before walking away and leaving the fork hanging messily out of its ear.
"It's safe now." Which, really, is an afterthought to everything else. "You can come out."
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"Pity about the fork."
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