Tony watched Lucy and Daisy leave the church garden together, wading through the deepening snow, Lucy's broken arm hidden beneath the jacket, her black hair covered by the hood. She looked worse now than she had after her collision at their first meeting the day before, and it physically hurt Tony to let her leave his sight again. The shadows wanted her; that much was clear, but why they wanted her and what her powers were exactly remained a mystery that Tony was beginning to feel he had to solve. Questions needed answers, and to get those answers they had to get Lucy to the safe house in one piece, or at least alive.
Bali was watching Tony as he watched Lucy disappear into the blizzard; a deepening frown creased her smooth forehead, and she clenched her teeth together to keep from punching him in the arm. "You like this girl," she said bluntly, making him drop his gaze from the girl and turn to face her in the shadows. She said it as a statement, not a question—a distinction that was not lost on Tony.
"She's important, somehow," he replied, meeting her gaze for the first time since they had begun the mission.
"Important to you, you mean," she said flatly, holding his gaze.
"No, not just to me. Important to everyone. I'm just not sure how yet." He looked away from her to where Lucy and Daisy's footprints were already filling in with snow.
"Yeah, ok...whatever. You know you could just be honest with me. It's not like….it's not like we are together," Bali replied. She fought the urge to turn away from him as she said it.
Tony turned back to her, his brow furrowed, seeing her clearly for the first time that night. They hadn't talked since the last mission they had gone on together. It had been a simple one, standard stuff: shadow terrorizing a local park near dusk. Some kids had gone missing. Tony and Bali went to investigate, hanging around the playground as the sun went down and the younger kids went to their homes, leaving only the teenagers with skateboards and no bedtimes to loiter about.
Tony and Bali had been more than friendly towards each other during that time. They were together more than they were apart, off missions and on, and there had been the familiar tingle of mutual interest brewing between them for weeks. Tony had it planned out: how he would talk to her, how he would ask her out for a coffee, and have the official "talk" about their future. He had decided that morning that he would ask her after that evening's mission was done, and as they walked around the local playground there was the rush of expectation and feeling of tension between them.
They stayed close to the light, eyes on the shadows. It should have been a simple mission, a quick night, and then he could have asked her out when it was over; she expected him to ask her out. But then a younger kid, staying up past his bedtime because his older brother was supposed to be "watching" him, wandered into the darkness near the fence line that surrounded the school playground. Tony had heard the boy's screams and had gotten to him just in time to see a shadow grab him by the ankle and drag him into the forest. Bali had been right behind him, but when she arrived she realized she had forgotten her augmentor and her cellphone. Tony had tried to find the boy on his own, leaving Bali standing in the light of a street lamp and running into the forest with his augmentor out. He managed to kill several smaller shadows that crept along the forest floor like demons, but when he reached the boy he was surrounded by shadows. It wasn't a shadow that had been terrorizing the neighborhood but a shadow ring, led by a shadow hunter. Tony survived with his life, but the boy did not.
Since that night Tony had refused to work with Bali. He had spoken with Maverick and asked if he could be paired with Daisy instead, without telling Bali in advance. He let Maverick tell her. It had been a cowardly way to deal with the situation and he knew it, but the alternative seemed just as bad to him. Telling Bali to her face that he didn't trust her as a partner and therefore couldn't trust her as his girlfriend somehow seemed worse than leaving her without an explanation. Maybe he had overreacted, but maybe not; either way the damage was done and the gap between them had turned into a deep ravine that no amount of banter could fill.
Now as he looked at her, wearing Lucy's clothes, legs exposed in the frigid air, he felt guilt well up inside of him. She was doing the job, however uncomfortable, and though he still didn't feel the way he had about her, he thought maybe he had been too harsh.
"Bali…I…" He started to say, but then he stopped abruptly at the look in her eyes. They were wide and filled with fear, and she was backing away from him as if he were a shadow. He whirled around and found a witch watching them.
"Ahhhh…..nice choissse," the thing hissed between rotten teeth that looked as if every tooth were in some state of decay. His skin was sallow and pock-marked, a touch of leprosy at the corners that accented his overgrown eyebrows. This one was old, the oldest Tony had ever seen. He wore regular clothes, except for a bowler hat that sat atop his mangled and fraying head; it looked like it had been conjured from a different timeline. Witches were recognizable by the decay, most easily by the smell that emanated off of them. It was the smell of death, since witchery stole the life of whoever practiced it, bit by bit. This one reeked of it.
"What do you thinksss, Ichabod?" He hissed through his teeth at a black crow that landed on his shoulder. His gnarled hand was petting the creature fondly, and he took a dead cockroach from his pocket to feed the crow affectionately. Witches, especially ancient ones, were known to keep familiars close by—people that they had turned into slaves and imprisoned as animals. "A church wassss a good idea, but perhapssss not good enough. They did not know there wasss a witch after the girl. Did they, Ickabod?" He took a step past the archway and into the garden of the church without even flinching. Daisy had been right to ask earlier if the shadow hunter had hired a witch. This complicated the plan significantly, and Tony backed further away from the creature that was barely still a man, hiding Bali behind him.
"You can't hide the girl from usssss," he said, taking a step closer to them. "We know who she isssss and what she will do."
"What do you mean?" Tony realized suddenly that their disguises had worked and the witch thought that Bali was Lucy.
The witch cackled, stepping closer to them. "You don't even know what she issss, do you? All this trouble for a girl and you don't even know that she issss the shadow eater?"
Tony frowned at this; the phrase "shadow eater" sounded familiar, but he wasn't sure why. He had heard it somewhere but wasn't sure where. As he considered the witch's words he took the opportunity to gently push Bali deeper into the shadows behind them before asking, "What is a shadow eater? And what does it have to do with us?"
"Not you!" The witch bellowed, spitting as he did so and then lifting his gnarled finger and pointing behind Tony at Bali. "Her! It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with her. We have ssseen it! The shadow eater, born of the bloodline of those who ate the moon and the sun the first time, so many many years ago. She will have the power of the first and she will rule the shadows asssss her ancestor did at the beginning of it all!"
Tony had heard of the first sun eater and moon eater; it was an old nursery tale told to children, and he couldn't remember how it went but he knew that it was nothing more than a story for little kids.
"That's an old wives' tale, nothing more," he said to the witch.
"Hahaha! You are as ssssstupid as you look! Do you think my brothersss and sisters would send me, the ancient one, to retrieve anyone less than the shadow eater herself? Now move asssside, and maybe I will let you live."
Tony knew that he had to give Lucy and Daisy as much time as possible to get to the safe house. He held his augmentor out in one hand and used his other hand to shield Bali; in that moment he really wished she had brought her augmentor.
"That wand is not going to stop me, perhapsssss if I was younger, more ssensssitive to ssunlight, but I am no mere witchling child," the decrepit man spat, malice clear in his voice, while the familiar on his shoulder let out a plaintive caw of agreement.
"Are you working for the shadow hunters?" Tony asked, trying to stall the witch.
"I work for no one but my order! If our interestssss align with others, then sssoo be it," the witch replied, grinning widely and showing the depth of black inside his mouth. Tony had to suppress a gag rising in his throat at the sight of the decay.
"What if she doesn't want to join you?" He asked.
"Want? What doesss want have to do with it? We need her; this issss her destiny, ssssooo she will come!" He replied icily, the menace returning to his voice, and then he paused and added with a disgusting grin, "Besssidess, once she eatsss shadows she will not remember what she oncce was."
"You're a son of a bitch!" Tony spat, feeling suddenly furious at the sheer audacity of evil before him. "You will never have her, that I can promise you!"
"Enough! I have no more patience for you!" The witch pulled from his pocket what looked like an oversized pocket watch. He flipped open the case to reveal a watch face with arms bent in a counterclockwise position; there were rings inside of rings in the watch face starting with the largest and growing increasingly smaller until, at the very center of the watch, there appeared to be a tiny black hole. There was a small crank on the outside of the watch that the witch began to wind in a counterclockwise motion.
"Tony!" Bali whispered suddenly in his ear, a fervency in her voice that made him turn slightly to look at her. "It's a time stop!"
Tony looked back at the device in the witch's hand, sudden realization striking him. He had heard of time stops before, in the older texts, but he had never heard of one being used in their time; they weren't supposed to exist anymore. It was old magic, evil magic, and only the witches were vile enough and reckless enough to mess with time.
What happened next was a nightmare in slow motion. Tony raised his augmentor while the witch snarled, his decaying mouth dripping spittle as he spun the dial on the watch, with a smug and victorious look on his face. For a span of time that was probably no longer than a blink of an eye everything around them slowed painfully; snow flakes slowed to a pause mid-air, dotting the space around them like miniature versions of the paper snowflakes that children like to make.
Tony could feel time slowing, his heart beat shifting from a regular rhythm to a painfully slow march that felt as though several seconds were passing between each beat. Time wrapped around them and bent in a way that felt unnatural, and there was a popping sound in his head that was like glass bottles being run over by a truck. Tony couldn't tell if time was standing still or rushing forward at a pace his normal human senses couldn't perceive, but whatever was happening it ended abruptly.
Time returned, his heart jumping into its normal rhythm while the snowflakes continued their drifting paths towards the ground. Tony's brain couldn't comprehend the moment. He stared disbelieving at the spot the witch had been standing just moments before. The witch was gone, and when he turned around he knew before he saw that Bali was gone too.
"Damnit!" He yelled as he sprinted from the church towards the safe house. The night had been one long shit show, and he had lost Bali to the witches on top of it. She hadn't wanted to come in the first place, and now she was in the vile hands of wicked creatures that thought she had powers that she most definitely did not possess. They had to find her and soon, but first he had to make sure that Lucy made it to the safe house.
The sun was rising as he sprinted down the empty streets; there was a break in the clouds on the horizon that held the promise of a much needed change in the weather. Tony pushed his body beyond its normal endurance level, pumping his legs against the deep snow so that as he neared the street the safe house was on he felt as though they might give out any moment. If he could just get the girl to safety then the whole mission wouldn't be a failure and they could save Bali, but just as he turned the corner and was in sight of the alleyway that led to the safe house a light so bright he had to shield his eyes came shooting out of the alleyway, followed immediately by the limp body of Lucy being flung through the air. Tony just stood helpless as Lucy hit the snow, snapping her head back against the street with a force that echoed. Bile rose in his throat, as steam sizzled around the girl he had spent the last eight hours trying to save.