“Shit” She ran down the stairs, tripping twice or perhaps thrice, she didn’t know really what to do or count or think. She merely ran and went out to the back upon landing in the main hall. The lights were dark. They were yellow and lined the way to her destination, out the back door behind the restaurant of the casino and to the outside world. She burst out like a blonde flood, both hands placed against the doors to the exit. She ran towards the parking lot, though only needed to go half way. Through a chain link fence, and into a shed of generators in some dingy room, where the dusty glass filtered light into a blurred and low glare.

A metal lock held this door, one she opened with keys hanging on a lanyard on her waist pocket. The wind was cold beneath her, there were no crickets or indeed no sound. There was nothing in this large casino, nothing that could be considered life. She walked casually inside or appeared to be casual, though her heart raced and her eyes paced across the horizon of the room for the metal box. She found it across, in between, it was two rows of four generators, spinning and humming like engines of some forgotten warmachines. She paced through, it was a center shot inside.

About halfway she felt a pain in her arm. She squinted and looked down, her brand was bleeding. It ran down her sleeve, and she was sure had the coloration of green, something shiny and reflective, like the exoskeleton of a fly. She dismissed it, as much as she could at least, for it still frightened her, but the task at hand frightened her even more.

She walked towards the box, a man-sized sheet of metal that creaked open and looking inside, she could not tell what was what. For the switches were on and off in strange orders and referred to numbers and floors, she did not understand. Such that, she looked at the fuse and out the window to the top floors of the casino. She turned switches on and off and watched as the lights of whole levels turned on and off. And so she began mapping the schematics of the fuse box to the levels. She worked her way down, getting rid of every useless apparatus and every useless light.

The street lamps were turned off, the giant sign at the front too was turned off, and the casino grounds were reduced to dead-space, like a graveyard. The warmth and the buzz remained alone, amongst the dead lamps and lights.

She was beginning to get confident and recognized what floor she needed to remain on. A giant lever was set next to the twenty-first-floor switch, one that would leave it on indefinitely. One, she struggled to pull and pry across. One that made clicks and clacks and groaned as she ran it across.

She looked at it, halfway, breathing hard and cursing at herself. She stared into the switch box, which she now realized was rusted and croaky. And breathing hard, and relaxing, she noticed in the corner of this metal wall, a reflection. Herself, of course, blond haired and messy, and then…something else. Behind her.

She moved aside. The wall near her shattered, she wasn’t even sure if the fuse box was intact. She only saw, from the floor looking up, a hooded figure and a long blade like a dagger running across.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

She shrieked as she crawled out and behind a generator.

When she looked around, the figure was gone.

Her breathing gave a false sense of security, for it was neither hard nor constant. She wasn’t breathing at all. Her eyes merely looked side to side in wait.

And after a moment, she felt her arm bleed again.

She jumped, in the only direction that looked clear, and she felt her hair cut and fall to the floor.

She looked behind her again. The figure returned into darkness.

“Who is it?” She screamed, walking towards the center, towards a hanging bulb and the weak light it rendered.

No one responded. Though she could see the figure move along in the long shed, along the walls, with a dagger crooked and chipped.

She felt a cut along her shoulder, something light that trickled down. Blood wasn’t a stranger to her though.

She waited, feeling her arm which to her now appeared the only instrument in safety. And in her waiting, she heard her phone ring. A dial from Dion and looking up the windows by the side of the little shed, she could see the light turn off on his floor.

She looked behind herself, only a small glare, and felt her mark burn and bleed again.

She jumped down and watched as the blade interred itself the steel fuse box, into the wiring and the electricity. How it went smoothly through the surface, like water, and how it remained interred afterward, like a holy sword in a rock.

The electricity and sparks shot out, as did smoke afterward. Smoke that wrapped around the masked figure, smoke that she ran from and out the door.

She dialed her phone as she did so, with her eyes looking every which way.

“I fucked up.” She screamed in between heavy breaths. “I fucked it all up, I’m sorry.”

“What?” Dion asked. “What went wrong?”

She put a hand on her forehead. In confusion, in anger, for her eyes showed both.

“I don’t know. Someone’s chasing me, I don’t know.” She ran behind a pillar, in the parking lot now. There were no lights, she was to thank for that. And so she followed the sound of leaks and of small debris falling from one parking lot floor down to another. “What do I do?”

The phone broke into static. Then a loud bang, a scream. And more static.

“Come on.” She screamed at it, she raised the glow of the phone outward. There was no burn of her tattoo, but she needed to be sure. Then she hit it some more.

Dion picked up again, groaning and spitting.

“I won’t be able to kill it.” He said.

“What do we do then?”

“Kill the person who summoned it.” He said, desperate-like. “Kill the summoner, you kill the pact. Kill the pact, the demon disappears.”

“Is that who’s chasing me?”

“I don’t know,” Dion said. “Where are you?”

“In the parking lot.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the parking lot!” She screamed. She felt a burn in her arm. He jumped forward. The blade went through the pillar. Not just the blade, the black-gloved-arm too, as if it wasn’t even apart of this material plane. As if it had just phased through, before materializing, and shattering the stone that took up its space. The rest of the figure came through, right through the metal.

She shrieked. She crawled back as the figure looked down at her and walked. Walked, just so casually. Walked, as if it had no other care in the world, as if this meant nothing.

Walked with complete calm. As she shrieked and ran, and grit her teeth and roused herself into fearful fury.

She ran, down a floor and down the stairs. Ran, dodging knives coming out of the steel stairs and out of the metal walls, like a funhouse of madness.

She ran, thinking, how in the hell am I going to kill this thing? How in the hell am I going to survive?