44 Chapter 44 - Nil

Dante

I carried Caroline as far from the garden as possible. When we were almost two blocks away, I realized how my strength had greatly improved. The training with Alucard had yielded unexpected results.

People on the street were looking at me while I carried her in my arms. I tried to shield her from any onlookers, not wanting to complicate things even further. I felt like the two worlds in which I lived in had started to collapse into one another.

An old man saw us and forced me to stop on my tracks. He asked me, along with a woman probably in her thirties what happened.

"She's alright, just asleep." It sounded stupid for an explanation.

"I have my car, we can take her to the hospital" The old man told me.

"No, don't worry she'll wake up in a bit. It happens, she's narcoleptic you see." My mind seemed to flip through pages upon pages of lies.

"OH MY GOD! IT'S CAROLINE KING!!!" The woman's voice rang through the streets like a fucking homing beacon and within moments people were rushing at us. The old man was the only one who seemed to not know what was happening.

"What happened to her?!" I heard a voice behind me, a male one.

"Is she drunk?" Another, female.

"Oh my god, is she dead?!" A teenage girl.

"Who are you? What did you do to her?" A man asked me accusingly.

The questions piled up, one after another and I was afraid they were going to take Caroline from me. I felt like we were circled by wolves. A part of me wanted Caroline to wake up so she could tell these people that she was okay and that nothing happened whatsoever but in the scheme of things, I figured she'd be better off asleep.

I was looking for a way out, wanting to push people out of the way but the crowd only seemed to grow. Then I felt a familiar pulsing in my head. Rage.

"WILL YOU PLEASE GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY??!!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. Everything froze and I heard someone clapping. The people around me had started to become shades, fading in the background and I knew I was warping towards purgatory.

"Well done. Well done." The voice startled me. It seemed to come from all directions. "I'm surprised you didn't kill them considering the circumstances."

The first thing that I noticed is the lightness in my arms and that's when I realized that Caroline had vanish from my arms. I looked around frantically, the panic settling in. There was nothing but a sheer empty replica of the real world on which I stood a few seconds ago. The street was empty and the surrounding establishments were hollow of any substance. I wasn't thinking about anything but Caroline. I didn't give a fuck that I was trapped in purgatory with the unknown.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" Even my voice started to sound like it had been warped, twisted with anxiety.

The nihilistic laughter chilled me to the bone, like the voice itself was that of the abyss. I heard the footsteps behind me, a foreboding personification of my fear. When I turned, I saw its harbinger. A hooded figure and in its arms, Caroline. What scared me the most was the fact that I couldn't see the face underneath the hood.

"Fear not. I am not a threat to you. I am merely a watcher of things to come." The assurance sounded so convincing I felt some of the fear slip away.

"Then what do you want?" I was looking at Caroline, not wanting her to disappear from my sight.

"I am merely here to speed things up."

Gently, he placed Caroline on the ground. He started to move a few meters backward and when he was satisfied, he opened his arms like someone about to embrace another.

"A pilgrim knows not when his journey has ended, therefore he continues to travel without a sense of purpose, like an insignificant driftwood flowing along the river of existence." From his center emerged a dark light. I recognized it as the same substance of the dark spheres that I could create. "Faith and belief are entwined with hope and prayers. Do you have it in you? Or are you just the dark side of the spectrum? A despairing, wretched thing who doesn't know what he's doing?"

The dark light became a sphere. Slowly, it hovered a few inches away from him then it began to move.

The fear and the anxiety vanished. I became unconscious of myself. When the dark pulsing sphere of death started to move towards Caroline, my whole existence didn't matter.

I was aware of the cold rage in my veins. It had detached me from all my inhibitions. What mattered was Caroline, what mattered was the light.

**

I closed the gap between me and Caroline in the blink of an eye. I wasn't thinking, there was no time for thought, only action. I gathered her in my arms and moved her away from danger by going sideways to avoid the trajectory of the sphere. It continued moving forward until it came into contact with the wall of the nearby hardware store, a replica from reality. The whole structure was decimated in seconds, leaving a gaping hole where the building stood.

"It's funny how love motivates you." The humor in his voice was akin to Mephisto's, dark and filled with twisted wisdom.

I wasn't intent on listening, I was trembling, not because I was afraid. The uncontrollable rage inside me was about to reach its threshold. I looked at Caroline, the quiet innocence and peace on her face reminded me that I couldn't lose control.

Hesitation marks in my head , I bottled it all down and faced the hooded creature before me.

"What do you want?"

"Question. Is that all that you think about? What I want?" He seemed to be smiling underneath.

I felt like I was talking to something vast and empty. "I've had my fair share of strange happenings and most of them always have something they want."

He nodded and laughed. It was the laughter that disturbed me. "Yes. I understand that you've seen some of the bitter truth unveil before you." He started to crack his fingers, his hands were covered in the same dark garment that wrapped his entire body, black on black. "Let's have a palaver shall we?"