Darren's still in human form, reading a book about magic that's slightly less unhelpful than other books of its type. But only slightly. It's naming the failed attempts at doing certain things magically, and what the results were. He's trying to reconstruct what runes were used and figure out why those attempts failed. While he's really got no reason to try and do most of the spells here (why would he even want to boil someone's blood in their veins, if he were feeling murderous there are better, easier options), it's the academic exercise that's important.

He's petting Bella, gently, as he reads. He's not planning on getting up any time soon, she can sleep as long as she likes.

Mmmm petting purrrrrr zzzzzzzz.



Something dark seeps flatly under the front door.

Pet, pet, pe-

-What is that?

Okay. Okay that is probably not friendly.

"Bella," Darren murmurs, gently shaking his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, he starts wracking his head for a spell.

Bella yawns groggily and shifts a wing.

The shooping blackness - unflattens. It piles up on itself until it's thick and squodgy-looking and approaches the couch.

Well that's utterly terrifying.

"Bella," he says, fear tinging his voice a bit. "Bella there's a - thing. Wake up."

It's - like darkness personified. The first obvious idea Darren has is to combat it is with light - does he have a light scroll on him? He might, if not that's an easy spell and he can - draw that out pretty quickly.

Bella shifts again. "Mm? Thing?"

One wing flops down off his lap, towards the blackness.

The blackness opens up and swallows her wing in one gulp, and she screams.

Fuck.

"Shift," he tells her, trying to - pull her away from the - creature but not getting very far due to the weight of a fullformed sphinx on his lap. He's piecing together half remembered pieces of a spell, searching his clothes for a light scroll or something that will do light or something.

"I -" If she tries it, it's hard to tell.

The blackness spreads past her wing and gets the rest of her, and then there is not a weight of a sphinx on his lap anymore - just a squodge of inky blackness, now retreating.

Darren will wonder, later, exactly what went through his head when he saw his girlfriend get - eaten by an ink monster. He won't be able to recall. He'll try to describe it as 'a deadly calm' but that's not what it is at all. It's focused, it's logical, and it's - like a tidal wave of emotion, pushing him to act and to act decisively.

But he will be able to remember what he says, in perfect French, and how he managed to get the fire scroll out of his pocket before the ink - thing makes it to the door.

"Light, heat, sunlight brought to life, come forth, come forth without harm to any but darkness," he nearly whispers. "And do some fucking smiting."

Fuck. Fuck, he miscalculated -

He is off of the couch and after the - the ink monster as fast as he can manage it, and he's already trying to figure out a new angle to kill it. Because he is going to kill it, it ate his girlfriend, it is not allowed to keep shooping along like that's perfectly fine, it gets to die. It gets to die efficiently, damn it, except he can't figure out how to kill it, not yet. He just knows that he's going to.

Shoop shoop.

It melts into a storm drain.

Darren hisses a curse word and grasps at the storm drain, briefly trying to see if it will do what he wants it to and be ripped out of the fucking ground, but no, no it holds just fine. Damn engineers. He tries to tell what direction the ink - thing goes, see if he can follow it, but it's too dark down there, he can't tell.

He indulges himself by allowing himself a primal scream of rage and despair. Once. He makes it a good one.

And then he stands, turns on his heel, and marches back to his house to start composing a spell to find the ink monster, and then a spell to kill it, and then he's going to do both in rapid succession and maybe it will spit his girlfriend out.

Or maybe not. She could be dead. Please don't be dead.

He ignores the cold pit of fear gripping his heart. He adds another item to his list of things to do, and that item is 'find way to torture the information out of ink monster about the whereabouts of his girlfriend.' He doesn't even think about the ramifications of it, it's just a mission that he is going to accomplish. Because it ate his girlfriend, and Darren wants her back right this instant.

"Call Savannah, I require her. Ink monster just either kidnapped or ate Bella."

And then he walks off to make spells. To find, torture, and then kill the ink monster.

Vernon calls Savannah. She says not to bother picking her up, she's flying home, it's important, and that she gives no fucks about subtlety. Vernon does not enforce the swear jar, just this once.

And then, wondering what on Earth he's going to say - Vernon calls Charlie.

"Took?"