Crimson Claws & Fangs ch.02

     In a vast darkness a single pillar of blue light has standing with in it a man, a man wearing a brown coat, blue jeans, with short shaggy brown hair. This man hasn’t changed in all the time he has been in this place. He hasn’t seemed to age, or even grow hungry or thirsty, this man’s name is Mike King.

    The Man had grown use to the darkness, and being alone. To the man’s surprise a familiar form appears from the darkness, towering over him standing 14 feet tall and looking down at him with its black jackal like face is none other than the one that put him here, Rhuen.

    “You have been in this place for a year and a half.” Speaks the regal sounding god of darkness, “and many things have changed in that time that may be of interest to you, your order has fragmented, one such group sent a number of its member’s out on a hunt for one of my sons. Heh, he made easy prey of their pathetic toy robot. While they ran away they were captured by some of your Order’s old American allies, a group called the H.E.P., of course the only reason I tell you this is because amongst those men was an old friend of yours. Peter Jones I believe his name was.” Rhuen pauses for a moment and says, “well rather than just tell you, how about I show you something that is happening right now.” With a wave of his clawed hand Rhuen created a window in space with a green wavy border.

     In a dark room sits a chair, and tied to that chair with mechanical braces around his wrists, ankles, and neck is Peter Jones, a man who had at one time been a sheriff in a small mountain city called Brooksville just a few miles up the road from the tiny town of Pine Ridge. In front of the man is a mirror, which he assumes, correctly, is a one way mirror and he is being watched. The mirror clears and behind it is the same woman that had captured him and his allies out in the desert. Shortly after being captured they had all been rendered asleep, only to awaken in this chair one hour before the mirror cleared up. He has no idea where he is or what will happen next.

    The Woman tells him that they know all about the Order of the Knights of the Golden Cross as well as their splinter group the Sacred Knights of the cross. She even describes their secret pin emblem the crystal cross with a gold vein around it and she even somehow knows its symbolic meaning that they grew from the Golden Cross as a jewel of purity. Peter is stuck sitting there astounded by how much this enemy already knows, as she goes on about the factions with in the Golden Cross splitting because of the events in the middle east where the Paladin division had been on a goose chase and accomplished nothing even as Peter and his family were facing down four Dire. Peter can’t believe that she even knows about that!  And how the Sacred Knights approached him so he could get his revenge on the Dire despite the truce the H.E.P. had with the Order of the Knights of the Golden Cross.

     “However,” she stated, “Thanks to the Order’s little spying and attack in the Middle East they are forbidden from any activities with in the United States with out our approval from now on, even if their grunts are unaware of such deals.”

    Peter screams, “Blasphemous bull shit! The Dire and their minions are the spawns of Satan! They must be destroyed, neither you, the order or any government agency has any authority over the kingdom of Heaven!”

    With the click of a button on a panel in front of her below the window out of view of Peter the woman causes a screen to come down from the ceiling to the right of Peter forcing him to strain his neck in its confinement to see it. The screen shows an above image of the battle between Khyte and Peter’s group’s robot. She clicks the button again and the screen retreats back into the ceiling. She states, “The Dire are extremely dangerous life forms, and very important to the future of this world. But that is none of your business. And with another click of a button I will erase all your information, it will be as if you never existed. We will then lock you away to never again see the sky.”

    “damn you!” he screams, “I have to get back out there! That bitch Samantha York murdered my father and grandfather. Her demon masters crippled my brother and my son! And this is how this god damned country treats me, and how they deal with having these beasts of hell in their own back yard!?”

    The woman simply says, “We are no more a part of the United States government than your old Order is part of the Italian government.” With a wicked smile on her face she pushes the button and erases Peter’s existence from the grid. She pushes another sequence of button and the floor around Peter’s chair opens up and the chair on a small cylinder platform lowers into the floor, he screams out, “No!” as the view of the woman fades from view and he is surrounded by darkness.

   All he can think of is avenging his family as the chair stops and some unseen mechanism in the dark moves the chair to a conveyer belt and he moves backwards down a hallway. In the dark around him he could swear he can see reflective surfaces on the walls like the plexi-glass windows of prison cells and movement behind some of them. behind him he can hear what sounds like automatic doors opening as the chair stops. A small light protected by a panel in the ceiling clicks on to reveal that he is now in the center of a very small room, to his right is a prison bed and in front of him two plexi-glass panels close shut and the seam in the middle fuses somehow together to create a solid panel.

    The restraints release him and he rises to his feet only to fall over onto the bed from the cramping in his legs from sitting so long and being restrained. The chair vanishes into thin air with a slight shimmer, from behind it Peter can see a toilet in the back of the room. “it’s a prison cell.” says the same woman’s voice from before, echoing Peter’s own thoughts. “from this day on until you die and rot this will be your home.” She says with a laugh. Peter looks up to see her standing just outside the clear opening to the cell, to either side of her he can see other cells, confirming his earlier impression.

    “You will be damned to hell!” screams Peter, “You have no idea how powerful our new order is. We are backed by god and the host of heaven; you have no idea what you are really dealing with here!”

   “No,” she says, “You have no idea what you are really dealing with.” Her latex outfit flows like an oily living shadow wrapping it self around her body which alters its shape with in the darkness. It seems to sink into her and form into the pitch black fur of her body. She has revealed her true form, a shadowy black were-dire. She switches her black fox tail around her muscular legs as she turns around to walk away from Peter, she turns and blows him a kiss from her fanged muzzle just as he feels his entire cell begin to move. The entire thing sinks into the floor like an elevator and he finds himself going down for longer than he would have cared for. Eventually it stops and he finds his cell at a different angle than it was before. Now it is sitting facing a hallway going from left to right rather than being at the end of a hallway. “Must be some kind of mechanical prison able to move the prisoner cells around so they don’t have to take anyone down hallways they could recognize.” He sits there on the bed trying to look out across to the cell across from his to the movement inside it as the light is off in that cell, but is cut short as the light in his own cell cuts off and a mechanical voice from the ceiling says, “lights out.” He is forced to sit there in the tiny cell in the pitch darkness.