Chpt. 2 [Potential.]

Just a job.
Upton slipped through the blackened, rain-slick cobblestone streets. The tenuous set of an aggravated animal was in his shoulders, and his face was dark, hidden behind the high collar of his coat. There was small, bright part of his spirit that wanted to run back, to scale the exterior of the high, aristocratic house and sweep her back into her arms and make the promises he was divinely bound to break. The darker, embittered remainder of him disagreed, and as he made his way through the deserted streets, beneath the clumsy fog, this side whispered thoughts into his mind.
Just keep moving. This is your life, and she doesn’t want any part of it. She is light, and you are caught in shadow.
His lip curled into an agitated half-snarl.
She’s just another bystander, that’s all she’ll ever be.
Laurea.
He grimaced, and pulled the collar of his coat higher around his face.
Lost.
“Ai, what’s wrong with you, fella? You smell somethin’ bad?” A voice screamed from the side of the alley. Upton glanced down without inclining his head. The drunken woman who had referred to his expression smiled at him and twisted a lock of her hair.
“You shouldn’t be in the streets at this time of night.” Upton said curtly, and nodded.
“’Ow else am I s’posed to get any business then, sir?” She smiled wider, revealing a twisted and blackened canine. “Speaking o’ which, you interested?”
Upton was motionless as he stared at the fallen woman.
To an observer, they might have thought he was sizing her up, considering her offer, but internally, Upton was simply wagering her odds of survival if she stayed the night in the gutter: low, but they could have been far worse.
“No.” He said, with a sense of finality, and walked on.
“Fine. Never wanted one so-“ she waved her hands about in Upton’s direction, “- DARK.”
He strode forward through the blackness, separating himself from the grisly encounter with a blazing will. These streets were filthy, and he was destined to walk them until the end of his days.
A watchdog for the higher powers.
A reluctant boatman of the proverbial river Styx, aiding the worthy across to damnation.
A scream pierced the night behind him.
And barring the damned from returning to the world of the worthy, he mused as he turned on his heel.
The fog obstructed any direct view, but it became very obvious to Upton that something was distinctly wrong. The specters of steam and blackness swirled, intertwined, but potently disturbed in their course of motion.
In response, Upton drew his weapon.
It was not, in reality, a weapon- to Upton, it took on a sort of higher meaning and intention. A weapon was simply a tool, designed for harm, and utilized easily for either good or evil. To Upton, the silver-double-barreled, ornately decorated beast of a Howdah-style pistol that he removed from his waist holster was something a religious icon; an exactor of just wrath, a thing of divine certainty and light, and the upholder of Upton’s faith.
He took long, uniform, but cautious strides through the mist, pistol extended in his left hand, and cocked his head lightly to the side.
The scream came again, this time with intelligible words.
“Get off!” The fallen woman screamed, her voice bordering on bleeding hysteria. “Get off!”
Upton moved slowly now, peering through the mist until the woman was in a semi-clear view. Something was pulling at her hands, struggling to drag her away. Upton moved again, but this time with abnormal speed, to rest the pistol’s head against the shockingly small form. The form turned its head to stare at him with large, dark eyes, and even in the darkness, Upton recognized the upturned, dirty face of a young lady.
“Ma’am, I request you step away from the woman whose hand you are currently tugging at.”
She swallowed, and her eyes suddenly glistened with a dreadful, hysteric panic. She dropped the woman’s hand and back away from Upton until she struck the wall of the alley.
She looked entirely normal, but Upton knew far better than to dismiss a being based upon appearance. Besides, a pain was slowly growing in the space behind his forehead, and she definitely did not smell human.
“Please-“ She was speaking now, her enormous black eyes imploring. “Please- don’t hurt me, sir.”
The constant furrow in his dark brow deepened. “What’s your business here?”
“It’s- It’s my sister, sir, I wanted to take her inside for the night, she can’t just sit out on the streets, it’s far too cold- she’ll go cold.” She whimpered, pointing at the woman on the ground, who rocked back and forth, smiling at Upton again.
The aching of his head increased sharply. He rubbed at it with his free hand.
“Your sister, hmm?” This was far more talking than he was accustomed to.
The girl nodded.
What was wrong about her? Upton tilted his head and squinted as he beheld her face. She was pretty, undeniably. Her skin was pale and lightly freckled, but lacked the transparency of a creature of the blackness. Her dirty strawberry-blonde hair fell in distressed lengths around her face with none of the mesmerizing beauty of a Selkie or any other creature of seduction. He moved the pistol to lift her hair from the sides of her face so he could get a good look at the shape of her ears. She flinched immensely, and closed her eyes tightly, whimpering, “Sir- please-“
Her ears were round and human, not the points of fair-folk descendents or the hanging folds of some altered person. He removed the gun and glared. She slowly opened her eyes and stared back at him.
“What are you?” He asked, finally.
“I’m Caroline-“
“No, what are you, woman?” He corrected, gruffly.
The pain in his head suddenly doubled, causing alarm to spread throughout his body. As the girl attempted to formulate an answer, he hushed her, glancing about the fog behind him. It, too, had doubled, and now encompassed the alley in a blanket of bright, yet inky clouds.
“Why were you bringing her in?” He growled, slowly lowering the gun. The girl stared at him, and the fear present in her eyes before returned sevenfold.
“Because there’s something here.” She whispered. “I smell it, I hear it, but it’s somewhere above.”
Upton swore and pushed the girl aside, backing up against the wall. A sudden jolt that sent shockwaves through the cobblestones informed him that the creature was no longer above them. “Girl,” he hissed towards the strawberry-blonde. “Move- take your sister out of the alley, get back to your house. Do not return here.” She was shaking violently as she nodded, but stared upwards at the roof, as if something else remained. Upton ignored her.
Upton dug in his pocket with his free hand and produced a stub of chalk. He slowly, cautiously knelt, and began to inscribe symbols on the ground in a semicircle around his person. “Creature of blackness,” he said loudly, addressing the thing shrouded by fog, “you must reveal your presence, or be removed from this world.”
“But you already feel my presence.” The harsh whisper snaked through Upton’s eardreams with explosive pain.
The aching followed its course, and resettled behind his forehead, ever worsening. Upton fell sideways, gritting his teeth, and held the pistol up in the direction of the whisper.
“This is not your territory, Spectre.”
“Try again.” The voice invited, resonating from all sides.
“Dijinn, return to your prison.”
“Still wrong, hunter.”
Upton paused, tearing through his mind for any information. A night creature, following two women, surrounded by spectral fog. “Hupia, show yourself.” He said, finally.
The fog imploded backwards violently, until it reentered a solitary grey form, standing only yards from Upton, head inclined.
“Very good, Sir Upton.” The being spoke, yet had no mouth, stared, but had no eyes. It was faceless, and fairly colorless, but the hardness of the light on its shoulders conveyed its presence.
“You’re a long way from home.” Upton noted, now turning the chalk stub to his pistol, marking a symbol that stretched around the barrel and down the handle.
“I could say the same for you.” It said, before laughing.
Upton rolled his eyes and slowly moved to his feet. “Yes, but I’m ordained to be here. You, on the other hand, have slipped back from the reaches Below, and it’s about time you return there. You’re giving me the most terrible headache, and you stink of murder.”
“That’s a tad impolite.” It said, cheeriness fading. The smoke began to slip from its from again, sliding down towards the cobblestones and billowing towards Upton. The figure started to dissolve.
“I believe this is more than a tad.” Upton said, and fired a bullet directly into the monster’s faceless head. It crumbled instantly.
Upton holstered his revolver, and drew a notebook from his inner coat pocket. On the map inside, he made a black mark above the specific spot, and wrote as a short not ‘Hupia’. A strange scent crossed his nose again, and he glanced up to find Caroline standing a few yards away, still shaking.
“Sir,” she said slowly, “I think I may be in need of your assistance.”
“Not hardly, young lady.” Upton sighed, pocketing his book and turning. “I’m not buying.”
“No, sir- I’m quite sure.”
“I’m not. Go home to your sister.”
“She’s dead.”
He stopped dead, and turned. “Dead?”
“There were two.”
“What?” He began to walk towards her, but stopped. Her dress glistened, dark, in the moonlight, and her once-dark eyes were cast up towards him, exuding a very strange burnished brightness.
“Are you injured?” He asked in a low voice, keeping his distance.
She glanced down at the slowly spreading scarlet darkness that was spreading from her ribcage. “This happens occasionally- Sir, I need you to do something.”
“Did the Hupia do this?”
“No, sir, I need you to do something, please.”
“What is it?”
She glanced down again, and up at Upton. Her shaking increased again, jolting her body in a manner that exceeded fear entirely. Upton stared. “Sir, I need you to kill me.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, there’s a very good chance I’ll kill you.” She slowly fell to the ground, where she knelt, clutching her torso.
“Caroline.” Upton began to say something, but as he opened his mouth to speak, a frigid gust of air shot down his throat into his lungs. From inside, it shifted to a boiling agony, spreading through his veins- his head erupted into an explosion of pain so potent that he allowed a single, agonized cry to slip from his mouth. Caroline stared up at him, alarmed.
“Sir-“
The second Hupia, he thought, with sudden realization, the Hupia has the power to enter the spirit of a broken man.
“Sir!” Caroline screamed, as Upton convulsed. Someone else’s words spilled from his mouth.
“Come here, girl.” It said, forcing his mouth into a smile. “Come here, and I’ll make it all alright. Don’t worry.” There was a truly agonizing moment of belief in her eyes, which Upton attempted to disregard, but the Hupia’s joy forced him to witness. “Don’t worry.” It crooned again, and the belief slowly began to fade.
“This is bad-“ she murmured, shaking again. “This is very, very bad.”
“It doesn’t have to be-“
“No.” She glanced up, through sheets of hanging strawberry-blonde. “It does.”
And suddenly, she burst forth from her skin, which unraveled and dropped to the cobblestones in ribbons. The animal that leapt from her skin was long, muscular, and covered in deep blond fur.
A lycan, of course. Upton groaned internally. Of course, a disease wouldn’t manifest itself physically while dormant.
And suddenly, the beast was tearing into the body that had once belonged to Upton. The force of its pounce threw the man to the ground, forcing him flat on his back as the wolf took its claws to his chest and stomach.
The Hupia screamed, and the immense feeling of his insides tearing told Upton that it was preparing to flee. His mouth dropped open and the same frigid steam poured from his throat, leaving behind a cooled, almost divine sense of absence. The smoke collected on the ground, and for a moment, formed into the shape of another faceless, colorless man. The wolf’s claws turned away from Upton and buried themselves in the Hupia’s back. The wolf’s jaws came down hard, burying themselves into the spirit’s back, and tearing with murderous force. The spirit had the time to scream only twice before it crumbled between the beast’s obsidian teeth. Upton could not move, could not speak, and found himself a prisoner within his own form. His eyes shut themselves, rolling back into a currently vacant, painless skull, and the simple rush of breath in and out was all that seemed to fill his frame. He was enclosed, somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, but as he thought of bursting forth and once again taking control of his form, he found his current state to be quite painless.
There was no bleeding, no headaches,
No feelings for Laurea.
As his first opportunity passed, Upton’s body began to sink into a state of unconsciousness.
Without the fire, the steamboat is motionless, harboring only an expectant pile of coal, unburned.
Upton was slipping into the abyss.
A cold furnace of potential, untouched
Laureau was nothing to him.
Waiting only
And now he had only darkness.
for the chance of ignition.