ArchivedLogs:Bloodhounds

Bloodhounds
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Kay, Shane, Sebastian, Eloise, Karrie
In Absentia	2013-10-28 Kay search-party, with a bit of friendly fire. (Set a short while after Vector escort mission.) (Part of Infected TP.)
Location Somewhere outside NYC.
New England autumn, all bitten through with faint blue frost and a panoply of green and orange and yellow and savage red – not that you can see any of it in the dark. It’s all so many black silhouettes cut out against the night sky. Off to the east, faintly, glows New York but here in upstate it’s a small cluster of sincere primordial night. Small things rush through the underbrush. Branches sway in sluggish chill winds. The smell of leaves and frost fit well against the smell of brimstone and campfire. And cooked flesh. Less so, perhaps, with the smell of burnt clothes and hair. “Koff.” Kay informs the night, laying on his side in a small thicket of dogwood and bloody leaves all stuck to his hair and clothes. It sounds /kind of/ like an incredulous laugh-sound. Kind of just pained. He has two fingers working their way into a bullet hole in his shoulder, a stick gripped in his teeth as, softly, there’s the hissing whine of moisture evaporating rapidly from a hot surface – cauterizing. His eyes are closed tightly. There are other shapes moving out here in the dark and the night. Quiet, small, the twins are long since accustomed to hunting -- they stalk the woods like predators, swift and quiet on the trail of their wounded prey. Sebastian leads, dropped into an easy all-fours lope that only serves to make him look still more feral. Shane doesn't try to keep up with his brother, exactly. In his hands he holds a familiar leather jacket, Kay's decorated kutte draped over an arm. He doesn't follow Kay's scent. He follows his /brother's/, keeping a slower pace to track Sebastian's path through the woods and lead the rest of his small group along behind. The rest of his group currently consists of Jax and two small teenage girls. Eloise is bundled up against the chill, puffy sky-blue jacket and thick grey tights beneath her dark brown skirt, tall combat boots on her feet. Karrie is more nondescript, weatherbeaten old jeans and denim jacket, her frizzy red hair plaited into two braids beneath a green knit cap with long tassled earflaps. Neither girl is talking much. Which is okay, Jackson isn't either, flashlight (currently switched off) in hand, a backpack on his back, keeping the girls at his elbows and navigating them through the dark woods himself. Sebastian lopes on ahead. The scent of blood quickens his own pulse, speeds his own steps. Kay's first announcement of the teenager's presence comes in a low harsh growl just outside his thicket. Soft and hungry. The rustling of weight on four feet, growling in the dark. Kay’s eyes snap open with a startled-awake /hiss/, not even waiting for understanding – he throws out his hands in the direction of some… /thing/, some animal stalking just beyond the brush, baring his bloody teeth. And throws out a low-level explosive burst. From a distance, the branches are suddenly cast into stark black relief against a baleful red /glow/ through the trees. It’s shortly followed by a wave of heat that bathes past the cheeks and forehead of those approaching. Sebastian's low growl cuts off into a sudden sharp keening, pained and animal as well. But once the wave has passed it leaves in its wake the continued crisp smell of -- frying fish? -- and a soft sobbing whimper just outside the thicket that abruptly sounds more childlike than feral. "Oh -- oh -- oh. You're. Ali --" It is tiny, and fades off shortly afterwards into nothingness. Sebastian's gills attempt to flutter, but stop, scorched flesh kind of melted together too much to open properly. Farther in the distance, Shane snarls, harsh and suddenly anguished. "/Pa/." And that's all he rasps out, sinking teeth into Kay's kutte to carry it as he drops down to all fours, too, racing off in the direction of that light. The light through the trees, at least, provides as much direction from here as Jax needs. A small soft globe of light blossoms to hover in the air, illuminating the way faintly as he urges the girls onwards. "-- um that means you don't need me, right?" Karrie sounds hopeful. She's not hurrying, though Eloise does. By the time anyone needs Karrie there's -- not really any /rush/. Kay’s face pales into an open-mouthed face of stark horror, to see /Sebastian/ through the glowing ring of incinerated leaves and branches. “--no!” What, by nerve intention, is a rush out of his hiding place, transforms instead into a faceplant, neither arm able to support him on the first go. His legs scramble at the loose leaf litter, dragging himself forward to curl arms around Sebastian’s (crispy fried) little body, pulling him awkwardly against his chest. His bloody hand raises, to – pat the boy’s cheek or smack at it, caress it, but the cheek is /burned/ and he dare not touch it. “Jax!” He doesn’t know Jackson is nearby, but bloodloss and shock remove a few legions of common sense, “Dusk! Briar, oh, Jesus, I didn’t even see him – kid. Kid c’mon, no-no-no.” His tenor generally is always scratchy. Now, it breaks every few words, pitching high then crackling /low/ and guttural, stooping over him. Kay's crackling voice is soon joined by another snarl, harsh and guttural as well as Shane bursts through the trees. He pulls himself up short beside the others with a sharptoothed /hiss/ of sound, body shifting to a protective hunker beside his brother and his sharp claws extending reflexively. And then pulling back, once he registers Kay, Kay's distress, Sebastian's /burns/; the snarl breaks into words: "Ohfuck, oh fuck oh no oh fuck {oh fuck oh fuck no, no, no --} /Pa/ Eloise Karrie /here/ here now here --" He's beyond caring about quiet anymore or who else might be lurking around the woods. "We -- we came --" he's kind of trying to explain to Kay, but his words come out fumbling and hard to reach. "To -- Dusk called -- Pa wanted us -- you smell. Like blood -- /PA/." Jax and Eloise break into a run at the sound of Shane's voice, Jax's little globe of light bobbing through the trees to illuminate their footing. Karrie still picks her way slowly, but starts to at least jog once the others are out of /sight/, perhaps more out of fear of being left alone in the darkened woods than out of any real hurry. Jax's face pales starkly when he comes across the others. A faint aura of light flickers around him. "How bad is it?" He's looking straight at Kay. "Eloise --" Eloise just moves to drop to her knees in the crisp leaves beside Shane. "I heal," she explains very simply. She extracts her hands from the pockets of her jacket, reaching one towards Kay and one towards Sebastian, fingers resting lightly on each to first assess the damage. Shane bursting into sight drags hauls Kay’s attention up, staring stunned at the other twin and then looking back /down/ at Sebastian as though expecting him to have disappeared, to /be/ Shane, and the fact that he isn’t has him looking back at Shane again, not seeming to hear him talking at all. Because he’s also talking, bleeding, illuminated in the small crackles of flame and ember still smoldering in the cold frosty leaves, “-didn’t even see him. I just – fired. Thought he was… Jesus - /Jax/.” This last part is barked out when the illusionist bursts into view, partway rising before he realizes he’s still gripping Sebastian, before he realizes his hip isn’t going to be /able/ to stand, and he drops back down, “Jax, heal him heal him.” He’d addressed it to Jax, but he’s saying it to Eloise, pulling back his arms to allow her better access to the small singed body. Maybe they’re all just Jax right now. To look into the mechanics of his body, he’s suffering predictably from shock and blood loss, bullet wounds in his torso and hip, his metabolism turning in on itself at a low burn for expending more energy than he technically had to offer in the fight now passed, second degree burns lash his hands and arms, stabilized and straining to heal themselves without resources. For now, though light headed and drifting in and out of a void, his heart thuds stable, deep inside. Just… slower. Blood pressure dropping at a slow, steady rate. Eloise's fingers linger on the others for a long while, her expression tightening like she's tasted something unpleasant and is trying to keep her gorge down. Slowly, slowly, she drops her hands back to her knees, sitting back on her heels. "They're -- both bad," she says this like a shaky apology. "I can't --" She tears her eyes away from Sebastian's ruined face to Shane instead. Then Jax. Then Karrie, just entering the thicket. Jax again. "I can't. Do them both I can't --" Her fingers work at her knees slowly. "Fix it," Shane's tone is desperate, pleading. In Kay's arms, Sebastian isn't moving. "Fix him please fix him." Jax is quiet. His arms tightens slowly against his chest, his breath drawn in through clenched teeth. He's very much not looking at Kay, but he's not looking at Sebastian either anymore; just at some distant point off through the trees with light still trembling around him. "Which of them is worse?" Eloise shakes her head. "Bastian -- maybe but he heals himself he's --" She shrugs a shoulder uncomfortably. "That helps." Jax nods at this. Once, slow. He looks down at Karrie for a long while. She looks back at him, shrugging uncomfortably. "It's just one person. If it's just one person." Jax kneels, too. In the singed leaves beside Kay, turning his one-eyed gaze now to look at the older man. His hand lifts, fingers brushing gently down against Kay's hair almost like he's straightening it. "I'm sorry," he says quietly. Just before a piercing bright beam of light sears its way out of his palm. boring a sizzling new hole very neatly straight through Kay's skull from one temple to the other. At first, Kay’s livid amber eyes simply don’t understand, looking up at Jackson. Then he stiffens - and there is simply no understanding in them at all. He remains sitting up for a few beats until gravity finds its weakest point. Then he slumps dead, trailing a faint streamer of smoke from the side of his temple. The small lapping flames taken to the leaves around him drop dim.