All Eyes on Me

So she was fine with dying. She knew what was happening to Dalia, and her death would make it permanent.

"...Fine. I'll do worse than just killing you if you get too close. Do you want to sit down and explain yourself here, or do you want to explain yourself in hell? Stay back."

Chloe was less confident now. Not because she couldn't make that happen, but because she didn't want to. She didn't know for sure if she could get Ana's corpse to hell in time. It was risky. And Ana kept calling her her aunt - was she prepared to inflict a fate worse than death on a niece of hers? Who the fuck was she, actually? What was going on?

She started backpedaling, out of the darkness and back towards her magic room, never taking her eyes off of Ana.

"W-what?"

Chloe kept backpedaling. She was still ready to shoot. But the realization was hitting her in waves - Chloe had created her, when she was trying to save Dalia's life. She was Dalia's demon half.

She felt a lot of things. Horror. Guilt. Fear. Anger. It was too much. She was shaking.

"That wasn't supposed to happen!" She shouted, then her voice got softer, trembling. "You weren't supposed to be alive. If I knew... If I knew you would be alive we would have taken you in."

But it was probably too late for that now. Too late for compassion. Ana was here for revenge. And Chloe was still leading her to the magic room.

Chloe wasn't ready for that strand of web. She wasn't ready to deal with any of this. When that webbing caught her feet, she stumbled backwards and fell, breaking her fall with her tail, but still ending up more or less on her ass with Ana pulling her closer.

She wanted to get caught up in what was right and wrong here. She wanted to find a way to make this right. It almost paralyzed her. She called out, "Wait!," but she knew Ana wasn't going to give her that luxury, and she knew Ana despised her, and she knew Ana meant to do something horrible to her.

Her hand, which used to have a flashlight sticking out through its portal, now had a small metal barrel sticking out. That barrel was attached to a large-calibur revolver full of holy water covered rounds. She was panicking. But she knew she shouldn't kill Ana, so she aimed for the legs. Three quick shots.

The moment that third shot went out, Chloe would seem to vanish.

Amber would be insulated from all of this, in her safe corner of hell. She wouldn't hear those three gunshots. She wouldn't hear Ana's voice, or Chloe's. It was pleasantly warm and bright, and comfortable. She would occasionally notice disturbing visions in the corner of her eye, but they would be difficult to focus on.

Up in her room in the tower, she would hear a bell ding! just next to her. There would be a piece of parchment floating in the air, right there, with a note written on it:

"Hi Amber. It's mom. Sorry I can't talk to you right now.
This place has cellphone reception. Call Jackal. Tell him that the woman who cursed Dalia is here. If she dies, the curse is permanent. Tell him she knows Malara's weakness and we need his help.
After you hang up, call the police."

If Amber looked out the window while making that call, she would notice that the landscape outside was changing. There was a beach nearby. The outside world would start to look a lot like, but not quite exactly like, Manta Carlos. Certain details would change every time she looked away from them. If she listened very, very closely, she might hear the faint sound of distant gunshots.




Almost a minute had passed since Chloe disappeared. The portal in the former sun room opened. On the other side, it looked like Chloe was standing in a living room in some kind of beach house. She held a revolver with shaking hands, pointing it in Ana's direction. And then she squeezed the trigger.

BANG! BANG! BANG! Click! Click!

The bullets went nowhere near Ana, harmlessly sailing past her and into the far wall. Her element of surprise had, apparently, been squandered by her terrible marksmanship.

"Shit!"

Chloe stumbled backwards and, looking horribly unpracticed, awkwardly fumbled with the gun as she tried to reload it. She would start pulling more bullets out of the portal in her hand to fill it with, until she tripped over a wooden chair she didn't seem to notice behind her, dropping everything.

The line of web found its mark. Chloe grabbed onto a big table, and she wouldn't budge no matter how hard Ana pulled.

"So why are you going after me!? Are you going to eat me and Amber too? Use our power to beat Dalia? Is that it?"

Chloe seemed to be pulling herself along the table, farther away from the portal, pulling at the web at the same time. Ana might have thought Chloe was trying to get away, but she was really trying to pull Ana in. And if Ana wanted to keep a grip on that line of web, she'd have to come through.

Elsewhere, Chloe was watching and listening to all of this very carefully. The more Ana spoke, the less Chloe felt like she owed her anything. Ana may have been worthy of love at some point, but that didn't change what she was now.