Author’s Note: Chapter five. Thanks once again to Awaking Kills the Dream and Harper Bell, who reviewed chapter four! You guys flatter me. I don’t think that I’m going to do reviewer responses, there wasn’t much to respond to…but you guys have my unending gratitude!

Resurrect

They had left the Sin Eater’s ramshackle dwelling as the sun had set; the cat was insistent that they keep moving. At night, the city streets took on a supernatural cast, each building had a spirit and the world seemed to exist only in the spots of light provided by the street lamps, disappearing into a velvet darkness as black as death itself. The Sin Eater could hardly feel the cement of the sidewalk beneath his bare feet, and seemed to feel himself dissolve into nothing every time he left one of the precious patches of illumination.

“If we’re going to work together, I’m going to have to have something to call you.” The Sin Eater murmured, his voice low and husky. There seemed to be some great irreverence inherent in disturbing the unearthly silence, an irreverence beyond even his comprehension.

“My name is Demi.” The cat’s voice was also soft, laden with tension that the Sin Eater could feel from where she perched on his shoulder. “Yours?”

“Kern.”

There was silence then as they pressed on, with no sound but the soft strike of Kern’s footsteps. They soon passed an electronics display in some nameless shop, and through the metal bars that protected the glass, Kern could see the vibrant green numbers of the numerous digital clocks on show.

11:58

Out of nowhere rose a ghostly breeze, like a dying man’s last breath, that carried to their ears the spectral howl of some ghastly hound. Despite the tepid air, the Sin Eater felt his blood freeze.

“Run.” Demi commanded, with a stoic sort of authority that chilled him to the core. “Run now.”

Kern needed no coercion; he had a fair idea of the beast that was calling so hauntingly to the night.

He swerved off the main street and into an alley so abruptly that he felt Demi’s claws dig into his shoulder to keep her from being thrown off. There was no light there, and Kern moved through the shadows with a speed born of instinct.

Lost in rising unease, and the sound of his harsh breathing and his feet hitting the pavement, Kern had no idea that they had come upon the canal until he felt himself collide with the harsh, metal railing that lined the edge.

He gathered himself for a moment, struggling to hear a strange noise that had reached his ears. It was a faint rushing, a bit like a sigh…

His concentration was shattered by a low, guttural growl, far too close for comfort.

“Over the edge.” Demi hissed, audibly struggling with her panic. “We need to make it to running water. He won’t be able to scent us then.”

“The canal’s dry!” Kern muttered back, and despite his claim, he hopped the fence and gripped it as he felt himself begin to slide. The incline was fairly steep, not unclimbable, but still nearly a hundred feet down to the bottom.

The floor of the canal was shrouded in an ethereal fog; Kern could see that now. Somehow, he knew that it was impossible.

“What are you waiting for?” The sound of eager panting and anxious whines were growing closer, ever closer.

Kern didn’t bother to look. Releasing his hold on the railing, he immediately began to work his way down. Crouched low, he started to drag one of his hands along behind him as he went, stepping quickly, and more often than not sliding, down several feet at a time. The rough cement of the canal wall bit harshly into the soles of his bare feet, and his palm and fingertips were red and raw.

The sighing sound was closer now, and so was the mist.

“Almost there,” Demi assured him; her feline eyes piercing the darkness like only an animal’s vision could.

Kern was past the point of caring; any light that might have spilled into the canal from the upper world could not penetrate that deep, and he was left almost entirely blinded. The only thing he could see was the mist, looming ever closer, until he finally entered it, and could see nothing but grey.

It was a shock, therefore, when his haggard feet hit water. Running water.

It was ice cold, and deep; when he finally touched the flat bottom of the channel, the water was nearly a quarter of the way up his thighs. It was moving at a fairly good clip, too; Kern only hoped that they weren’t headed upstream, it would be a slow and tiring journey.

His body began to protest the temperature almost immediately; the water was so cold, he felt as if dozens of knives were being driven ever-so-steadily into his skin.

“Upstream or downstream?” He asked, trying to ignore the goosebumps rising on his arms.

“Downstream.” Demi answered, her tail twitching. And, obediently, Kern began to slog forward.

It was slow going; it was not long before the muscles in the lower half of his body began to complain, and his legs had yet to go fully numb. His back ached; he had resorted to leaning sideways and bracing himself with one arm against the wall of the canal to keep himself from being swept off his feet.

“This is insane.” He grumbled, tired of the silence and resentful of the strange being riding in his shoulder. “The canal was dry just yesterday.”

“Yes,” Demi murmured, “The canal in the city where you resided yesterday is dry. It has been for a while now. But we aren’t there… anymore.”

Kern did not ask. He wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to know.

“It would be faster if we could have traveled on the streets.” He remarked after a few minutes, when the pain in his legs had lessened to a dull and constant ache. “I could have outrun that guy, I know this city like the back of my hand.”

“No one can outrun the Hunter.”

“Oh, really? Well, you seem to be doing a damn good job of it.”

Demi declined to respond for a good while, perhaps offended at his sarcastic tone. Finally, she seemed to have thought of a suitable response.

“I do have one advantage over him, I suppose, if it could even be called that.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that. Four legs?”

“No.” She sighed, her voice softening and becoming colder, like the icy water that swirled and eddied around him in an effort to pull him under. “The Hunter has no emotions whatsoever. He feels nothing at all.”

“And you do?”

“In a manner of speaking. I have one emotion.”

Kern felt the painful prick of her claws on his skin.

“I am completely and totally hell-bent on getting what I want.”

And her voice was so low, and so dead, and so dangerous that Kern began to think that he had made a big mistake.

And from somewhere far upriver, the ghostly sound of tortured sobbing echoed towards them above the waves.