Ghosts of Eden

Prologue

The slam of the door as he staggered through it was a gunshot in the silence, amplified by the adrenaline pounding riotously through his veins, muffled at the same time by the mobile blots of grit and shadow burbling across his field of vision. Breaths rasped harsh as battery acid against his throat while he leaned wearily in the doorway, drenched from head to foot by the downpour outside that lent the murky corridor before him its insipid grey light. Gods, he was tired. He would have given anything to simply melt down against the wall and drift into the heavy embrace of slumber – but he couldn't. Not yet. Panting - every muscle in his body trembling, every nerve searing with agony – he clutched an arm across the sharp, frigid warmth spreading over his abdomen. He had to keep going. He had to tell Memphis. They needed to do something, before…

He choked back a breath, quivering fingers tightening woodenly around the inundated fabric of his shirt. Before…

The pain throbbed coldly within him again, his jaw gritting, eyes clenching, as he stiffened against the wall, fighting to hold his thoughts together.

Before what…?

With his head swimming somewhere far above it all, he lurched forward, nearly tottering and collapsing to the polished wooden floors; breaths hissed between clenched white teeth in an ashen caramel face, gunmetal irises boring feverishly through soaked black tendrils of hair into the darkness before him. His lungs were starving, straining for every gasp of rain-dampened oxygen they could manage as he forced himself, one unsteady step at a time, into the corridor. All he needed to do was get to the closed door at the end. All he needed to do was tell Memphis, to warn him of the storm that was coming…

Something insidious pulsed within his mind, leeching the strength from his legs with an abruptness that left him crumpled against the wall, oblivious to the wavering crimson stain painted in his wake as he forced each step down that corridor. His clothes were sucking to his skin, heavy with water, draining the urgency from each and every movement, but he had to… Memphis… Memphis needed to know. The Five needed to know. They had to be ready, had to be warned…

The black steel cross nestled against the hollow of his throat burned from the heat radiating off of his body, and yet, the cold was sinking steadily deeper, encasing his bones, his muscles. Every thought was starting to become sluggish as he stumbled slowly, woodenly down the hall - one step, then another, and another - only distantly aware of the rectangle of rain and dismal grey light at his back. Memphis was just ahead of him, just within a few feet. He was just at the end of the hall, likely sitting at the small desk on the tatami of his office, just as he'd always been, smoking and handling the necessary evil that was the paperwork for their occupation with a permanent scowl. Memphis would know what to do. All he had to do was tell him… And then Memphis would take care of the rest, while he rested. Memphis would know, and he was so tired…

With each breath growing shorter and faster, consciousness fading in and out of the static overwhelming his thoughts, he shuffled towards his goal, clawed his fingers into the wedge between the door and the wall, and thrust the sliding panel open.

It was dark inside, lit only for a moment by the lightning that suddenly flashed through the window – but in that instant, his fading eyes saw everything.

Furniture overturned. Paperwork and vases flung about the room as though a tornado had rushed through. Tapestries torn off the wall, silk irreverently slashed into ribbons with malice. Tatami buckled, shredded from its weaving. And in the middle of it all, the lightning had shown him a misshapen figure lying motionlessly in the center of the room, the heart of a pool of crimson, still wet enough to glimmer from the illumination of the storm outside the open porch door.

Oh, gods…

His laboring heart seemed to seize in his chest. Staring blindly at the massacre before him, dread closing in tight and cold around him, an amalgam of terror, confusion, and grief dragged him down to his knees in a daze on the polished hardwood flooring.

Ashen blonde, sodden tendrils of hair that had always been pulled back into a severe braid, webbed over the cool visage that had considered everything with thought and wisdom - frozen now in a horrific, macabre mask of death. Head twisted savagely on a neck once long and elegant; blood saturated, splattered immaculate robes left torn into disorderly ribbons and rendering flesh porcelain pale. A gruesome tableau of euphoric mutilation, and in its center was his master, his mentor…

Lips left numb with cold and shock never even felt the name tumbling from them, heartbroken and breathless, as he slumped against the wall. "Memphis…"

Someone loomed out from the greyness at his back, but that name was still repeating itself in endless stupefaction and misery in his mind. Even when a voice abruptly rasped something behind him, it was the helpless memory of his master's face that clouded his eyes before the world simply winked out of existence, and he began to fall…

-x-

To Be Continued…

-x-

So, like it? Hate it? Wish it would spontaneously combust? Leave me a review and tell me all about it! C'mon, I wanna know everything!

Oh look, something new! So this is an idea that's been kicking around for… a very, very long time. I can't count the number of times I've made an attempt to get it started only to decide that something didn't feel right. I think I've got it down now, with some content for the next chapter already started. It should be interesting, working on this one, so… Let me know what you think, and I'll see you all next time!

Oh. Derp. Right. I should probably clarify something. Ghosts of Eden isn't tied in any way to Bloodstar. Different universe, different rules, different creatures, the whole enchilada. Just figured I should give everyone a head's up so there's no confusion. (There may possibly be a cameo or two, though, depending on how I'm feeling. XD )