Never Too Late

[Ashton]

This was dangerous. So fucking dangerous. Why was he trusting this guy? Of all the people who begged for their lives, why was he trusting this one man? It wasn't his friendly face, maybe inspite of that. He wasn't afraid. Ashton had seen what he could do how he destroyed that gorilla thing in the ring. He'd seen the videos. He was in charge at the club. Something about his said he could do this even drugged up and dying he could do it.

God, Ashton hoped he could do it or they were all dead.

He handed the arm and wallet through the bars and Nox took them with care. His body still moved sluggish, but he attached the arm with ease and turned the wallet on nearly before the arm finished attaching.

And then he looked through the bars. "I need some time, how much do I have before he starts looking for his dinner?"

Ashton shrugged. "I don't know. A few hours. But there is no telling for real. I could give him a different heart. It would be nothing to send Noah down to the dealer and get one."

Nox visibly shuttered and gagged. Ashton felt the same, but it was what his life was. "Don't risk your people. Just get them all out. If there's a Rougarou you trust among them save him. Those boys are going to need someone to teach them."

Ashton smiled. Though Nox didn't return it. "Max is a good man. Less tainted by the disease. But..."

"Deteriorating because he's not eating human flesh, got it. It's a mutation nothing can be done about it that we've found... yet." Nox mumbled something afterwards to himself. "Not that the Atharim ever tried either."

He was done with words and he started doing pushups on the ground. "What are you doing?"

"Getting this shit out of my system."

He didn't look good, but that didn't stop him. Sweat poured over his brow, and he grunted with every push up and sagged to the ground with each down. Ashton was starting to regret this. "I'll send Noah and the others to the shop. Get that heart. You don't look good."

"Wicked, get this kid my address." He looked at Ashton through the bars. The fire of before was burning in his eyes but Ashton knew it wasn't at him this time. "Wicked will get you my address. And a path to my place without being seen. Send them there. It'll be safe there."

[Nox]

Nox felt better with his arm. The earbud in his left ear allowed him quick communication with Sage. "Wicked." Nox whispered into the wallet.

The screen flashed.

Where the fuck have you been.

"Later. I need all cameras and power out at my location. Everything, Wicked."

Ashton stood and watched as Nox did push up after push up, straining against his own weight. They weren't this hard before. Now his arms ached, his side and back hurt. Every muscle in his body felt tense. And he was burning up. The fever he'd woken up with was only getting worse the more he moved, but he needed the sedative out of his system.

"Water. And get everyone out of here."

Ashton nodded and unlocked the cage with a big metal key that hung on the far wall. "Does every jailer like to taunt their prisoners." Nox said sitting down on the cold hard floor when Ashton handed him the water bottle.

Nox sipped at it and drank of the cool water. It felt ice cold in his hands. He had to move soon.

Nox closed his eyes and took a deep breath and settled himself into Sukhasana. The power danced in the corner of his eye and he reached through the slick sludge of the horde in the emptiness of his mind and found the darkness. It slipped through his fingers, once, and then twice and with a third dramatic reach Nox grabbed the power and wrestled it into submission. It fought more than usual. It burned and raged like his body and he pulled it through his self and into a weave.

He opened his eyes and flames erupted at the ends of his fingers. The power was intoxicating and the horde revealed in it even though they feared it and knew its wrath. It didn't care right now -- there was revenge to be had.

"You ready Wicked?"

A large thumbs up popped on his screen. A wicked smile drew across his lips as he shot the first bolt of flame at the cage he'd been in. The girls who'd been next to him scrabbled to the door and Nox delved into the iron and found the cracks and shattered it with ease. It crumbled into dust and they wrapped their arms around him. "Kill us too."

The power dropped from his grasp as his arms wrapped around the girls. "No. Why... No."

"We don't want to live like this anymore."

"That's the whole point of this. You won't have to."

"Please." they both begged.

"You have babies inside you... no."

"Monsters."

Ashton interrupted. "You know they can live normal lives. Look at Max."

"I can't. Maybe after the babies are born we can talk, but suicide should not be your first option." Nox turned to Ashton. "Get them out of here, use your gift if you have to but they will not die tonight."

Ashton nodded and frowned. He wasn't happy about it either. But they would not die on his watch. They were victims.

Nox unfurled from their grasp and gently pushed them towards Ashton. "Out of here before the fire starts blazing. Get everyone out Ashton. Even if you promised never to siren them I need them all out. Anyone you trust and feel safe. Now."

He reached for the power and had to fight for control. He had to fight to stay standing. The power raged inside him once again and as the children all ran up the stairs Nox started burning the basement and all that reminded him of the monsters.

[Sage]

It was the middle of the night when an important notification blared in his brain. Nox was back online AND pinging him. In his half asleep state he answered Nox with a though.

Where the fuck have you been.

He didn't answer the question and his voice seemed weary and distant as he spoke with instructions. Easy enough.

Sage crawled out of Aiden's embrace with a press of his lips to his lovers cheek. "Go back to sleep it's just Nox."

He hadn't told Aiden he wasn't responding. But it was common for Nox to need something in the middle of the night. Sage left the warm bedroom and went into the cold chill of the server room and sat down at his computer. The nueral link was already there by the time the screens flicked on and Sage was in the power grid. All cameras went out and so did the power.

He had no idea what else Nox wanted but he was ready. But while he listened and surveyed the feeds he sent another message to another soul looking for Nox -- someone who could help -- whatever he was doing, he was saving someone, and was going to be doing bad things. He knew the best person to send.

It was only a matter of seconds before he sent the priority message to Oriena's wallet. He only hoped she'd be sober enough to be of any use.

Found him. He's being a baaaaad :little sheep:. He might need help.

[Ashton]

Ashton rushed Liv, Izzy and Ava up the stairs. "Let's go." He said in his siren's voice -- taking no chances as he ushered them into the kitchen. He took Liam and and Noah by the arms. "Take the girls outside." Liam grabbed Sophia's arm and they dragged the girls outside even if they didn't want to go.

The house started to creek with strange sounds -- sounds he'd never heard the old construction make. What was he doing?

Ashton didn't have time to dally though he found Emma and Jackson upstairs in the play room with Arabella and Serphina. "We are playing a game of hide and seek outside. Let's go." He sang his lie to get the kids all out of the house quickly. "Go quickly and don't stop."

Genevieve was with Max and Victoria in the study. Everyone was up so late. That meant the Ambrose Senior and Reginald were awake and moaning keeping the house awake. This wasn't good.

Cedric would be hungry!

Ashton stepped into the study with Vic. "I need you to get the boys Max and go. Percy, Am and Tav. Things are going to be bad."

Victoria frowned. "What did you do, Ash?"

He sighed. "I let him out."

Victoria gasped. "He can't kill them all."

"But the fire he's starting can. We have to get the kids out and you and Max."

"What of the others? and who is he?" Max asked.

"Just a guy who kills monsters with the power the Ascendancy wielded to make the monument in the Red Square. You remember the one." Vic said with disgust.

Max gasped. And Ashton sighed. "It doesn't matter. I don't want to sing to you but I will if you don't get the fuck out now. He's literally burning this place down right now."

Max sighed and grabbed his youngest daughter and called for the three junior boys and sent all of them down the stairs. "Who else are you saving Ashton?"

"You are the last of them. Let's go. I think the structure is weaknening. It sounds like it down stairs. Let's go." There was panic starting to sound in his voice. He wasn't the savior. He wasn't even strong enough to force his friends out of the house. The other kids yes, but his friends... no he gave them the choice and they choose to follow him down the stairs and out the front door. He could only hope that the rest stayed inside. Flames were flickering in the basement windows. "I'm sorry." He said to no one in particular.

[Oriena]

Not my problem, was the only reply Sage got. And he was lucky to get even that much from Ori. Nox could look after himself, and while she knew he burdened himself with the title of friend, and not just because they were fucking, she had never pretended reciprocation. When Jaxen disappeared off the face of the planet, Ori had never looked for him either. There wasn’t an ounce of sentimentality in her frigid heart.

She went anyway, of course.

By the time she got to the coordinates sent she was angry at her own internal reactions, and Nox was as likely to feel the brunt of her fury as whatever shitshow he’d managed to get himself tangled up in. The wheels of her motorcycle churned up the pristine lawn of the land around the secluded mansion. Power wreathed her like turbulent waves; she was in no mood for subtlety. Figures flitted outside the door in panicked flight, and there was a telling glow from within the building. Enhanced senses picked up the cloying stink of acrid smoke somewhere out of sight.

Leathers creaked as Ori got off the bike. She recognised one of the faces around the door, though didn’t have a name for him; pale and pretty, she’d seen him both at Almaz and Kallisti. The power snapped out as she headed for the door, wrapping him up and appling a warning pressure to his soft, swan-like neck. Anyone else who got too close would be sent flying like bowling pins.

“Where is he? Do yourself a favour and speak quickly, sweetheart.”

[Ashton]

Ashton did as he was bid. It wasn't like he had anything else he could do. It was either get out or die. And he didn't exactly want to do that. So he gathered up everyone and rushed out the door. He wasn't far, and the others hadn't heard him squawk as he was wrapped up in invisible bonds. The dark figure who approached he recognized -- she was scary in broad daylight, in the dim light of the porch and the knowledge of what lay inside made him squeak. This was going to end badly.

She asked him a question, and it took two or three moments for Ashton to comprehend what she asked. And who she was asking about. He would have pointed, but his arms were wrapped up in the invisible bonds. "Inside. Burning the place to the ground with the monsters inside." The words were but a soft whisper. Though after he answered her question, he gave her a sweet smile -- his own fear pushing him to free himself even as he started the siren's singsong in his voice. "Let me go."

[Oriena]

Ori barely paused her stride. If they had escaped whatever carnage was happening in the house, then it probably had something to do with Nox’s idea of heroism – which is to say, he considered them innocent, and she considered them worthless. But Sage wouldn’t panic about a normal hunt, even a dangerous one, despite what the pale man said about there being monsters inside.

She wasn’t sure what made her look back as she reached the front door; something in the tone of his voice maybe. He was smiling. The bonds around him loosened, albeit they slithered across his skin like teasing fingertips. Her own smirk was sinister. “Run,” she cautioned, as she shouldered her way inside.

Her gaze trailed the grand foyer. Presumably Nox was somewhere below, with the source of the fire. A grand way to bring a fucking building down on his head. What monsters he was trapped with was anyone’s guess and, filled with power, Ori didn’t much care. Even the ijiraq were quiet beneath the weight of her fury. She half expected Nox to come bursting through one of the doors, on the heels of those he saved. But he didn’t, and it only soured her mood.

“Ready or not, here I come.”

[Nox]

Nox sent tendrils of earth and spirit throught the structure looking for weakness and defects. He held them together with a flow of his own even while a second flicked through the house touching everything with flames. It was a casual walk, his hands spread wide touching the walls and watching them burn as he left a trail behind him. There was only the horde and only a vague sense of relief as he burnt his way to the main floor.

A dark figure shadowed the grand entrance he'd never seen before. "Wicked sent an Avenging Angel?" He laughed and it was cold and distant in the void of the power he weilded. "Rougarou live here. Anyone left inside should burn." Nox walked carefully over to Oriena with a predatory gaze in his eyes and a sly smirk on his lips and leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. His skin was feverish and she felt cool even in the slight brush of his lips against hers. "Come play with me Oriena."

Nox bound up the stairs looking for the child -- Edmund was his name. He had one last person to save -- a boy named Ethan who was the pet of the child.

The child was cowering in a corner as Nox stepped into the boys bedroom. A room filled with lavious toys and an iron cage in the corner with a boy encased with in. He was covered in rags, and bandages that looked like they'd been used too many times. Dried blood mixed with Fresh over wounds and bite marks across his entire body. The evil child stood up from his cowering and shouted. "He's mine." He drew Nox's gaze and the child stepped back.

With a third flow of air Nox could feel the power struggling beneath his skin, felt the fever of his body raise. He knew he didn't have much left, but he didn't really care in the moment. He lifted the arrogant rich rougarou in the air and pulled him closer. The child screamed as Nox smothered him with a gag of air to keep him quiet. He hung in the air kicking and clawing at his mouth and throat but nothing would break the bonds. Nox opened the cage and the boy inside begged. "Kill me."

The plea dug into his heart. A plea he'd asked many a time. The promise he made to Ashton tickled at the back of his mind. But the boy looked hopeless, sad and broken. "Please. I know Ashton wants to save me. But please. No more. Please." He begged and tears fell from his eyes.

Nox stood up and shut the cage. He snapped the boys neck with a weave of air and torched both bodies as he left the room. Nothing would remain but ash and fragments of bone of either boys bodies.

And Nox moved on to the rest of the house. Burning doors and trapping the adults inside even as they screamed and pounded on the doors.

[Oriena]

Though he arrived in a halo of flame, Ori glowered to see he was still on his fucking feet and decidedly did not need her help – although perhaps it was for the designation of avenging angel, which she certainly didn’t care for. Nox moved like a wounded animal though, and it stayed whatever notions of retaliation flickered behind her eyes, if not the way they narrowed in a scowl at him as he drew closer. Her fists tightened, biting back provocation of the beast she was always trying to entice out of him. It didn’t stop the shiver of desire, not for him (he looked like shit), but for the moment itself, even in her own fury. Or maybe because of it. His lips scorched like a furnace. But it was the low cadence of his voice which seduced. The words he spoke.

She didn’t know what a rougarou was, nor cared to ask the question. As he turned away she only followed up the staircase. It was clearly vengeance; what she could see of Nox’s injuries from behind, they were not the fresh sort inflicted in a fight, and the heat of his skin suggested a deep-set fever. She didn’t know exactly how long he’d been missing. Long enough for Sage to worry, she supposed. Ori waited in the threshold as he entered a child’s room, with half an ear on the hallway behind for any warning noise. The house could not be empty. But anyone foolish enough to approach now would feel the unceremonious brunt of the power lighting Oriena up from within. The same went for anyone foolish enough to attempt escape while Nox was preoccupied. For inside the room, she saw a child in a cage, and her expression had flattened.

She made no attempt to stop Nox during what unfolded in those scant moments. Ori uttered not one word, though had he hesitated she would have told him to do it. She didn’t think the boy’s pleas for death would leave her brain anytime soon, nor the sight that she nonetheless did not blink away from as the beaten body slumped. For the rest she helped without question, though all the screams were human. The power raged through her, and she was deaf to the humanity. No one left here deserved sympathy. But by now the smoke was thickening, and Nox looked dead on his feet. It had to be him supporting the mansion’s structure, and she had no desire for either of them to die if he pushed himself to passing out. It was time to go. She’d shove him about bodily if she had to.

[Nox]

The house burned. Women screamed their innocence but anyone who fed and killed for the monsters was dead tonight -- except the kids who did so only under duress -- just as innocent as their victims. And they'd remain alive so long as they didn't continue their seduction of the innocent to other monsters or worse themselves. Nox's brain was raging ten thousand miles an hour. He moved on instinct alone -- the horde spurring on his vengeance.

Oriena's flames mingled with his. She looked angry and aroused and everything in between -- at least of what he'd noticed. His mind was a fog as the building creaked in his grasp.

The power flooded his body. He felt it slipping from his control. Oriena grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him towards the stairs. There were no need for words as Nox moved in that direction.

A door at the end of the hall opened and the blond woman from before screeched and shouted. Though the words Nox didn't comprehend through the roar of the flames and the gurgling scream that let loose from her lips when he cast a final fireball towards her and watched it engulf the mistress of the house who'd worked ever so vigilantly with Vaia Plus. Oh how they'd pay for this act.

Nox stumbled down the stairs barely catching himself. A flow of the power slipping from his grasp and his full attention remain on one foot in front of the other and holding the house above their heads. Smoke swirled around them, his weaves slipping from his grasp.

His body raged like the fire and Ori shoved him again when he faltered a moment in the door frame of the main entrance.

Three steps past the edge of the porch, Nox turned to see the flaming house on fire. He reached for leather at Oriena's neck and as his fingers wrapped around the supple leather he collapsed to the ground. The power vacated his grasp and the precarious hold on the Blackthorn mansion relinquished its designs and the house crumbled into the center of what had been their prison. Much like the building Nox had brought down in China and London, nothing else was damaged, the flames flickered above the ground continuing their destruction with in the confines of the concrete basement that had once been Blackthorn mansion.