Night's Omen

[12:30 AM]

Heather had left her apartment late, therefore she wasn't paying much attention to her surroundings as she hurried along the streets to work. She wasn't as concerned with taking shortcuts as she had been in the past, mostly because she'd become comfortable with the idea of turning into a bird and flying away. What, would some crazy alley-dwelling mugger tell the papers that he tried to rob someone who turned into a bird? She thought not. So, Heather, doing exactly what Harvey had told her not to do, took a few narrow streets with bad lighting and not a lot of traffic so that she could make it to work on time. Ash wasn't really bad about punctuality, but she'd promised Darren that if he swapped a shift with her, she'd come in on his night so that he could go do something with Paris. She wasn't holding up her end of the bargain yet, and she didn't like to be made out to seem unreliable.

She was thankful that the weather was warm enough for her to have skipped her heavy jacket, and she hugged her light knitted duster to herself more tightly as she crossed the street. Warm wasn't the word she was looking for - maybe less cold would have been more appropriate. Had Heather any knowledge that Midnight had just green-lighted a salvo of attacks on the guilds, thus putting her in direct and immediate danger, she might have called in. Darren would have understood, too, since he was also on the radar. Since it was common knowledge that her husband was in Crimson, Heather figured she'd have gotten some sort of phonecall if an emergency ever did come up.

She continued to mind her own business and was well within a block of the Hollow now. She relaxed slightly, feeling warmer from moving. Even as an Avian, with an elevated heartbeat and body temperature, she couldn't deny that the air was frosty. She didn't care for it, and so she tried to scoot along. She could just barely see the back of Darren's car parked out front. She glanced down at her watch and made a triumphant noise. She had ten minutes to go. She wouldn't be late after all!

 Kiyoshi pushed the sunglasses back on his nose and glanced over at the man who'd accompanied him. It was some no-named vampire that Niall had sent along as backup - not that Kiyoshi needed it. Niall's word for backup was synonymous with "cannon fodder", and since this vampire was no more than a hundred, Kiyoshi was confident that he would definitely play the role up well.

"What do you think?" he asked, holding a folder loosely in his hand.

The man looked down at it, and then back up at the girl. "Oh, it's definitely her, he said, nodding.

Kiyoshi frowned. "Of course it's her," he snapped. "I meant, do you think we should grab her now, or do you think that we should wait until she gets closer?" He rolled his eyes. "Nevermind, I'm going to let her get closer. It'll be more fun." He fell into silence as he brought the file back up to his attention, letting it rest on the steering wheel of the black Cadillac Escalade. It wasn't an uncommon vehicle to be seen in the city, and Kiyoshi had implemented a massive cage to go where the back seats should have. It was perfect for transporting... luggage.

He scanned her file, lips twitching a little. She was an Avian, nothing but a Sparrow. She was pretty, though - and blonde. He knew a certain man who had a penchant for blonde birds. Would Stefan like this little songbird? he wondered to himself. He was willing to bet money that the German would. His pet hawk, however, might disagree. Jealousy was unbecoming in most women, but in Desten, it made her radiant. It was... adorable how much control she thought she had. Speaking of adorable - the Sparrow crossed the street in front of them, and then hurried around the corner.

Married only a few months to her high school sweetheart. The man had gone into Crimson, and had a strong knowledge of chemicals. He was their version of an explosives expert, except instead of TNT, he found ways to use science to make vampires heads explode. Kiyoshi wasn't terribly bothered by it overall, but Niall had said that this girl would certainly piss off that Triste, and if the Triste was mad, he'd make the guilds miserable for bringing the battle to his front steps. Kiyoshi could get on board with that idea any day of the week.

Her husband had been reported by their sources as "sincere, sweet, and almost a little goofy". Kiyoshi wondered what he could do to break that in half? He openly welcomed the idea of returning Heather unscathed to a raving mad lunatic of a husband who would do more damage than Kiyoshi could have ever hoped to, and this would be his concentrated thought process as he pulled away from the curb. She was in sight of the Hollow, and that was when he wanted to strike.

He pulled up alongside of her, and used his best Japanese fobulous sort of voice. "Hello, I am lost. Can you please to tell me how to get to address?" he asked. He waited for her to come close enough to see the piece of paper he had scribbled some inane address on, and when she did, he flexed his control over her animal form, meaning to freeze her in place.

"Let's see if she has a demi form, shall we?" he asked, leaning against the doorsill, not even bothering to open the door. He flicked his hands a little in an upward motion, ripping one wing from its origins. The job of the other vampire, at current, was to make sure that people walked right on by, and he was going to do just that until Kiyoshi said otherwise. No, the little bird could scream all she wanted - nobody would hear her. Yet.

 Heather stopped, looking over to the Escalade as it pulled next to her on the street. When the man stuck his head out, something about the way he... was frightened her. She frowned though, because it was dumb to think that every little thing was out to attack her. He was only asking for directions - he didn't even get out of the vehicle. He could barely speak English, too. It didn't occur to Heather to process the worry any further, because it was still three hours before anyone in the guilds would even try to warn her about what had happened.

"Oh, where are you trying to get?" she asked, putting on a smile. Heather was pretty - conventionally gorgeous, actually, and when she smiled, she radiated, like the sunshine. She should have been a lot more careful about talking to strangers in vehicles at midnight, but really, he was only asking for directions. She looked down at the paper, and her smile froze.

"Huh, I don't think I know where that is," she said. She frowned. "Sorry, maybe you can stop at a gas station?" As she moved to back away from them and step up onto the curb again, she realized that she couldn't. She frowned more fully, and tried to turn away, but her body felt incredibly heavy, like it was frozen.

"W..?" was all she could manage. She couldn't even speak. Her mouth only opened partially before remaining there, stuck like someone had hit pause. If it was possible, her heart began to speed up, making her feel lightheaded with fear. When the man spoke plain English, she heard him say something about a demi-form, and then --

Pain.

It was excruciating. She screamed and tried to pull away, feeling like her flesh was being peeled off of her back in layers, but she still couldn't move. She could feel her eyes watering and all of the nerves in her body going absolutely crazy with sensory overload, but the more she tried to move, the more it hurt. She tried to fall - forward, backward, on her side - anything, anything to make it stop! One wing lifted, the right one, ripping through her shirt, sweater and duster and outstretching slowly. Mottled grey and brown and thrust colours marked her as a Sparrow, and her voice - so melodious, even when she was screeching out in bloody murder. Sparrows were songbirds, after all.

WHY ISN'T ANYONE STOPPING?! she thought/screamed into her head. She finally managed to close her eyes, and she tried to shift and fly away, but that was an even bigger mistake. As soon as she tried to let the natural magic of her form take over, it felt like the time she'd accidentally spilled some of Harvey's chemicals on herself - except all over her body. She screamed again, this time far, far louder, if that was even possible.

 Kiyoshi laughed out loud when he heard her mental cries of anguish. "They're not stopping, my dear, because we're vampires, and we can tell them to keep on moving," he explained. Smoothly, he stepped out of the vehicle and approached her, holding one hand up and making a closing motion with his fingers to his thumb. He clamped her mouth shut and turned her screams into a strange muffled whining. "Better," he said with a happy sigh. He slowly began to roll up the sleeves of his designer button-down shirt, and when he was done, he tilted his sunglasses down at her.

"This might hurt just a little," he advised. And then, with his hand, he made the same opening motion to the other side of her, as he'd done when her first wing came out. The process repeated, and he found he barely had to exhaust any energy at all in doing it. Was she that weak? He had found Avians, by nature, were easier to shift, but -- perhaps he had been expecting more, since the Arini was so much more difficult to rip apart. His smile vanished as he watched her, and he began to puppet the wings with his hands while he thought, calling sobs from her closed mouth as he did.

"Why are you making it so easy?" he asked, tilting her wings at an unnatural angle. When she released her power to try and fully shift, all it did was fed his voracious black hole of an appetite, and he laughed aloud, making a fun time by taking her hand, allowing her motion, and then breaking her hand in a clench as she tried to squeeze his own to output some of her pain.

"It's just like playing mercy!" he exclaimed, shaking her mangled fingers out of his grasp.

 When Kiyoshi began to play with her wings, Heather thought she was going to pass out. She let her eyes roll back and felt herself slip away, but a pulling sensation brought her right back to the present. He was stopping her from losing consciousness. He wanted her to feel this! All of it! But why? What had she done? He'd given her motion of her hand and taken it to his, and she squeezed down instinctively, thinking that he was going to stop, to offer her comfort - only to find that he was toying with her. He broke all of her fingers, which caused her to scream again, only now it was caught in her throat, which hurt more. He practically threw her hand back at her, and her arm hung down, hand limp and useless, fingers angled in odd ways.

She had tears streaming down her face now, and none of what he said was making sense. She wasn't making anything easy! Was this supposed to be some sort of game? She knew that the Hollow couldn't have been far, but she had no sort of way to run. She tried to focus her eyes on the vampire in front of her as he made a fun time of playing with her wings, but with her mind, she was trying to reach out. Would Kiyoshi be able to hear her? She didn't know.

ASH, CAN YOU HEAR ME? IT'S HEATHER! I'M OUTSIDE, I'M NOT FAR, I'M BEING ATTACKED. PLEASE, HELP ME!

Had it worked?

 Kiyoshi heard her mental cries for help loud and clear, and he wasn't willing to take the chance that the stupid Triste had not. He reached out and slapped her; slapped her so hard he cut her face and knocked her down. He released the hold on her body long enough for her to curl up into a ball, and then dragged her to her knees by her hair.

"Did you honestly think that I wouldn't be able to pick up on your little psychic SOS, songbird? Please, you're even dumber than I'd hoped." He turned his head back into the window, and instructed the man inside to open up the back. With that done, he dragged her around to the rear of the SUV, and then lifted her up, hurling her inside the cage. Ferocious zapping noises started and she began to jump around and scream, and Kiyoshi made a surprised facial expression. He motioned to the man again, who flipped some sort of switch that was mounted on the dash. The zapping stopped.

"Be a good little bird and I won't electrocute you until you're crispy enough to eat," he hissed. His expression had darkened from the silly surprise to a malevolent sneer; it was a wonder that he hadn't been labeled schizophrenic, yet. He slammed the doors shut, and then walked around to the front of the vehicle and opened the passenger door.

"Drive," he ordered the other vampire. The other quickly dropped the illusion and moved to the driver's seat, turned the vehicle on, and headed right past the Hollow. Neither of them looked over to see if anyone had come outside; they weren't interested. From the front, Kiyoshi instead turned around and put his hand on the cage, shaking it harshly.

"HEY. Don't go to sleep back there. I've got some questions for you, little songbird," he snapped.

 Heather screamed more as he dragged her to the back of the SUV, praying that the illusion would break long enough for someone to see her. She had no way of knowing, and so she struggled as he tossed her into the cage. She stopped struggling and began screaming and jolting around about the time she realized it was electrified, which was excruciating, to say the least. When he killed the switch, she lay very still, wings still out and one of them mangled at this point.

"I'm not.. supposed to have this form.." she begged. "Please, put it back, I'll tell you anything you want to know," she said. She curled up into a ball as far away from them as she could get, pinning herself nearly at the hatch where the cage closed. She cradled her hand to her chest, wishing that Harvey would come in and grab her and take her away. She knew he'd told her to fly - and she'd tried, but the vampire was stopping her somehow.

"Please, change me back and I'll tell you everything," she pleaded again, trying to hold back her sobs. It was hard to do, extremely so. She had a feeling she'd never see anyone she knew or loved ever again. She felt incredible waves of despair and pain, and it would surprise Kiyoshi, no doubt, how easily she could be on the brink of breaking when he'd done very little at all. To the Sparrow, though, he'd done quite a lot.

 Kiyoshi held his hands up and waved them. "Oh no, oh no, mister, my wings are out and they aren't supposed to be there! What's gonna happen to me, aieeeeee!" he screamed in an incredibly high-pitched voice while making faces at Heather's expense. Suddenly, his expression changed and he flipped the switch for a second, shocking the shit out of her again. He waited patiently until she was done screaming and bouncing around like a rubber ball with feathers sticking out of it before he continued.

"Rule number one, blondie - I ask the questions, I make the demands. You comply. That's it. No begging, no pleading, no crying, no whining, and no asking for mommy," he said. "Call out anyone's name other than my own and I'll start chopping off your fingers instead of breaking them."

When she seemed to understand this, he smiled sweetly and leaned against the center rest, putting his elbows up with his fingers folded together and placing his chin atop them. He batted his lashes at her. "Tell me about your husband. He's a hunter, yes?" When she didn't respond right away, he sighed and looked at the man driving. He nodded to the switch, but before the man reached over to it, the bird was talking.

"YES! Yes, he's a hunter! He hunts for -- "

Kiyoshi held his hand up. "I'll ask what I need. No need to orate a life story to me," he said with a roll of his eyes. He resumed his original position with his chin rested upon his hands. "So. What guild does he hunt for?" he asked with a sadistic smile.

 [12:45 AM]

"That's fucking gross. How can you eat that?" Laura demanded of Trevor, who'd just stopped to get a hotdog from a street vendor. "Ugh, you are exactly like my brother," she complained. She went back to her triple scoop chocolate ice cream with another noise of disgust, completely ignoring both the looks of Trevor and the vendor as she did so. Laura had been craving ice cream for two weeks. Two weeks. She had been hunting her ass off, and she deserved to have it.

As they walked back to his car, Trevor held a hand up. "Oh, no. No food in the beast," he warned.

"I wasn't planning on it anyways. The way you drive, I'd end up wearing this," she snapped. She plopped down on the hood, actually taking care not to hit it with her belt and scratch any of the black paint, and enjoyed her ice cream. "Lance says I'm crazy for eating this when it's cold outside," she mused, fitting the smaller top scoop into her mouth. With triumph, she mashed it around, making small happy noises as she did so.

Trevor looked up from the edge of his hot dog. "Uh, you are," he confirmed.

"Don't be such a fucking queer," she shot back, gesturing angrily with one arm so that she didn't put her cone off balance. "I'm the opposite of most chicks. I'm always hot. I could have forgone the jacket except that I like it and it makes me look sexy," she argued, stopping to wipe sprinkles off of her face. She was glad she had brought one of those wet nappy things or whatever the hell they were called. She had chocolate all over her face, she was sure of it.

"How much longer do you want to run game on the street?" she asked. It sounded dirty, but it was just Laura's way of asking how much longer he wanted to patrol. "Lance had a date tonight. Is that why you're keeping me out? Did he pay you?" she demanded.

As long as she wasn't getting into the car with that ice cream, he was fine with it.  He was being pretty hypocritical about the food thing, since he ate in there all the time, but he was different.  Nobody other than Colt had ever been allowed that right, and he hadn't changed that rule for anyone.  Even though Laura was hot, especially eating the ice cream that had allowed them all to deem her insane.  It was nice out, but still too cold for ice cream, and he didn't understand how she did that.  She even said that the jacket was too much, which made her crazier.  He was just fine with his own jacket, thanks very much, but he wasn't going to argue that it looked sexy on her.  He wasn't going to admit it, either, since he'd seen the way she punched. 

"Hey, if I'm such a fucking queer to you, I guess I also don't have any response to your questions.  I'll just finish my hot dog in silence," he threatened, putting his focus back onto the delicious New York City hot dog in his hands.  Nothing beat a hot dog from a NYC street vendor, especially at night, when other hot dogs had been stewing in that water all day.  That just made them taste better.  That hot dog being so freakin' good also made it easier for him to uphold his threat to remain quiet, since when else was he going to? 

Given that she was asking about Lance and whether her brother had been involved in how long they patrolled that night, he didn't want to respond, but silence seemed as though it would have been more telling.  He indignantly returned fire with half of a mouthful of hot dog, eyebrows knitting up ALMOST angrily.  "What are you even talking about?  He's probably with your creepy neighbor, and if he's not, I don't owe him or you jack SHIT after nobody warned me she was going to cop a feel like she did.  Assholes."

Laura almost spit her ice cream out when he referenced the old lady who liked to play grab-ass with her brother. "Yeah, I think he accepts that we hang out because he thinks if you come around more, she'll target you instead of him. Never gonna happen though. That lady's only thrill in life is getting her Avon glass miniatures and grabbing my brother's rump," she remarked, finally able to control her ice cream. She was down to one scoop, and she wasn't even close to being full. Usually after the cone would be when she felt all fucked up, but she didn't tell Trevor that. She felt like it'd be less... manly.

She glanced up as a black SUV rolled by, thinking about how much she wanted an Escalade. Sure, she had a bike, plus that black GTO she'd picked up when her brother decided he'd wanted a new Camaro, but the Escalade.. she could thug the living shit out of it and claim it was because it's how she wanted to "roll". Laura could be a gangster, right? Some movement next to it caught her attention, and she reached over and hit Trevor in the chest, hard. She forgot that he was a human sometimes, because he was so much like her brother, and so she might have actually made him choke on his food.

"Holy shit, Trevor, LOOK!" she said, pointing over to the vampires. They were having some sort of exchange with a shapeshifter who was in her demi-form, and she didn't sound happy. People who were around them completely ignored it though, and Laura felt the prick of power wash over her. For a moment, the visage faded, but she concentrated and it came right back to her.

"Oh my god," she whispered. She threw her ice cream in the trash and nudged him. "Let's go, partner," she said, pointing to the situation at hand. It didn't occur to her that Trevor couldn't see any of it.

Kiyoshi was having a ridiculous amount of fun with this bird. He had gotten a thorough amount of information from her over the course of a few moments, and despite the fact that he knew he could break her before he got her to Midnight, he knew that it was only half of the game. The other half would be watching other trainers have a go at her. Kiyoshi could control her animal form, which meant that he could puppeteer her however he wanted, and she would comply; he didn't even try to focus on any actual breaking techniques. She'd be in for a shock when she met the German.

Speaking of which, Kiyoshi had the phone up to his ear as he had fun scaring Heather. "Oh, hello, Stefan!" he exclaimed. He leaned into the back and whispered loudly to Heather. "This is the man I'll be selling you to. He's not as nice as I am," he informed her. To Stefan, he said, "I've got just the girl for you! Of course, your Hawk might be jealous, but it's nothing you can't overlook. She's a Sparrow, she's young, quite blonde, a delicious body, and she cries at the drop of a hat!" he cheered

To demonstrate, he reached for the switch that charged the cage, but before he hit it, Heather screamed.

"No, no, please, no more!" she begged, scuttling backwards across the cage like a cockroach. She grabbed for his arm, and yelped when he flexed his power on her animal. It wasn't something visible to the naked eye, but the way he twisted her inner bird made it feel like he had a firm hold on her intestines and was raking them with razors. She doubled over and fell backwards, smacking her head against the floor and curling into a crying ball.

"She's so much fun!" he squealed. "One second, I'll send you a photo!" To Heather, he snapped, "Sit up and look presentable!"

When she did as she was told, he snatched the other phone from the man driving, snapped a photo, and sent it to Stefan.

"Isn't she a doll?" he beamed.

Desten tried not to look when Stefan received a picture of the other bird, but she couldn't help herself. He hadn't told her not to, anyways, and so she peered over his shoulder in passing from her bath, fingers clutching the soft robe that she wore. It slid off her shoulders attractively, but since she knew that she was beautiful, because Stefan wouldn't have an unbeautiful pet, she didn't worry about trying to appeal to His desires. She could when she wanted to, but she felt it would be tacky when He was observing a new prospect. He did not praise her for jealousy, but neither did He punish it - yet. She knew that was not a line she should cross.

When she saw the photo of the pretty girl, though, she gasped, and looked at Him incredulously. Her golden eyes were wide with a flurry of emotion, but she shut her mouth with a snap and said nothing. The feeling was there, though, as Desten was as transparent to Stefan as glass. She rose back up, straightening out and rolling her shoulders back to correct her posture, and then practically sashayed to her quarters to put on suitable clothing.

He had already been out terrorizing family members and low level hunters, dropping a few in the dungeons to play with later and then stopping back at home for Desten.  She'd expressed an interest in helping him, and though he normally would have been ridiculously against the idea of letting his prized hawk out of Midnight's walls, he couldn't deny that she could make herself useful and that she wasn't as frail as she let on.  Kiyoshi's call was just in time, and Stefan's lips quirked up some as the other trainer described the sparrow, then sent a picture.  She was beautiful, yes, but still only a sparrow and obviously ridiculously weak-willed if Kiyoshi had her so far gone so quickly.  Of course, one had to have some measure of sympathy for those poor creatures that the other trainer took his hand to.  He was certain that the man was somewhat...unhinged.  It was a delightful, unceasingly interesting way, but true nonetheless.  Stefan would take him up on this offer.

"You've already half-broken her, but I'll be along to collect her," he agreed smoothly, catching the jealousy that was positively rolling off of Desten in waves and deciding that this WAS the best time to take her out.  She would understand how important she was, and feel useful, while he took the sparrow off Kiyoshi's hands. 

When he'd gotten a fix on the location, he stood and collected his knives once more.  "My dear, we're going out.  Kiyoshi has a new toy for us," he informed her, as though she hadn't already noticed and expressed her distaste.  He would ignore it until it was a problem, and then he would deal with it.  He didn't foresee it becoming a problem.

As soon as she was ready, they were off.

She could say what she wanted about that old biddy being unwilling to cave to Lance's plan, but he sure as hell knew that she'd given his ass one hell of a squeeze when he wasn't expecting it, so he would withhold his opinion until they had a definitive answer.  For all he knew, she could have been giving him a test run, and decided she liked Lance better.  God, he hoped so.

Actually, between Laura and Lance, he decided right around the time that she nailed him in the chest that he liked Lance better, too.  How did she even hit him that hard?  She struck him right in the sternum, which shouldn't have been a big deal from a chick, but he choked on the last of his hot dog when she did it, nearly losing it in an attempt to breathe.  "Would you NOT do that?  What?  I don't see anything," he told her irritably, not understanding why she was so completely ready to run into some imagined fray. 

She'd even dumped her ice cream cone.  Either she meant srs bsns, or she was done with it and finding a weird way to get out of having to admit that she didn't want the rest.  Women were weird. 

He watched the direction she was headed in, still seeing nothing, and finally jumped forward the few steps to catch up with her, grabbing her arm and leaning into try to figure out what was happening.  "I'm serious, Laura, I don't see anything.  What the fuck?"

 Laura looked at Trevor like he was crazy. "WHAT?" she blurted out. She rose her arm, hand curled into a fist as she made to hammer him again, but he took a wise step back and she stopped short. "They're - but - OH," she groaned. She turned back and watched the scene unfold. A vampire was torturing this woman on the street, and people literally walked between them without noticing. It had to be a glamour, and a damn good one. He was fucking with her wings, however that worked - probably had control of her mind. Laura wasn't aware there was a vampire who could control shapeshifters like that, and it was probably for the best at the moment.

The glamour dropped suddenly as the other vampire struggled to open the doors and shove the girl inside, and that was when she heard Trevor make a choking noise. She looked back at him, pointing to the scene as it unfolded. "Do you believe me now?" she demanded. She didn't wait for an answer, but instead ran around to the passenger side of his car and dove in, slamming the door behind her.

"I have a feeling we're about to be in for a wild night," she said under her breath as the motor growled to life. She called Lance and told him their location, but he was at least a half hour out, even if he left right then and drove hard. She looked back at Trevor. "It's just you and me, buddy. I hope you brought your vampire killin' gear with you," she said, a weak attempt at a joke. She felt sick to her stomach, but rushed at the same time. She always felt like this before a fight.

She was looking at him like he was crazy when SHE was the one talking about things that he couldn't see.  Did that make any sense whatsoever?  That she curled her arm back like she was going to nail him again caused him to take a cautious step back, in just case, and she hesitated before dissolving into a frustrated groan and looking back in that direction.  He followed her gaze, looking suspiciously from the spot she was focused on to her for a moment or so before the scene suddenly changed.  It was like a movie flickering between frames, a normal street and a winged girl being shoved into the Escalade that was parked there.

He almost choked for the second time in just a few minutes, dropping his trash into the bin and jumping into the driver's seat of the car with a good bit less grace than she did.  It didn't hurt his ego.

Car started, he tossed Laura a smirk over her mention of a wild night, then the vampire killin' gear.  "Always.  It's what we live for, right?" he asked, but damn, he had NO clue what they were walking into.  He didn't know what kind of horrors were hitting the city that night.  Wait until they understood.

 Desten had stock mostly in dresses, for that was what Stefan had preferred her to wear. The prospect of going out and helping, though, made her curious as to what clothing would be appropriate. She was instructed only to fly overhead and to keep a watchful eye on things, reporting back to Him as events unfolded. That she could do in any clothing, because she would be in her final form. She didn't tarry, knowing that He did not like to be made late, and chose quickly the only pair of slacks and a white blouse that she could find; things she would not mind dirtying if she needed to. She shifted into her hawk form immediately after securing her hair into a low ponytail, and nestled on his arm, head turning this way and that as she re-established her mental connection with Him. In her animal form, it was not hard to do, but merely different than how they normally communicated.

By the time Stefan had drawn near enough to the situation for it to matter, Desten left the comfort of her Master and rose to the night sky, soaring up, up, until she could get a good fix on everything. Her eyes were keen, and she drank in the scenery as she saw it, feeding it back to Stefan almost like a mental video camera of the area beneath her. It certainly would give Him the advantage, and as much as she did not relish the idea of sharing Him, He had made it clear to her that her purpose was to keep Him happy. She certainly would do that. Once she spotted the SUV, she let out a loud shriek, and dove down for a better feel.

By that time, Kiyoshi had stepped out, leaving the driver inside to maintain control of the girl. She didn't dare get close enough to them for Kiyoshi to do more than feel her presence, because she did not like the man. Desten didn't really like anyone unless Stefan told her to, and since her Master was as selective as she was, it had never become an issue. She didn't intend for it to become one now.

I've found them, she said, relaying her exact location to Him. She perched on a large sign suspended overhead until He was within her view, and then lifted back into flight, circling like a buzzard and keeping a careful watch. She studied traffic patterns to ensure that they had not been followed, and focused her gaze on any bodies coming within the same block location as the group.

 Lance couldn't believe that his sister was doing this to him. He set his glass of water down carefully on the table, giving his date a tight-lipped smile. His phone was ringing again. He'd ignored it the first two times, but it was Laura's ringtone, and it was loud. He'd been quick enough to silence it the first time, but when he'd gotten up to use the bathroom, she'd called again and his date had endured the full-volume serenade of Creature Feature's "Aim for the Head". As he sat back down and took a drink, it started up again.

"Er, yeah, it rang while you were in the bathroom, too," she said, gesturing to the pocket of his motorcycle jacket thrown over the back of the chair.

CAN I POSE A QUESTION, HOW DO YOU KILL WHAT IS DEAD? I JUST SHOOT FROM THE HIP, AND I AIM FOR THE HEAD!

"Excuse me, I need to take this," he said through clenched teeth. He ripped through his pocket, found his phone, and turned away from his companion, a gruff, "WHAT?!" Laura's greeting.

"No time to explain, I need you to get on your bike and get your ass out here. I'll text you an address once we stop, but right now we're headed north on 67th, passing the 2500 block. Just get to this side of the city. We've got big vampire trouble," she said, speaking loudly over the sound of Trevor's motor.

"Are you sure this isn't your way of trying to interrupt my night?" he asked, tone stern. The waiter had just dropped off the main courses, and Lance was starving.

"Seriously? Lance, I mean it! I have that bad feeling in my stomach. I need you to get here, now!

Lance stood up and motioned for the girl to start eating, ducking away from the main eating area and into the hall where the bathrooms were. "I thought you were with Trevor?" he asked, hissing as someone walked by him to the men's area.

"I AM, but I don't think it'll hurt to have backup. I can call Andrew if you won't come, but - "

"NO, god, I'll get my shit and head out there. With traffic it's going to take me at least a half hour though, maybe less. Bonne Chance is slammed, and I can't just leave this girl here while I run off," he argued.

"Fine, I'm calling Andrew."

Click.

Lance put his head against the wall and groaned, then took a deep breath and walked as slowly as he could manage back to the table.

"Is... everything okay?" she asked, setting her chopsticks down. Damnit, and Lance had really been looking forward to sushi, too.

"Uh, family emergency. I need to go, now," he explained briskly. He yanked his wallet out of his pocket and set a fifty down in front of her. "I'm really sorry. This should cover everything, plus a cab for you to get back home. I'd like to say I had a great evening, but evidently my sister refuses to not be at the nucleus of my day. I hate to see how she treats her kids, when she ever has them," he added, grabbing a piece of sushi and shoving it into his mouth as he struggled to pull his other glove on.

"It's okay, really. I work here - well, not this level, but I mean, I can catch a ride home with a friend. Zahra gets off in an hour or so, so I'll just hang around. Don't worry about it. I'll see you in class? she asked, unable to hide her frown.

"Yes, you will. I'm really sorry Wren," he said with an apologetic smile. He leaned forward and dropped a kiss onto her hand, and then scooped his helmet up and headed for the elevator.

"I'll just call Andrew," he mocked, his voice high and scratchy. He moved his head back and forth like Laura did. ""I'm Laura, I want to control your life." When he got downstairs, he started his bike and took off for the last known location of his sister. He hoped she really hadn't called Andrew and was just growing more effective at threatening him. His brother was the last person he wanted to see at the moment.

Meanwhile, in the restaurant, Wren picked up her phone. "Zahra, are you on break? Good, then could you come to the sushi bar and sit with me? I just got ditched for a 'family emergency'. I know, lame. Guess it wasn't meant to be," she said, rolling her eyes. What a dick.

 Laura didn't call Andrew like she'd threatened to, knowing that had been enough to kick her brother into gear. She looked over at Trevor as he drove, keeping just far enough back from the SUV so that they didn't know they were being followed - yet. It wasn't until they stopped that Laura held up her hand. "Keep with the flow of traffic and drive by. We'll park in the old garage around the corner and run through the alley." She was basing this on the pretense that the people in the SUV were aware the glamour had faltered, which they weren't - or even if Kiyoshi was, he wasn't really about to dedicate caring to the cause when he could obliterate most competition he had. He also didn't anticipate a real Vida rolling up with someone who got a little too much out of killing monsters, though.

As they drove by, Laura glanced out the window, watching as the story unfolded. Sure enough, one vampire was exiting the vehicle while the other stayed inside. No sign of the girl, since the back was unopened. The building they'd stopped in front of was abandoned - were they taking her there? Laura had no way of knowing if they were Midnight or not, and it didn't occur to her that they might be. Not much occurred to her at the moment except that she wanted to get them out on the street instead of in the confines of a building, regardless of the collateral damage. She would face off in the open much more happily than in a dark and unsturdy piece of New York's condemned lots.

As they pulled into the garage, Laura did a quick inventory of herself, patting where her knives were. Two in her boots, one at her spine, and one up the sleeve of her jacket. She didn't prefer to use a gun; as effective as they could be, she was trained with weapons that were, when wielded properly, every bit as dangerous, or perhaps even more. On top of that, she liked being able to switch into primal rage mode: go and wipe the floor with her vampire opponents.

Trevor knew bits and pieces about their family and the names he heard, though it was only because he was smart enough to pick up details when he heard them.  Here, he confirmed that Andrew wasn't ridiculously popular with them, especially Lance.  Naturally, he had no clue they were all witches and probably didn't even have a good idea as to what a witch WAS.  If you asked him, he was likely to define something a little more like a triste, or a gypsy.  His father hadn't had much contact (that he knew of) with witches, and he hadn't ever mentioned much about them.  Of course, if you were to ask Trevor if he'd had any contact with witches, he'd have said no, sitting right next to one in his beloved car. 

Sure, it was kind of weird that she'd seen what was going on when all he saw was a normal street, but he wasn't about to argue with her about that when there was a hunt underway.  Maybe later, when it had time to eat at him, but for now, he had his mind on the job.

God, he loved his job.

He still wasn't back to normal, back to the way he'd been when Colt was around all the time, hunting with him and needing him, but he was better off around Laura and Lance.  They didn't need him, which didn't help his more reckless streak, but he HAD been sorely in need of some non-violent socialization.  Vamps and shifters that you were planning on killing, then drunks in the bar, were not good friends or conversation.  His quality of life had gone up by a LOT when he'd started spending time with the two of them, so it wasn't as though he was in a huge rush to psychoanalyze the situation.  Why fix what isn't broken?  Until it was bothering him, a problem wasn't getting touched. 

Anyone who said that Trev was difficult to work with was an idiot.  See that unwillingness to make waves?  He could follow instructions, too, which he went and displayed when Laura told him to drive right past the people in the SUV so they could park in the garage.  He even did it nice and casual, glancing over at her and smiling, like he was completely uninterested in the vehicle.  He'd had way too much practice pretending; every day of his life.

"So, is there a plan other than busting out there and killing it?" he asked as they parked and he took the opportunity to arm himself.  Unlike her, he kept firearms and knives on his person whenever he could manage it, and he'd use whatever worked best at the moment.  The difference, which he didn't realize was an issue, was that he was only human where she wasn't; he didn't get so up close and personal because if he got smashed by a vampire's fist, he wasn't getting back up so fast.  Laura and Lance had influenced his fighting style enough that he was giving into that aggressive, in-your-face attitude where his fighting was concerned.  He'd always preferred to get up close and personal, but caution had weighed out so much more with Colt.  He figured that if Laura could do it, so could he, and he'd had a decent track record of it.  If he'd been hurt, he walked it off without complaining too hard.  That probably wasn't helping her thinking that he and her brother were similar, or supporting the rather important fact that he couldn't take a hit like her brother could.  Eventually, they'd all learn, but hopefully not for awhile.  It was bound to be a painful lesson.

 "Plan?" she asked, turning her head to him with a brow arched. Why would Laura ever need one of those? She grinned a little at Trevor, a flicker of something dark in her eyes. "Let's just roll with it," she said. She'd played rough with Trevor before, and she was confident he made a good fighting partner - she wasn't sure how he'd feel knowing that she was a lot harder to injure than her. She was going to hope that it didn't come down to it, though.

As they stopped, far enough to be unnoticed but close enough to make his vehicle a comfortable sprint, she put her hand on the handle, and then looked back at him. "Watch your back," she said, voice nearly above a whisper. "I have a feeling they won't be too happy about us showing up," she added. What she meant was her showing up - when they realized she was a Vida, it was going to be twice as much of a fight. She jerked out of the vehicle, a knife only a brush of her fingertips away.

Trevor hadn't seen Laura fight - he hadn't seen her really fight, but he was about to.

Trevor THOUGHT he'd seen Laura fight before, and he also wasn't exactly sure what they were walking into, so he was going to be a little off-balance here.  Did he really care?  Nope.

He lived for this shit anymore.  Gone were the days where he and Colt had spent their days researching and being careful.  Now?  No plan was the plan consistently, and if Trevor took more beatings than he ever had in his life, that was okay with him.  It suited him right about then, which was probably a 'sign' if someone was paying attention, but nobody seemed to be.

"Rolling with it," he agreed, checking his weapons as he jumped from the car after her, keeping pace and grinning when she said that they wouldn't be happy about them showing up.  When were vampires ever happy with the two of them showing up?  Hah, never, that was when.  "I'll try not to let it hurt my feelings," he cracked, grinning at her for a second before his attention returned to the front and where the expected enemies would be.  He was literally watching his back, mostly because he wasn't sure if the only threats would be in front of them, but they KNEW there was trouble in front.  That was important.  He was also wired.  He was in the mood for a good fight.

 Laura could sneak up on one of the vampires, but the other one was older. The closer she got, the more she could tell. It washed over her, like a slime, clogging up her lungs and eyes and ears. She pushed through it, not ignoring it but placing it carefully aside, and managed to get close enough to the first vampire to say something.

"Hey!" she shouted. He turned around, a plain-looking man, obviously not someone who ran in the same social circles as the second, and looked at her with his black eyes. His expression was near-glazed, something to which she did react, told by a smile sliding upward on the corner of her lips. She tossed the first thing she could think of at him, which ended up being a handful of gum wrappers that had amassed into a ball in the pocket of her jacket. As soon as he reached to catch it, she punched him right in the face. It could have easily been the hit heard 'round the world for all of the impact she had; the vampire stumbled back into the SUV, denting it, and then slid down to the ground. He was obviously not unconscious, but that didn't mean he wasn't dazed. Laura didn't stop. She drew back her leg and kicked him in the face, twice, before he was able to get up. He grabbed her leg and rushed at her, folding her limb up at the knee and pinning it to her chest.

It probably made him think he had the advantage, but in reality all it did was put her knife closer to her grasp. She let him pin her down, putting up a falsehood of a fight for a brief moment, and then she smiled broadly at him as he swore and cursed her, and plunged the knife into the side of his head. He fell over in a heap, and she withdrew the blade, thrusting it down into his heart. She righted herself, wiping her knife on his jacket, and was caught by surprise by a firm hand wrapping around her long, blonde hair.

"Ooh, do you condition?" Kiyoshi exclaimed. She swung behind her, but he'd already pushed forward, planting her face into the glass of the SUV. She was going to have her hands full for a minute. "Trevor, get the - UNH - girl!" she screamed as Kiyoshi twisted her arm into an uncomfortable position.

"You taste all sparkly and powerful," he teased, dislocating her shoulder with a simple gesture of his hands. "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"

Trevor wasn't stupid, nor was he lacking in experience in working with a partner, so this was all pretty instinctual for him.  He actually regarded Laura in the same mental space as Colt where hunting was concerned (protect above all else), but he could complement whatever moves she made just as he would his brother.  When she went for the vampire, he went for the back of the SUV and the girl.  He and Colt had focused quite a bit of effort on saving people, so that was a definite priority as soon as they hit the scene.  He didn't need to be told, and the girl's cage was actually already opened by the time Laura told him to do it.  He gestured quickly for the girl inside to get the hell out, and even reached in to grab her arm.  Laura needed a hand, so this had to be fast.

"Run for the parking garage, there's a muscle car that's unlocked, you'll see it immediately.  Jump in the backseat and get down," he told her, confident that they'd be following her in just a moment.  "GO!"

He gave her a bit of a push in that direction, hoping that she could make herself run without help, since his help was going to Laura in the form of a bullet meant for her vampire opponent.

Heather, still in her half-bird half-girl state, a form she wasn't supposed to have, was pulled to her feet, but didn't run. "I can't!" she said, still sobbing. "He has to change me back. I can't be stuck like this!" Trevor may not have understood, but Heather wasn't supposed to have a demi-form. It was one way or the other, and she didn't know how to make it change back. Honestly, even if she had, Kiyoshi had MADE her one way, and she couldn't just change it herself. She'd need someone to undo what he'd done, and there were very few who could besides the vampire himself.

Laura, meanwhile, had other things to tend to. "A bad witch," she advised. "A very, very bad witch." And with that, she placed one foot up on the tire of the SUV and pushed off, using all of her momentum to throw herself at Kiyoshi. With that came the tumult of her magic, a burning thing, which the vampire did feel indeed. Kiyoshi had encountered her type before, but not so trained, and it caught him just off guard enough that he almost didn't catch her blow gracefully.

Almost.

He had tricks of his own, and he pushed with his magic right back, causing her to cry out. He caught her by the arms and literally flung her away, into the figure of Trevor. He'd gotten some distance on her, that was for sure.

He was wondering right about now where the HELL Stefan was. He caught sight of Heather trying to flee, and raised his right hand, clamping it down. With the gesture, Heather buckled at the knees and fell against the pavement, hands down at the palms while she cowered over and screamed in agony. He had told him he wouldn't damage her terribly, but he was losing his fucking patience.

Trevor had tried to get the girl to get her ass out of there, and then she went and did something as stupid as that?  They're about to get their asses kicked, and she's going to object to being saved?  Trevor might bash her in the face just for risking their lives if she didn't want to move.  "If you don't want to die, you need to go!" he shouted, not exactly caring about her issues with the vampire.  They could deal with that later, after they were certain they were all going to live through this.  Priorities, seriously.

He was going to snatch her arm and try to force her forward movement, knowing that he had seconds (if that) to deal with her before Laura would get to a point that she absolutely required his help, and then he suddenly had a blonde body smashing into him.  He went down HARD beneath her deceptively solid frame, and was trying to push her up and manage something in the way of defense almost as soon as he hit the sidewalk.  'Almost' because those first instances had been spent wondering just how much of his body was busted up with that crash-landing.  Fucking ow.

That was when Stefan showed up, stepping onto the scene with a quiet sort of grace so that he could snatch the blonde woman up by the arm.  He twisted it in his grip, aware of the problem she presented just from the short time he'd spent watching.  He didn't mind observing before arriving on the scene.  "Why, hello."  Now, wasn't she a charming girl?

 The only thought in Laura's mind as she sailed at Trevor at a speed about as regular as what she used to ride out of her neighborhood on her motorcycle was Well, now he'll know what it feels like to get hit by a Laura-sized bag of bricks. She was trying to pick herself up as much as he was trying to shove her off of him; Stefan, thankfully, was right there for the assist. She couldn't say that she was thrilled by his introduction, but at the very least, he'd disentangled she and Trevor. Laura didn't fight him on the way up, because he'd twisted her arm easily enough that she could slide her shoulder right out of place. The bad thing about being a Vida was that you healed within hours; she didn't have any joints that she could pop in and out of place because of old injuries. It would hurt every time.

Laura didn't really feel like small talk, but she knew the vampire couldn't hear her thoughts. She didn't know about Trevor, though. All she could do was direct her thoughts to Lance, begging him to hurry. 'til then, she had to handle this at half-power. She opened her mouth to tell Trevor to get the other vampire, but when she did, he made a formal bow and disappeared. Stefan had a way of directing her attention back to him though, doing it with a tightening motion around her arm. She looked at him, not startled by his eyes because they were so bright of a blue, but because she could sense that he wasn't old at all. The other vampire was at least four times his senior, but he was... a baby, by vampire years. She made a face at him that only reflected her thoughts, a You Have to Be Kidding Me sort of look.

"Let go, and I'll make it quick for you," she said with a smile. "I promise, it won't hurt a bit."

"That's funny," he hissed, but with less humour and slightly more conviction. "I couldn't really say the same for you." And he yanked before Laura had a chance to react.

Laura had come across countless vampires who had fast reflexes, but Stefan really surprised her. She calculated his accent German, even if he spoke deliberately without it. There was something about his pride that probably wouldn't let him loose it so quickly, even if he had the ability to. Laura went back into reality as she felt her shoulder slip out of place, and followed through as she turned with the momentum. She went right for one of his knee joints, and they went down to the ground. She ended up on top first, and then they went into a roll.

There was a lot of scraping about against the asphalt, and it probably would have sounded like a bag of cats if it hadn't have been for the fact that both of them were fighting with every ounce of control not to give the other one an inch of room to fight back. Stefan found himself on the winning end of the equation eventually as Laura's head rolled right up near the curb. He took the opportunity to go in for a kill shot right away, but only because he wasn't arrogant and stupid enough to not do the job - especially when he didn't really care if she was to become a new pet for him or sewer food. He raised her upper body by grabbing onto her shirt, slamming her back down. Her head made a strange cracking sensation against the pavement, and she let out a loud choking cry before falling silent.

It may as well have been the hit heard 'round the world. Trevor stopped from finally directing Heather out of the line of fire, looking up at the sudden cry and then lack of sound from Laura's end. "Laura?" he called, tentative - he didn't want to believe it. There was a pause, and Trevor as a hunter knew it had gone too long. "LAURA?" he screamed. He ran-scrambled-crawled and dove at Stefan, just as he was sitting up on Laura's limp body. He didn't know what to do, or what to think. He just knew that Laura wasn't moving, and she was some sort of super-girl, so this was twice as bad.

He caught Stefan off guard, but only because the vampire had been trying to determine if she were dead or not. He was having trouble reading through her energy; she must've been some sort of Witch, but Stefan hadn't actually considered the prospect of her being a Vida. The boy she was with was definitely human, which didn't threaten him any. Trevor had him by the shoulders, and managed to sling him off of her body, which rolled to one side listlessly. The idea that she was just suddenly dead was not a foreign concept to Trevor, but the burning sensation in his chest when he thought of her, of what he was going to have to tell her brother (no, brothers), was almost overwhelming. It translated into rage, and part of that was because Trevor was setting himself up to be at fault yet again. Who else would Andrew and Lance blame? He didn't have any idea that Vida tradition was how it was, and that it would probably be much different than how normal humans handled bad news, but it was probably better at the moment, because it made him hit that much harder.

Trevor got him good. He drove his knee right up into Stefan's jaw, satisfied with the pop that it made. He began hitting him, a blitzkrieg of fists and elbows and knees and shins - anything he could to smash the vampire's face in. There was blood - his, the vampire's - he was losing track of which. There was still a lack of conversation, and it seemed as though the time for quick-witted remarks was over. Stefan managed to take an upper hand after a lengthy time of struggle and gave Trevor a few good satisfactory blows to his face and upper body that would be sure to leave more than a few marks.

The problem was always the same, though. Human versus vampire - strength would win in the end. Trevor was tossed down, and Stefan rose, striding to him at leisure. As he walked past Laura's body, her hand snaked up and grabbed him by the ankle. Laura sprang into life,  whipping the knife she kept at her spine out as she rolled. She yanked on him to pull herself up just as much as she did to bring him down, the other hand wielding the blade fused with Vida magic. She looked ghastly, like a freshly risen corpse. A human would have been dead from the blow Stefan had delivered to her moments prior, but the Vida lifeblood was stronger still, and her body mended itself before she'd been given a chance to bleed out. She was weak, but she wasn't dead. She was far from dead.

She drove the knife downward, her eyes as primed as Stefan's very own perhaps before he fed from a very wanted donor. Before she made the contact that she'd been hoping for, there was a flash of gold and a scream of utter horror. The form of a bird fell and tumbled, rolling just as they had moments before. As it rolled, it turned into a woman with gilded wings and long blonde hair, and there were moments where it was nothing but crimson and feathers as the wound Laura had intended for Stefan opened more against the disgusting, dirty New York street.

Everyone seemed to stop for that moment as Desten laid flat on her back, wings twisted at awkward angles. She lay with her mouth agape for a moment, eyes wide in a silent scream. She inhaled sharply, and then she began to yell. The knife burned! Laura wanted to use Stefan's moment of shock to her advantage, but she'd be damned if she was throwing one of her knives. She wished she'd had the necklace that Danielle had been rumoured to use, it would have worked like piano wire for her, but at the moment all she had was just what she had on her. That being said, she flattened her scraped-up palms out and opened the vault of a mind she had. She could feel her energy, melted and caustic, like titanium heated to 3560° Kelvin. She welled it up until she felt like her eyes would bleed, and then she just released it. Andrew had showed her how to do it; the equivalent was something akin to an H-bomb. Even Trevor would have felt it, and for that Laura was sorry, but at the moment, she was more than pissed off and didn't feel like squabbling anymore.

When the dust had settled, so to speak, Laura dropped to the ground. She could hear the sound of Lance's bike a few streets over, and Trevor's angry grunting from the injuries he'd sustained. The bird-girl that they'd rescued was in the corner of her blurring vision, head in her hands as she cried her eyes out. No doubt that Laura's energy EMP had caused her more than a bit of grief. Laura didn't have time to check and see if the other bird-girl and the vampire were still there. She was feeling as though she were walking in and out of the idea of consciousness, and felt herself hit the ground next to Trevor with a groan just as Lance had arrived.

 Lance had been swearing his entire way out to the random address Laura had rattled off. He went as fast as he physically could, but traffic wouldn't let up. It was like the universe was working against him, and he didn't like it. The closer he got, the more he felt his nerves began to spark, as though Laura hadn't been fooling around to begin with. He knew that she was with Trevor, and they usually ended up hunting, and that they usually got into trouble, but it had never escalated to the level that it just had minutes before. He could feel that something was different on the air; the way that the lights glinted off of the street, the way that all of the red in the street lights seem to blend together in one constant halo of blood.

He almost laid the bike down on its side when Laura let go of her energy like that. He managed to keep it upright, but he fogged his own visor up with his cursing as he struggled to do so. He caught a blonde man scooping up a blonde woman - Golden Hawk, judging by her wings - and didn't place them at first. Not until he saw Heather curled up against the ground, hands over her ears like she could stop the residual that Laura's energy had left. Lance whipped off his helmet just in time for Laura to yell for him to stop the duo trying to depart. It was too late - they had gone already. Lance wanted to throw his helmet at them, but his helmet was expensive, so he managed not to let go of it. He hurried over to where his duo lay, kneeling down next to his sister. From what he could gather, they were both hurt. Trevor's condition was worse, but only because he was a human. Laura was bad. After the energy expulsion, she was bad, even for a Vida - but not in mortal danger.

He dialed out the only number he could think of, turning his back from Laura as he got the phone up. "Andrew? We have a little situation."

At his brother's command, he'd stayed with the two of them while their brother called the only person who was closer to them that he trusted not to get any of them killed. It took maybe six or seven minutes before Danielle pulled up, in a black Chevy Avalanche that looked almost like an unmarked police car. She had a way of acquiring vehicles that had certain perks that civilian vehicles they did not. She got out, motioning for Lance as she walked at a brisk pace to him.

"Get them up and into the SUV. Get the bird in the back, lay her out and try not to jerk her."

Lance was seriously stalled out for a split second. He'd never seen Danielle in person before - she looked... so much like Laura that it made him hesitate. She looked so much like Laura to Lance that it was eerie. But she was a Vida, so Lance shouldn't have been surprised. He had wished that Andrew had warned him a little, but then again, it was Andrew.

"Come ON," she commanded, crouched down by Trevor to check for a concussion. She spoke softly to him, nodding when he responded and holding up fingers. "Just a few minutes, I promise," she said, using her strength to help support him as she propped him up. Lance took a cue and grabbed Laura, scooping her up just as Stefan had to clear out Desten. Once he was sure his sister was settled, he went back for the malformed Sparrow.

"Just a few more minutes, honey," he promised. She cried in his arms, the pain of him moving her around almost unbearable. He whispered to her, trying to calm her as he climbed into the back to lay her down properly. He climbed back out and jumped on his bike, leading the way to the Hollow. He parked directly in the front and went right through the front door, trying to find Ash. He didn't have to look hard; when Danielle had said that Andrew was calling her, Ash was already aware that something was going on. That, paired up with the phonecall Darren would leave and the fact that Heather was missing, definitely told the Triste this would be a long, long night.

Yeah, so Trevor definitely got the gist of what a Laura-sized bag of bricks would have felt like, and despite the way they were both scrambling to disentangle themselves and get back to the fight, he was willing to consider the idea that he might have some kind of internal bleeding going on from the impact.  If he'd been asked, he never would have thought that it'd be possible  for her to hit him that hard, so she definitely had some added badass points thrown in there.  Having the new vampire pull her off of him had been even less awesome, except that she was obviously not impressed.  Trevor should have just taken the opportunity right then to jump in with her and gank the guy, but they'd been so focused on trying to get the civilian out of dodge that he jumped back into it.  He had to practically carry her to move her along at this point, and he did it without complaint.  He just made sure that he had a sense of urgency about him that was befitting of the situation, regardless of his attempts to avoid jarring her injuries.  She needed to be out of the line of fire, and fast, so that he could get back to Laura.

He was in the process of doing exactly that, settling Heather down far enough away to hopefully offer her some safety if things got even worse and actually running back towards the vampire and Laura when it became obvious that she wasn't getting back up.  There was that moment of horror, that understanding that he'd just lost another friend in the field, that it was his fault, and then that panic rocketed up into rage.  There was no denying that it was still there, that utter panic and the sick cold spot in the pit of his stomach, but there was also a heat.  He hit Stefan with a speed and force that he hadn't even known he could manage, and from there it was just fists, elbows, knees and blood.  He knew better, on a conscious level, than to take on a vampire hand to hand; any human did.  It was stupid to even try, but he found himself taking hits from that vampire that should have put him down right then and there, only to throw his own a second later.  The abuse he took before Stefan finally threw him aside was enough that when he struck the pavement, there was no way in hell that he was getting up.  He could see (barely) the bloodied vampire approaching him, and frankly?  He knew this was it.  Laura was dead by Stefan's hand, he'd failed to keep her safe, and now he was going to follow after.  Hell, it was fitting.  This time, he wouldn't be walking away from a situation that friends hadn't made it out of.  It was over.

Except...not.

Everything was swimming in his head, but he could have sworn that he saw Laura's dead body rise up with a knife in hand, grab at the vampire, and stab at him.  Then, the world got even more unbelievable, as blood and feathers exploded in front of the vampire and what had to be an angel rolled away from the vampire with Laura.  He didn't know where the hell she'd come from, the angel with the blonde hair and golden wings, but he thought in that moment that it was a damn shame that she was in so much pain.  Of course, he didn't understand why she'd have dropped from the sky to save a vampire, either, but the man rushed in to grab her and disappeared.  Yeah, because that made total sense!

Actually, when Lance's voice rang out on the air, it made a little more sense.  With the angel down and having taken abuse from both Laura and Trevor, it wasn't hard to believe that the vampire wouldn't want to play ball with Lance, too.  Trevor wouldn't have, in his position.  Trevor really didn't want to play ball with anyone right then, and he definitely slipped in and out of consciousness over the course of Lance's conversation and Danielle's arrival.  In fact, the most aware he could claim to be after Stefan had dropped him was when Danielle (Laura?) approached him, checking for injuries and holding up fingers.  He must have satisfied something for her when he answered (either for good or bad), because other than yelling towards Lance, she was talking softly and hefted him up off the pavement.  It made even less sense, because he definitely thought she'd died, but here she was scraping him off the sidewalk.  Had he died?  That would suck, but why would he hurt like he did if he was already dead?  How was that fair?

Nobody had said that life (or death) was fair, but he wasn't in any condition to really contemplate any of it.  By the time Laura got him into the SUV, he was out. 

This was guaranteed to be the night that never ended, from the looks of things.  It was bad enough that they'd been mobbed all night and understaffed because Heather hadn't shown up, but Dani and Darren both disappeared from the scene at some point in there.  It wasn't like Ash had the time to really pay attention, jumping between the kitchen and the bar as he was, right up until he got the call from Darren letting him know what was going on.  That settled that. 

He'd barely set down the phone before he was on his way out into the bar, brushing his forearm over his forehead to wipe away sweat and taking a deep breath as he hit the open main room.  He passed behind Dave and Anthony, who'd stepped up to pick up the slack, and dropped quiet instructions to them before he took up a spot in the middle of the bar. 

"LAST CALL!  EVERYONE FINISH UP!" he shouted, his voice projecting better than most people ever seemed to think he was capable of (he wasn't exactly the biggest guy in the room, and actually looked like he could pass for Anthony's smaller brother) before he vanished to the kitchen to inform them all that it was closed, not to leave the building to do garbage, and to keep an eye on each other.  Back out in the bar, he had to field the fact that the 'last call' bit had meant that whatever they were drinking was their last.  He wanted everyone out so that he could get a handle on this situation and figure out what the hell was going on, who was unaccounted for, and try to get a word in with the guilds.  Being uninformed was going to get people killed.

They were getting people out of the place as soon as they had the bar under control, particularly anyone that seemed to be at all suspicious.  Ash was less inclined to throw out anyone who might be considered a target based on the little information he had, but once he dropped a warning to people like that, they were on their way out in double time, anyway.  Everyone had places to go and people that they were worried about, and who was he to argue?  The first person who seemed to think he was going to be insulted that his quick offer of sanctuary was refused got a look out of him that clearly said, 'are you kidding me?' before he'd been off and helping to herd others out of the building.  Anthony was easily the most aggressive in moving everyone along, which was easy to tell even from across the room because he was getting the louder complaints, but there was a reason for that.  Dave was older, more experienced and had more of a reputation, and Ash just shoved at auras if he wasn't getting his way.  He didn't mind reminding people that he could ruin their day if they refused, especially in a situation like this.  Danny and Steve, on his instructions, had left the kitchen to help out in the restaurant and bar area, while Tyler had ensured that the girls were out of harm's way. Chloe, Nicole and Jess were all on the clock, and Ash would have to tear someone apart if anything happened to them.  Being phasi, Tyler didn't mind rounding up a bunch of girls, so Ash didn't have to worry about his pride being hurt because he wasn't much of a fighter, so it was a win-win situation. 

The big problem, and the cause for the sudden rush, was that Ash had a sinking feeling that the night was just starting.  Something was coming, something big, and the sensation akin to a shockwave that shook through him was even further urging for him to move.  It was obvious that others had felt it to a smaller degree, but that was energy that shapeshifters didn't play with.  This was going to be serious, which explained why he didn't even play around when they'd cleared the place of most everyone (they'd let a few people stay).  He went for a stiff drink and a hand towel to wipe some of the sweat from his face and hair, anything to try to chill out for a few minutes before the trouble arrived.  It was a good thing he took the opportunity, because it was only a few minutes before Anthony shouted from the door about Danielle being there.

"Of course she is," he murmured from the seat he'd taken at his own bar, finishing the drink as she helped a young human male who looked like he'd been on the wrong end of a bad fight into the building.  His cold blue eyes met her stormy gray for a moment of grim understanding that this whole night was officially fucked, and then the rest of her parade followed after her.  It was like a stream of Vidas, other than the young man they'd brought in and Lance going back out for poor Heather.  By then, Ash and Anthony had hastily pulled the chairs away from some tables, offering up some makeshift place for injured folk, and Dave stepped up to help ease Heather onto one of them.  Laura and the human were hurt, that much was ridiculously obvious, but it was Heather that his eyes kept returning to.  He knew for a fact that the demi-form she was currently in was impossible, drawing plenty of questions that he didn't exactly have time to wait for answers to. 

Where do I even start? he thought, just a tad irritably just at the level of energy he was going to have to expend to deal with this, especially after the night they'd already had.  Being useless after this just wasn't an option, either.  "Dare I even ask how Heather ended up this way?" he remarked, not really expecting much of an answer.  The problem with it being unnatural was that if he was able to take care of it, it was going to be difficult.  He was tempted to take care of the other two first, but dare he attempt to help Heather on anything less?

"Heather first.  Anthony, Dave, check the other two for serious injuries, please," he told them, definitely meaning along the lines of 'life threatening'.  He didn't think either of them were going to die in the meantime, so he figured he could make it work.  He ran his hands over Heather's face, leaning closer to her to talk softly, just reassurances and promises that he was going to do everything he could, so that when he rested his palm over her forehead, she didn't think it odd.  The last thing he needed was for her to be paranoid and trying to block him, and he pressed at her white aura, offering it some extra light of his own to calm and reassure her as she cried and asked for Harvey.  "Someone call her husband."

His other hand slid to hers for a moment, squeezing as he opened up the power centers more fully, positively pouring energy into the aura that affected her shapeshifting, and though he felt a budge that drew a gasp from him and a short choke out of her, and moved their hands to rest over her chest.  That actually lined him up with three of her power centers (which he hadn't planned, just hadn't been able to get his hand out of hers), and opened him up ever further to her.  He could feel her shift threatening, like it was right there on the edge and ready to tip, but he wasn't pushing hard enough just yet.  He grit his teeth, muscles in his arms and back clenching and sweat breaking out on his face and shoulders again, and gave another mental heave.  Heather suddenly screamed, back arching and wings stretching for an instant before they suddenly just withdrew.  It was a sudden rush, done in that quick instant, and Ash knew exactly when he could let go because it felt like falling and then the painful impact.  He let go of her almost like he'd been burned, stumbling for a moment and grabbing the edge of the table to steady himself while he just focused on breathing and being in the present.  He glanced over Heather to satisfy his own metaphysical understanding that the job was done, but that was all he was bothering with for the present moment.  He needed a second to breathe before he tried anything else.

 As Danielle lead the pack in, Laura's arm slung over her shoulder, she made eye contact with Ash and the flicker of a half-smile appeared across her face for only a second. It was like she knew that she was worth that stiff drink that didn't even affect him anyways, like some giant cosmic inside joke the two were always on opposite ends of. She slowly let Laura down into one of the chairs Anthony had pushed over, and she caught his eyes as she ducked beneath Laura's arm, letting her cousin lean back and take slow, steady breaths on her own. She kicked another chair under her feet so Laura could relieve the pressure of her swelling-but-not ankle.

"It's like looking into a mirror, isn't it?" she asked Anthony, amused in all of this turmoil. Danielle had become less crazy than before, but still the things that came out of her mouth were somehow always inappropriate. She turned back around and motioned for Chloe, careful to keep her attention on Ash as he tried to asses the damage Heather had. "Take care of him," she said, pointing at Trevor. "Not her, though," she warned. She took her eyes off of Ash and looked squarely at the blonde. "She'll heal on her own," she said. It was unclear as to why she was warning Chloe off of Laura, but it probably had something to do with how much energy she'd spent so suddenly. She'd gone up like a match, and Danielle worried that Laura might accidentally fry any healer who put their hands on her. It wasn't that she didn't have confidence in Chloe, it was just that she knew the Vida energy was a hungry one, and it didn't always want to let go.

Speaking of hungry energy, she peeled herself from that situation just as Ash was trying to wrap up Heather's wings. She was glad she did, putting herself just behind the path of stumbling that Ash made. She put her hand out, palm against the small of his back. Her eyebrows raised as he turned to glance at her, as if to ask if he was okay, but he just brushed it off. Now was probably not the time for anyone to act like they'd just had the wind knocked out of them, and she knew that more than anyone, but it wasn't like she couldn't tell. Still, she nodded ever so slightly at him, and then looked beyond him to Dave.

"Andrew's on his way," she said, much to the chagrin of Lance, who ironically had called him in the first place, if only to get ahold of Danielle. She turned, her hand still at Ash's back, and couldn't resist sliding it up to his shoulder and resting it there as she spoke. "Lance, why don't you run into the kitchen and grab your sister and Trevor some water?" she asked. Trevor didn't look like he was in the state to drink now, but he would be in a few minutes. She glanced back at Laura, who was still mending, now having moved herself to a booth to lay down in. Trevor still looked worse for wear, but that was only because Chloe was taking her sweet time.

Danielle nodded to their direction, an indication that this was something Ash would want to see. "C'mon. You were always curious about what made Chloe set your radar off; well, now you're about to find out," she said. She took his hand gently, pulling him to where they sat. Chloe was kneeling next to Trevor, who'd made a command decision to sit on the floor and not in a chair, and was currently laid out with his head tipped back against the side of a bench. He was fading in and out of consciousness, and wasn't quite coherent. He kept talking about an angel.

"He's human?" Chloe asked, putting her hands at his temples. She looked up to Danielle, fingers massaging them gently.

"One-hundred percent," Danielle replied.

Chloe nodded. She'd been told not to heal Laura because the Witch's magic might bite her back, she understood. Trevor was all human, so he was within her boundaries -- but he'd been beat up pretty good. Chloe had never done anyone up that had this many sustained injuries. She wasn't sure she could.

From a questioning, tired glance on Ash's end, Chloe's gaze returned back down at Trevor, and she lowered her head. At once, Trevor's injuries began disappearing. They seemed to 'fade' off of him, as though they were being rewound. Large cuts and bruises closed back up or turned back to normal colour; the few large, gaping wounds he had fixed themselves up, too, but were more slow about it. Meanwhile, Chloe's body reflected the injuries for brief intervals before they too, faded away. Chloe felt severe and intense pain in her head, but she held on because she had too much pride to let go, and when she finally withdrew, Trevor would still be sore, but healed, and she'd have a thin line of blood running down her nose, something that caused Danielle to hand her a napkin absently.

"Thanks," Chloe said, dabbing at her nose. Her face was so serene; it seemed more like she'd just done some common menial task rather than save someone's life. She sat down with a little thunk in a chair instantly after she'd finished wiping her bloody nose, though, and felt lightheaded.

Danielle, meanwhile, was trying to explain in as much detail everything that she knew to Ash. It still had holes, though. After she was done, she motioned for Lance to come and sit by Laura. "I think she can give us a better version, but she's going to need a few moments. How do you feel?" she asked, taking a step back from Ash to assess his damage more objectively. Dave had been assigned the dubious task of calling Harvey on Heather's behalf, something that she did not envy at all, and eventually he emerged from the back with his phone stuck to his ear.

He most certainly didn't verbalize that he was grateful for the solid support of Dani's hand against his back when he stumbled, but that wasn't exactly the kind of thing that was necessary with them.  They communicated more through glances and simple eye contact than anyone gave them credit for, so he just shrugged off the concern that she was putting off and put his focus into standing straight and not looking too haggard.  It was easy enough, considering she offered him the distraction of watching Chloe with Trevor just an instant later.

Just looking at the human and Laura Vida had him prioritizing Trevor before Laura in his head.  Laura was healing on her own, however miserable that had to be, but the human was in pretty bad shape and would be needing his attention.  It was why he sighed as he took it in, giving Chloe a curious look as she asked if Trevor was human with her fingers massaging at his temples like she was.  What was she doing?  If he hadn't made a rule about reading the minds of people close to him without permission, he'd have been far more in the know about little miss Chloe, but he couldn't actually be anything other than grateful at that exact moment.  That was one less person he had to worry about, and he could discuss this whole thing with Chloe later.  In fact, it was pretty clear in his expression when he stepped up in front of her where she'd sat down that they would be having that conversation sometime soon, despite the fact that all he cared about currently was making sure that she was okay.  Other than a drain on her energy, he didn't sense anything else unpleasant, so he had no choice but to be satisfied.  He couldn't deny that Trevor looked as healthy as he did, either.  So, he'd had some kind of healer under his nose all this time?  It wasn't any kind of healer he'd ever seen, not with the way the injuries had manifested on her own body while she worked, but that would be part of that later conversation.  For now, he held his feet and let Danielle explain things.

She shed much more light on the situation at hand than they'd had, but he could certainly agree with her that Laura was going to need to explain what had actually happened with Heather.  He might have even tried questioning Trevor, but he wasn't sure if the human was quiet up to it, yet.  Besides, Ash wasn't exactly in any hurry to exert himself, either questioning the human or anything else, until he'd had a moment.  The alcohol he'd had before didn't exactly do him any good, but eating something would.  Tristes, as immortal as they were, still needed to eat physical food almost as much as they needed to feed on energy.  Since he didn't have anyone in the area that he could get energy from, food was going to have to do the trick to try to get some of his strength back up. 

There was no sense in lying to Dani, especially with the way she was looking at him as she backed up to take him in fully, though he took the distraction that was Dave talking on the phone to Heather's husband for that moment of thought that it offered.  He didn't envy his best friend that task. 

"I'm drained, honestly," he started, shrugging and leaning back against the nearest table.  "I look forward to hearing who did that to her, because it's not supposed to be possible.  That was why she couldn't fix it herself, and why it took so much for me to do it.  If this is going to be a habit of theirs, I'm going to have to start feeding more completely more often."

Did he like admitting that it took that much out of him to fix whatever that vampire had done?  No, not at all, but this was Dani.  She was one of the few people that he would admit it to, and even if he hadn't, she'd have guessed on her own.  It wasn't like she (or anyone else) usually saw him hungry, and that was because he didn't play around with it.  They never saw him utterly sated because he typically took tastes that wouldn't be noticed from various people he was in contact with throughout the day instead of taking large amounts from any one person, and he supplemented it with regular meals consisting of 'real' food.  His power wouldn't be at full strength and didn't grow the way he'd have liked, but it meant that he avoided issues that he didn't prefer to deal with.  Tonight, he wished he didn't stick to that plan.

Actually, he was betting that he wasn't the only one that could use something to eat.  He didn't know how Chloe's abilities worked, but she and Laura were likely to be low on energy after all this, as well.  It was why he flagged Steve, his head cook, over.  "Is the stew we made earlier still hot?"

"Yeah, it should be.  When you said close the kitchen, we didn't get too far before coming out to help here.  Do you want some?"

"Yes, three bowls, make sure Chloe and Laura get some.  Anyone else is welcome, as well."

"You got it," Steve agreed, glancing at Danielle worriedly before disappearing to do as his boss had said.  Ash would be making sure that he played up his strength after he ate, if only to avoid those looks. 

"We're going to have to contact the guilds.  If we can help, I'm going to," he told Dani firmly.  For all of the neutrality he enforced in his establishment, this was murder and mayhem.  Targeting families was stepping over a line.

Right up until injured people started rolling in, Anthony was pretty damn pissed.  He liked Heather, but he didn't appreciate her not showing up without even a call to say she was sick or something, and he liked Darren, but disappearing like he had was just bullshit.  On any other night, it might not have even been a huge deal, but they were slammed and there was no reason that Ash should have to be jumping between the kitchen and bar like he was, or for his Dad to be running around like a maniac.  It was just stupid all around, and he'd been fully prepared to hold a serious grudge until he could take his anger out on the offending parties (especially Darren, because Heather was a girl).  He was going to stuff that cat into the dumpster out back, then maybe smack the dumpster itself with a broom handle a few times, just to hear him yowl.  That would teach him not to be an asshole.

Naturally, when Heather came in with the other abused parties, Anthony's anger at her dissipated, and he'd gotten the idea that Darren had called to tell Ash what was going on, so maybe he wouldn't hit the dumpster with the broom handle when he got his hands on the leopard.  He'd still want to stuff him in.  Heather was off the hook, but then, maybe Chloe was suddenly on it.  Anthony had no problem following instructions and checking over the human man that had come in with Danielle and her blonde party (god, wouldn't Stefan love this entire room right then?), but he did have a problem with the fact that Danielle totally gave Chloe the okay to tend to Trevor (fortunately, the guy wasn't very attractive right then, regardless of how he was supposed to look) and he definitely didn't like being out of the loop when she suddenly started doing something that she shouldn't have been able to do. 

Not only was she healing that guy right before his eyes, but she was showing signs of his injuries on herself as she healed him, which Anthony wasn't okay with.  It was one of his goals in life to make sure that she was never hurt, and here she was absorbing them off of someone else?  Definitely not cool, at all.  He tried to tell himself right then that the reason he was unhappy was because he didn't know about it, and that was absolutely true, but having Chloe put out that effort for another guy (then finding out that the dude was pretty underneath the beating he'd taken) was playing a pretty good part in his irritation over it all.  He'd never claimed that he wasn't jealous, but he also hadn't exactly admitted that he was as into Chloe as he was.  They hadn't actually gotten anywhere, and Anthony hadn't actually laid any official claim.  He'd just been protective and territorial, which this new, suddenly not very injured, guy didn't know.  Anthony was going to have to watch him, in case he took a shine to his 'savior'. 

As if the situation wasn't bad enough, Anthony hadn't missed the way Ash had stumbled after dealing with Heather's wings, and he'd elbowed his Dad to make sure that Dave noticed, too.  That didn't mean that he wasn't focused on Chloe for her ordeal or that his father didn't go call Heather's husband, but they were both also watching Ash for further signs of weakness.  Danielle seemed to be on the same page, though she was more actively dealing with it.  That was a good thing, in his opinion.  Ash seemed to listen to her almost as well as Dave when she had something to say.  Anthony just hoped her advice was as good as his dad's. 

Finally, after only a few minutes but what seemed like ages of staring at Chloe with an expression that couldn't decide if it was pissed, concerned or amazed, Anthony went over to squat in front of the chair she was in and take a look at her bloody nose.  He still wasn't happy, but concern had weighed out because he really did care about her, so he reached up to take the napkin away to see if it was still bleeding.  It was, so he tilted her head back with a finger on her chin, standing so that he could still watch her.  "Are you okay?"

Chloe did precisely as Danielle requested, because of two reasons. The first, obviously, was because the situation had turned for the worse, especially with Darren's phonecall, which Chloe did not understand the details of but knew enough from the tension in the bar to know that she didn't need to cause any trouble over it. She also knew that Danielle was the only person there currently besides her uncle Luke (who'd been around her more often now that he knew she existed, which was an entirely different ball game) who knew what she was capable of. She knew that if Danielle asked her to use her ability, it was for a good reason. When they'd brought her to Laura and Trevor though, she'd hesitated for a second.

Looking at Laura was like looking into a funhouse mirror. Chloe didn't look exactly like her, but Danielle - Danielle could have been her older sister. Trevor even bared a small resemblance as well - it was his cheekbones, probably - or it could have been the multitude of bruising. She looked from the wounded duo to Danielle and the boy with her, who could have been Laura's twin, easily. She wordlessly tended to Trevor, though, ignoring the compression that her skull began to experience. She could feel the hemorrhaging, but it went away as her nose began to gush blood. She felt nauseous for a few seconds as she stood up and stepped away, but Anthony was there to help her to a chair, where she sat down away from the rest of them.

She managed to lean away from him as he tried to "help" her nosebleed. "Don't," she said, taking the tissue back. "It runs down the back of my throat and it'll make me yak," she explained, leaning forward again. Her hair was a little sweaty, but it wasn't nearly as bad as one would have expected. All in all, Chloe was free except for a few cuts and bruises that had been healing over from larger wounds. She looked up at him. "Sorry," she offered. "It'll heal in a little. A nosebleed is usually the end of it."

Danielle sat with Ash as he ate, looking at her nails with a blank expression on her face for the most part. She looked back up at him every few minutes, and then would look past at Lance and Laura and Trevor, now sitting together and replaying their fighting to eachother. Laura, with her slowly mending ribs would laugh as best she could and then look pained, and then Lance and Trevor would both reach for her. She wondered idly if that's how she and Marcus would have been, but she supposed she would never know.

"They will know, though I don't know about names. Wait until they calm down, and we'll find out." She fixed her watery gray eyes on him, leaning forward to prop her elbow on the table and put her hand in her chin. "This is a clusterfuck," she spat. She idly toyed with the ends of her long, wavy blonde hair as she spoke, trying to look less calm than she actually felt. The problem with Danielle was that nothing much got her blood moving. Sure, the prospect of Ash needing energy or rushing to the aid of her family was enough to make her wake up a little, but she really wasn't in a panic like most should have been. Of course, neither were the hunters. They were visibly bothered, sure, but nowhere near as bad as the menial people who thought they'd get caught in the crossfire.

Funny that hunters were more relaxed even after they'd gotten their faces smashed in.

Andrew came into the Hollow only a few minutes after everything had happened, going right to where Danielle and Ash sat. He would wait to yell at Lance, Trevor and Laura later. "Ash, Danielle," he said, greeting them briskly as he sat down next to them. "So I've been getting calls from Frost ever since I left my house to come and pick up my brother and sister - and they're all the same. Midnight has unleashed on the Guilds. I don't know why, but there's speculation someone tried to kill the new Master of Midnight, and they finally have had enough with the slap and tickle."

He looked at Danielle, whom he couldn't really stand at all, and grimaced. "Thank you for getting Laura and Lance. I don't know what vampire they tangled with, but she says that he had a hawk, in demi-form, save his ass. She would have gotten him with one of her knives otherwise. I'm out of the loop, but she says he was young, and she thinks that the other vampire, the one who fucked up your sparrow, was older. She described him as Japanese, and crazy. He also knows what a Vida is, but evidently the other one did not. That's all I got. I don't know who they are but I think that Therrayans might have information. Also, regrettably, I think someone might need to talk to the two people who were actually in Midnight: Rafael Ortega and Gabriel Sullivan."

Danielle looked at Ash, eyes bright. "Who do we have diplomatic enough to do that?" she asked coyly. "I'd say this could potentially fall into my territory," she volunteered. There was nothing helpful in her tone of voice.

"No, no," Andrew said quickly, exchanging a glance with Ash. They both knew that Danielle had no sense of morality, and she didn't care what the two had been through when it came to getting information. "I think I can make a few phonecalls. In the meantime - is everyone accounted for?"

Trevor was totally man enough to admit that he didn't exactly know what went down after he started brawling with the vampire, and he was still confused about it.  He remembered the fighting, and then Laura attacked the vampire only to have an angel drop in front of him to block her knife.  From there, it was all fuzzy right up until a moment ago, when he'd come to with that pretty blonde girl leaning over him almost the way the scruffy dude was currently leaning over her, he'd thought for a second that he'd died.  Then, he'd tried to move, and realized that he still hurt.  That definitely didn't sound like heaven to him (and wasn't nasty enough for hell), but the rest of the world swept back into focus right after she did.  He was alive somehow, and though he was disoriented and still sore, he knew he should have been in a hell of a lot more pain than he actually was. 

He was also completely out of the loop regarding these people, and that didn't make him feel much better.  He'd just gotten his ass kicked and Laura had nearly died (he didn't consider his own life or death situation to have been quite as serious as hers), so he figured being a little paranoid wasn't a fault.  Laura seemed comfortable enough here, but Trevor wasn't disoriented enough to miss the unpleasant air about Lance when Andrew appeared.  He was much more observant than people seemed to give him credit for, but it still wasn't any of his business.  There were a few things that he just couldn't keep his mouth shut about, starting with Laura's injuries (since she basically doubled over every time she laughed a little) and the fight they'd just gotten out of.  He was going to have a zillion and a half questions by the time this was done, starting with how he'd been healed, how she was healing so fast, and who all these people were (not to mention the assholes they'd just fought with), but he could wait.  Besides, trash talking the asshole vampire was more fun.

Oh, and commenting on the blondness of the room, too.  "Okay, all joking aside, are you people all related, or what?  This room has so much blond going on, and you all look alike," he finally pointed out, breaking the former line of concentration as he leaned back in the booth and glanced around.  He had no clue that there was a wolf line being represented here, a witch line, and then Ash and Chloe completely separate.  He just knew they all seemed to fit together, which left him feeling out of place.  He had no way of knowing that Chloe had thought that even he looked like the Vidas some.

The joke was most certainly on Trevor when it came to demanding if everyone in the room was related. Tyler had ducked into the Hollow only moments before the group had, and had been in the back alley coughing on a cigarette. He didn't smoke, but a beautiful girl had asked for a light, and then when he'd handed her the beaten up Bic lighter he always carried (because he was such a Boyscout he thought he'd need it for something), she'd handed him a cigarette in thanks. Tyler had trouble lighting it, and so she'd bent forward and lit it for him.

"You aren't from around here, are you?" she asked, a coy smile on her full lips. She looked predatory almost, like a cat or a wolf. She shrugged her shoulders and leaned against the alley wall, ignoring anything that might have been on it that could be considered gross. Her long hair fell in dark waves around her face, and she seemed almost... ageless, somehow.

Tyler coughed again, trying to flick the ashes off of his cigarette. God, these things were gross. "Oh, no, I've only just gotten in a few days ago," he said. He didn't tell her he was looking for his brother, or anything else, because even though she was gorgeous, that... look in her eyes made him not trust her. It was probably better that he didn't, either - Purezza wasn't the sort you wanted to trust.

The door to the alley swung open suddenly and a tall, slender blonde poked her head out. She opened her mouth to say something, and the brunette flicked her cigarette into the nothingness of the night sky. "That's my cue," she said. She locked onto Tyler's eyes for a moment, and then patted him on the head as she passed by him. "Be seeing you again," she whispered.

By the time Tyler was done being blinded by the light from inside of the bar, the woman had vanished. He looked at the blonde, mouth agape, cigarette hanging loosely from his hand. She gave him a look that plainly told him that she could see right through him, and he threw it to the side, wiping his shaking hand on his jeans. "Sorry," he said sheepishly. "I probably shouldn't be back here, huh?"

Danielle folded her arms slowly, holding the door open with her booted foot. "Not if that's the company you're going to keep," she said cryptically. She regarded him for a long moment, and then nodded her head back towards the inside. "Come on, kid. It's freezing out here, and you are definitely not equipped to be wandering around tonight alone." She waited until he shuffled inside, and then looked around in the dark alley for another moment before closing the door.

Tyler walked back inside and sat down at a table towards the back, away from the attention. He watched the blonde walk by, and as she did, she wrapped her knuckles against his table twice, though he couldn't tell if it was a threat or if she was merely acknowledging his presence. He followed her with his eyes, up until she wrapped her arms around another blond man. That was his cue to stop staring. Then, of course, the doors burst open and all hell broke loose.

As it was now, he was currently sitting at that table still, warm beer in front of him, as he tried to listen in to the conversation that was going on in front of him. It was eventually the same blonde from before who piped up, nodding her head at his form.

"Did you need something?" she prompted.

Tyler sank into his seat as EVERYONE turned slowly to stare at him.

Ash didn't consider himself to have any true abilities in the area of premonition, especially knowing some of the people who really did, like Chase, Luke and Aspen.  He had a strange habit of being right on time for some things, as though he'd known beforehand, and having strangely accurate 'gut instincts'.  That didn't change his opinion on the matter -- that he didn't actually have any Seer type power -- but it might have meant that he was very slowly growing into some.  Regardless, he'd been right in sending Dani out to call in the young man who'd wandered outside before everything had gotten crazier, and he wouldn't have denied knowing that it was a good idea.  He just couldn't have said why.

Actually, he didn't have an idea as to why it was the right thing to do (other than just keeping the poor kid alive), until after he'd eaten and had a moment to take in the full situation before him.  With Anthony tending to Chloe, whom he was absolutely having a word or five with later, and the Terrible Trio retelling their adventures in a booth, it was a little easier to take notice of the young man again.  He was just sitting there, seemingly trying to eavesdrop on conversations that he wasn't likely to understand in the first place, and then there was Andrew.

Glancing up to offer the man his attention for the instant before Andrew helped himself to a seat, Ash still didn't actually grant the witch his full attention.  He was listening, but at the same time...not.

"Darren called and was ushered off to the airport by the pretty jaguar who likes the aluminum foil balls, and Heather has been recovered, so I'm fairly certain that's everyone that was meant to be here," he answered, not even batting an eye at Dani's 'joke' about her going to talk to Sullivan and Ortega.  He'd actually smirked a little at it, both because he knew that Andrew would refuse and because he wouldn't have agreed, either.  Dani's methods weren't always kind, and they were rarely diplomatic, if ever.  She was into blunt force trauma, and Ash understood that, sometimes, that was necessary.

Perhaps that was why he nudged her elbow when she addressed the young man again, asking if he needed something, and then nodded in the direction of Laura, Lance and Trevor.  "What do you see, Dani?" he asked, knowing as soon as he'd nudged her that he was right.  There was something in their auras, something that matched beneath the confusion and general innocence in the one and the anger, hurt and bravado of the other.  Dani might not see what he saw, but she would see something, he was positive.

Tyler was completely caught off guard by the woman's pointed question, and then she was staring at him. She looked from him to another guy in the bar, and then back to the man she was seated next to, and whispered something to him. Then she stood up, very slowly, and walked in the opposite direction. He watched her put her hands down on the table where the other three blondes were sitting, and whatever the hell she'd said made them all sit up and act right - it was like they were dogs and she'd said "SQUIRREL!"

Taking the nudge from Ash, Danielle tilted her head a little, fixing her eyes on Tyler so much that she could almost make out the faintest outlines of his aura. Maybe she'd been hanging out with Ash way too much, because when she blinked, they were gone. "Hm," she said. She turned to him, giving Andrew the opportunity to answer his ringing phone again. As the other Vida got up to leave the table, Danielle looked up at Ash from her slightly leaned position. "You can't be serious," she whispered. He just looked at her, and she sighed.

"Fine, I'll deal with it. You stay here," she said, knowing full well he had no intention of getting up. Ash's job wasn't to do things like this. Danielle was always the one to deliver strange news. She strode to the table where the two Vidas and the human were, and placed her palms down on it. She closed her gray eyes for a moment, and then opened them, focusing on Trevor.

"I think you have a visitor," she said matter-of-factly. She watched as Lance, who'd been slumped over on the table and Laura, who'd been leaning on her brother both sat up. Their heads turned left and right, but it was Trevor who was fixed directly on Danielle, as if he thought she was screwing with him.

"Turn around," she told him, voice very slow, as though she were speaking to a child.

Tyler sank further down into the booth. He was about to get his ass kicked. He could feel it - especially when the guy whose head was turned the whole time set his beer down with a pointed clank and demanded "WHAT" at the blonde. Tyler was beginning to wish he'd never come to the city. He'd been looking for his brother for three years. He'd been in New York for four days and already he'd almost gotten arrested, nearly been stabbed, tried cigarettes for the first time, and nearly gotten hit by a crazy Taxi driver. It was beginning to seem fruitless, especially when his presence in a bar seemed to make people want to bang on him.

He pulled out the picture of his brother - the only one he'd had, actually, one he'd stolen from his mother's ex-husband when he'd gone looking for Colton and Trevor, and glanced down at it. If he had to get his ass kicked, so be it. He wasn't leaving until he found his stupid brother. It wasn't like he had anywhere else he had to be, anyways.

Trevor was tired. He was amped, but he was tired, and he wanted to enjoy his beer and revel in knowing that the blonde girl with the nosebleed had just saved his ass. He was having a good time teasing them about being related and swilling his ice cold beer, and he was very familiar with the idea that this was going to be a limited relaxing time before they had to go right back out there to do more damage. He wasn't in the mood for games, and Danielle seemed keen on playing them.

When he finally turned around to see what she was pointing at, he fixed his eyes on a boy in a booth towards the back of the room. Boy was what appropriately described him, too. Kid had a baby face and a newness to him that told Trevor by a glance he couldn't have been in the city for long. He also looked scared shitless, but Trevor wasn't going to judge him for that. He furrowed his brow a little, looking at the kid as the kid looked at something in his hand, and then back up at Trevor.

"...the fuck?" Trevor finally managed. He brought his beer around to his face as best he could manage, and tipped the bottle back. Yeah, that beer was necessary right about now.

Tyler suddenly stood up from the booth, looking very sure of himself - and then he didn't look sure at all, and teetered on his feet. He almost sat back down, but the way the blonde man was staring at him - Ash, that was (so many blondes) - told him not to lose his ground. He looked back at the picture quickly, and then back to Trevor. It was a late middle school photo, because that's all he could grab before Trevor's father had actually shot at him and chased him out of the house, but still.. add about fifteen years, and it could have been Trevor. Maybe.

"Trevor.. Browning?" Tyler said, his voice shaky.

Trevor didn't see it, or he was being too dense to admit that he saw it, and so he was able to stare at the kid with a rather uninterested, irritated kind of expression.  What was Danielle playing at, and why were Laura and Lance looking at him like that.  Actually, they'd looked from the kid to him, then back to the kid and then to him, almost like they were comparing, which made NO sense.  He took another long swallow of his beer, suddenly getting the feeling he was going to need it, but he pulled the bottle away from his mouth as the kid stood up.  For an instant there, the kid looked like he had a plan and was GOING to follow through with it, but he faltered, looked to Ash (who was strangely focused on the situation from where he was sitting, particularly the new kid), and then he had his courage back.  He also had something in his hand, a piece of paper or something equally non-threatening.  Even so, Trevor was watching him with the slightest tinge of caution.  Something was up.

"Yeah, that's me.  Why?" he demanded, that cautious edge sharpening when the stranger spit his name out, but that was nothing.

Logically, Trevor knew that there was an actual response there, but he didn't remember hearing it.  He remembered dropping his beer bottle like it was something he'd seen on tv, distant and unimportant, and grabbing for the picture that the kid suddenly offered him with the news of who he was.  Tyler Brandt.  The photograph was of Trevor, and when he snatched it up and stared at it, then looked at Tyler, he saw what the others had seen almost immediately.  Trev was much younger in the photograph, younger even than Tyler looked now, but there was absolutely no mistaking the resemblance, especially there.  Trevor hadn't looked 'new' since he was a small child, but he'd had something of a babyface for awhile that had worked wonders for con jobs.  Tyler had the same kind of face, with the kind of sincerity that Trevor was used to seeing out of Colton and hardly wore himself.

He actually wished for a second that he was back on the floor, bleeding and unable to keep track of his surroundings, because this was just too much.  "Bullshit," he murmured, but not because he didn't believe it.  The kid spit out his mom's maiden name, Brandt, despite looking far too much like all of the Browning men not to have been Tim Browning's son.  He had the picture, and there was no arguing what was so obviously seen there.  How the hell had Tyler found him?

Tyler was a full three inches shorter than Trevor, but he felt a lot smaller at the moment. When Trevor snatched the photo out of his hands, Tyler reached back for it, but the other man was stepping over the spilled beer and looking at it more closely.

"I'm Tyler. Tyler Brandt," he said, as though that could explain everything. It couldn't, obviously - shit, it didn't even scratch the surface. Tyler watched Trevor's face go from confused, to concerned, and then to disbelieving and cold. Bullshit. Tyler almost took a step back, but instead he tried to steel himself, actually imitating what he was seeing Trevor do.

"I've been looking for you for three years," he told him, trying to ignore the group of people gawking at them. "All I had to go on was some bullshit I found in - " He'd been about to say in his mom's things, but he realized that was Trevor's mom, too, and suddenly it felt weird to hate her so much. "I just found some stuff. When I turned eighteen, I was out on my own, and I didn't have much to go on. I tried to track down Tim, first. He's a mean old badger, that one," he said, a nervous laugh not helping in the slightest when Trevor just narrowed his eyes to make them even more scrutinizing than they already were.

"Anyways, uh, he didn't give me any real information." He shot at Tyler and told him to 'get the hell out', after demanding to know how he'd even found him in the first place - but why split hairs? "I grabbed this photo of you before I got out of there, and the last lead I had was an apartment in California. Damned if this ain't the furthest point from that place, though, but I will say this - Colt was good about leaving forwarding addresses. It was a PO box, and it wasn't a good address anymore, but I kind of just hoped you were still in the city."

Oh man, Tyler was trimming a lot of the details out of this. He didn't tell Trevor that Christina was dead, that she'd nearly drained his savings account dry with her alcohol habit, and that his dad had walked out a long time before that happened. He didn't tell Trevor that the money he did have left was spent tracking Tim down, only to have the man tell him to rot in hell. He wouldn't give up, though - he didn't have anyone in the world left, and he'd have hated himself for not trying. It gave him a purpose, searching.

He was quiet for a second, and then looked back up at Trevor. "I've been looking for you for three years, man. As soon as I knew you were out there, I started looking." That sort of explained a lot - Christina hadn't ever actually TOLD Tyler about Trevor and Colton. He'd found out on his own, through old medical documents and other bullshit he'd cleaned out before the trailer had been taken over by the bank. He didn't have anything to go back to, now. Three years of hotels, odd jobs, and trying to keep his head down - it had been rough, but Tyler had made it.

This was surreal.  Trevor didn't WANT to believe it because it was just too ridiculous on top of the bad shit already going on, but this 'brother' situation required an explanation and the alternatives were crazier than the truth that Tyler was peddling.  The kid knew too much, had the picture and Colton's brand of sincerity, which was enough to blow Trevor's mind on its own, but it truly was that sensation of staring at a younger version of himself (or a younger version of what he COULD have been) that threw him from denial into belief.  Tyler had, right in front of his eyes, essentially imitated him in the way he'd covered up his weaknesses.  The kid was scared, but he pushed forward anyway, just like Trevor had always done.  He'd even cracked a joke about Tim, which Trev didn't much appreciate at the time but still knew he'd have done if the roles were reversed.  In fact, standing there staring down at a picture of himself that he hadn't even known his dad had kept (one of the many short-lived friendships he'd made as a kid had included a mother addicted to taking photos of her kids, so Time had gotten some of his, as well), he gave into his own need to make some kind of sarcastic or amusing comment.  He had to, or the tension might break that careful facade.

"I'm surprised he didn't shoot you," he remarked, wondering exactly what his father had done.  The fact that Tyler had the photo and wasn't dead was a point in his favor with Trevor, but his father's silence on the matter said even more.  If Tim thought Tyler was lying, he'd have warned his kids that some whackjob was looking for them.  Finding out like this was tough on Trevor, who wanted to refuse the information so that he could process it first (which was what he'd have done if Dad had warned him), but had to face the fact that Tyler was really his brother, or that there was a wussier alternate universe version of himself running around.  Brother was more likely, and less damaging to his ego.

Brother.

He turned his eyes up to Tyler and kept them there this time.  Nobody could really fault him for being paranoid, but he honestly didn't know how to deal with this.  He'd been getting into the worst messes of his life since Colt had left him to his own devices to pursue his own life of school and normalcy, and right up until he started spending so much time with Laura and Lance, he'd been headed on a swift downward spiral.  He didn't much think about it, but he might have been dead in a very nasty way by now if he hadn't pulled himself out of it and focused his 'Colt attention' on Laura some.  Obviously, she already had an older brother to watch out for her and keep tabs on her, so she'd gotten a much smaller dose than Colton ever had, but even if he was just their friend, it gave him people to give a shit about and keep himself alive and functioning for.  Sadly, Trevor was one of those people that just didn't know how to live for himself, and now here was this kid, his brother, showing up in the middle of a crisis completely unprepared.  Tyler was either going to be exactly what Trevor needed (though Trev would never admit it), or he was going to get both of them killed.

Brother.

He never would have burst forward like he had if he had maintained any real awareness of his surroundings, that much was certain.  If he'd remembered Laura and Lance were there, not to mention the other people he didn't know who were witnessing an increasingly private family moment, he probably would have checked himself, but he didn't.  His attention was all on Tyler, and when he closed the distance between them and yanked the kid into a firm hug, he wasn't thinking about his ego or anything else.  All that was there in his brain at that moment was the rock-solid 'oh my fucking god' understanding that he had a younger brother that had been completely outside of his realm of awareness and protection, and suddenly that this kid was standing here in the middle of a very real crisis of epic proportions.  Trevor had just gotten him, and now there was the very realistic chance of losing him shortly after.  Not cool.

Tyler was pulled into an abrupt hug by Trevor, one that went from manly and gruff to real in about as long as it took for Trevor to really let it sink in. Tyler tried not to just stand there, but to be honest he'd been so starved for attention from his mom that he didn't even know how to hug properly, so he sort of patted Trevor on the back and then stepped away as soon as he saw an opportunity to. It wasn't that Tyler didn't feel the overwhelming sense of connection to his brother, but he just couldn't translate it physically.

"To be honest, he did try," he said in reference to Tim, scratching the back of his head nervously. "And anyways, he wasn't too thrilled that I even existed to begin with. Guess there's a lot I don't know about our family," he admitted. He looked down at the ground, and then back up at his brother.

All the while, Laura had taken Lance's arm in her hand and squeezed it, watching the exchange take place. She turned to her brother, eyes wide, and made a face at him, to which Lance's expression could only be mirrored exactly. It was like the two were twins, even if they weren't.

Laura stood, very slowly - mostly because she was still in pain - and walked just behind Trevor. She nudged him a little, like a cat might. "Aren't you going to introduce me?" she asked with a small smile. It was her way of letting him know that she was behind him 100% - or her way of letting him know she was still in the room, since he seemed to have lost touch there for a second. While she did that, Lance edged out of the booth to clean up the spilled beer. Luckily the bottle hadn't shattered everywhere, which meant he could busy himself but still keep an ear on the conversation.

"Hey," Tyler said, waving shyly at Laura. She was gorgeous - even if she looked like she'd just gotten into a fist fight. He didn't want to make assumptions, and so he tried not to concentrate on the scratches and bruises she displayed. "Are you his girlfriend?" he ventured.

The laughter from Danielle was almost crowing as she strode back to Ash, her back turned but shoulders shaking as she moved. Tyler scratched his head again. Guess not.

It was strange how both of them had grown up with little in the way of physical affection, yet they had such different comfort levels with it.  Trevor, Colton and their dad used hugs sparingly, almost like they were precious (though they'd never thought of it that way and likely never would), whereas Tyler didn't seem to know what to do with one when he had it.  That was curious, since Trevor remembered hugs with his mother fondly before she left, but that was a conversation for another time, if at all.  There was enough to focus on for one day already (or, more than enough, honestly).

Laura helped with that, believe it or not.  Right up until she nudged him and asked for an introduction, he'd completely been in tunnel vision and forgotten about everyone around him.  Suddenly, he felt awkward, like these people had witnessed an intimate moment, but it wasn't his way to clam up about it.  Naturally, he took the clumsier approach with Danielle's laughter in the background.

"You kidding?  She doesn't like me enough for that kind of trouble.  Just the kind that gets both of our asses beat," he joked, pulling an impressively convincing smile, despite being a little sore over Danielle's laugh.  Why was the idea of Laura being his girlfriend funny?  Danielle didn't know him, so it wasn't like she knew that Trevor wouldn't know how to treat a real girlfriend and would probably fuck it up, so why was she laughing?  He could believe that Laura knew how to have a boyfriend, and he'd have bet she'd had them before.  Probably some cute kid in high school that was totally wrapped around her finger, or something.  It seemed likely.

God, could Trevor have been more far from the truth? Laura's inability to keep a relationship was the base of a lot of her issues, though the fact that she had Lance covered most of that up. The two seemed unusually close, but it was only because both of them knew that they were all they had, essentially. The reason that Lance and Andrew didn't get along had a little to do with the fact that Andrew didn't like how heavily they relied on eachother. In the world of a Vida witch, you were all you had. That was not what had prompted Danielle's laughter, though - she could simply pick up on the fact that Tyler thought Laura was a pretty girl, and she knew his line of questioning wasn't as innocent as it seemed.

When Trevor sputtered out an answer before Laura had time to think, she made good on hiding any facial expression that would have mirrored her own actual opinion over the matter. No, she didn't think she was his girlfriend. They hadn't ever even been intimate - not even a kiss. But Laura felt something, and she didn't know how to sort it out. She supposed her idea of a date was what they'd been doing that night: beating up on vampires. She realized right then she had a very, very skewed sense of propriety and romance.

"Oh, but that's how boys know I'm serious," she said, her voice making the statement Trevor had said more emphatically a joke. She looked back at Tyler and smiled. Usually she'd have chirped something to make him uncomfortable, but Laura didn't feel like pushing his buttons when he'd already been through enough - and so had she, come to think of it.

"So, where are you staying, Tyler?" she asked, tilting her head.

This was SO UNFAIR.  Trevor would have liked to know that Laura felt 'something', because he'd have been more than okay with their hunting trips being dates if she wanted to call them that.  He didn't ever make a move on her because he had nobody now that Colton had gone to school, and he wasn't about to risk the only two friendships he really had because he was a horny bastard.  Trevor needed a little more communication than this to know that she might actually like it if he showed more interest in her, and this doubt she was instilling in him?  Not cool.

It sounded like the perfect, joking response to what he'd already said, but her comment had him wondering if there might actually be some truth to it.  He'd never seen Laura actually pursue any kind of interactions with a guy, and didn't honestly think he'd ever seen her flirt.  Maybe it WAS her way of showing interest in a guy, going hunting with him.  She wasn't exactly a typical girl.

Fuck.  Now he didn't know what to think.  Was she kidding, or trying to drop a hint?  He preferred just acting on impulse with this kind of shit, but he actually cared how this turned out, so he was ridiculously off-balance about it.  Fortunately, she gave him an out in asking Tyler where he was staying.  Frankly, Trevor didn't know what to do with this.  If Tyler needed a place to stay, Trevor could take him in, but this was still ridiculously surreal to him.

"Good question," he agreed, glancing at his brother.  Christ, this was going to take some time.

Tyler's eyes widened a little at Laura's proclamation, and he brushed it off with a forced laugh. Man, that girl seemed wild. He'd have to ask Trevor about her when they were alone. Of course, he had a lot of stuff to ask Trevor about, but she was definitely going to be a nice deviation from the usual 'o hi i'm new' conversation that was inevitably coming along. Tyler also didn't know about anything that had happened that night, or what was in store from Midnight in the future. None of them did, but at least they were half-way in the loop. Tyler was plain ignorant to the events.

"Well.." he hesitated. He hadn't really been staying anywhere solid. "I was staying at a hotel on this side of town. I've kind of exhausted all my resources with locating you. I mean, if I hadn't have found you here, I guess I would have gone back to the drawing board, but I hadn't really considered what would happen if I did find you. Truth be told, wasn't expecting to find anything except another forwarding address."

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his baggy-but-not-too-big jeans, feeling somewhat guilty for admitting the fact that he never thought he'd actually find Trevor. There was some merit to it, though - on Trevor's end, it just made him sound that much more untouchable.

Laura picked up a disturbance in the Force - or, a disturbance in Trevor's aura, anyways. She didn't know what, or why, and could only assume it was connected to Tyler somehow, but it still did make her wonder if it had been in regards to her quick scoffing laughter and responses. She made a thoughtful "Hm," sound to his reaction, though it could have been directed at Tyler also. It was hard to tell with Laura what she was thinking sometimes, especially since right now she was still a little too beat up to be fully expressive.

She retracted from the conversation to sit down next to Lance again, and looked over at him as Tyler spoke to Trevor. Her look plainly said, "Now what?", but Lance just shook his head. He hadn't seen any of that coming, at all. He was just happy to not be talking to Andrew, which irritated Laura but was low on her list of priorities at the moment. They'd talk about it later.

It seemed there would be a lot of conversations 'later'.

"Why don't you two sit down?" she prompted, tapping the table with her right hand. She offered up a smile to Trevor, but it wasn't convincingly warm. It was more of a courtesy, because now she was confused, and she didn't like it.

Tyler shouldn't have felt guilty for thinking that he wouldn't find Trevor, because Trevor wasn't an easy person to be found.  In fact, the only reason Tyler probably found him was because Tyler was pretty smart for a kid with no training and Trevor hadn't been trying too hard to stay hidden.  He'd been reckless and completely apathetic about his own safety all this time, and he was lucky that it was just Tyler who'd tracked him down.  He'd been a bit more careful about covering his tracks since he'd been hanging with Laura and Lance, but that didn't stop someone from picking up on the trail he'd left around the city until then.  The problem was, Tyler had probably left an even more obvious trail, right here to Trevor.  Hopefully, nobody picked it up.

"Well, my place isn't a five star hotel, but you can take Colt's bed.  He's not using it," Trev offered with a nonchalant shrug that suggested he was okay with whatever Tyler chose, but it was a lie.  He might take offense if Tyler wasn't interested in crashing at his place.  Of course, Trevor was also fine with thinking that this whole situation that they'd gotten into helping Heather was an isolated event, and over.  The vampire was gone, all four of them had walked away with an ass-beating, and Trevor figured it was even.  That was until Laura leaned over to fill him in on the situation as they knew it, information that had probably been offered to them while Trevor was in his own little world dealing with Tyler.  Now, he was changing his mind from playing casual about his offer of a place for Tyler to stay, and doing it quickly.  Just, how to hit that subject?  "Actually, it sounds like this whole city is about to implode, so you might be better off getting out of dodge."

It pained him to think about sending Tyler away so soon, but that didn't mean it had to be permanent.  They could meet up again when everything calmed down, and when Tyler's life wasn't in danger just from being related to Trevor.  Trevor, who liked to hang out with the Wonder Twins and piss Midnight vampires off.  They were all geniuses, but it was so damn fun most of the time.

 Tyler looked confused as he sat. "But - I just got here," he sputtered, in obvious shock to Trevor's response about telling him to leave again. He looked at the girl for support, but she had closed her eyes momentarily and was absently wiping blood from her nose. Gross. He looked back at Trevor, unsure of how to react. Part of him wanted to cry - and he wasn't a sissy, but damn, what the hell! But the other part of him wanted to talk back and tell his big brother that he could take care of himself. Another glance at the duo across from him told him that the 'taking care' part he knew was not precisely as good as he thought it was, and so he just said nothing.

That was when Laura cut in.

"Smoke," she blurted suddenly.

Tyler looked at her, and then around wildly, trying to see where the smoke was coming from. "Where?" he asked, frantically standing up and whipping his jacket off as though he were going to prove he were tough at least once by taking out a fire.

Laura watched Tyler jump up and laughed aloud. "No," she said sharply. "Sit down, spaz."

Tyler sat, looking properly admonished, but he still glanced up and over for this 'smoke' she was talking about.

Laura turned to Lance, who was remaining quiet at this point still, and then back to Trevor. "Listen, until this blows over, I know where we can stick him - where he won't get into any trouble," she added pointedly, looking at the boy. "Then, once it blows over, he can just move in with you. Voila. Problem solved."

She leaned back, looking rather pleased with herself.

"You're going to smoke me?" Tyler said. He didn't follow.

"No, there are other wwwwpeople who I know that are practically immune to trouble," she said. She'd almost said 'witch', but she didn't really feel keen on that discussion right now. She also knew that the Vida and the Smoke lines didn't necessarily get along; fortunately, she didn't care. She'd roll up and drop Tyler off and they'd take him in and like it.

While the set argued over what to do about the new-found brother, Danielle had problems of her own to deal with. Heather was asleep, finally, which meant that Ash could work on her without utterly destroying her, but they had come to an impasse on how to deal with a specific detail of the problem.

Danielle had managed to keep her voice lowered, but she was starting to lose her temper. Ash kept doing that tired eye-rolling logical speak with her in his 'calm voice' and all it did was make her want to get louder, like that would get her fucking point that he was obviously missing across.

"I don't really see how you're planning on keeping this little tidbit to yourself. That is not fair," she said, and she jabbed him with her index finger in an incredibly irritating manner. They'd taken to the kitchen now, where her loud hissing wouldn't be observed by the people up front who could hear them. Everyone assumed they were discussing Midnight, anyways.

The fact of the matter was that Heather was pregnant, and by now the child was probably dead. She wasn't very far along - barely along, actually, but it was something Ash had stupidly mentioned to Danielle, probably thinking she'd agree that not telling was the best answer. But Danielle had suddenly taken up a flag and began to crusade for the other side, which he had not anticipated.

Danielle's poking was about to drive him nuts, especially because she had this knack for hitting the same exact spot every single time, and it was starting to sting. He wasn't immune to injury, just usually so capable of healing himself even as a reflex that it didn't matter. His body was essentially trained to dump energy into healing for as long as he could afford it if he was badly injured, so it wasn't as though it was a problem, but he was low on energy currently. Fixing Heather had been difficult, and he wasn't even finished. The issue of the child she was carrying was a big one, one that he'd made the MASSIVE mistake of mentioning to Danielle, thinking that she would confirm what he'd already decided and that would be it. Yeah, he was wrong, and now he had another headache forming in his general vicinity. Heather's husband would be there shortly, and though Ash wasn't opposed to having another hunter in the building while the shit was hitting the fan, he didn't need a dangerous, emotional man there. Telling him that not only had his wife been attacked, but his unborn child had been killed was NOT conducive to helping everyone survive.

Arguing with Danielle when all he really wanted to do was get a meal that consisted of energy instead of food was another thing that would be conducive, but he wasn't getting that right then, either. It was making him irritable, and combining with the poking he was receiving in a bad way. Finally, he turned and grabbed Dani's wrist, his grip not tight at all, but enough to make his point clear that he wanted her to STOP. CHRIST.

"What do you propose, Dani? That I tell him now, while his wife is still a wreck, so that he can be even more unbalanced when we need the help the most? The child is either dead or nearly there, so I see no reason to tell them and have both of them be more upset at such a crucial time. It's a trauma that they don't need, and if the child is alive, I could try to save it, but I make no guarantees that it would work or what condition I would be in afterward."

He didn't want to say it out loud, but he was afraid that the night had much more trouble in store for them, and he didn't want to be so badly weakened for it. He couldn't protect the people who mattered if he was weak, and he was already uncomfortable with his current state. Trying to save that child was possible, if it wasn't dead already, but at what cost? He didn't want to die that night, and even more than that, he didn't want his people to die that night. It was selfish, but he'd never claimed to be entirely lacking in such traits. In fact, quite the opposite, whether everyone realized it, or not. Surprisingly, it was Dani who tended to encourage him to do things out of the goodness of his heart, whether she knew it or not. Something would come up and she would react like this, in a way that utterly shocked him and made him feel guilty, and then he'd go and do the right thing even if it cost him. He was about 30 seconds away from throwing up his hands and going out there to work on Heather again, hoping that the food he'd eaten would be enough to help.

Damn it.

"Sometimes, I hate spending time with you," he told her, unable to stand looking at her and wondering if she thought less of him for refusing. Damn it. "I will try, and if I fail, we will tell the husband, but we will do it AFTER this blows over, and if I die, I'm going to haunt you."

The last bit was obviously more of a snapped joke than anything else, however much he wished he could mean it. He wasn't even sure that he HAD a soul to haunt her with. It was the point of it.

"Danielle," she snapped, "and I don't know." She snatched her hand back and turned to lean against the counter with a loud thump, crossing her arms. She blew her blonde hair from her face and then looked back at Ash, a quick movement by her head that caused her hair to brush against him.

"As long as you tell them. I was left under the impression that you weren't going to say anything at all." She paused. "I know if it were me, I'd want to know. And you don't hate spending time with me, so you can shut the fuck up about that right now. Who else would put up with you for this long?" she asked, arching her brow at him, her expression serious.

She did reach out and put a hand on his shoulder though, which was about as comforting as she was going to get at the moment. She was still mad, though the steam was quickly being blown off as she found satisfaction from his answers. She fell into silence for a few seconds, and then unexpectedly said,

"I hope that baby is okay."

Danielle didn't like kids. It was no secret. But for some reason, she liked Heather, and she liked Harvey. She had taken to Heather when the girl had come in for an application - nobody really knew why, but she had - and now she was a tiny bit bent out of shape.

"As soon as I can find out who did this, I'm going to take Andrew out for round two," she added, which was also uncharacteristic. She and Andrew hated eachother, but she could bet money that if he spent ten seconds with Heather he'd be right where Danielle was about the whole ordeal.

"So, Trevor's brother..." she prompted after another pause. She turned her body towards Ash, letting her hand slide from his shoulder. "That kid has some balls just rolling up here in the middle of this shit. You think he's going to be okay, or should I tell Trevor that they need to stay at one of my places?" Danielle bought property like nobody's business, and none of them were in her name, so it wouldn't be likely the spots would attract trouble.

"Immune to trouble, huh?" Trevor asked, cocking an eyebrow up in very obvious disbelief, but that was really only his own inability to stay out of trouble that made it hard to believe.  Of course, he also attracted it like a magnet of the opposite pole, so he had reason to feel that way.  If Tyler had half of Trevor's troublemaking and finding abilities, they were well and truly boned.  "I hope they are."

He wouldn't argue, wouldn't give his panic a chance to manifest even in his own mind, let alone out loud, and he most certainly wasn't going to go into a game of 20 questions over Laura's strange verbal typo.  At least, none of that was going to happen right then and there, but he reserved the right to go there in the future whenever he felt the need.  For now, having a safe place to send Tyler (even if he preferred the unrealistic idea of keeping him close) was much more important.  "What's the plan for getting him there in one piece?"

That was when the 'smoked' comment hit him, and he shot Tyler a confused look for half a second before it turned into an 'omgwtf are you talking about' kind of look.  "Wait, smoke you?  What?  No!"

Well, Ash and Danielle were obviously both pissed off, and Ash was adding being tired and energy starved to that list, but at least they seemed to have made some progress.  She wasn't making angry faces at him, and he'd accepted the fact that he had to go try to save Heather's baby despite how difficult it was going to be as quickly as it had taken her to say that she hoped the baby was okay.  If it mattered that much to her and it was something he could affect, he was going to do it. 

"He does, and that's exactly why I would suggest seeing how they handle it for themselves, first.  They're all welcome to make use of any of my resources, but they might have ideas of their own," he pointed out, rubbing his hand over his head and effectively destroying any semblance of normalcy his hair had fallen into since the last time he'd done it.  While he agreed with her sentiments regarding making whoever had hurt Heather regret being born, he would advise waiting a little while if it came up seriously.  "I'm going to see what can be done for the child, can you and Andrew work together to figure out where we stand with our defenses and threat level?"

Her hand had slipped from his shoulder, but he reached out to brush his thumb over her cheek, just a light, brief touch with a smile that was just as quick before he disappeared out the kitchen door, headed for Heather with his 'srs bsns' face back on and his thoughts on exactly how he was going to pull this off. 

Carefully.

He shot Danielle one more glance, almost like a deep breath before a dive, and then he rested both of his hands over Heather's abdomen and the power center there.  He could feel the presence of the child, which meant it was alive, but it didn't seem like it would be for long without his interference.  If he held back, it would die.  So, he didn't.  His eyes fell shut as he first opened the power centers between them and then had to force himself to start the flow of energy in her favor rather than pulling in the opposite direction to feed his own needs (which was what instinct said to do).  It started as a slow stream, easing himself into it, and then the flow increased like the opening of a dam until power, energy, life was pouring into the damaged womb and the dying little life that was going to be Heather and Harvey's child.  He put as much of himself as he could into it, knowing even without consciously thinking about it that if Dani cared that much about whether this baby lived or died, it mattered.  He didn't know why, but it did, and it would live.  He would make sure of it.

Finally ending the contact with Heather's body, he stared down at her like he was in a daze for a few seconds, just trying to pull himself back in and draw something back up for himself, but there wasn't much left.  If he thought he'd been starving before, he hadn't known the meaning of it.  He'd never used himself up so completely as this, essentially for fear of doing something he'd regret, but he didn't even have it in him to do anything as extreme as all that.  His face rose slowly to Danielle, eyes barely focusing, but he still smiled.  There was that pride of his.  "It's done."

Then, he dropped.

"Oh, they are," she assured him. "We can leave any time you want. I can ride along and show you the way, then catch a ride with Lance back, or I can just stay, or ride back with you. Whatever," she said, waving her hand. She smiled at Tyler again, and then looked at Lance. She wondered if she shouldn't go back with Trevor and tend to him. Now probably wasn't the time, but she could always blame her sudden outburst of wild passionate kissing on the night and the complications therein. When the sun came up, all would be forgiven. That was how it worked on nights like these. Everyone got a bye.

"Ready when you are," she said, brows raised.

Lance all but slammed his glass down on the counter, and began gathering his jacket and helmet. "Sonia's?" he asked, though he already felt what Laura's aim was. The duo was strange like that. They could hear eachother's thoughts, feel eachother's feelings. Lance certainly didn't miss how Laura felt about Trevor, and he didn't like it. Trevor was human. Hit him hard enough and he'd crumble. He wasn't good enough for Laura. Lance nearly cracked his teeth he clenched his jaw so hard, the thoughts coming and going in waves of rage. Trevor and Tyler, he could tell, only sensed his anger on a level that was basic to their predicament. But when he turned to look at Laura as he stood so that they could leave, the look on her face...

"Later," he said, his command abrupt. He couldn't do this now, not on top of everything else.

"Lance..." she began, her voice barely audible. He cut her off, and turned, directing his stormy mood to the door as he went to start his bike. She watched her brother, helpless. It wasn't a feeling she liked, but as she glanced back to Trevor and Tyler, she realized they were looking to her - to her for direction, control. She strengthened her resolve and pushed those feelings of confusion back down. At least she knew she was going to go home after this, and not to Trevor's after all.

"Let's go."

At the door, Andrew tried to stop her, and she side-stepped to let Trevor and Tyler go. She held her hand up to him, side-stepping his grip. "I can handle it," she told him. He didn't say anything to her, just stared at her with his cold expression. Family secrets were plentiful among this bunch, whether they could be proven or not. Even Andrew was not immune to his share, but Laura was still his baby sister, still his responsibility.

He was already on his bike by the time they came outside. Lance narrowed his eyes through his helmet as his older brother's figure appeared in the doorway. It was coming from all directions, it seemed, but frankly, he didn't give a flying fuck at that exact moment. He rolled into the street, blocking traffic while they pulled the car out, then followed them to the Smoke-Castille household. He generally liked Trevor most of the time, but right now, he couldn't wait to unload him and his brother and get home. He needed to talk to Laura before she could talk to anyone else.

Danielle allowed a small smile as Ash grazed her cheek, and then nodded. "I will deal with Andrew, but after this," she told him. She followed him to where Heather was, ignoring Chloe as she lingered behind them. She paused at the top of the stairs, and then motioned for her to come up finally. May as well let the girl see what was going on. Chloe would just go up anyways, so Danielle didn't want her to hang around on the stairs, waiting for a miracle.

It was a mistake, though. As soon as Ash began to fall, Chloe lunged for him.

"Chloe, NO!" she yelled.

Chloe left Anthony's side shortly after his mothering became too much for her. She hadn't witnessed much of Danielle and Ash's conversation in the kitchen, but she'd heard enough to think she could help. If there was a baby involved, she figured maybe she could try to work on some of the internal injuries. She didn't know Ash was going to just go right for the gold, so she was surprised when the room suddenly became filled with the heavy thrum of his power. Tristes were a strange thing to behold, and Chloe was appropriately awed because of it.

When Ash fell, she reached for him, to steady him. She heard Danielle yell, but by then, it was too late. She could feel him - not him, his primal him, the Triste, hungry and needing and depleted and hungry. Chloe opened her mouth for a scream, but it came in reverse, like a shrill gasp. She was a healer by nature, and she volunteered her energy to try and soothe his wounds, but he needed too much, more than she could give.

Her face twisted in a painful, scary visage (the Ring was not a bad description), a silent scream of terror as she felt the life being sucked from her. Her veins began to run black and her complexion paled significantly - first white, than a strange, powdery gray colour. By the time she began to look not unlike someone five days drowned, Danielle finally managed to crush Ash's hand with her boot, breaking his grasp on Chloe. She fell to the floor with a thud, and everything went black.

When she awoke, it was several minutes later. Blood oozed from beneath her fingernails and out of her ears, and from her eyes and nose. Even from her mouth, which was the most disgusting thing of all. Chloe made sputtering sounds and sat up on her own, spitting blood and fiber from her slick lips in disdain. She rapidly wiped at her tongue, like she'd just gotten something nasty like green apple candy in her mouth, making all sorts of noises. She was hardly aware of her situation until she saw her hands, and then she felt the warm, gushing sensation of her nose.

"Oh, fuck," was all she said. She didn't dare stand up, rather preferring to remain seated on the carpet to avoid passing out. Her skin had returned to its normal hue, if not still pale by comparison of how she usually looked. Danielle was handing her a damp towel, which Chloe accepted weakly and pressed to her face in its entirety. Gross. Blood.

"Let's avoid doing that again," Danielle was advising Ash softly, who was also on the ground, but sitting up and looking very confused. "I think you almost broke her."

"Nah," Chloe said through the towel on her face. She ignored the severity of what had just happened, in part because she couldn't see what she looked like. If she had seen what Danielle had seen, she might've sang a different tune. "But I don't want to do anymore healing tonight, if it's all the same. Thank god Anthony didn't see that."

A familiar voice at the door asking too many questions made her groan. He may not have seen it, but he could smell something was wrong.

Trevor really had NO FUCKING CLUE where Lance's sudden anger had come from, but he had no choice but to assume it was over the situation at hand.  What else could it have been?  He certainly hadn't done anything all night that could have pissed Lance off, unless the guy wanted to blame him for the two of them getting their asses kicked, and even that wasn't something he'd really done wrong.  He didn't really understand what had happened and how he'd survived the beating he'd taken, but he was pretty sure that he'd have needed an extended hospital stay if he even survived had that girl not been leaning over him when he woke up.  He also knew that if Laura had died like he'd thought she had initially, he'd have blamed himself for the entire ordeal, but she hadn't, so he'd dodged that guilt bullet for the time being.  Yeah, he was just going to have to assume that Lance was pissed over the situation at large until the dude said anything else about it.

Of course, there was that weirdness between Lance and Laura, but really?  Trevor had enough going on with the Tyler situation, he just wasn't asking.  Speaking of which, he suddenly grinned and pulled Tyler up beside him so that he could put his arm around the kid as they went outside. 

"Since you're going to be around from now on, we'll have to find time to properly introduce you two, but this is my baby," he told his younger brother, the grin obviously ridiculously proud of the car they walked up to.  Laura took the front passenger seat without it even being a question, but Trevor grabbed the backseat door with a slow stroke over the top of the door.  He appreciated this machine. 

Still, the instant Tyler was in the backseat and the door shut, Trevor was behind the wheel and whipping out into the street behind Lance like the driver's seat was where he belonged.  He knew everything about that car and how it handled, every little quirk and all of her abilities in handling and speed, so in a way, he DID belong there.  Someone else, probably Andrew, had driven her to the Hollow, but he didn't think about someone else behind the wheel. 

Ash was no more aware of what was happening once he dropped than Anthony was of the situation, so his confusion as he forced himself to sit up (his fucking hand was throbbing) was just as pronounced as Anthony's as he entered the room.  He didn't like it anymore than the young wolf did, but whereas Anthony dropped down beside Chloe, his questions unanswered at the moment, Ash just stayed put.  Yes, sitting on the fucking floor rubbing his head and trying to get a grip on exactly what had gone on and why Chloe was bleeding from everywhere.  He ached in a way he was unfamiliar with, like he'd run miles on no food, water or sleep, and there was that awful nagging, gnawing hunger inside of him, but it wasn't as bad as he'd have thought it would be after...what?

He grabbed onto the table beside him to pull himself shakily to his feet, and it was only when he was standing that he saw Heather and it all came rushing back.  The baby.  "Did it work?  The baby?" 

If it had worked, he wasn't hungry enough, not by a long shot.  He should be unable to stand, desperate, after that kind of a drain, shouldn't he?  He glanced at Chloe where Anthony was moving her to a chair, and his eyes shot wide in understanding.  He didn't say anything, but he turned a questioning glance on Dani.  'You almost broke her.' 

FUCK.

"Chloe, I am so sorry," he said softly, turning back to her very suddenly.  He knew what he must have done, even if he wasn't really aware of it.  Danielle was there and must have stopped him, or he had no doubt that he'd have taken everything that Chloe had.  It was a good case for him feeding as often as possible in the future, honestly.  This whole night was.

 Danielle sighed and glanced over at Heather. She closed her stormy eyes for a moment, reaching out with her energy. Danielle realized that she hadn't spent very much of herself, which was good - she and Andrew were going to be operating at full tilt if it was necessary, and despite the fact that they disliked one another, it did nothing to save anyone who deigned to step aside when they made their path.

"It's alive. And, a boy," she said, brow furrowed. She opened her eyes. "Hm." The Hyena Matriarch and Capricia had both had girls, so a boy on the way was a little of a surprise. She supposed it was about time. "Where is the husband, anyways?" she asked, spinning around to look at Anthony. Yes, she knew he was somewhat endeared to Chloe, but it didn't change the fact that they would have an angry, chemistry-able Crimson 5 on their hands in a matter of minutes.

Chloe just sat there, allowing the room to move around her. She didn't want to touch anything, having no desire to leave bloody prints everywhere. She chose not to acknowledge Anthony's obviously agitated state, knowing that he was already reeling and she couldn't do much to convince him she was okay now that she was secreting blood everywhere like some sort of mutant.

"No big deal, Ash," she said, her voice laden with obvious exhaustion. She sighed heavily, wiping her brow with the back of her wrist to avoid smudging blood all over her face. "Danielle told me earlier not to touch any of the Witches. I should have known better. I feel like I was turned into a piece of beef jerky and then re-hydrated, though. Pretty intense."

She finally looked at Anthony. "I think I need a napkin," she said, laughing. "Your dad is gonna shit his pants."

Laura was thankful for two things: Trevor's unyielding belief that everyone's foul mood was to blame on their evening thus far, and that Andrew had the grace to bring the car back to the Hollow when he'd arrived at the scene five minutes too late. Trevor wasn't stupid, but he seemed to be letting a lot of bullshit go unsaid based simply on the fact that their night had been left pissing upwind. Thank fuck he lacked psychic ability. Sometimes she wished he had it solely based on what they did as a profession/hobby, but times like tonight when Lance wanted to throw his tantrums, she was so glad his mind was so unreceptive it was almost cloudy to try and read for someone who wanted to probe around.

She had been watching Lance ride ahead of them, and he was driving like an utter asshole. Seriously. He was cutting people off, running lights, and in general it appeared he was trying to get himself killed - while Trevor had only seen Lance arrive or depart, he'd never actually ridden with him in traffic, and Laura had. She knew he was driving like a fucking toolshed on purpose, and it was pissing her off the more she watched it. When she finally tuned into the conversation, it was obvious she'd missed something. She situated herself against the door and seat, turning to see Tyler and Trevor more fully.

Trevor had just given Tyler the entire walk-through of the car, from start to finish, bragging about how it had been hand-restored and blah blah expensive blah blah perfect. She rolled her eyes with a smile on her face, having heard it a thousand times. Cars didn't impress her, but she'd seen Trevor pick up his fair share of bitches with it.

Tyler, on the other hand, was very impressed by the car, and aside from that, happy that Trevor wasn't giving him the evil eye or suspicious of him (at least not outwardly). He listened intently to what Trevor said, asking little questions and making comments where appropriate. He couldn't help but notice Laura seemed to be focused on her brother driving ahead of them, and his eyes bugged out at a few of the moves Lance was pulling. He did notice Trevor didn't comment at all, simply gliding through traffic with ease.

"Dude, does your brother always drive like this?" he finally asked.

Laura shrugged, nodding to Trevor. "We all go a little apeshit some days," she said. It was a carefully diplomatic answer, and didn't really explain anything, but it was all Tyler would get. "We're going to be turning a few lights up," she told Trevor preemptively, only because she wasn't interested in sliding sideways through an intersection when Lance decided his blinker became an unnecessary stop on the tour.

Tyler just nodded. "So, where are we going, anyways?" he asked, sitting up a little to see both of them more fully. "Do you know these people well? Who are they?" Tyler was particularly worried that he'd end up locked in a basement, somewhere, honestly.

"They're like family," she answered him. "Bianca is a little younger than you, but I think Fiona is your age. They're the daughters - damn near twins. Kind of like you two, except less of an age difference," she said with a laugh. Now Laura was beginning to realize how much everyone she knew looked like everyone else. It was kind of Twilight Zone. She'd have to sit down later and make a chart of who could be related for fun - since it wasn't like she'd be doing anything else now. "They're a very special family," she promised. She was hesitant to dump the entire concept of the Children of Macht on them just yet - she'd have to explain sooner or later, but she honestly would rather have let them ask their own questions when they got there.

"Bianca and Fiona," Tyler repeated to himself. Evidently, it was the only part of her speech he'd focused on.

"Yeah. You two are definitely related," Laura spat, looking at Trevor with a grin.

Ash nodded to Danielle's answer, finding the gender of the child to be unsurprising, though he wasn't sure why.  It could have been that he just figured that a boy was likely, just because all of the other recent babies he'd seen had been girls, but it was more likely because he'd been so very involved with the child's survival.  Either he'd picked up on the gender while he was pumping life into it, or he'd affected its gender, he wasn't sure.  It was young enough that gender wasn't definite except in an essence about it, and if Ash had messed that up, he was sorry.  He could hardly be surprised if his subconscious fell back on outdated beliefs in boy children being preferred (stronger, more capable and able to carry the family name back in the day), but he definitely wasn't mentioning it.  First off, he didn't know if it was his fault, and second, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that he was doing anything about it if it was. 

Besides, he had other things to worry about, like the father's impending arrival, Chloe, and everything else that was falling down around his ears.  On top of it all, he'd been so drained that even when he pulled from Chloe, he hadn't gotten enough.  He was still weary and hungry, so there was that nagging feeling in the back of his mind like he hadn't eaten in days despite the fact that he was functioning.  He would ignore it, but it didn't change the fact that he wanted more.  If it wasn't so crucial that he didn't, he might have asked Anthony for a 'donation', but not tonight, not when he needed the muscle that the young wolf offered more.  Anthony was protection for the other people here, and just all-around useful; weakening him was a bad idea. 

"Anthony, let Chloe rest there for a little while, then take her to one of the beds upstairs when she's up to moving.  In the meantime, Heather's husband should be here momentarily.  Make sure you and your father intercept him, don't stop him from seeing her, and let him know that she's going to be fine.  We won't be long," he instructed, and though Anthony shot Chloe a look that made it seem like he was uncertain that he wanted to leave her, he nodded, squeezed her shoulder and then grabbed her a handful of napkins from nearby before following Ash's instructions.  The triste didn't mind the hesitation, nor did he disagree with Chloe's decision not to heal anyone else that night.  Whether Dani had warned her not to touch the witches or not, he didn't like that he'd nearly 'broken her', as Dani had said, and he didn't see it as being her fault.  He didn't want her to strain herself any further. 

He glanced at Danielle, his guilt over Chloe stuffed down deep for the time being, and rolled his shoulders back.  They just didn't have time for this kind of situation.  "We need to get Andrew and think up a plan.  With the firestone I've laid into this place, it should be safe even if my rules that it's neutral ground are ignored, but we need to know what we're doing before anything gets worse."

Really, he wouldn't have been surprised if hunters, and just those who were afraid for their safety, started to arrive.  The Hollow had a reputation for being a safe haven, and Ash intended to make that the case even now.  He just wanted to know what the hell they were going to do before potential casualties started arriving. 

Trevor actually noticed a hell of a lot more than he seemed to get credit for, and he thought a lot more was bullshit or suspicious than he let on, but he wasn't the sort to make waves.  After growing up with Colton and their father's disagreements (probably because the two of them were practically the same goddamned person), he'd learned how to let things go in favor of ensuring everyone's comfort.  He may or may not bring it all up later, when things weren't so ridiculous and everyone was calmer, but it was part of why he'd gone on about the car for most of the ride so far; it was an excellent distraction, and it was an easy one for him to provide.  Especially when the alternative was commenting on Lance's driving skills.

Or lack thereof.

Trevor wasn't a stranger to motorcycles.  Really, he could drive anything he could snag the keys to, and he could drive it well, which was probably the only reason why he was keeping up with Lance without getting them all killed.  He managed speed and traffic with a grace that was completely unexpected if you watched him move.  Not that he was a clumsy oaf on foot, but he was no graceful flower, either.  He was a dude, he moved like a dude, and it was all hard-won experience and practiced reflexes.  His car was a lady, and she was a graceful one under his hands.  The fact that Tyler seemed to appreciate her only made him like the kid more.

The fact that Laura opted to warn him before Lance made a stupid turn without a signal made him like her more, while he was at it, especially since that's exactly what Lance went and did.  It was getting to the point that if the night hadn't been so ridiculous already, he would have given up any attempts at keeping his mouth shut in favor of asking Lance where the fuck he'd gotten his license, but not tonight.  Tonight, he kept his trap shut, he listened when Laura explained where they were going and who he was leaving his little brother with, and he tried not to let her realize that his brain did a crazy little somersault over her comparing these girls who were 'damn near twins' to him and Tyler.  Yeah, there was the fact that they'd been practically identical at some point in each of their lives, but they weren't currently, were they?  Christ, looking in the rearview mirror at Tyler made him reconsider.  He had to actually THINK about not gripping the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white, and he kept reminding himself that keeping Tyler in his line of sight until the world stopped being crazy just wasn't a smart thing to do.  He couldn't, but he wanted to.  

"What?"  When Laura decided that they were 'definitely' related, Trevor glanced over at her, blinking for a moment, then shooting his eyes back to Lance and his next retarded move.  It took him a moment to realize what the hell she was finding so funny, since he hadn't thought it was odd that Tyler repeated the names of the daughters.  He'd done it in his head, just because she'd given him names to remember (and yes, because they were girls, but that was secondary tonight and Laura was more on his mind than these girls whose names he'd just learned).  "Oh.  Okay, you're a comedian tonight, that's awesome.  Are they hot?"

That was intentional, by the way.