signed_sabrina | (no subject)

Sabrina finds the book on the kitchen table.

She knows even before she's moving to open it that it's somehow from the place she only sometimes thinks of home, and she's moving toward it with the same sick feeling of compulsion that had led her to another book in the woods.

But this is not the Book of the Beast. She can see it's a book of prophecy, and with a shaking hand, she reaches for it. It feels familiar under her hands; she opens to the page marked with what looks like a page torn from a sketch book.

Before she can identify the actual content of the drawing, she knows Harvey's made it, knows his hand; when she looks a bit longer, she realizes this is her own face, but not, somehow wrong and evil and everything she's tried to pretend she's not. Trembling violently, she moves the drawing away and finds that the page beneath has an underlined passage.

She leans down to read it, and then she's falling, and she's closing her eyes with Salem's panicked yowls fading away.

Her eyes open and she's curled up on the floor, the afternoon light turned to dim twilight tones, her face wet and sticky with tears. She wants to claw at her own skin, she pushes her hands through her hair to get rid of a crown that isn't there, she screams and hits her fists against the floor.

Even Salem is gone, but as sure as she knows anything, she knows he's gone for help and she's going to have to move quickly to make sure that doesn't happen. There's no help for her here.

Her legs are unsteady, but they carry her as she grabs her bag and takes off out the door.

At the edge of town, there's a place she's always eyed with the suspicion of one who knows she'll visit, but not when. She goes to the Necropolis now, picking out a particularly large and suitably Satanic looking mausoleum.

Chalk and candles and a knife-- she has these things in her bag all the time, and she works with them now. She draws the circle, the sigils, the sacred geometry that will form her makeshift prison. Her blood charges the lines, and the trio of candles serve as a timer. When they burn themselves out, she will no longer be able to alter this trap. It's foolish to think no one else could, but she's fairly certain it will take long enough that-- that--

She doesn't know.

She just can't let herself be out there, a loaded gun, the bringer of an apocalypse, traitor to everything and everyone she loves.

Drawing her knees to her chest and hugging them tight, she tucks her face out of sight, and lets the candles burn.

Threaded | Flat

[Marcus]

[Charlie]

Marcus barely sleeps that night. He's worried, of course he's worried, so he sends Neil a few text messages, far too late, then tries to force himself to get at least a bit of rest, but nothing comes easy. Charlie and Sabrina are in her room, with Salem keeping watch. Trass is in Marcus's room with him, but he senses something is wrong and spends most of the night restless, too, hopping up onto the bed and then padding over to the door and sniffing around the frame.

Eventually, as the sky has barely begun to lighten, Marcus gives up on trying to sleep.

With Trass padding along behind him, Marcus goes to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, knowing he'll need the caffeine today. Sabrina might need it, too, and he can have it ready for her when she gets up. He won't wake her, won't disturb her, because he imagines she needs a great deal of rest after yesterday, but at least he can get things ready. And he can be here when she comes out of her room.