On an Ordinary Night....

[Alexis Reese James]

Damn it, the boy really fit in to well in her family of stubborn, irritatingly brave children.

If she didn't know better, she would have sworn she'd given birth to him herself and he was the real product of her union with Tristian James just like her two natural born imps. At any other time, Lexi probably would have found that endearing but all she wanted to do at the moment was yank him out of dangers path and destroy the threat she sensed being leveled in his direction.

Unfortunately, he had to go and make her task more difficult by moving closer to the very thing she was trying to pull him away from.

Bloody freaking HELL! Had she honestly been thinking life was to dull not a few weeks before?? This was a surreal case of "Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.". After the upheaval of the last four months or so, boring was beginning to look damn good.

Turning her attention back to the woman, Lexi took in her combative words with nothing more than a coolly arched brow. With apparent disdain, she hid her fury behind the calm, collected mask she'd perfected some twenty five years ago. To anyone observing the scene, she appeared perfectly composed without even a strand of hair out of place even as magic fairly crackled in the air around the two women.

"Oh, I'm sure that he's perfectly capable of seeing through your bullshit, madam, and as easy a piece as you might seem... my son is no ones fool.... However, I think its best that you and i have our little... "talk" ... just between the two of us... Don't you think?"

Before she could say anymore, Lexi felt the approach of someone behind her and knew immediately from the familiar, comforting presence who it was. While she wasn't afraid to take the woman on alone, Talons presence complicated matters and she felt better with Ty at her side.

His words, though, made her shoot him an exasperated look that said "SERIOUSLY, TY?? DON"T YOU KNOW ANY BETTER THAN TO HANDLE A YOUNG HOT HEAD LIKE THAT?? YOUR ONE!! YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER!!" all in one expression.

Turning her brilliant indigo gaze back to the woman, Lexi spoke to Talon softly even as she kept her eyes upon the woman.

"Talon, you know that I very seldom throw my weight around as your guardian. However, this is one of those times when I have to ask you to do as I say and stand away from her.... Theres more going on here than you realize and I need to know your safe while I deal with this."

As she spoke, she moved in closer and pushed at the rapidly clearing crowd with her magic. Civilians had already been harmed and she didn't need anymore tragedies in her club tonight. She'd run a clean operation for to long to let some little power hungry twit ruin it for her now.

[talon]

Nearly everything out of Talon’s mouth was truth, and twice as much a lie in its fractional honesty. He did not want to stay. He needed to stay. He had to stay. Sanity relied on his ability to preserve exactly that which made him vulnerable. The purity that this strange woman lusted after was the key to his youth, the only thing that made him worth the concern to be shown for him. That which he clung desperately to in the arms of the purist being he knew, who still allowed him to believe in unrealistic perfection. Clinging to the hope that something within him could still change the situation, change the world, needed him to stay. Needed to be kept on the forefront and be relied on. Not too long ago he had been convinced that maybe he had found it yet again, but the world never failed to disappoint. It dangled what it had to offer in his face, but just out of reach, and leaving him susceptible to the clutches of evil. For what should desire him, and what should emphasize his deficiency?

He knew too before Cora uttered such predatory words that there was something dangerous about her. Maybe it had not occurred to him as quickly as it should have, but he did not need sugarcoated tones to mask the truth. He did a sufficient job of that himself. Her taunt should have been the last straw, it should have made him cringe to connect her ill intent for him to becoming her next meal, but it did not. And it did not before she even recovered from the suggestion to deceive him. His natural instinct was already to draw forth and challenge his own demons by crushing those of others. To fool himself that he saw this world in black and white, and that he stood definitively on the side that he forcefully submerged himself into.

Lashes blinking erratically when the finger rendered him paralyzed as it drifted down his spine, the sensation flooded his body with warmth, and the room felt like it was closing in on him. Cora’s words stung through his mind and blinded him as the air felt thick with a sucking breath. Wavering slightly at the unnatural feeling she provoked, his brow furrowed and he shot a hot glare at her when she released him from her touch. She lost him in the moment that she chose to mention Lex in that way. Refusing to release the past, as he felt the pressure to do so from no one but himself regardless of what he perceived, his distant and uncertain glare drifted to Lex when she accepted this role so easily in spite of his reclusive behavior. It made him sick, and he literally felt the burn in his throat as her bulky backup took her side.

Stepping back, pinning himself against the bar in front of the one who these two tried to draw him away from, the wordy voices of reason pounded against him and Talon just wanted to disappear. Dropping a cold snarl to the floor, Talon shook his head uncertainly. Not an outright no, but in pure defiance to make a decision he was not sure he knew how to make anymore. Reaching back to grasp the bar and keep his balance, another tingling sensation began to drain him of the emotion he clung to before he was emptied and he made the foolish decision to stand up against that which had caused him such an undercurrent of pain. He silently begged himself not to let it consume him, his knuckles whitening as the club was drifting away, the music numbing him and weakening his reserves. Left only with the ability to whisper vaguely,[white] “Go.”[/white]

[Kat Cora Neverov]

Cora wasn’t just dark. She was filled with blackness; devoid of any warmth or light or concern for the weakening emotions that plagued her less than magical human brethren. Love. Kindness. Caution.
Those words were curses in her opinion; dreadful, control devouring nuisances that were spoken too often, and the conviction behind them far too ephemeral. The raven haired witch preferred to live true to her nature. She fed her basic hunger for flesh and the primal impulses that made her so…wicked. And this she did so without repentance. Humans called this lack of compassion Psychopathic; the witch just called it her unique personality. In spite of everything the way she had turned out, even a century later, was not her direct burden. She had been young once; a fairly human child with a heart and the need for what was given and received so easily by those all around her but never, ever bequeathed to her. In the place of loving embraces from her mother and father, she had received cold shoulders, and then much too innocent to understand them, the lingering, dirty touches.
The pure child with trusting jade eyes had been infected with hatred, and it had grown into something that consumed her; something that stared out of those same bright green eyes now; barely contained under the surface of this polished, ethereal exterior. A monster. The very thing that Talon would have grown up to hunt down and exterminate so pitilessly. If he were going to live through the night. Which he wasn’t.

Cora’s crystalline emerald eyes narrowed and she offered a tight-lipped smile to the dark skinned male that appeared at the white witch’s side. The mental imagery of having such a raw and powerful man’s hands sifting through her insides drew a shiver of anticipation up her spine and her tongue across her scarlet lips.
Later…perhaps…for now she had not one but two antagonists standing between her and her banquet of boy. The monster within her was prickling. It needed to spill blood. It needed to feel the warm spray of that divine fluid on her pale, alabaster skin. To taste it rich and coppery on her lips.

The darkling retained the thin, snake-like smile as Lexi’s eyes found hers, and the sensation of that white magic forced the crowd behind them back while challenging the darkness inside of Cora like an azure wave opposite a raging pyre.
The sensation was almost euphoric; for the wholly goodness blistered the witch’s dark aura, and such pain was as a drug to the female.

The exchange between mother and son was brief, but it gave the malevolent witch just enough time to prepare a curse for the young one. It rumbled up from the depths of her soul; an ancient evil that rolled over her lips in a whisper as a thousand moans from hell, but settled over Talon as smoothly as a knife across baby’s soft skin. This spell was meant to cause euphoria much like the previous one, but where as the former was bodily; sensations exchanged between fingertips and skin, -this- one seeped deeper, into the very core of his humanity. Within such blanket of rapture, the young man would be unaffected by pain. Physically he would only feel pleasure even as the blade slid from her skirt and into the soft skin at his kidney. Mentally, he should have been dulled to hurt as well but who really knew how bright the boy was. Where he was lacking in corporal muscle he very well could be powerful of spirit.
The blade slithered through the muscle of his back like a snake through the grass, and surreptitiously the dark haired woman hid it once more in her skirt and lifted crimson stained hands to her lips, savoring the tang of youth. She had no time to truly enjoy it, not with two rivals so close. Cora seized the back of Talon’s neck with one hand, and threw her other arm toward Ty and Alexis. “Do we really have to sully this moment with conversation?" Cora’s smile grew into a lovely beam, and her jade eyes shifted to the male’s face a moment before her flattened palm fairly sizzled with an electric charge.

The magical force burst forth from Cora’s palm and struck Lexi with a strength that sent her flying. With the witch dispatched for the moment she narrowed her gaze on the skinwalker and snickered. “Bring on the pain, Cueball.”



.......................................

-wearing-

[tyreese]

EVERYONE THINKS THAT I HAVE IT ALL
C A S T L E W A L L S
BUT IT'S SO E M P T Y LIVING BEHIND THESE

With a glower, Ty met Lexi’s chiding glare with his own. What, did she expect HIM to know how to handle a teenage kid? He was better at smashing peoples’ heads together, not trying to stop a moron kid from getting his spleen ripped out. God, Lexi knew him for HOW long? Then again, he’d always thought Talon to be street smart and able to hold his own. He’d never thought that he’d have to school that particular kid, so he was a bit lost. Sue him.

And sue him for thinking the newest addition to the James family could look out for himself. Damn, he was going to end up getting really pissed off by the end of this; he just knew it.

At Talon’s low growl, the skinwalker turned his gaze back over to the duo. There was something wrong with him; his face was screwed up and he was paler than he should be. Was that woman doing something to him? Shoulders bunching, he took a step toward them, waiting for his boss’ sign to attack. A glance around the room signaled the other bouncers to get ready to corral the civvies and empty the club if anything went down, and a warmth spread through his chest when he turned back to the strange woman. There was going to be a fight soon; he could smell it…and fuck, it smelled like Heaven.

He was glancing back and forth between the kid and the dark haired woman, all tensed and ready to attack, when Talon muttered a strained’ go.’ What the fuck…’go?’ Go where? Go to hell? Was he cursing at Lexi, and telling them to leave him alone with the woman? Damn, but he wanted to go and tell the kid to use his Big Person Words…but never got the chance.

Cora’s hand moved subtley, and in the blink of an eye, it came right back up again, now tinted red. Fuck, was that BLOOD? Had she just hurt Talon? With a purr, she threw the kid at Lexi and Ty gave up on waiting for his boss to give him the signal to attack. He really didn’t know much about the kid, but the mere fact that he was part of Lexi’s family made him part of his family.

Nobody hurt his family and was allowed to go smile about it. This bitch was dead, man. Dead.

With a roar, Ty charged, temper renewed when that ball of energy flew at the two beside him. He didn’t know how his own mojo would fare against a witch like this one, but he was more than willing to try his luck. Bring it, she’d said? Okay; he’d definitely bring it. She’d never fought an immortal gladiator, baby.

Using his fists like sledgehammers, he swung them at the woman’s face and stomach. He wanted to snap her concentration from any spells she was trying to cast and land a few blows to give the others a chance to regroup.

_{THIS POST GOES OUT TO lexi, talon and cora! AND IT JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE done! THERE ARE ABOUT enough WORDS SO THAT SHOULD BE GOOD. I JUST HAPPEN TO BE WEARING bad ass clothes. LIKE THIS SONG TOO? IT'S CASTLE WALLS BY T.I. FEATURING CHRISTINA AGUILERA. OH! BEFORE I FORGET, I WANTED TO TELL YOU THAT notes here. CREDIT FOR THIS TEMPLATE GOES TO BUNNYA! OF CAUTION 2.0!.}

[Alexis Reese James]

This was not going to end pretty. Lexi knew it on a subconscious level that rivaled the warnings that had come during the war when she'd been faced with demons of the worst sort. This woman wasn't simply a average psycho witch. She fairly crackled with a dark power that only came with the worst sorts of the black arts. The blond wasn't sure exactly WHAT she was but it didn't give her a warm, happy feeling.

Oh no... it was completely the opposite to be exact. Dude.. What the hell had happened to the normal every day lunatics that she'd once thought inhabited the earth? Who had put in the order for "Super Sized" crazies? Hadn't they had enough of these morons to last a life time?

Apparently NOT!

Bloody Freaking HELL!

She did not need this tonight and she didn't need her son involved in it either. However, it looked as if she wasn't going to have any choice. Lucky her. Why did she always get the insane bitches to deal with again? Oh, thats right... Because some idiot upstairs thought it would be fun to see how bad they could screw with her head until she cracked. What was this? One of THEIR sick ideas for a joke??

Taking a deep breath, Lexi prepared herself for a confrontation but before she could act, the dark haired woman was moving closer to Talon. Freezing instantly, the blond tried to figure out the best course of action even as she narrowed her eyes and stepped forward. It was then, though, that she caught the scent of fresh spilled blood and watched in horror as the woman lifted a hand stained in crimson to her mouth. The satisfaction on the womans face left her with no doubts as to who's blood it was and it paralyzed her momentarily as her gaze shot to Talon in pure panic.

Before she could force herself past that emotion, the woman was speaking again and her hand flew out in a blaze of power that knocked Lexi backwards and through some tables on her way to the brick wall. As her skull crashed against the stone surface, she momentarily saw stars before fury filled her and she straightened with aclarity that left no doubts about her emotions. Starting forward, she sent the over turned tables flying out of the way and narrowed her eyes on the dark haired witch.

And then she saw the wounded form of her son and all thoughts of destroying the woman were benched for the moment. With a small cry she ran to wear he sat and the sight of so much blood put the fear of god into her. Oh, it wasn't that she hadn't seen such injuries before.. It was the fact that it had occured to one who was hers. Horror, anger and the need to shed a bit of blood herself rivaled for position in her emotions but she forced a cool, logical expression to her face even as she hollared for someone to call 911 and saw Ben already on the phone.

Then and only then did she turn to look at the woman with a wrath that would have made the fires of hell look like fourth of July sparklers. Unfortunately, Ty was in her line of fire and not even her anger would allow her to risk injury to him.

Damn It All To Hell.

(OK, Since I'm not sure of Talon's reaction here... I tried to keep it open. If it doesn't work, let me know!)

[talon]

Talon was in a daze, and not only because of the magic coursing through his body to calm him and turn pain into pleasure. For some people, pain was pain and pleasure was pleasure. Tonight that division was obscured. The anguish gripping him vanished as though it had never existed and his calmed, giving him the sensation he knew only in one other activity. And that had never involved a blade. Cold metal drifted through his body, massaging his organs and opening a new channel through his torso. It was long gone before Talon so much as flinched. His brow furrowed in confusion, as his attacker enjoyed the metallic life force seeping across his dark shirt. It was difficult to remember that anything else existed, and Talon blinked at Cora with glassy, obedient eyes when she gripped his neck and sent Alexis flying. The last thing he expected was to be discarded as well, but he did not blame her. Less so when a dull throbbing slowly took over his stomach and pounded across his body.

Falling to his knees with a slightly surprised expression, the noise around him felt distant and muffled. Somewhere inside of him, he knew he should get to his feet. There was something he needed to do. Now it was not even the remnants of magic distracting him, but the weakening state of his body. Vision blurring slightly, Talon was only vaguely aware of who was touching him now. His lashes drifted shut and his hand found the floor to try and steady his swaying body. He knew he needed help, but he could not find the words ask for it. Wincing slightly from the pain now absorbing him, dulled now only by the adrenaline, Talon’s foot scraped along the ground as he attempted to get back up. Instinctively, his hand shot to the base of his ribcage, as the motion sent a spike of pain shooting through him like a shock of electricity.

In the end, it was not his own power that elevated him, but two foreign hands anchoring him under the armpits and lifting him as though he had not putting on muscle at all in preparation for just such a moment.

⇔

When Elijah got all of his affairs in order and located this club, Wicked, he was not anticipating there to be a trial run. Apparently Lex was not kidding when she suggested the sort of ‘activity’ that befell the club. He no sooner started to enter than all hell broke loose. It was little wonder to him anymore why she should be looking for another bouncer. She was probably continuously looking for them if this was the sort of chaos that ensued. Though the crowd was making a surprisingly calm aim for the door, it was still plenty difficult to navigate towards the spot everyone seemed to be edging around to get away.

He had no idea who the injured kid was, but it was clear by the look on Lex’s face that it was someone to be concerned about. Glanzing the young man over as he foolishly tried to stand, Eli grabbed him to make sure he did not cause further injury to himself. He was no doctor, but the spread of wetness across the front and back of his shirt was probably not from a spilled drink. A flare of the nostrils confirmed this, and he anchored one of Talon’s arms around his neck. The injured party put up little to no struggle. It was more due to the fact that he could not help that Talon was difficult.

Casting a look at the enraged matriarch, knowing already from the story that she told him that she was needed in this fight with a clear head, he lifted Talon into his arms and shook his head. Just by the sheer dead weight in his arms as Talon drifted from consciousness from trying to overexert himself, Eli sensed the necessity of expediency. [white]“They won’t make it in time. I’ll deal with him Lex; I have a contact.”[/white]

Granted, it probably was not conducive to getting a job to start heading in the opposite direction from a fight at the very club one was entertaining the idea of taking up the job offer at, but it was not a good idea to leave the source for the boss’s distraction either. He was not one of her employees yet, after all, and if Elijah could tell anything by the crowd, there was not a face in them who was prepared to thrust Talon onto the backseat of their car and get him to the hospital. Elijah’s was just a rental anyway, so the perfectionist was not quite so uptight about staining the material. Taking the wheel, Eli already had his new phone out and was searching the center console for the business card of said contact.

Throwing the car into gear, Eli was already navigating the road as his opposite hand finished punching in the number and lifted the phone to his ear.

[Yeah, I thought about responding first for that reason… it’s okay. I didn’t mean to take him out so early, but with that injury he would have to be. XP]