Warlock

A Frozen Attack

The last pieces of the soup kitchen's lunch rolled out the door to the serving area, completing the glorious rows of food that fed the city's forgotten. Loch headed to the sink to begin cleanup while everyone else served, but he was stopped by a squat, silver-haired woman that matched his height exactly. Darcy smiled at him and spun him around.

"Today you get to serve the customers that you make so happy with your glorious food! Leave the dishwashing to the next shift, dear. They can handle it." Loch reluctantly followed her out to the main room. Everything was far too loud, and he could feel the gazes of the Others that often discussed him burning into his skin.

The old woman set him up serving the stir-fry they had made that day alongside a vampire who volunteered solely for the serving portion each day. He recognized the girl from the table of vampires that had bet on whether he would say yes to Skye's request, and unfortunately, she recognized him too. As they began to dish out the food, she started to talk to him. "So, did he actually formally ask you out once you two were taking your little walk in the park?" She tipped some of the stir-fry onto the tray of a frail man and smiled without teeth.

Loch sighed and pasted on a smile of his own as he served the people of the street. "No."

"When he does, are you going to say yes?" Her question sounded threatening, as if she was going to kill him if he said otherwise. Skye definitely had a lot of friends looking out for him.

Did he have any other choice? What if the naiad did eventually work up the courage to ask him? Loch did not know how to date. He had managed to go over four thousand years without encountering such a dilemma, since his time in Egypt was spent as a magical priest for the most part, and they only ever 'did' anything if they were corrupt, and after that he had never stayed in one place for long. The world had been a map to explore and fill out, not a place to stay and get comfortable. However, he did need to keep Skye on his side in order to learn about the plans of the Others. "Yes."

The vampire grinned, bearing the sharp incisors that she thought he could not see. "I guess opposites really do attract. And I'm going to win that bet, too. We should chat more so I can continue to make money off you." Loch glared at her, but quickly replaced his smile as he continued to serve the long line of homeless wanderers.

They did not speak again, except to compliment the poor wanderers on an interesting article clothing or hairstyle. Loch definitely preferred cleaning the kitchen, where he could focus his attention on listening rather than speaking. Now he could only catch snatches of the various conversations around the room before he was distracted by his own task. At one o'clock his shift finally ended, and another volunteer took his place at the serving counter.

Darcy smiled at him as he began to cross the serving room to leave, but before he could force his lips to curl upward in response the whole room went dark. He barely had time to recognize the frozen figures in the darkness around him before something shoved him to the ground. Glowing white eyes stared down at him with tiny black pupils, then a mouth much wider than it should have been opened to reveal rows upon rows of rotten black teeth. It was drooling, dripping a dark liquid onto his chest that burned like acid. He recovered from the initial shock and tried to jerk away from the creature, but two of its arms pinned his to the ground while two more emerged from the darkness bearing knife-like claws.

His eyes adjusted far enough in the darkness to realize the shapes around him were the frozen forms of all of the homeless and the volunteers. Time had stopped, but he had not. The slowly approaching claws suddenly darted forward, slashing at both his throat and his face. He was choking on his own blood. The pain was nearly unbearable, and he could not take it any longer.

Loch felt power pulsing through his veins, there one moment and transferred to the creature the next. The dot-sized pupils grew in size as it leapt backward, but it was too late. He could not make out its form in the darkness, but he could tell when it suddenly collapsed into a pile of dust.

The lights rushed back, far too bright, and he was collapsing. Loch pushed himself up and coughed up more blood. He was going to bleed out if he did not heal his throat quickly. People were shouting in shock around him, someone was calling the hospital. There were Others watching, so miraculously healing himself was out of the question. He would have to put up with the annoyance of blood for a little longer. Loch quickly made a decision and healed the throat wound so that he could breathe without gurgling, but no more than that. He pushed himself into a sitting position as people began to close in, saying words that did not make sense. His ears were ringing with the sound of rushing blood, the lights were far too bright, and darkness began to creep around the edges of his vision.

The wail of a siren pierced the gibberish yelling around him, bringing him back into the present. Loch forced himself to his feet and began to stumble his way through the crowd. Some of them stepped back to let him through, while others attempted to form fences with their arms. He could not go to the hospital. The door was a few feet away.

He burst out into a world painted white with snow. It was even brighter out here, and the flashing lights of an ambulance alarmed him into action. Loch stumbled along the sidewalk at the fastest pace he could manage with injuries that seemed much greater than before, heading somewhere, anywhere but his present location. Footsteps began to grow louder, approaching him. They were chasing after him. Loch ducked through an alleyway and continued his stumbling pace.

The world swam into focus again as he found himself in front of the café. His subconscious mind had brought him there for a reason, so he accepted it without a thought. The darkness around his vision began to close in once again as he fell into the building. "No... hospital..." The world crumbled around him.