Chapter Text
Black blood and viscera pooled in the grass - not his, for once. Jared Wells wasn’t used to that. Even after he had figured out how to weaponize light against The Darkness, he rarely came away from their encounters intact unless he managed to catch Estacado in full daylight.
This wasn’t one of their usual encounters.
He had hunted the Darkness through four cities and eight states this time. Following the Darkness host through the last city had been hell. Jared had lost too much time battling through the constant clamoring of everyday atrocities, layered on top of and through each other like a mass of screeching, squirming vermin. Fortunately, Estacado seemed to avoid cities when he could - limit the collateral damage, he had admitted during one of their fights.
That fight had leveled a school.
Recently, Estacado seemed to be running from - or hunting - something other than himself. With the amount of carnage The Darkness left in its wake, it was no surprise he had an endless supply of enemies.
The thought of someone else getting to his quarry first made him sick with fury.
Jared watched as a familiar blur of black leathery wings and iridescent green crashed through tin siding and melted away upon contact with the early morning light, leaving Estacado unprotected as he hit the ground and rolled. It took him a few moments to get up. To Jared, who had fought Estacado to an exhausted standstill a dozen times, it was an eternity too long. His left arm hung at an awkward angle as he drew a handgun - real steel and gunpowder, glinting in the sunlight - with his right.
To Estacado’s misfortune, this did not deter the - what the hell was that, a stone lion? - creature pursuing him. The beast shook its strangely fluid granite mane in irritation as .38s pinged off uselessly. Whatever it was wasn’t sentient. There was an empty void where it should have been. The sins, however minor, of humans would have registered as seething bundles in his awareness. Jared started running as it collided with Estacado. There was too much blood and too much sunlight.
When he got a glimpse of them again, Estacado was miraculously still standing. He was propped up against a fallen tree trunk in a low gorge between two gently rolling hills. Visible bone shone out of the wreck of his left side. The shredded muscles and tendons he held uselessly in front of himself resembled the contents of a butcher’s display cabinet more than an arm. It wasn’t the first time Jared had seen him use his own body as a shield in the way only immortal bastards like them could get away with. Estacado could be as ruthless and callous with his own flesh and bone as he was with others, but he had rarely seen the Darkness wielder take this much damage in daylight.
As he watched, Estacado wavered for a moment before sliding down to his knees, the gorey mess of his arm still raised as if it could protect him from the stone creature stalking him down at a leisurely pace.
He should have let the thing kill Estacado and drag him off. It’s not like he would’ve stayed dead - the sun had to set sometime. But the thought of leaving this mindless pawn with his quarry, his responsibility , was unacceptable.
Damn you. Damn you to hell.
Whatever material the creature was made out of was brittle, more akin to limestone than true granite. Jared barely felt the pain from shallow lacerations as he rained down blows using the inhuman strength granted by his curse. Their combat left rich dark gouges in the fields. Dirt and shards of stone sprayed as both fought with reckless abandon, giving no thought to their own vulnerability, but only one of them could heal.
The creature’s remains lay scattered and smoldering as Jared crushed its snarling head against a boulder. He stood panting for a moment and found himself unsatisfied. There was no justice in destroying something incapable of sin. He turned towards his true target. Estacado was still close enough that he could feel the weight of even the dormant Darkness scraping at his mind. It was distant but oppressive in its magnitude, like mountains dominating the horizon, and pulled him like a lodestone to its source.
The former hitman hadn’t gotten far. He was still in the gorge, red streaks showing where he had dragged himself over the fallen log to collapse face-down in the dry riverbank. He didn’t move as Jared approached and sat heavily next to him. The missing chunk of his shoulder was starting to knit back together and it hurt like hell, but he was in better shape than Estacado.
Blood and viscera - entirely his own, given that stone didn’t bleed - soaked the side of his shredded dress shirt. From a distance, the gore of his ruined arm had camouflaged the deep slash across his lower torso. He watched Jackie spasm slightly, some unknown lacerated organ pulsing forth more blood from the wound, without alarm. The Darkness couldn’t fully regenerate in sunlight. It might be able to repair some internal damage, safe in the body’s dark cavities, but this was not an immediate concern given half of Estacado’s guts were exposed to the bright summer day.
“Th…thought you wanted me dead.”
Jared thought Estacado had stopped breathing, or was unconscious at the very least. He should not have been conscious, let alone lucid.
Jared grabbed a fistful of long black hair and dragged him closer, forcing his head up to look him in the eye. Brown to molten gold. Estacado made a strangled, inarticulate noise as exposed flesh and broken bone had a brief but violent dispute with the rocky ground.
“ I should be the one to kill you.” He said, conviction suffusing every hateful syllable.
He wanted to write off the resulting hazy, shit-eating grin growing on Jackie’s face as delirium from blood loss.
“Lucky me,” Estacado rasped, and went limp and silent in his grasp.