House of Wolves: Night at the Museum

[x-scarletwitch.livejournal.com]

In the middle of the night, in a spooky, empty museum, the four members of X-Force spread out to investigate.



"Professor Harkness speaking - Wanda? What is it, what's happened? Oh no, Magda, I didn't know she was that sick... Wanda? I'll be there tomorrow. Stay strong, can you do that? Yes, I know, of course you can. I'm coming, I'll be there as soon as I can."

**

The museum was a fairly short drive away from the main body of the Cambridge University - the twisting and smaller roads simply made it seem a bit longer. The building was a stone worked two story building that had once been a home to someone with title before it had fallen into disarray. It was longer than it was tall and Wanda knew that it had a fairly extensive basement that she hoped they wouldn't have to search.

It didn't take long for security to clear them, not after Victor had spent the almost two days getting clearances finalized, and Wanda was relieved to see that the new security staff were stationed out front and around the building, giving them a clear space to work without having to worry too much about someone getting suspicious. Also, there seemed to be a general reluctance to work in the spot where several people had been murdered and Wanda and the others used that to their advantage.

They stood in the slightly lit entry way and were each given a map of the place. "Victor managed to buy us a few hours," she said softly. "The police have copies of the surveillance tapes but copies were left here. Mark, can you and Jake perform whatever technology magic you have to on those?"

"Allakhazam," Mark replied with a salute. He took out his phone, having already downloaded a map of the museum onto his phone (there's an app for that), to mark where he and Jake ought to concentrate. "What're you gonna do?"

Wanda pointed at Illyana. "My second magical assistant and I are going to go take a look around the main part of the museum, see what the attackers might have been aiming for." She eyed his phone with amusement and horror, happy to leave the technology aspect to people who knew what they were doing. "We all have our phones on us - I do not think we'll run into any trouble but call if you see anything, okay?"

"Will do," Jake said. "We promise not to get eaten by anything." He turned to Mark. "I don't suppose this is the right time for the 'cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war' quote?"

The urge to smack was strong, which meant a lot coming from Mark. "Yeah, no. I don't like magical wolves at all. Even I'll pass on the dumb joke."

"Yeah, yeah. Demons are bad. I'm so glad we've all read the memo." Illyana really was irritable, probably because she did not enjoy chasing demons at night in echoey old museums filled with breakable, ugly things. "Can we just get on with it?" - this directed at Wanda.

"Never change, Illyana, never change," Wanda murmured to herself before heading off down the slightly murky corridor. "Remember your buddies, please, I do not fancy having to chase anyone down tonight."



Wanda and Illyana discover that Agatha's been hiding a few secrets.



"Victor managed to get me a rough list of the museum's contents," Wanda commented as she and Illyana walked down one of the main throughfares. It was better lit than the others and she knew, or thought, most of the more valuable pieces were along that route. The large book Victor had handed her was tucked under one arm - for a smallish museum, Agatha had managed to stockpile it during her years of collecting. She knew that finding out what the intruders had been looking for was small to slim but she knew it was better to keep busy, to focus on the job, than to sit around and let Mark and Jake work on the technology aspects of it.

Illyana looked around, hair swinging, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "It looks like Jubilee's bedroom in here," she complained. "Museums are boring enough without having to pick your way through -- " she paused, foot poised to kick at a statuette on the floor. "You know," she said, "I'm pretty sure there wasn't a Figure of Enlil on that manifest. Which makes sense, since they're mostly used to asphyxiate one's enemy's children." Instead of kicking it, she stepped carefully away, and plaintively said, "I don't like this museum."

It took quite a lot of will power to mention that Wanda didn't think the museum cared for Illyana, either, but she managed it, having not quite caught what the younger woman had said. She rather liked the younger woman but she was tired and running out of patience. "Just be grateful that whoever broke in here seemed to have avoided most of the side rooms or we would be here for days."

"That sounds great," Illyana muttered, more to herself than anything else. "So we might as well just get on with it, I guess. Unless you think there might be a way to do it in the daylight. Armed."

"In the daytime, there would be too many people asking the wrong sort of questions." Wanda's voice trailed off as they came to a four way intersection. A small glass case stood in the middle, surprisingly untouched. But what drew her attention wasn't the nondestruction but what was written on her list of artifacts in her hand.

"That's supposed to hold a necklace found in Cyprus," she said, staring. "But I recognize those symbols from something we uncovered a few months back. Illyana, does that look familiar to you?"

In the daylight, the sweat that broke out on Illyana's forehead would have been visible. "Well," she said, wincing, "yeah. It's a demon-repellant. Basically. There's a name, but it's in this ancient lost language and it kind of hurts to say." She rubbed at her face. "Can we get away from that thing now?"

Wanda nodded once and led them down another hallway. Agatha must have been mistaken or tricked. But it pricked at her - Agatha was no fool and had resources that Wanda could only guess at. But it simply didn't make any sense.

Ten minutes later and it was making even less sense. Wanda stared at Illyana and then around them with open astonishment. "I counted over a dozen artifacts that were listed wrong," she said quietly. "All of them magical or close enough in nature. And they were all labeled as something else on this list."

"Listen, I don't know about you, but in my reality museums don't carry this kind of stuff. This is like," Illyana waved her hands, "really serious stuff. I'd expect to see some of it in Limbo, or maybe under your ex-boyfriend's bed, and this is really starting to freak me out."

Wanda glared down at the list in her hand as if she wanted to burn it. It wasn't far from the truth. "She did this on purpose," she said with conviction, suddenly bitter. "I do not know why but this was not done by accident. She kept this from me and by fudging this list, just made our job that much harder! Damn her!"

She pinched the bridge of her nose before pointing down a side corridor. "Do me a favor? Go and check in on that room. I want to have a closer look at this artifact over here." And a moment alone to stew.

Illyana's eyebrows were already at her hairline, and she readily edged away, walking more quickly than was strictly needed under the circumstances. Peeking into the room to make sure there was nothing particularly fatal, she slipped in and began to poke around.



Jake and Mark tackle the technology side of their job to find that they aren't the ones in immediate danger.





"Creepy museums are creepy," Jake muttered. His flashlight was probably making things worse, skittering across strange and grotesque artifacts and making them even more strange and grotesque, elongating shadows and illuminating crevices to startling effect. Still, though, he'd rather have the flashlight than not. He didn't want to think about how much creepier the place would be in the dark.

He glanced at the iPod in Mark's hands. "How much further?"

"Voila," Mark replied as they rounded the next corner. The security room stood before them, but the door was locked. With a sigh and the brief assistance of the Eurythmics, the doorknob flew off the door and landed several feet away, clanking loudly down the empty and otherwise silent hallway. The two men entered, and Mark took a seat at the small security console. Nothing big and fancy like he'd expect at the Met or AMNH, but that made it all the easier to play with.

Jake pulled open a cabinet to reveal-- "Tapes," he said flatly. "They still use tapes. You've got to be fucking kidding me." He rolled his eyes as he pulled out the tape with the proper day's surveillance footage. "I swear, if we get through this without this place burning to the ground, I'm going to let Emma know that she needs to anonymous-benefactor her way into this place." He leaned on the desk behind Mark. "Because you've got to admit, an Emma vs. Agatha knock-down drag-out fight would be awesome."

"When Amanda, Angie, and I had to deal with this last winter," Mark sighed, scanning through the ancient technology. "All analog, no digital. It was distressing. But because I'm a secret genius and I know how to read a calendar . . . Voila number two." He pulled out a video marked with the date of the museum's attack, and pushed it into the sad-looking VCR. "I feel so primitive and rustic."

Behind him, Jake rolled his eyes. "This is where I tell my 'when I was your age' stories, isn't it?" A pause. "Oh God. I was your age. Dammit." He rubbed a hand over his eyes, then leaned forward to watch the video. "Of all the days to not bring popcorn."

It was one of those videos that cycled through several different stationary shots, and as they watched, the destruction started to creep into the museum. First the scenes showed empty, intact rooms. Then, one of the rooms was suddenly a disaster scene, artifacts and furniture broken and scattered as though a tornado had gone through. "That was fast," Jake said, frowning at the screen.

"Huh." Mark rewound the tape to just before the destruction, and then pressed the slow motion button (at least the VCR had that) to play it. He leaned in, trying to catch a glimpse of anything potentially responsible in the grainy, black-and-white video. "There! Look. The room goes dark but this . . ." He pointed a finger at a black blob that seemed to be absorbing the light in the room. He progressed the video frame by frame and as the shadow moved, the room fell apart.

"That's reassuring," Jake muttered sarcastically as Mark backed the tape up a few frames, unable to find a clear image of the blob. "Okay. We've got it--whatever it is--wrecking the Hall of Creepy Dead Things. Do we have it attacking anyone? As much as I don't want to see that, we might get a better view of it..." He trailed off as the video showed it wrecking another empty room, again moving too fast for the grainy footage to reveal much detail. "Damn."

They watched it progress through two more rooms before Mark paused the video and pulled up his map on Esther. "It clearly has a purpose in mind. Look, it's following a path, not just going from exhibit to exhibit and randomly destroy stuff. It's probably going to this room next." He pointed at a section of the map. "S'where the guards were murdered. Play more and you'll get what you've asked for."

"Oh yay." Jake glanced down at the iPhone, then back at the screen, trying to marshall up the stomach to watch Hanzi and the others get ripped apart. He took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's--" A flicker of motion on the live camera feeds above the screen they were watching caught his attention. "What the hell was that?"

"It looked like . . ." There was no need to finish that sentence, as Mark and Jake clearly had come to the same conclusion. They were out of their chairs and racing down the hall barely a second later. "Call Wanda," Mark ordered his phone. "Wanda, brace yourself! You've got trouble coming straight for you!"



Wanda runs into an old 'friend' right as the creature in the museum finds them and all hell breaks loose.



With a curse, Wanda slipped her phone into her pocket and shouted for Illyana to get back to her side. The girl had just stepped into another room for a second but according to the call she just got, whatever was heading their way was heading there fast.

And apparently it was chasing someone.

She stepped back against a pillar and blended in with the shadows there, ready to run if need be, ready to spring into action if she could.

It turned out that the following places in museums made for lousy hiding spots.

1. Behind a giant stone sarcophagus.

2. Behind a tapestry

3. Under a large wooden something that McNee couldn't identify that was most definitely magically active and he really wished he had time to find out what it was. It had to be worth something to someone. Perhaps a great many somethings made of paper with the Queen's picture on them.

4. In the women's bathroom.

As it turned out, hiding in places that had a lot of shadows was possibly not the wisest decision when one was trying to hide from a giant shadow creature. In his defense, Ian McNee was willing to admit that he did not have the best skills at coping with a disaster.

He backed carefully around a corner and then squeezed between a pillar and a wall and would have screamed bloody murder as he backed into something soft and warm, if the soft and warm thing hadn't put it's hands over his mouth.

Wanda tightened her grip as she spun them around, slamming the strange man against the pillar. She pinned him to the wall and her eyes narrowed sharply as she got a good look at his face. "You again?" she hissed sharply, giving McNee a good shake for her trouble.

Of all the people that had been on her list for stealing into the museum, Ian McNee, resident low-life of the magical world, hadn't even been at the bottom of it. Though with some consideration, Wanda realized she really should have put him in the middle at least.

"You know, I should have smelled you coming - god, I thought that stench was from the Parisian sewers the last time, not you."


It was metaphorical. It was metaphorical. It was not a literal statement on his body odor. "I had a shower last night!" McNee blurted, struggling ineffectively against Wanda's grip. "That thing is going to destroy everything if you don't stop it!" Including eating him. Or possibly just some of his organs that he might need later, like his heart or his brain or his soul.

Her hand tightened around his throat. "What did you let loose in this museum, McNee?" Wanda hissed, glancing around the corner. "Were you the one behind Agatha and the others getting hurt?"


"Um? Er?" It was hard to even dodge the question when the really tall woman with the terrifying hair was choking him half to death. "Yes? No? Not exactly!" He gurgled. "Can we talk about this somewhere where I won't get eaten?" Why hadn't he brought a gun? Why hadn't he brought a taser? As soon as this was over he was buying a gun and a taser.

"What do you mean not -" Her question was cut off by a soft growl at the end of the corridor and Wanda's eyes grew just a bit larger as she peeked around the corner.

"Illyana!" she shouted, yanking McNee with her. She'd interrogate the little bastard once they were out of danger.

**

All cultures had their bogeymen and monsters - there was a lot of overlap as empires had expanded, kingdoms fallen away and travelers spread out. And the Rom were especially good at picking up, and believing in those tales.

In Romania, they sometimes still talked of the vârcolac, the werewolves, around the fires and Wanda remembered the fear and terror as her uncle had talked of the wolves made out of shadows that hunted in the night.

She'd believed in the stories then...and the problem with her job now, she thought, gripping the back of McNee's jacket with one hand as she propelled him into the room Illyana was in, was that sometimes it proved those stories to be a little too close to the truth.

Whatever it was behind them was the size of a small pony, black as pitch with the exception of the yellow eyes that moved in the darkness. And moved it did, fast, almost inhumanely, a growl growing in it's throat.

"Illyana!" she shouted again, all pretense of hiding given up now. "Out the other door - now!"

Despite that McNee knew it would be futile to try to get away from Wanda, he tried anyway as soon as he saw that her companion was a blonde. For that moment of panic, he thought the blonde was Amanda, and if Wanda was there, and her blonde friend was there, then their crazy Doctor Farouk friend was there and he was pretty sure that Doctor Farouk probably wanted to kill him. Possibly in very painful lingering ways. Ian McNee didn't want that at all.

It was a rock and a hard place. Caught between impending death and impending being eaten by a giant shadow monster.

And he was right, trying to get away was futile and only got him a sore shoulder as he was hauled backwards. "I don't want to die!"

Illyana moved in a flash of light, sliding through the disc beneath her feet and reappearing a few seconds later further down. "What in God's name?" she demanded, not expecting an answer.

With not a lot of effort on her part, Wanda pitched McNee through the nearest open door and hustled Illyana in after him. She spun around to throw the door closed behind them, noting exactly how much closer the giant wolf was to them now and he was gaining ground. He was loud and solid, actually there as opposed to intangable shadows -that, she reasoned, as she slammed the door closed, did not help one bit.

The door hit home right as the thing on the other side rammed into it, denting the door and sending Wanda stumbling backwards to the floor. She landed hard, trying to scuttle backwards as the door started to cave in.

Of course the creepy museum was a lot bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. Jake and Mark had followed Mark's map, and then the trail of destruction, racing through the hallways and trying to ignore the way the shadows jumped and stretched in the wake of Jake's flashlight. They skidded around the corner just in time to see the creepy wolf-thing--the tangible creepy wolf-thing, Jake realized--slam into the door again, letting out a howl of frustration as the door bowed but didn't break.

"Get Wanda and Yana out of there!" Mark shouted to Jake over the demonic howls. "I'll distract it. Hey, fucker! Yeah you, bitch. Over here!" Aided by Nicole Scherzinger's wailing over a failed relationship, a mote of light exploded in front of the wolf, blinding it.

He waited until the wolf turned away from the door, trying to ignore the utterly creeped-out feeling that was currently climbing up his spine at the noises the creature was making, then ran to the battered door. "Wanda!" he hissed as he knocked on it, keeping one eye on the monster currently being barraged by Mark lest it turn around and try to gut him. "Either let us in or get out here!"

"Get back," Wanda warned, heaving herself to her feet. The door wasn't going to be opened by any normal means, not warped and caved in like it was. She slid her hands around the edges, the red light from around her hands throwing everything into contrast. When that was done, she grabbed the edges and yanked backwards as it rusted under her hands.

"There's another door at the rear of the room," she said, watching the wolf stalk Mark - it was having fun, she realized, playing with him now that it thought there could be no continued chase. "We just need to get Mark in here. Illyana? Could you find something heavy but throwable, please?"

Before Wanda had even finished, Illyana was already moving toward the best-looking projectile in the room, a vase that was probably priceless, but certainly made of heavy cast iron. With a little effort, she pulled it from where it had fallen to the floor and 'ported closer to Wanda, handing it off quickly.

The vase was heavy and, more importantly, solid. Looking directly at the wolf-creature with her powers on was a bit difficult - the lines acted like they didn't want to stay in the same place - but Wanda was able to heave the vase at it without too much trouble.

It hit the thing as it was trying to leap for Mark, throwing it off balance and into a nearby wall. No yelp of pain, just a grunt as it tried to regain its feet.

Mark fell on his ass when he tried to dodge the evil death wolf, and took immediately took advantage of Wanda's distraction to distract in again himself. He threw out his hands and illuminated the hallway, giving him the perfect opportunity to flee.

Once Mark was through the door, Wanda reached down to yank on McNee's shirt. "Up and running now, if you please."

"No need to shove!" If it had been possible, he would've been up and running ages ago. Running far, far away from these people and their powers and the shadow-wolf-thing and hiding in a country where they had to import shadows by boat. Or at least where no one had ever heard of him.

"Who the hell is he?" Jake asked wildly as they ran down the hallway, reaching out from time to time to pull something down behind them in an attempt to slow the shadow creature down. The howling and the sounds of things smashing behind them proved that plan ineffectual, and he focused on running faster instead.

"Slime of the magical underworld, pretty much," Wanda said shortly, her feet faltering as the thing behind them suddenly howled, the noise echoing and growing down the corridors. They all slid around another corner and Wanda tried to remember the layout of the museum, trying to think of the best place to stand and fight.

The lack of light was a hindrance, especially in the tight corridors and more than once someone ran into someone else, slowing them all down.

"The basement," Wanda snapped, grabbing a hold of McNee again and turning them towards a door at the end of the hallway. "There's only two ways in and out - up here and an exit in the back."

They were a few feet away from the door when a blur exploded out of the shadows behind them, easily jumping over several overturned exhibit cases and heading right for Jake.

"Son of a--" His flashlight had gone out, of course, because there was nothing better than being chased through the dark like a horror movie hussy by a shadow monster without a working flashlight. However, it still made a decent weapon, and he flailed at the shadows with it, swinging wildly as he ran backwards. "Bad dog! Bad d--AUGH!" The words turned into a scream as the creature's claws raked across his chest, sending both Jake and the flashlight flying. As it rolled to a stop the light blinked back on, casting a pool of light that did very little to illuminate anything useful but did a remarkable job of highlighting the brand new spray of blood on the wall.

"Jake!" She knew, knew, he could heal from that but that didn't stop Wanda from reacting, though in the dark she couldn't find an outlet beyond tightening her grip on McNee's throat. "Who the hell sent -"

One moment she had her hand on McNee's throat, the next and she was gone as the dark shadow slammed into her side with its shoulder. She landed hard, sliding along the floor with the help of some of the blood on the floor and the weight of the wolf on top of her. It was heavy, heavier than a normal wolf, and fast.

She'd been wearing a jacket to ward off the chill in the museum and that was the only thing that saved her arm as teeth tore through it, catching her skin as she slammed a foot into its stomach, trying to throw it off of her.

Illyana's body nearly worked faster than her brain, turning on her heel halfway to the door and ending up at one of the few displays that had been left alone: Several swords of various origins, variously and intricately decorated; she picked the one that looked the sharpest, tested the weight, adjusted her grip, and 'ported back over to Wanda.

The wolf's howl when the sword sank with a dull grind into its leg reverberated through the entire room. "I really hate animals," Illyana muttered under her breath.

They were fighting the thing. They were all totally mad and not in the oh-so-profitable way where you weren't really mad at all but were actually just picking up lingering effects from tainted artifacts and would be fine once you got rid of them.

Only crazy people stayed around to fight monsters. Ian McNee was not crazy. He had a very firm grip on his sanity and on his love of waking up the next day able to breathe and eat and have a pulse and generally be alive. He was a lousy fighter. He was an amazing sprinter. He was very very good at running away at just the right moment when everyone wasn't looking and wouldn't notice him being gone until it was too late to chase him down and hit him over the head with things.

He was halfway out of the building before he even worried that the crazy people might not make it out alive and the thing might come after him again. He would worry about that later - after he got out of the city. Or maybe the country. Or maybe the continent.

The wolf lunged to the side, dragging the sword out of Illyana's hands and Wanda scrambled to her feet, arm aching but still there. "Mark, find Jake!" she barked. She glanced around and cursed when she realized she couldn't see McNee anymore. A problem for after they dealt with the creature.

It was wounded now, which meant it was going to be pissed off.

"Basement, now."

"Dammit dammit dammit." Mark scrolled through Esther as quickly as he could, looking for a specific song. "Everyone either put on some shades or shut your eyes!" He didn't give much more warning before his own club remix of Madonna's "Ray of Light" came on, and it was like he'd plucked down a star to light his way. He was only partially blinded by his own powers, and could see enough to differentiate between the flailing wolf demon and his allies, and pulled Jake to his feet. "You OK?"

Jake groaned as he regained his footing, one hand still clutching at the gashes across his chest even though the bleeding had mostly stopped. "Hating everything," he wheezed as he half-stumbled, half-ran down the hall, leaning heavily on Mark's arm. "Are we running now?"

She hated running, hated the idea that they couldn't stand and fight. But they were facing an unknown in crowded hallways with bad to nonexistent lighting. They had to even things up.

"We're running."

**

Underneath the museum proper was a sprawling multi-room basement. Like many other, larger museums, it served as an archive and a dumping ground. Whatever wasn't put on current display was held in the lower levels, most of it marked and recorded but others things forgotten in boxes and on shelves.

It made for a confusing labyrinth but one Wanda was intimately familiar with and she knew that one of the rooms near the stairwell was more open and roomy than the others. And it was better lit than the upstairs with the back up generators finally kicking in. She wanted to take away the creatures advantage of the dark and tight corridors and there was no better place to make a stand than that one room. No other place they could reach, really.

They spread out in a rough half circle and waited until all they could hear in the semi-darkness was their own heart beats and the slow, limping steps of something stalking down the stairs.

It paused in the stairwell and there was no more sounds of paws as it flung itself through the door, streaking as fast as it could while wounded, teeth gleaming white in the dark.

And slammed right into a hex bolt, sending it stumbling to the side.

It had no time to recover before the air around its body suddenly ignited, briefly lighting the hallway in a bright golden glow. Mark lowered one hand but raised the other and fired again. The wolf adapted quickly and dodged the second blast, and Mark flung himself out of the way to avoid certain stabbity death.

Jake had taken several steps back unconsciously when the wolf-thing had entered, but it still didn't save him from a burnt, stabbed, hexed, angry wolf bearing down on him at top speed. He swung the artifact he'd snagged out of a pile--with no idea what it was, save that it was long, heavy, and made of iron--and connected solidly, feeling the thump travel up his arms as the creature went bowling over towards Illyana. He'd already healed the worst of the damage from earlier, but the force of the blow still sent spasms of pain through his chest.

"Oh, thanks!" Illyana snapped irritably at Jake, barely stepping out of the way of snapping, foaming teeth. Grabbing the first thing she could find -- later, they would probably all laugh and laugh about the time Illyana used a solid gold 12th-century Catholic incense holder to bludgeon a demon wolf -- she swung, hard, sending it away from her at the very least. She didn't take chances, though, and swung again, shouting, "Just die already!"

Funny enough, the wolf staggered away from Illyana and into the middle right as she said those words. It shook its head, blood and foam dripping from its jaws and a high pitch whine erupted from it as it...

Shifted. Rippled. Shimmered like a mirage on a hot summer day - one minutes, an injured wolf the color of shadows, the next a crazed, wild looking youth was screaming as he dropped to his knees. He was naked except for the blood running down his injured arm and a now smoking crystal necklace around his neck.

Still screaming, he turned his head and stared at Wanda and he shimmered again but the form of the wolf was gone. In it's place was a being that was almost flickering in and out of existence, crooning Wanda's name with a voice that had the echo of the cry of an owl.

She stumbled back, eyes widening. "Not real, not real," she muttered, staring at her perception of what Chthon had been to her. The stain in her head and soul brought back to life. It was reaching for her because it wanted her and, worse, it wanted her to become it. The heart and soul of chaos and it was staring right at her. She bit down on a scream as bile and fear rose up in her throat, making her feel ashamed and dirty all at once.

Jake pushed himself upright, propping himself up on his improvised weapon, the lingering pain in his chest contracting as he came face-to-face with Wanda. But not Wanda--no, couldn't be, not with those flat, accusing eyes and dark blood gurgling from her mouth. "No," he whispered, and then it wasn't--"Jacob," Jean-Paul murmured, his voice raw and ragged from the jagged slash across his throat as he stepped closer, reaching. "No," Jake said hoarsely, and now Jubilee, and now Betsy, and Cammie laughing mockingly, and Amanda and Monet and Emma, all with dead eyes and grey skin and gaping, bloody wounds and reaching, desperate hands until one of them grabbed him by the remaining rags of his shirt and he was nose to nose with Remy.

He whimpered, then, even as Remy pulled him closer, glaring at him with the one remaining eye of a face that looked like it had taken an incendiary round to the left ear. "You always got to be de one who runs away, Gavin," Remy growled, hot breath washing over him.

"Nooooooo," Jake wailed, pushing away from Remy. He stumbled backwards until he was sprawled on the ground, eyes wide and frantic. "NO!"

The world roared in Illyana's ears for a bare moment; she was aware of sweat pooling at the small of her back. She was staring at herself, a wraith-pale, over-exaggerated clawed thing, hair flowing in the wind like flayed skin, fingers that extended far too long, tapering into razorsharp points. A locket, nestled at the not-her's throat -- five stones that glowed like hellfire, mirroring the bright blankness of those eyes --

She took a step backward, involuntarily, barely able to breathe.

When it turned to Mark, it looked like it had shifted back to its original lupine form. But this time its appendages were long and thin, and its body a shining, shimmering silver. Its appearance sent shivers down his spine as if simply its presence was sucking the heat and life right out of him. It howled with the force of a full pack of Warwolves, drowning out the sound of his own music and blotting out the radiance of his plasma.

As the four staggered back in various states of shock, the creature turned back to Wanda and then hesitated, swaying. It screamed again, shifting to a man in purple, looked at Illyana, turned into something red and large. Around again to Mark and then...

It dropped to it's knees, the scream turning into a high pitch wail before collapsing forward onto it's face. The body shivered in a convulsion before turning back into form they'd seen between wolf and 'elder god'. It was indeed a young, gangly man, completely naked and utterly unconscious now.

Hesitantly, Wanda shifted forward, chaos energy cupped in one hand in case it was a ploy and gingerly pushed against his shoulder with her foot. He flopped over, breathing at least, but clearly not a threat anymore.

"Right. Well. Shit. Someone go find those officers around the building, please?" Her voice was distracted as she dropped into a crouch next to their former attacker, her eyes widening slightly.

The others, except Jake who went outside as fast as he could get, crowded around and they all stared at the crude symbol drawn into the skin between his shoulder blades. They'd seen it before - once in the sewers and then, again, in Africa a number of months before.

"What in the fuck is going on?" Wanda asked the room at large but there was really no answer forthcoming.