It was not her choice at all. None of it was. Not the feeling of the growing expanse in the pit of her stomach that resembled a bit of excitement but mostly fear. Nor was it her decision to wander down the halls, in the deep heavy sweats that made her clothes heavy, with eyes sloppy and overly excited. She had stopped at the floor, only briefly, stopped on that poker room where the monstrosity and the Vicar’s were fighting. One, laying on the floor, the other struggling. The bullets and fire scared her away though. Maybe she could have killed them. Maybe.

Instead, she kept true. She went down to the first floor, down to the security room at the side of a janitor’s closet in some corner of the first floor. She looked for the damn security guard who had sold her a lie. She found him too. He was hunched over, hole in his chest. His chest was open, the bone protruding like a busted bird cage. To his side, the access to every room and floor given up, the buttons jammed or rather, destroyed such that they were all active, regardless of VIP access or not. A wall of monitors flashed on and off, static and sparks shot out every so often. The room was desecrated, the corpse was proof enough of that. She looked up to the screen. Her eyes scanning up along the wall of CRT TV’s humming and flashing white noise. She spotted one such television, by chance alone, one where she watched a young woman drag herself around outside the casino. The television, of course, blacked out almost immediately afterward. She slammed her only hand on the desk. Blood spilled down. The bodies head shook and slumped over towards the floor.

She didn’t even care that there was a body next to her, her eyes rolled back and lips curled into almost a laugh.

She didn’t care for much of anything but Aenea. Aenea, running outside, running for the generator room.

“Did she kill him?” Jezebel asked she looked at the hole in the man. “No, I don’t think. Maybe? I can’t tell. But if she could kill Junior, what else is she capable of?”

She shook her head. The blood was on her gloves. She paced in the room, thinking, only briefly before beginning to phase. Then found something strange. Her body seemed uncooperative, all her limbs went through save for one; her hand. It would not go through the walls. So she yanked at it, worked at it until finally, her bloody glove slipped off her hand.

“What was that?” She asked. And she could not think it over, not really. She shook her head and phased to the outside. Each brick and concrete and wooden wall like a kind of hidden door. Then she perched herself next to a flagpole. Jezebel’s eyes wandered left to right like a vulture perched on the skull, hovering, waiting. She found her target. Really, she heard her. Her strained screaming, the pacing she made as she ran across through the parking lot.

“You don’t think I can catch up, bitch?” She said. More a declaration than a question. And more an invitation, than just a threat.

Jezebel ran across the concrete paths, the roads empty and somber. Lamp posts flickered for no one but her lonely shadow, the dragged black smudge that skidded across. She cut through the parking lot and cut through and into the off-site generator room. The machinery was twirling, the lights flashed on and off. All of them red and screeching some god awful buzzing sound. She couldn't focus on them. She couldn’t even afford to be short of breath. Her lungs were still. Her heart too. All of her body complied with the demand to be still, as she waited, half absorbed into the wall, looking into the dark and morbid generator room. She was nothing. Not in the darkness. Nothing. And she could feel her tattoo light up, feel it bleed through the black bandages wrapped around her.

Half her body was inside the wall, but she still had a sense for it.

She felt for the knife strapped to her heel. Unsheathing it from the bandages in a slick, quiet manner. She raised it in front of her and put herself deeper into the wall until all that showed was her face.

Her arm could not stop shaking.

And she heard the door open.

Her breath finally caught up to her. She took a deep gasp and leaned back into the shadow. She must have been paper thin, with nothing but a few inches of her face to show like a mask hung up against a wall. She looked at Aenea walk across, towards the metal panel, towards the lightbox.

I’ll kill her. Nothing matters now, not the plan and not myself. I’ll kill her.

Her breath accumulated with small little gasps.

I’ll kill her and bring the body to mom. I’ll let Richter see it. And maybe then. Her eyes dilated. Maybe then things will be fixed.

And she waited, hostile in her little corner. Waited for Aenea to approach. Her blade loomed overhead, and she crept slowly up behind her. She must have been inches away from Aenea, the knife still and focused. It must have been that close. Nothing else could explain the heat of her tattoo and the pacing of her heart.

The knife came down.

Aenea ducked. She pushed herself away. Jezebel went through the steel, through the panel. The sparks hit her face, she closed her eyes.

What happened? She stuck her foot against the wall and pushed. The knife came out with sparks. Where’d it go wrong? Not again.

Aenea ran. Jezebel chased after her, slashing at the air. Slashing at skin and clothes. Slashing at nothing.

It all happened with heat and fury. It all happened with Jezebel's cheeks puffed and her eyes incredibly dry and her mouth tucked in, lips bit and blood drawn. With fury and anxiousness and a constant chasing and running.

Nipping. Chipping away at Aenea. Who would not fall, who escaped.

They went to the parking lot. Jezebel fell into the concrete, phasing through it, disguising (so she thought) herself, and surfing the solid stuff.

It did not work well, though she got a few shots in.

Why is she so fucking agile?

The feeling was frustrating, her blade cutting at skin only slightly. Blood spilled, only slightly.

And it frustrated her more. Touching gasoline, touching water. It frustrated her because it made her realize her flaw; water. Liquid.

It seemed to disrupt her phasing or at least made whatever was wet un-phasable. She must have lost inches of her leg garments touching gasoline, the bandages were being cut and left behind as she traveled along. Her skin was exposed. The cold air, a reminder to this foible of hers.

And it was frustrating seeing Aenea catch on. To start noticing the wet clothes she left behind, or the way Jezebel dodged puddles.

Frustrating. She slapped her face and watched Aenea stand in a pool of gasoline. It extended out like a spider-web and Jezebel walked the circumference of the smudge.

They looked at each other like those old cowboys in the west would, with their eyes narrowed and their hands on the imaginary trigger.

The gasoline ring was no more than a pause. A break. They both knew it.

And after a while, they went at it again. Aenea jumping down the hall. Dodging, skirting death. Jezebel chased after her, the blade slicing air. Blade, searching to decapitate her, to slit her neck open, to cut her chest.

They came to another run, across the concrete fields and the grassy plains. They headed for the fountain at the side of the hotel which led into the side of a buffet restaurant. There was no restaurant left there, of course.

The fountain was loud in the silence of this empty casino.

They both sprinted for it. And Jezebel was getting wet from the mildew of grass. Though she did not care anymore. Her bandaged body slowly becoming loose, her knife hell-bent on Aenea’s back. Aenea sprinting with a limp, tiring.

It’s almost here. She’s got the stamina of a buffalo, but she’s almost at the cliff-side.

They must have gone for ten minutes at a full sprint before Aenea stopped. Before she dipped into the fountai0n.

Water won’t save you. Not now.

Jezebel walked into the fountain, knife drawn.

She raised it above her head. Her breath was faint, but she had endured long enough for this moment, with sheer desperation and anger.

She let the knife sheen and gleam against the dark sky and made a movement, a jerking motion, to push it down.

Her breath halted. Her shoulder clenched. She moved forward, downward.

And she wondered, briefly, why it was all black. Was she staring at the night sky again? She asked herself that, in what felt like an infinite conversation in the short seconds she had left of consciousness. It felt like she was screaming into a tunnel. A tunnel with a clear ending coming her way.

Wasn't I going down? Why am I looking up?

It came to a shock. No, not really.

Jezebel died too soon to be shocked. And any thought or question dissipated, returning to the blackness she was seeing now.

Her head had gone a full circle and came back, clinging by flesh and veins alone to her neck.

It was a good thing she died that fast. She wasn’t conscious enough to feel the pain. And certainly wasn’t alive long enough to complain about it.

Her body walked for a bit. It struggled. Then, as if in acceptance, it fell too. Backside. Into the water, she returned.