Amanda Sefton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
xp_daytripper) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
xp_logs2007-06-04 08:16 pm
xp_daytripper) wrote in xp_logs2007-06-04 08:16 pm
Entry tags:
- c: amanda sefton,
- c: doug ramsey,
- c: marie-ange colbert,
- z p1: c: .npc,
- z p1: c: .retired: illyana rasputin,
- z p1: c: .retired: remy lebeau,
- z p1: c: .retired: sarah morlocke,
- z p1: c: .retired: wanda maximoff,
- z p1: c: mark sheppard,
- z p1: c: pete wisdom,
- z p1: c: sofia mantega-barret,
- z p1: p: prince of thieves: voodoo child
Voodoo Child: The Song of Erzulie - Finale
The assault begins, and X-Force shows no mercy. But are they too late?
Remy and Illyana fell back from the house, diving behind a low stone wall they'd picked out earlier as the best place to take shelter from the explosion. They'd done their work quickly, leaving enough time for everyone else to get into position. Remy pulled the detonator from his pocket and laid it to one side, waiting for Pete's go-ahead.
"Dat was fast work wit' de charges."
"My philosophy is to spend as little time with explosives as necessary." The blonde girl shrugged slightly, reaching back to readjust her ponytail. Tension was strung through her unforgiving posture; she was taking this seriously, despite the brevity of her words.
Remy didn't saw anything in return, doublechecking their placement and decided it was about as good as they could hope for. "Wisdom gives de signal, I'll blow de house, and you straight to Sofia to tell her. You stay behind Sofia, petite. Despite what you might think, dese people are well armed and more experienced fighters den you. Do not try and do everything on you own."
"Yeah, I know." Her voice was flat but neutral. The countdown to action seemed to be taking a certain toll on her: Her earlier caution augmented by a quick alertness and her movement harsher, more utilitarian, as she crouched behind the wall. "I'm not looking to get killed today."
"No one generally is right before it happens." Remy ran his thumb over the edge of the detonator slowly, like reassuring himself, even though he was deep into his professional mind set. There were still nagging tendrils of concern for Amanda's safety leaking past. "Come on..." He whispered, waiting for Pete's call that they were all in place.
“I meant I was planning on being careful, not that I’m too bloody stupid to understand the risks at hand.” Though said rapidly, under her breath, the annoyance was distracted, stuttering in and out of her voice as though on imperfect autopilot. She was only paying half-attention to the conversation, but she stayed absolutely still, pressed back against the wall.
"Remy be interested to see how dat works out for you." Remy said, as his comm clicked twice. "And dat's Pete. Get out of here, 'yana."
Remy waited for her to disappear before he sit off the detonator. There was a half second pause, and the night suddenly erupted into a gout of flame and fire. The roof blew ten feet into the air, spiraling before it landed with a smash, showering flaming fragments all over the estate. The walls collapsed inward from the explosion. Remy pulled his staff from his coat, still telescoped to the short length and waited. A few minutes later, a guard patrol came racing around the building, weapons ready.
Unfortunately for them, looking into the flames robbed their nightvision, and they never saw the man waiting in the darkness. Only the metallic clack of his staff going to full length, and before they could react, death emerged in the form of the lanky Cajun.
***
The humid night was split by the sound of an explosion as Remy triggered his distraction.
Sarah might have looked impressed, but it only took a moment to snap back into fight mode as the house's defenses started to recover from the explosion and a couple of armed guards rushed through the now gaping hole in the front of the building. She glanced quickly back at Mark. "You going to be okay?"
Mark held back to let Wanda and Pete confront this brigade, and took a moment to regain his breath. "In a sec. I think I put a bit too much in there," he said, and managed a weak, self-deprecating smile up at Sarah before calling forth the purple energy again.
The sight of George, who normally floated around with the energy of a sugar filled child, caused something to tighten and crack inside Wanda. Her eyes flickered from the werelight to the rushing guard, a hand simply coming up in a restrained gesture. The first man suddenly went down, hands scrambling at his chest as the gun he had been holding tumbled to the ground.
Weak heart.
Pete walked forward at a steady pace. A couple of guards raised started to raise their guns, but went down as arcs of red light leapt from Pete's body to strike them through the chest, burning holes the size of a man's fist through body armour and organs, cauterising as they went, leaving perfectly round holes all the way through the men.
A third man managed to fire his gun, but before the bullet hit, Pete was briefly wrapped in a solid cocoon of energy, and the slug boiled away harmlessly against it. Pete's pace didn't falter, he just kept walking, following the werelight.
The path ahead seemingly clear, Mark took the opportunity to change playlists, deciding that a more defensive approach on his part would be a good idea. He briefly glanced up as Hendrix finished, the screeching guitars replaced by a cacophony of orchestrated rock - not something he'd ever learned how to manipulate - and saw that he was staring down the barrel of a pistol. His last thought as the trigger was pulled was 'Why the hell is this song even here?'
His next thought two seconds later as the bang echoed through the hall was 'Why the hell am I still alive?' Two reasons, he found. One, a nastily twisted shard of bone was sticking through the gunman's chest, Sarah standing behind him wearing a countenance of utter fury. And two, he wasn't in the path of the gun anymore. He stood - no, floated - three feet off the ground. He raised a hand to his face to wipe the sweat from his brow, and a giant white hand nearly smacked him in the face.
Wanda blinked, pushing her hair out of her face, before she glanced up at Mark. Well. Now that could be useful. Turning back, she suddenly found herself with an armful of guard--caught unawares, she flinched as a knife skimmed her stomach. Too close and they couldn't afford anyone to be sloppy.
Lashing out, her head connected with the softer parts of the face--nose and eyes crunching as a red flare brightened the hallway. Another body hit the ground, this one suffocating on the blood pooling in their mouth. Wanda lengthened her stride to catch up to Pete.
Mark in his shiny new exoskeleton followed, easily grabbing and tossing armed guards around like they were toys. "I feel like King Kong," he said, his voice oddly distorted by the armor. He smacked aside yet another guard like a bug, not even wincing as he nearly crashed through the wall. "Just don't ask me to climb up any skyscrapers."
***
Even when they'd invaded a former Russian weapons facility and a Chinese army base, Doug hadn't felt quite so out of his depth as he did inside Candra's Louisiana estate. Maybe the novelty and initial numbness of things had worn off. Or maybe it was the personal reason for this mission. Maybe it was the cold way Pete and Remy had laid "kill or be killed" on the table during the brief in New York. Whatever it was, it sent a somewhat permanent chill down Doug's neck as his eyes continually flicked from side to side, trying to take in everything at once.
The path was clear as Sofia, Doug, and Marie-Ange moved down a hallway, quietly and with purpose. As they neared a staircase, though, a flash of motion from within caught Doug's eye, and he hissed a warning, holding his hand out for the other two to stop.
Dark brown curls fell over Sofia's shoulder as she cocked her head to the side, stilling at Doug's gesture but for the turning of her ear just right to catch the rotating sound. Her sight line fell on the destruction they'd left in their wake – slashes, burn marks in the wallpaper and plaster crumbling from the elaborately carved ceiling – but saw through it blindly, concentrating. Holding up her palm, all fingers extended and indicating "four", she suddenly brought up her other hand to increase the number to "five, no, six, no" before shaking her head and making it known that she couldn't be sure.
It most certainly was. Belladonna halted abruptly as soon as she spotted the 'intruders', her men lining up to flank her automatically. They made no openly hostile moves yet it was clear by the way they held themselves that they were ready to escalate matters at a moment's notice. "Get out of my way," the woman said coldly, "or you're dead."
Sofia's frown of concentration was replaced by a strange, half curve; not a smile nor smirk, and tired at the ends. "Go on ahead," she said, taking a few forward steps away from her two teammates. Glancing back, she found they hadn't moved. "I said," Sofia continued, any amusement gone from her face, and voice hitting sharp. "Go ahead."
Doug took a long look at Belladonna Boudreaux-LeBeau, and then at Sofia, then shuddered. Those were not two women he fancied coming between. As much as the potentially ensuing bitch-off might be entertaining to watch from an educational standpoint, he certainly didn't fancy being anywhere in the area if it turned ugly. He grabbed Marie-Ange by the elbow and led her forward. "I think we should do what she says," he muttered sotto voce to his girlfriend.
"Yes." Marie-Ange agreed. There was a hallway off to side that they'd passed that headed in a direction away from here. Perhaps Sofia and Belladonna would just have a nice chat about shoes and become quite friendly. She somehow doubted it, and wanted to be very far away as swiftly as possible.
***
Illyana dropped to the ground a few feet from Sofia, light flashing mid-air, catching only the tail-end of the explosion; distantly, she'd thought it would be louder. She stood up quickly, glancing around for the others, movements controlled, but tense. It had been a long time - a long time - since she'd worked with another person like this. "Doug and Marie-Ange?" she asked, keeping her voice at an audible but inoffensive volume, something that blended into the background noise.
"Up ahead," Sofia remarked casually as she came up the hall. The door she had just come through was half closed, whether the years had caused a slight tilt to the house, or a nudge from her hip or idle draft. Either way, the angle made it impossible to see. "We're splitting up to cover more ground."
Illyana nodded, brushing her hands off on her thighs. “All right,” she said, “So – which way’s ours?”
"This hallway is still common." Sofia paused, looking over her shoulder. Something didn't sound right. "We'll take the stairs up, eventually, but at least it means this area should be fairly cle-"
Illyana almost didn’t see him in time; he came from behind, slipping through the half-closed door, and she caught only the slightest movement in the periphery of her vision. Enough to save her life; not enough to avoid the sharp edge of his knife catching and pulling against her shoulder, barely enough time to deflect the second attempt, and somehow she was too close and too unarmed to fight effectively.
Suddenly, he was gone, followed by a dull thud noise. Sofia passed by Illyana’s view, already automatically pressing the heel of her hand against the blood flow in her shoulder. She had a hand out, graceful almost, with the curve of her fingers making an arc to their attackers throat, which he was clutching at with one hand. Her eyes burned amber a moment as she stared at him, waiting until he fell limp, before dropping him to the ground and when Sofia turned around, they had gone back to brown.
“We’ll bandage that up as we walk.”
***
Marie-Ange and Doug had stayed to the shadows as long as they could, and had paused when they saw their entrance guarded by two large men. Nodding towards the guards, Marie-Ange slipped a card from her belt and flashed it at Doug, waiting for his response.
Doug was very familiar with the card in question, and he grinned tightly at Marie-Ange, guessing what she had in mind. He pulled a small pair of cylinders off of his vest, and pulled the pins with his thumbs. Counting silently in his head, he nodded at her as he leaned around a corner and pitched them low across the floor.
Both guards reacted at the sound of the rolling grenades, and would have shielded their eyes, having recognized them, if it hadn't been for what followed the two cylinders. Filling the entire foyer was a luridly green and gold dragon. It appeared to squeeze itself through the door, although in reality it was simply being created as it moved, only finishing in time to dive at the guards as the flash-bang grenades went off.
On the other side of the wall, Marie-Ange pressed fingertips to her forehead, wincing at an expected pressure headache. For a moment, the shape of the dragon wavered, but it held solid, bending it's long neck around to snap at the guards.
One had taken the brunt of the flash, and slumped against the door, unconscious. The other had turned, and took a step forward as if to run. He didn't make it.
Before he could take another, the dragon's mouth opened like a snake's, far larger then it should have been able to, and darted out to bite the man. He slid between the fangs, and thrashed and kicked his legs, trying to free himself.
Doug was hot on the heels of the Shivan Dragon, and reached the doorway just in time to see the construct dissolve, leaving an unconscious guard covered in the ectoplasm that Marie-Ange's constructs were made of. Sparing only enough attention for the guard to see that he was indeed unconscious, Doug lowered his shoulder and hit the door at a run, bursting into a large parlor with very little furniture and a rather large number of muscular flunky types, all of whom were already turning toward the door from the noise in the hallway.
Marie-Ange was only a few steps behind Doug, with a trio of her frequently sketched imps already on her shoulders, and another two at her feet. As Doug pressed into the room, she followed, and the imps leapt down from her shoulders to claw at the face of one of the men. Withe the imps swarming over him, she was free to engage another of the men, driving her elbow into his stomach and kicking him in the ankle to drop him to the ground.
One of the henchmen reacted quickly, swinging his fist down in a tight, quick haymaker aimed at Doug's face. The move was telegraphed, though, even to someone without Doug's particular talent for body language. His left arm came up to block the punch, and his right fist flashed in the light as a studded set of brass knuckles slammed into the man's jaw, the force and speed of Doug's strike shattering his jaw. As the man clutched at his mouth in pain, Doug brought the butt end of the metal surrounding his fingers down on the base of his neck, knocking him out and shoving him aside as he moved further into the room.
A blunt kick to the head knocked out Marie-Ange's opponent and she spared a glance at Doug to check that he was okay. It cost her the chance to see one of the men coming up next to her, only realizing it when he grabbed her shoulder. She spun, dropped the card between her fingers and raised her arm as if to smack him across the face. He gave a disdainful snort, and then the guard's eyes went wide as an armored gauntlet formed itself around Marie-Ange's arm and hand as she swung.
He didn't have time to react. What he thought would be an ineffectual slap that he could laugh off was a backhand with the added force of an image as strong as steel. It caught him on the temple and cheek, and he went down, taking a kick to the chest and then another clubbing blow from Marie-Ange's gauntleted fist.
Doug's next opponent stepped in more cautiously than the first, having seen the speed and capability of the pair. He feinted once with his fists, a move Doug did not fall for as he was zoned in to the body language of every person in the room. A raised leg was similarly ignored as the man did not follow through with the kick. Then the man stepped in for real, aiming a series of punches and kicks at Doug's body, keeping him on the defensive and moving him back, away from Marie-Ange.
Each strike was met with a block or counter, but Doug struggled to find an opening in the man's defenses. A mistimed block of a kick impacted Doug's fist on top of the brass knuckles, numbing his fingers and causing them to unclench involuntarily, letting the brass knuckles drop to the floor with a thud. Doug shook his hand momentarily, grimacing. The man rushed forward again, looking to press his advantage, only to find Doug slipping past an overextended kick and darting to his side. Doug's black steel-reinforced combat boot thrust out and connected with the man's knee, bending it sideways, a direction it was not intended to go. As his legs crumpled and he exclaimed in pain, Doug's elbow lashed out, striking the henchman on the temple and leaving another unconscious body behind him.
Marie-Ange was calling up images as fast as she could, mentally directing two groups of her imps to drag the men off their feet so that she could kick in the face or stomach, and leave them unconscious or groaning in pain behind her. She dove behind a table as one of the men pulled a pistol out of his jacket and opened fire, as both groups of imps swarmed over him, dissolving into slime as they were hit with bullets.
The reports of gunfire whipped Doug's head around, and he reached into a pocket, fitting a small knife between the knuckles of his left hand. He took an extra second to seat the knife firmly between fingers that quivered, then clenched his hand hard. This was no time to be succumbing to fear. He moved up behind the gunman, knife hissing through the air as he sliced through the man's hamstring. As he tried to turn around to bring the gun to bear on Doug, Doug caught his forearm against his chest, breaking the man's wrist in a violent twist. He managed to catch the gun as it dropped, and racked back the slide, dropping the clip and ejecting the round in the chamber before reversing it like a club to bash against his skull. If he were a hero, the moment would have called for a pithy quip, but Doug didn't feel very much like a hero at the moment, and he dropped the gun numbly on the unconscious man.
Once the gunfire had stopped, Marie-Ange peeked out from behind the table, and then kicked it towards a pair of the men. It was too smell to do much to them, but it was a distraction. If the table was moving, they'd be less likely to pay attention to her. She pulled another card, this time from her shirtsleeve and side stepped as a miniature Juggernaut swung a stone tower like a baseball bat at the pair of men. Miniature being quite relative, of course, as the imaged version of Cain was still several inches taller than Marie-Ange.
The men ducked the tower, one turning to try to fight the armored simulacrum. The other spun around to face Marie-Ange, grabbing at her. Even with him grasping at her arms, she managed to stomp on his foot, scraping her boot against his shin on the way down. A pair of kicks destroyed the man's knee and she shoved him away hard, turning away before he hit the floor.
Unlike the large groundskeeper that Marie-Ange's image was modeled after, it -could- be stopped. And was, by several quick strikes from the man who turned to face it. But rather than turn back to attacking Marie-Ange, he moved forward towards Doug's exposed back where he was fighting another guard. But Doug barely saw the knowledge of it in his opponent's body language, and ducked aside just in time to avoid a killing or incapacitating blow. He didn't avoid it completely, however, and his ears rang with the force of it. Quickly folding up the opponent in front of him, Doug turned to face the other man. A few measuring strikes by each to take the measure of the other, and then they were fighting in earnest back and forth across the carpet.
It was almost graceful and balletic, the moves and countermoves, and Doug could almost hear Remy's indignant snort in his mind. "Dis not a fucking dance, Ramsey," the Cajun would likely have said. But it was a sort of dance, if a macabre and violent one. Doug's guard slipped for the briefest of moments, and another punch landed on his cheek. He turned away from the worst of it, and kicked wildly at the other man, driving him back long enough to regain his balance.
Before Marie-Ange had a chance to do more than pull out a pair of cards and begin to call up another image to help Doug, she found herself slammed up against the wall, face pressed into the wallpaper. She struggled as her unknown assailant plucked the cards from her hands, chuckling nastily. "You are nothing without your parlor tricks, ma petite," the man said, letting his grip loose just long enough for Marie-Ange to turn and face him.
Unlike the other men who had been in the room, he was neither muscular nor armed, and his face did not hold the blank look of a hired guard. It was twisted up in a sneer that seemed almost permanent. "You cannot stop her." He spat, driving his knee into Marie-Ange's stomach and then shoving her to the ground when she doubled over. He bent, and gave a sick looking smile, and seemingly from nowhere, produced a jagged and ugly looking knife. "Where are your cards now?" He asked.
Doug's tiny knife kept hissing through the air, and his opponent kept dodging. Neither one of them seemed to be able to land a deciding blow, though they both had scored a few glancing hits. Then Doug saw the bokor grab Angie and scatter her cards. His face twisted in helpless rage, and he grabbed his opponent's arm, driving his knife deep into an artery. The man would likely live, but his arm would never be the same. None of this mattered to Doug as he shoved the man brutally aside and grabbed a throwing knife from his vest. He'd practiced a bit with them, and the odds of him making the throw in a situation like this were slim, but he had to try. And with his girlfriend on the floor and in danger, suddenly he found the killing urge in him. He stepped forward and prepared to let fly, his heart in his throat.
Marie-Ange's hand shot out, to try to push the man away, and the sleeve of her shirt fell back, revealing the pattern of the tattoo in a band around her arm. "Right here." She said tightly. She twisted her arm, and curled her fingers, for a moment looking as if she were grasping something invisible in her fist. As she swung, the hilt and then thin blade of a short sword appeared. She made a single thrust, and while the voudoun priest slashed at Marie-Ange's arm with his knife, her sword was longer, and faster.
She didn't aim, the sword went straight up, and when it met resistance, Marie-Ange put all her strength behind it, ignoring the desperate gurgling from the man above her. She twisted it, and then kicked up with both feet, pushing the bokor away from her. The man's body hit the floor, blood pooling around the sword piercing through his mouth and cheek and exiting out the side of his neck.
The knife slipped from Doug's fingers and the killing rage similarly slipped out of him as he saw the sword exit the bokor's body. Yes, it was kill or be killed, especially in the position Marie-Ange had been in, but that didn't make seeing death, even deserved death, any easier. The stunned moment passed, however, and Doug realized that Marie-Ange was without any cards at all. Then he remembered the card she had passed him while they had been preparing for the mission. He didn't believe in coincidence anymore. Not where she was concerned.
He crossed the floor in seconds, shoving a henchman out of his way and diving to where she lay against the wall, knocking the priest's body off of her in the process. He plucked the card from his vest and turned it over. The Knight of Swords. His new signifier. Definitely not a coincidence. "Mon coeur," he said gallantly in greeting, as if they were the only two people in the room. "Are you okay?" he asked her nervously.
"I ... believe so." Marie-Ange answered, getting to her feet. She looked herself over, noting bruises and a few scrapes and the shallow cut on her arm from the bokor's knife, but nothing more serious then that. Her attention was drawn briefly to the body at her feet, and then she looked around the room, seeing only unconscious or groaning guards. "We should move on." She said. "There are more rooms ahead."
***
Candra seethed in the middle of the room. She could hear the sounds of combat beyond the walls, and with the breaking of the ritual, her plans had been stymied. What could have possibly gone wrong with Mordo's end, or with Heinrich. Her plan was perfect, and now, her own home was under assault. Someone would pay for this, over and over again. Turning, she saw the figure of Amanda, lying still on the slab. She grabbed a knife from the table and crossed over. If the little bitch was dead, there would still be power in the heart and the blood that she could extract. This wasn't over yet.
Rounding a corner, Wanda was only a step behind Pete and Amanda's were-light but she could clearly see a door along the corridor. Hopefully that was their destination because they were so close now...
A sudden movement to her left and she dodged, stepping out of the way of a wicked looking knife as another guard showed up. The other woman flipped the weapon over in her hand, changing her swing to up and over. Wanda blocked that, hand coming to rest on the forearm and left off a hex bolt. As the muscles exploded under her touch, she lashed out with her other hand, palm of the hand smashing into and shattering the nose, driving it up and out of place. The woman dropped and Wanda turned back.
Mark brought up the rear, conjuring a force field of Tchaikovsky-inspired rose-colored energy to shield the group from anyone daring enough to shoot them from behind. This was one of his less flexible shields, yet strong enough to block a barrage of bullets even if not at full strength. As he passed the corner, he heard a number of soft thumps, and turned to see half a dozen knives slam against the shield and fall. Their throwers stood just yards away, withdrawing more weapons from their persons. Mark briefly glanced at Pete, then turned and wordlessly widened the shield, forming a convex barrier that blocked the corridor that separated him from their attackers.
The cliche about people coming out of the woodwork had never felt so true, and had Sarah not been boned over, she would have taken a knife to her ribs. Instead the weapon scraped off her, knocking her off balance, but unharmed. Her opponent was confused for a moment, and Sarah took advantage and kicked up from the floor, twisting to grab the bone beside her and slamming it up and into his midsection. Maybe she'd take out a couple of vital organs along the way.
Pete's steady pace had brought him up to a set of double doors, obviously the doors to a large room. George hovered impatiently in front of it.
He glanced back to the others. "Everybody ready?"
Then the werelight vanished. Pete made a choked sound, somewhere at the back of his throat, and the doors exploded inward one astonishing blast.
Candra turned at the sound of the explosion, to see the door fragment and whirl away in a whirl of wood and stone. This was her inner sanctum; the place where her power was greatest and the only unchanging point of the last three centuries. They dared to challenge her here? She had over fifteen guards, all of whom were will trained and well armed, veterans of numerous wars and deadly as any in the world. The cream of her bokor priests were arrayed behind her, a potent magical force that was a threat to the greatest foes.
"Oh sweeties, you've just made the last mistake of your lives." Candra's hands began to glow with magical energy.
Pete didn't break stride. A huge swathe of power flashed forward from him, expanding out toward the crowd of arrayed scum. A few of them managed to throw up some kind of shield, and survive the initial blast, but the greater part of them fell to the ground with great cauterised slices carved out of them.
A soft gasp was the only sound Wanda made at the sight in the room. Cold rage filled her vision as she reacted, mouth forming a line, hard line. Those that had survived Pete's attack now being targeted; some dropped without a sound while others fell clawing at themselves, screaming out their pain. Her power had reached out and turned their own bodies against them, attacks they had no way of defending against.
A bokor priest, luckier than the others, moved and Wanda's hand snapped up, sending a hex bolt towards him. He fell choking as cancerous lesions exploded over his face, blocking his nose and mouth and denying him oxygen.
All that was left was Candra and the body lying face down on the table behind her. Blonde hair matted with blood, beloved leather jacket charred and sliced down the back, hands lying limply in the restraints... Amanda's back was a bloodied mess of cuts, symbols gouged into the skin and then a mixture of charcoal and salt rubbed in to make the scarring stick, but it didn't seem that would bother her overmuch now. She lay motionless, face still and white and not a sign of life about her.
For Candra, it was standing in the middle of carnage the likes of which she'd never seen, not even in her oh so brief brushes with the Civil War. These wretched animals! Her bokor were dead to a man, and even the expensive soldiers had died with barely the opportunity to fire a shot. All at the hands of these mongrel mutants. Her voice went very cold.
"You think you've broken my cult. Oh, but darlings, I've lived three centuries and more. Not only can I rebuild, but I will make my revenge last generations--"
Pete didn't do more than glance at her as he ran toward Amanda's body, a sick look on his face. Hotknife after hotknife went blasting toward Candra, almost as an afterthought. Whatever mystic shields she possessed held out a matter of seconds against the torrent of energy. She screamed once, as her body was pierced all over by the lances of terrible heat, before collapsing.
"Oh fuck no Amanda no fuck" He stopped, crouching down by her, fingers looking desperately for a pulse.
Her skin was cold and clammy against his fingers, but a pulse was there, weak but steady. A barest hint of a noise escaped her at the contact, fingers twitching slightly.
"Oh, God." Mark's voice was barely even a rasp. Unheeding of everyone and everything else around him, he dropped his force field and dashed into the room to nearly fall beside Pete. "Amanda? Amanda! Wake up, hun. Pete, she's okay, right? Right?"
"Mark..." Coming up behind him, Wanda placed a hand on his shoulder as she dropped into a crouch on his other side. Her free hand hovered above one of Amanda's, hesitating to touch only because that would be a true indication if she was alive or not. The older woman's face was drawn and sharp, paler now. "Amanda?" She cleared her throat as her voice cracked. "~Amanda, come back, please, come back to us. It's over. Please.~"
Another finger twitch, this one enough to rattle the restraints slightly, and Amanda's eyes slowly opened. "Look who's here," she managed to croak, and then she coughed. The movement wrenched a pained noise from her.
"No moving, you," Wanda managed to say, the noise coming out after a mix between a relieved laugh and a relieved cry. Her hand dropped from Mark's shoulder and reached for the restraints. "I will work on these," she told the other two, fingers slipping around the metal. Controlled hex blasts would rust them enough to free their friend but Wanda didn't feel confident in her aim at the moment, so touch was needed.
A muffled sob escaped Mark. "I fuckin' hate you," he managed to say to Amanda, wiping tears from his eyes. "I swear, if you do this again then . . . then I'll do something very not nice. Like, booby-trap your work space with Ashley Simpson. See how you like getting frightened to death then."
"Love you too." Amanda's hands flopped free of the restraints, her wrists a raw mess, and she had to struggle to lift them. Her arms felt like blocks of wood, having been in the same place for so long. Another whimper escaped from between clenched teeth as she tried to push herself up. "Everyone all right?"
The look Wanda gave her was slightly amused but tired. "I think we should be asking you that...but yes, we are fine." As far as she knew, the others were fine as well but she hadn't seen them since the attack had started. "But on that note, I think it is time to leave. Can you walk on your own?"
With help, Amanda had gotten herself into a sitting position. Now she answered Wanda's question by pushing herself off the table. Her legs began to fold, and she caught herself on the table's edge, breath hissing between her teeth. "I can make it," she grated, as hands reached to support her. Her gaze fell on Candra's fallen body, and she pushed herself upright again. "I've had enough people hauling me around this weekend. This time I get out of here under my own bloody steam."
Remy and Illyana fell back from the house, diving behind a low stone wall they'd picked out earlier as the best place to take shelter from the explosion. They'd done their work quickly, leaving enough time for everyone else to get into position. Remy pulled the detonator from his pocket and laid it to one side, waiting for Pete's go-ahead.
"Dat was fast work wit' de charges."
"My philosophy is to spend as little time with explosives as necessary." The blonde girl shrugged slightly, reaching back to readjust her ponytail. Tension was strung through her unforgiving posture; she was taking this seriously, despite the brevity of her words.
Remy didn't saw anything in return, doublechecking their placement and decided it was about as good as they could hope for. "Wisdom gives de signal, I'll blow de house, and you straight to Sofia to tell her. You stay behind Sofia, petite. Despite what you might think, dese people are well armed and more experienced fighters den you. Do not try and do everything on you own."
"Yeah, I know." Her voice was flat but neutral. The countdown to action seemed to be taking a certain toll on her: Her earlier caution augmented by a quick alertness and her movement harsher, more utilitarian, as she crouched behind the wall. "I'm not looking to get killed today."
"No one generally is right before it happens." Remy ran his thumb over the edge of the detonator slowly, like reassuring himself, even though he was deep into his professional mind set. There were still nagging tendrils of concern for Amanda's safety leaking past. "Come on..." He whispered, waiting for Pete's call that they were all in place.
“I meant I was planning on being careful, not that I’m too bloody stupid to understand the risks at hand.” Though said rapidly, under her breath, the annoyance was distracted, stuttering in and out of her voice as though on imperfect autopilot. She was only paying half-attention to the conversation, but she stayed absolutely still, pressed back against the wall.
"Remy be interested to see how dat works out for you." Remy said, as his comm clicked twice. "And dat's Pete. Get out of here, 'yana."
Remy waited for her to disappear before he sit off the detonator. There was a half second pause, and the night suddenly erupted into a gout of flame and fire. The roof blew ten feet into the air, spiraling before it landed with a smash, showering flaming fragments all over the estate. The walls collapsed inward from the explosion. Remy pulled his staff from his coat, still telescoped to the short length and waited. A few minutes later, a guard patrol came racing around the building, weapons ready.
Unfortunately for them, looking into the flames robbed their nightvision, and they never saw the man waiting in the darkness. Only the metallic clack of his staff going to full length, and before they could react, death emerged in the form of the lanky Cajun.
***
The humid night was split by the sound of an explosion as Remy triggered his distraction.
Sarah might have looked impressed, but it only took a moment to snap back into fight mode as the house's defenses started to recover from the explosion and a couple of armed guards rushed through the now gaping hole in the front of the building. She glanced quickly back at Mark. "You going to be okay?"
Mark held back to let Wanda and Pete confront this brigade, and took a moment to regain his breath. "In a sec. I think I put a bit too much in there," he said, and managed a weak, self-deprecating smile up at Sarah before calling forth the purple energy again.
The sight of George, who normally floated around with the energy of a sugar filled child, caused something to tighten and crack inside Wanda. Her eyes flickered from the werelight to the rushing guard, a hand simply coming up in a restrained gesture. The first man suddenly went down, hands scrambling at his chest as the gun he had been holding tumbled to the ground.
Weak heart.
Pete walked forward at a steady pace. A couple of guards raised started to raise their guns, but went down as arcs of red light leapt from Pete's body to strike them through the chest, burning holes the size of a man's fist through body armour and organs, cauterising as they went, leaving perfectly round holes all the way through the men.
A third man managed to fire his gun, but before the bullet hit, Pete was briefly wrapped in a solid cocoon of energy, and the slug boiled away harmlessly against it. Pete's pace didn't falter, he just kept walking, following the werelight.
The path ahead seemingly clear, Mark took the opportunity to change playlists, deciding that a more defensive approach on his part would be a good idea. He briefly glanced up as Hendrix finished, the screeching guitars replaced by a cacophony of orchestrated rock - not something he'd ever learned how to manipulate - and saw that he was staring down the barrel of a pistol. His last thought as the trigger was pulled was 'Why the hell is this song even here?'
His next thought two seconds later as the bang echoed through the hall was 'Why the hell am I still alive?' Two reasons, he found. One, a nastily twisted shard of bone was sticking through the gunman's chest, Sarah standing behind him wearing a countenance of utter fury. And two, he wasn't in the path of the gun anymore. He stood - no, floated - three feet off the ground. He raised a hand to his face to wipe the sweat from his brow, and a giant white hand nearly smacked him in the face.
Wanda blinked, pushing her hair out of her face, before she glanced up at Mark. Well. Now that could be useful. Turning back, she suddenly found herself with an armful of guard--caught unawares, she flinched as a knife skimmed her stomach. Too close and they couldn't afford anyone to be sloppy.
Lashing out, her head connected with the softer parts of the face--nose and eyes crunching as a red flare brightened the hallway. Another body hit the ground, this one suffocating on the blood pooling in their mouth. Wanda lengthened her stride to catch up to Pete.
Mark in his shiny new exoskeleton followed, easily grabbing and tossing armed guards around like they were toys. "I feel like King Kong," he said, his voice oddly distorted by the armor. He smacked aside yet another guard like a bug, not even wincing as he nearly crashed through the wall. "Just don't ask me to climb up any skyscrapers."
***
Even when they'd invaded a former Russian weapons facility and a Chinese army base, Doug hadn't felt quite so out of his depth as he did inside Candra's Louisiana estate. Maybe the novelty and initial numbness of things had worn off. Or maybe it was the personal reason for this mission. Maybe it was the cold way Pete and Remy had laid "kill or be killed" on the table during the brief in New York. Whatever it was, it sent a somewhat permanent chill down Doug's neck as his eyes continually flicked from side to side, trying to take in everything at once.
The path was clear as Sofia, Doug, and Marie-Ange moved down a hallway, quietly and with purpose. As they neared a staircase, though, a flash of motion from within caught Doug's eye, and he hissed a warning, holding his hand out for the other two to stop.
Dark brown curls fell over Sofia's shoulder as she cocked her head to the side, stilling at Doug's gesture but for the turning of her ear just right to catch the rotating sound. Her sight line fell on the destruction they'd left in their wake – slashes, burn marks in the wallpaper and plaster crumbling from the elaborately carved ceiling – but saw through it blindly, concentrating. Holding up her palm, all fingers extended and indicating "four", she suddenly brought up her other hand to increase the number to "five, no, six, no" before shaking her head and making it known that she couldn't be sure.
It most certainly was. Belladonna halted abruptly as soon as she spotted the 'intruders', her men lining up to flank her automatically. They made no openly hostile moves yet it was clear by the way they held themselves that they were ready to escalate matters at a moment's notice. "Get out of my way," the woman said coldly, "or you're dead."
Sofia's frown of concentration was replaced by a strange, half curve; not a smile nor smirk, and tired at the ends. "Go on ahead," she said, taking a few forward steps away from her two teammates. Glancing back, she found they hadn't moved. "I said," Sofia continued, any amusement gone from her face, and voice hitting sharp. "Go ahead."
Doug took a long look at Belladonna Boudreaux-LeBeau, and then at Sofia, then shuddered. Those were not two women he fancied coming between. As much as the potentially ensuing bitch-off might be entertaining to watch from an educational standpoint, he certainly didn't fancy being anywhere in the area if it turned ugly. He grabbed Marie-Ange by the elbow and led her forward. "I think we should do what she says," he muttered sotto voce to his girlfriend.
"Yes." Marie-Ange agreed. There was a hallway off to side that they'd passed that headed in a direction away from here. Perhaps Sofia and Belladonna would just have a nice chat about shoes and become quite friendly. She somehow doubted it, and wanted to be very far away as swiftly as possible.
***
Illyana dropped to the ground a few feet from Sofia, light flashing mid-air, catching only the tail-end of the explosion; distantly, she'd thought it would be louder. She stood up quickly, glancing around for the others, movements controlled, but tense. It had been a long time - a long time - since she'd worked with another person like this. "Doug and Marie-Ange?" she asked, keeping her voice at an audible but inoffensive volume, something that blended into the background noise.
"Up ahead," Sofia remarked casually as she came up the hall. The door she had just come through was half closed, whether the years had caused a slight tilt to the house, or a nudge from her hip or idle draft. Either way, the angle made it impossible to see. "We're splitting up to cover more ground."
Illyana nodded, brushing her hands off on her thighs. “All right,” she said, “So – which way’s ours?”
"This hallway is still common." Sofia paused, looking over her shoulder. Something didn't sound right. "We'll take the stairs up, eventually, but at least it means this area should be fairly cle-"
Illyana almost didn’t see him in time; he came from behind, slipping through the half-closed door, and she caught only the slightest movement in the periphery of her vision. Enough to save her life; not enough to avoid the sharp edge of his knife catching and pulling against her shoulder, barely enough time to deflect the second attempt, and somehow she was too close and too unarmed to fight effectively.
Suddenly, he was gone, followed by a dull thud noise. Sofia passed by Illyana’s view, already automatically pressing the heel of her hand against the blood flow in her shoulder. She had a hand out, graceful almost, with the curve of her fingers making an arc to their attackers throat, which he was clutching at with one hand. Her eyes burned amber a moment as she stared at him, waiting until he fell limp, before dropping him to the ground and when Sofia turned around, they had gone back to brown.
“We’ll bandage that up as we walk.”
***
Marie-Ange and Doug had stayed to the shadows as long as they could, and had paused when they saw their entrance guarded by two large men. Nodding towards the guards, Marie-Ange slipped a card from her belt and flashed it at Doug, waiting for his response.
Doug was very familiar with the card in question, and he grinned tightly at Marie-Ange, guessing what she had in mind. He pulled a small pair of cylinders off of his vest, and pulled the pins with his thumbs. Counting silently in his head, he nodded at her as he leaned around a corner and pitched them low across the floor.
Both guards reacted at the sound of the rolling grenades, and would have shielded their eyes, having recognized them, if it hadn't been for what followed the two cylinders. Filling the entire foyer was a luridly green and gold dragon. It appeared to squeeze itself through the door, although in reality it was simply being created as it moved, only finishing in time to dive at the guards as the flash-bang grenades went off.
On the other side of the wall, Marie-Ange pressed fingertips to her forehead, wincing at an expected pressure headache. For a moment, the shape of the dragon wavered, but it held solid, bending it's long neck around to snap at the guards.
One had taken the brunt of the flash, and slumped against the door, unconscious. The other had turned, and took a step forward as if to run. He didn't make it.
Before he could take another, the dragon's mouth opened like a snake's, far larger then it should have been able to, and darted out to bite the man. He slid between the fangs, and thrashed and kicked his legs, trying to free himself.
Doug was hot on the heels of the Shivan Dragon, and reached the doorway just in time to see the construct dissolve, leaving an unconscious guard covered in the ectoplasm that Marie-Ange's constructs were made of. Sparing only enough attention for the guard to see that he was indeed unconscious, Doug lowered his shoulder and hit the door at a run, bursting into a large parlor with very little furniture and a rather large number of muscular flunky types, all of whom were already turning toward the door from the noise in the hallway.
Marie-Ange was only a few steps behind Doug, with a trio of her frequently sketched imps already on her shoulders, and another two at her feet. As Doug pressed into the room, she followed, and the imps leapt down from her shoulders to claw at the face of one of the men. Withe the imps swarming over him, she was free to engage another of the men, driving her elbow into his stomach and kicking him in the ankle to drop him to the ground.
One of the henchmen reacted quickly, swinging his fist down in a tight, quick haymaker aimed at Doug's face. The move was telegraphed, though, even to someone without Doug's particular talent for body language. His left arm came up to block the punch, and his right fist flashed in the light as a studded set of brass knuckles slammed into the man's jaw, the force and speed of Doug's strike shattering his jaw. As the man clutched at his mouth in pain, Doug brought the butt end of the metal surrounding his fingers down on the base of his neck, knocking him out and shoving him aside as he moved further into the room.
A blunt kick to the head knocked out Marie-Ange's opponent and she spared a glance at Doug to check that he was okay. It cost her the chance to see one of the men coming up next to her, only realizing it when he grabbed her shoulder. She spun, dropped the card between her fingers and raised her arm as if to smack him across the face. He gave a disdainful snort, and then the guard's eyes went wide as an armored gauntlet formed itself around Marie-Ange's arm and hand as she swung.
He didn't have time to react. What he thought would be an ineffectual slap that he could laugh off was a backhand with the added force of an image as strong as steel. It caught him on the temple and cheek, and he went down, taking a kick to the chest and then another clubbing blow from Marie-Ange's gauntleted fist.
Doug's next opponent stepped in more cautiously than the first, having seen the speed and capability of the pair. He feinted once with his fists, a move Doug did not fall for as he was zoned in to the body language of every person in the room. A raised leg was similarly ignored as the man did not follow through with the kick. Then the man stepped in for real, aiming a series of punches and kicks at Doug's body, keeping him on the defensive and moving him back, away from Marie-Ange.
Each strike was met with a block or counter, but Doug struggled to find an opening in the man's defenses. A mistimed block of a kick impacted Doug's fist on top of the brass knuckles, numbing his fingers and causing them to unclench involuntarily, letting the brass knuckles drop to the floor with a thud. Doug shook his hand momentarily, grimacing. The man rushed forward again, looking to press his advantage, only to find Doug slipping past an overextended kick and darting to his side. Doug's black steel-reinforced combat boot thrust out and connected with the man's knee, bending it sideways, a direction it was not intended to go. As his legs crumpled and he exclaimed in pain, Doug's elbow lashed out, striking the henchman on the temple and leaving another unconscious body behind him.
Marie-Ange was calling up images as fast as she could, mentally directing two groups of her imps to drag the men off their feet so that she could kick in the face or stomach, and leave them unconscious or groaning in pain behind her. She dove behind a table as one of the men pulled a pistol out of his jacket and opened fire, as both groups of imps swarmed over him, dissolving into slime as they were hit with bullets.
The reports of gunfire whipped Doug's head around, and he reached into a pocket, fitting a small knife between the knuckles of his left hand. He took an extra second to seat the knife firmly between fingers that quivered, then clenched his hand hard. This was no time to be succumbing to fear. He moved up behind the gunman, knife hissing through the air as he sliced through the man's hamstring. As he tried to turn around to bring the gun to bear on Doug, Doug caught his forearm against his chest, breaking the man's wrist in a violent twist. He managed to catch the gun as it dropped, and racked back the slide, dropping the clip and ejecting the round in the chamber before reversing it like a club to bash against his skull. If he were a hero, the moment would have called for a pithy quip, but Doug didn't feel very much like a hero at the moment, and he dropped the gun numbly on the unconscious man.
Once the gunfire had stopped, Marie-Ange peeked out from behind the table, and then kicked it towards a pair of the men. It was too smell to do much to them, but it was a distraction. If the table was moving, they'd be less likely to pay attention to her. She pulled another card, this time from her shirtsleeve and side stepped as a miniature Juggernaut swung a stone tower like a baseball bat at the pair of men. Miniature being quite relative, of course, as the imaged version of Cain was still several inches taller than Marie-Ange.
The men ducked the tower, one turning to try to fight the armored simulacrum. The other spun around to face Marie-Ange, grabbing at her. Even with him grasping at her arms, she managed to stomp on his foot, scraping her boot against his shin on the way down. A pair of kicks destroyed the man's knee and she shoved him away hard, turning away before he hit the floor.
Unlike the large groundskeeper that Marie-Ange's image was modeled after, it -could- be stopped. And was, by several quick strikes from the man who turned to face it. But rather than turn back to attacking Marie-Ange, he moved forward towards Doug's exposed back where he was fighting another guard. But Doug barely saw the knowledge of it in his opponent's body language, and ducked aside just in time to avoid a killing or incapacitating blow. He didn't avoid it completely, however, and his ears rang with the force of it. Quickly folding up the opponent in front of him, Doug turned to face the other man. A few measuring strikes by each to take the measure of the other, and then they were fighting in earnest back and forth across the carpet.
It was almost graceful and balletic, the moves and countermoves, and Doug could almost hear Remy's indignant snort in his mind. "Dis not a fucking dance, Ramsey," the Cajun would likely have said. But it was a sort of dance, if a macabre and violent one. Doug's guard slipped for the briefest of moments, and another punch landed on his cheek. He turned away from the worst of it, and kicked wildly at the other man, driving him back long enough to regain his balance.
Before Marie-Ange had a chance to do more than pull out a pair of cards and begin to call up another image to help Doug, she found herself slammed up against the wall, face pressed into the wallpaper. She struggled as her unknown assailant plucked the cards from her hands, chuckling nastily. "You are nothing without your parlor tricks, ma petite," the man said, letting his grip loose just long enough for Marie-Ange to turn and face him.
Unlike the other men who had been in the room, he was neither muscular nor armed, and his face did not hold the blank look of a hired guard. It was twisted up in a sneer that seemed almost permanent. "You cannot stop her." He spat, driving his knee into Marie-Ange's stomach and then shoving her to the ground when she doubled over. He bent, and gave a sick looking smile, and seemingly from nowhere, produced a jagged and ugly looking knife. "Where are your cards now?" He asked.
Doug's tiny knife kept hissing through the air, and his opponent kept dodging. Neither one of them seemed to be able to land a deciding blow, though they both had scored a few glancing hits. Then Doug saw the bokor grab Angie and scatter her cards. His face twisted in helpless rage, and he grabbed his opponent's arm, driving his knife deep into an artery. The man would likely live, but his arm would never be the same. None of this mattered to Doug as he shoved the man brutally aside and grabbed a throwing knife from his vest. He'd practiced a bit with them, and the odds of him making the throw in a situation like this were slim, but he had to try. And with his girlfriend on the floor and in danger, suddenly he found the killing urge in him. He stepped forward and prepared to let fly, his heart in his throat.
Marie-Ange's hand shot out, to try to push the man away, and the sleeve of her shirt fell back, revealing the pattern of the tattoo in a band around her arm. "Right here." She said tightly. She twisted her arm, and curled her fingers, for a moment looking as if she were grasping something invisible in her fist. As she swung, the hilt and then thin blade of a short sword appeared. She made a single thrust, and while the voudoun priest slashed at Marie-Ange's arm with his knife, her sword was longer, and faster.
She didn't aim, the sword went straight up, and when it met resistance, Marie-Ange put all her strength behind it, ignoring the desperate gurgling from the man above her. She twisted it, and then kicked up with both feet, pushing the bokor away from her. The man's body hit the floor, blood pooling around the sword piercing through his mouth and cheek and exiting out the side of his neck.
The knife slipped from Doug's fingers and the killing rage similarly slipped out of him as he saw the sword exit the bokor's body. Yes, it was kill or be killed, especially in the position Marie-Ange had been in, but that didn't make seeing death, even deserved death, any easier. The stunned moment passed, however, and Doug realized that Marie-Ange was without any cards at all. Then he remembered the card she had passed him while they had been preparing for the mission. He didn't believe in coincidence anymore. Not where she was concerned.
He crossed the floor in seconds, shoving a henchman out of his way and diving to where she lay against the wall, knocking the priest's body off of her in the process. He plucked the card from his vest and turned it over. The Knight of Swords. His new signifier. Definitely not a coincidence. "Mon coeur," he said gallantly in greeting, as if they were the only two people in the room. "Are you okay?" he asked her nervously.
"I ... believe so." Marie-Ange answered, getting to her feet. She looked herself over, noting bruises and a few scrapes and the shallow cut on her arm from the bokor's knife, but nothing more serious then that. Her attention was drawn briefly to the body at her feet, and then she looked around the room, seeing only unconscious or groaning guards. "We should move on." She said. "There are more rooms ahead."
***
Candra seethed in the middle of the room. She could hear the sounds of combat beyond the walls, and with the breaking of the ritual, her plans had been stymied. What could have possibly gone wrong with Mordo's end, or with Heinrich. Her plan was perfect, and now, her own home was under assault. Someone would pay for this, over and over again. Turning, she saw the figure of Amanda, lying still on the slab. She grabbed a knife from the table and crossed over. If the little bitch was dead, there would still be power in the heart and the blood that she could extract. This wasn't over yet.
Rounding a corner, Wanda was only a step behind Pete and Amanda's were-light but she could clearly see a door along the corridor. Hopefully that was their destination because they were so close now...
A sudden movement to her left and she dodged, stepping out of the way of a wicked looking knife as another guard showed up. The other woman flipped the weapon over in her hand, changing her swing to up and over. Wanda blocked that, hand coming to rest on the forearm and left off a hex bolt. As the muscles exploded under her touch, she lashed out with her other hand, palm of the hand smashing into and shattering the nose, driving it up and out of place. The woman dropped and Wanda turned back.
Mark brought up the rear, conjuring a force field of Tchaikovsky-inspired rose-colored energy to shield the group from anyone daring enough to shoot them from behind. This was one of his less flexible shields, yet strong enough to block a barrage of bullets even if not at full strength. As he passed the corner, he heard a number of soft thumps, and turned to see half a dozen knives slam against the shield and fall. Their throwers stood just yards away, withdrawing more weapons from their persons. Mark briefly glanced at Pete, then turned and wordlessly widened the shield, forming a convex barrier that blocked the corridor that separated him from their attackers.
The cliche about people coming out of the woodwork had never felt so true, and had Sarah not been boned over, she would have taken a knife to her ribs. Instead the weapon scraped off her, knocking her off balance, but unharmed. Her opponent was confused for a moment, and Sarah took advantage and kicked up from the floor, twisting to grab the bone beside her and slamming it up and into his midsection. Maybe she'd take out a couple of vital organs along the way.
Pete's steady pace had brought him up to a set of double doors, obviously the doors to a large room. George hovered impatiently in front of it.
He glanced back to the others. "Everybody ready?"
Then the werelight vanished. Pete made a choked sound, somewhere at the back of his throat, and the doors exploded inward one astonishing blast.
Candra turned at the sound of the explosion, to see the door fragment and whirl away in a whirl of wood and stone. This was her inner sanctum; the place where her power was greatest and the only unchanging point of the last three centuries. They dared to challenge her here? She had over fifteen guards, all of whom were will trained and well armed, veterans of numerous wars and deadly as any in the world. The cream of her bokor priests were arrayed behind her, a potent magical force that was a threat to the greatest foes.
"Oh sweeties, you've just made the last mistake of your lives." Candra's hands began to glow with magical energy.
Pete didn't break stride. A huge swathe of power flashed forward from him, expanding out toward the crowd of arrayed scum. A few of them managed to throw up some kind of shield, and survive the initial blast, but the greater part of them fell to the ground with great cauterised slices carved out of them.
A soft gasp was the only sound Wanda made at the sight in the room. Cold rage filled her vision as she reacted, mouth forming a line, hard line. Those that had survived Pete's attack now being targeted; some dropped without a sound while others fell clawing at themselves, screaming out their pain. Her power had reached out and turned their own bodies against them, attacks they had no way of defending against.
A bokor priest, luckier than the others, moved and Wanda's hand snapped up, sending a hex bolt towards him. He fell choking as cancerous lesions exploded over his face, blocking his nose and mouth and denying him oxygen.
All that was left was Candra and the body lying face down on the table behind her. Blonde hair matted with blood, beloved leather jacket charred and sliced down the back, hands lying limply in the restraints... Amanda's back was a bloodied mess of cuts, symbols gouged into the skin and then a mixture of charcoal and salt rubbed in to make the scarring stick, but it didn't seem that would bother her overmuch now. She lay motionless, face still and white and not a sign of life about her.
For Candra, it was standing in the middle of carnage the likes of which she'd never seen, not even in her oh so brief brushes with the Civil War. These wretched animals! Her bokor were dead to a man, and even the expensive soldiers had died with barely the opportunity to fire a shot. All at the hands of these mongrel mutants. Her voice went very cold.
"You think you've broken my cult. Oh, but darlings, I've lived three centuries and more. Not only can I rebuild, but I will make my revenge last generations--"
Pete didn't do more than glance at her as he ran toward Amanda's body, a sick look on his face. Hotknife after hotknife went blasting toward Candra, almost as an afterthought. Whatever mystic shields she possessed held out a matter of seconds against the torrent of energy. She screamed once, as her body was pierced all over by the lances of terrible heat, before collapsing.
"Oh fuck no Amanda no fuck" He stopped, crouching down by her, fingers looking desperately for a pulse.
Her skin was cold and clammy against his fingers, but a pulse was there, weak but steady. A barest hint of a noise escaped her at the contact, fingers twitching slightly.
"Oh, God." Mark's voice was barely even a rasp. Unheeding of everyone and everything else around him, he dropped his force field and dashed into the room to nearly fall beside Pete. "Amanda? Amanda! Wake up, hun. Pete, she's okay, right? Right?"
"Mark..." Coming up behind him, Wanda placed a hand on his shoulder as she dropped into a crouch on his other side. Her free hand hovered above one of Amanda's, hesitating to touch only because that would be a true indication if she was alive or not. The older woman's face was drawn and sharp, paler now. "Amanda?" She cleared her throat as her voice cracked. "~Amanda, come back, please, come back to us. It's over. Please.~"
Another finger twitch, this one enough to rattle the restraints slightly, and Amanda's eyes slowly opened. "Look who's here," she managed to croak, and then she coughed. The movement wrenched a pained noise from her.
"No moving, you," Wanda managed to say, the noise coming out after a mix between a relieved laugh and a relieved cry. Her hand dropped from Mark's shoulder and reached for the restraints. "I will work on these," she told the other two, fingers slipping around the metal. Controlled hex blasts would rust them enough to free their friend but Wanda didn't feel confident in her aim at the moment, so touch was needed.
A muffled sob escaped Mark. "I fuckin' hate you," he managed to say to Amanda, wiping tears from his eyes. "I swear, if you do this again then . . . then I'll do something very not nice. Like, booby-trap your work space with Ashley Simpson. See how you like getting frightened to death then."
"Love you too." Amanda's hands flopped free of the restraints, her wrists a raw mess, and she had to struggle to lift them. Her arms felt like blocks of wood, having been in the same place for so long. Another whimper escaped from between clenched teeth as she tried to push herself up. "Everyone all right?"
The look Wanda gave her was slightly amused but tired. "I think we should be asking you that...but yes, we are fine." As far as she knew, the others were fine as well but she hadn't seen them since the attack had started. "But on that note, I think it is time to leave. Can you walk on your own?"
With help, Amanda had gotten herself into a sitting position. Now she answered Wanda's question by pushing herself off the table. Her legs began to fold, and she caught herself on the table's edge, breath hissing between her teeth. "I can make it," she grated, as hands reached to support her. Her gaze fell on Candra's fallen body, and she pushed herself upright again. "I've had enough people hauling me around this weekend. This time I get out of here under my own bloody steam."