All Eyes on Me

A few things had changed since Ana had lived here, since she was part of Dalia. Some of those things had to do with Chloe.

Chloe's power, and her foothold in hell, have been growing. What used to be Pandora's sun room had become Chloe's space for her dark magic. On one wall hung what looked like an intricate poster covered in barely comprehensible runes. It was an anchor point between this world and Chloe's realm.

Chloe could hear out of it, but she didn't notice what Ana was up to. She didn't take a moment to watch her rappel into that room. She heard the sounds of the latch opening, but didn't think anything of it. Even when the music started, at first she thought 'Dalia must be at the Lilac festival, or something. Good for her.' She had been asking Dalia to keep one of those anchor points on her, after all, and Chloe was paying fairly close attention to it. A middle ground, after Jackal talked her down from just locking Dalia up safe in hell.

But, no. This wasn't coming from Dalia. This was from the penthouse. What the hell was going on at home?

Soon, Chloe was walking out of the old sunroom. The music was way too god damn loud, so that was her first objective: going over and turning that down. And then, once she'd turned that volume dial, she would call out into the penthouse:

"Hello?"

Chloe's worst fear right now was about Amber. She noticed that bottle of wine, and she knew Malara was busy at work, so it couldn't have been her and Jackal. Was Amber getting drunk and having sex? How was Chloe supposed to deal with that, if she was?

Chloe didn't see her first. But she could feel it, vaguely. Something was moving, and that something didn't answer her when she called out a second ago. It wasn't Dalia. Dalia wasn't here - she could see where Dalia was. And it didn't feel like Izzy, and Amber was right in front of her.

She didn't answer Amber, not at first. She was putting together the pieces. Fear was building up in her chest. "Um, I think everything's okay. I just heard this loud music and —"

They heard the glass break. Chloe's head jerked towards the source of the sound.

She lowered her voice to a whisper: "...Amber, could you hop through the portal for a second?" Amber would know Chloe meant the one in her magic room. And she would probably know why - it was safe in there. The tattoos on Chloe's body began to move and shift.

The other side of the portal would look pleasant. It was like she was inside of a castle, at the top of a tower, in the middle of a beautiful forest. Her room in the tower would have books, a comfortable bed and a hammock, and even a few sweets which she could feel in her mouth, but they would never seem to actually fill her up. Only if Amber focused could she start to fathom the truth of that place.

She wouldn't see either of the guns Chloe had started keeping in this realm.

In the penthouse, Chloe was tiptoeing over to the source of the broken glass. The first thing Ana would see of her was her now-tattooed hand, slowly reaching in as if to grip the wall and pull Chloe the rest of the way in. Then came the rest of her body. She took a few steps in and stopped, staring.

"Ana, what are you doing in my home?" Chloe didn't know what was happening here, but she was already sick of it.

Chloe could see her well enough. She held her ground. Her expression didn't change. Back in her realm, holy water was being poured over a handful of bullets, and they were loaded into the revolver Ozzy used to carry.

"Back off," Chloe said. "I don't care who you are, if you take one step closer or make one more sudden move, I will kill you." Ana clearly meant her harm. Chloe was having none of that.

She held up a hand, and a bright light came out of it, lighting Ana up like a flashlight. In fact, it was literally just the head of a flashlight sticking out of a portal on her palm, but Ana might not have been able to tell with how bright it was.

"Sit down and explain yourself. Now."