(Day 7 writing assignment is to show contrast between two things through dialogue. Assignment here: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/writing-101-dialogue/ This is from The Gods Defense. I’m trying to move the story along and this was a scene I was having trouble with. Questions: Can you tell the main character’s emotions without her outright stating them? Does the dialogue sound real?)
Ravena straightened from where he’d been leaning on the door jam, and walked in, closing the door behind him.
I jumped out of the chair next to Mom’s bed, pulling my gun from its holster and pointing it at him before he could take another two steps. Apparently Apollo wasn’t sucking my speed dry yet.
“When did you get a gun!” Mom huddled up in her bed and I turned my back fully on her, keeping me between her and Ravena.
“You do know that won’t kill me,” Ravena said.
“You know, I’m not sure. I’ve got it on good authority that a demon like you is about as powerful as me. So I’m thinking it will.”
“You’re making an assumption, Psychic.” His smile and tone said the stressed word wasn’t supposed to be mocking, but I couldn’t figure out what else it could mean.
“What, that you’re here to hurt me or my mom? I think that’s a reasonable leap of logic.”
“Well, yes, that too. But you’re assuming that being shot would kill you.”
I’d be lying if I said my arms didn’t sag a little as my jaw dropped. But come on! Can you say shocking revelation?
I shook it off. “You really think I’m going to believe a word you say?”
“I hope so, otherwise my tracking you down was a waste of magic.”
“You’re here to talk? Righhhhht, and I’m a dancing coffee bean.”
He gave me a look. With his grey pinstripe suit and salmon button-down shirt, he looked like any other professional human today, the brilliant pink with little white elephants tie the only thing wild about him. His hair was slicked back and his shoes were shined so well they reflected the florescent light. He looked good, presentable… hell, he looked downright hot.
“Is that an American expression?” he asked.
“No, I just said the first ridiculous thing that came to mind.” My arms were getting tired. “If you’re not here to show me why I chose so badly, what the hell do you want?”
“Merely to tell you why your choice was the wrong one.” He held his hands up in the universal signal of ‘I’m harmless.’ “I swear I will not harm you or your mother during this visit. I just want to talk.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?” I asked, not lowering my gun but relaxing my arms. “You already proved your word isn’t worth the air it’s breathed into.”
Ravena closed the door behind him and sat on the plastic, gaudy orange chair next to it, looking every inch the professional business man as he rested an ankle on one knee.
“We shouldn’t be discussing anything in front of my mom.” Come to think of it, she’d been pretty damn quiet that past minute.
“She’s frozen.”
It took everything in me to keep my eyes on him as I shifted around the hospital bed until I was behind it and could see my mom and keep an eye, and gun, on Ravena. She was curled up against the tilted up bed, eyes wide and mouth open. I took a deep breath and walked back around to keep me between him and her.
I hated him for putting that look on her face.
“Okay, what do you want to tell me?”
“You’re a smart girl, highly educated, obviously driven to have gotten yourself through law school, which I’m given to understand is very difficult.”
“All things I already know.” I gave him a charming smile, finally lowering my arms.
“Then why haven’t you realized you’re being lied to?”
Annnnnnd there it was.
“Seriously? You came here to try to convince me that I’m working for the wrong people? That they aren’t telling me everything? That, the Greek Gods in all their wisdom and power are arrogant enough to think they don’t have to spell everything out for a mere mortal?”
Ravena opened his mouth.
“NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!” I couldn’t help but laugh as he glanced behind him, probably worried a nurse heard me and would come rushing in. “I pepper them with questions and I get nuts back. I’m not joining their cults and following them with a dopey grin to drink the Kool-Aid. I work for Apollo. That’s it. End of story.”
He raised his eyebrows, pursing his lips. “Really? You’re not lending him your power, being treated like a biological battery?” He smirked at my silence. “I thought so.”
“Still not ideology based. I’m being paid for that, too. I also already made the deal and unlike yours, my word means something.”
“See, you are being led to ‘drink the Kool-Aid,’ you just don’t realize it yet.”
“Fine, I’ll bite. What is the big, bad thing they aren’t telling me that will apparently end up killing me?”
“I would say that they are lying about needing your powers, but I suspect you already know that.”
The gun was the only thing keeping my hands from talking with me. “Knew that. And I’m getting bored. Next?”
“They don’t need your magic because there is more than was originally calculated.” He met my eyes as he stood. Can you say dramatic? “Ask them why there’s so much extra magic out there. Magic doesn’t change the basic laws of science. There is more energy in this universe than before.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Exactly.”
Well I walked into that one. “Fine,” I said through grinding teeth, “I’ll bite again. So how is that possible?”
“No idea.” He smiled, bland as cheap apartment carpeting. “None of us know.” He paused and I didn’t have to be psychic to know what was coming next. “Except the Greeks.”
“No, they don’t.” Unless they did. Wouldn’t be the first time Apollo lied to me… hell, wouldn’t be the hundredth probably.
Ravena chuckled. “Not so sure of that anymore, are you?”
“Good for you, you’ve got me wondering.” I pointed the gun at him again, still certain getting shot would slow him down for all of five seconds. “Get the hell out of my mom’s room.”
“Of course,” he said, sounding so smug I wanted to shoot him on principle.
He grabbed the door knob and paused. “That wasn’t the… are we sticking with the Kool-Aid metaphor?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “The Kool-Aid I was referring to. Ask your new boss what happened to the Native American spirits who should’ve been the ones to claim this land. There’s a reason I want to keep my full powers, Cassandra. You should, too.”
He disappeared.
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