When Jake realized where they were headed, he started panicking. Big time. "Oh no no no," he muttered under his breath, clutched the dashboard and held on for dear life.
Caleb shook his head. "Stop being such a wuss. You're the one who wanted to join me on this mission, so you're going to have to suck it up, princess." His eyes roamed around the vicinity, looking for anything unusual. He parked the car right underneath the street sign that said "Balete Drive".
"Yeah, I did. But you never told me what the mission's about. Hell, for all I know, you'd want me to gank some manananggal or beat the living daylights out of some dwende or something."
Caleb snorted. "Manananggals? Please. You know as well as I do those creatures do not exist at all. Well, at least not in this day and age. You're lucky they aren't, otherwise, I might have to ask you to do it."
"Can't we just do this some other day? You know I don't like ghosts. Why does it always have to be about ghosts?"
Caleb eyed his friend dangerously. He knew how exasperating Jake could be when the mission involved the walking dead, but he wasn't just about to abandon the assignment. Sinag already told them it was either now or never. They were at a race against time and he'd be damned if he let Jake sabotage this one shot opportunity.
Sinag, their trusty seer-slash-prophet, told him he would find his companions in the occurence of a supernatural event. Of course, he would have to kill whatever eerie creature stood in his way before a companion would be revealed. It pissed Caleb knowing that he cannot fulfill the prophecy on his own. He hated working with a team. And although he had Jake tagging along since forever, he still didn't like putting up with the idea of a Fellowship of the Ring bullcrap.
"Even if you do insist on this I-can-do-this-on-my-own-I-don't-need-a-team idea, you're never going to be successful. The gods have foretold this already and it's useless going against something that's already preordained."
God, even Sinag's irritating sermons were beginning to seep into his consciousness. He much preferred her voice when the diwata Sariya speaks through her. Albeit it was a lot creepy knowing the deity's human manifestation was that of an age-old woman who was almost always at Sinag's side.
Jake whined some more on the perils of dealing with a cranky spirit at the height of their powers that night. Caleb was just about to throttle him when a silver Honda CR-V sped past the block. He blinked and then saw the flash of a white dress up the road. "She's here. Shut up and just let me do my job."
Caleb turned on the ignition and followed the SUV, ignorant of the sudden chill brought about by the night air.
I wrote this in a burst of sudden inspiration. It's been marinating in my head for a couple of months now and this is the first time I've actually committed this project on something tangible. It's still a work in progress and there's still a lot of research and plotting to be done, but I'm hoping for the best. I hope I can see through the end of this ambitious project.
