Darkstache Week- Day Five
Prompts by @projectdarkstache: Cryptic / Danger
Prompt (submitted to my inbox by anonymous): “Put the gun down.”
Lightning split the sky wide open, its crackling boom delayed but no less terrible. Raindrops thundered down like bullets, soaking the ground and shaking the trees. Clouds roiled above, an angry sea of gray-black. The storm raged on.
And, below it, so did they.
Crack! Thunder incarnate, gunfire tore through the night, the shot going wide as the two men grappled, vicious, pale fingers seizing at a gray wrist, forcing the barrel of the gun out and away.
“Face it, Damien!” Lightning flashed again, silhouetting the men in dark but sending only one shadow dancing across the drenched grass. Mark’s hair was plastered to his forehead, and water and blood ran freely down his face as he forced the gun from Dark’s hands. “I’ve got you now. Got you both! You and your precious Colonel.”
He shoved Dark back, sending the entity stumbling, nearly falling as his injured knee threatened to give way beneath him, as pain screamed throughout his entire body, making his head spin and his vision crawl at the edges with black.
But he saw as Mark straightened. As a vile grin seemed to splice his face in half. As the barrel of the gun glinted under lightning flash. As he pointed that gun at Wilford. Broken, unconscious Wilford who lay bloodied in the grass.
“If I knew you still had a weakness for him,” Mark continued, never one to miss a chance to gloat. His gaze remained fixed on Wilford, ever-confident, ever-arrogant. “I would’ve lured him from you decades ago-”
His speech ended with a yelp as Dark threw himself forward, teeth bared in a silent snarl as he snatched at Mark’s wrists, grappled away a gun with fingers so slick with rainwater that the weapon was sent spiralling away.
Ears ringing, head throbbing, Wilford Warfstache came back to consciousness to see a glistening weapon land in the grass, well within arms’ reach.
With trembling fingers he took it, knowing by instinct that it meant protection even as uncertainty washed away everything else.
“Put down the gun,” came a familiar voice, gentle. “Give it to me.”
“No!” Came the same voice, urgent. “Do not give it to him.”
“Stay back!” Wilford managed to growl, waving the gun blindly in the voice’s direction. When it didn’t speak again he hauled himself unsteadily to his feet, squinting through sheets of rain at two Darks.
“Am I seein’ double?” He asked, training the gun at the first Dark, then the second, confusion rising up to meet him like a tidal wave.
“Don’t shoot!” The Dark to his left demanded, and Wilford turned his attention back. Even in the storm’s inky black it was clear that Dark was injured; blood gushed from his nose in gray rivulets, and he leaned his weight to his right knee, heavily favoring his left.
“You look like hell, Darkie,” he said.
“That’s not Dark, that’s Mark!” The Dark to his right protested, identical in every way, down to the last drop of blood slowly making its way down his cheek. “I’m the real Dark.”
Wilford blinked. “Hold on a second.”
“There is no time.” Said the Dark to his left, sounding tired. Sounding resigned. Lightning crackled through the sky above, illuminating the small clearing and sending shadows skittering away from the Dark on the right.
But not from the Dark on the left.
“You need to shoot him!” The Dark on the right screamed. “Otherwise he’ll kill us both!” He took a step forward, jabbing a finger toward the other Dark. “He lured you here to get at me. He tried to kill me. He’s Mark, and you need to shoot him! Shoot him now, William!”
Bang! Bang! Two bullets slammed into the chest of the Dark on the right, who stumbled back a few steps, touching the wounds with agonized tenderness.
“Well-played,” he murmured, as he began to dissolve, bits of him disintegrating into the air like sugar into water. “Well-played.”
“Wil,” Dark managed, once the actor had gone completely. The entity managed a step forward, his legs giving out and dropping him to the grass. His aura pulsed dully, wreathing him in sickly blue and dark, bleeding red.
Wilford threw away the gun, not caring where it landed. He sank down next to Dark, his own wounds howling in protest, but ultimately drowned out by relief. Thunder rolled above them and rain came down in heavy sheets, but all he did was wrap his arms around the entity and hold him close, warping them away from the clearing in a puff of soft pink.
