Still Just a Rat in a Cage [Summer, Seth, Tristan, Cynthia, London, Tanith]

[Gina Rose]

 Grayson always had a way of making Gina inconvenienced somehow. Sometimes it was jobs she didn't want to do, and other times it was to tell her something stupid that she didn't care about, but that he cared about, and since he forgot that she wasn't Chandra, he would expect her to be excited, and then be mildly confused when she didn't care.

This wasn't actually one of those times. When he called her, the news was big, and she was going to care - but she was still being incredibly inconvenienced.

Gina and Seth had always had an interesting dynamic. It was one they never got to explore much, because Gina was busy doing God-knows-what for Grayson and Seth had an actual life that consisted of college, friends, work - the usual. They got along well, and hung out when they could, which wasn't exactly all that often. They did things like go to the shooting range, drink, trade stories; sometimes there were days where they would just go to the movies and watch everything in the theatre that looked interesting. But lately, things had been weird. Gina could trade it all back to a girl Seth had been interested in, and recently he'd realized that she was never going to be interested back. Something about being a Witch and having a crazy vampire ex-boyfriend stalking you wasn't very appealing to Seth anyways, and he'd told Gina over her drink that night at the bar that he was fairly certain he was over it.

"Really?" Gina asked incredulously. "Just like that?"

"Yes," he said firmly. He gave a little nod, and then grinned. "Come on - Witches, vampires, drama? Not really my style, you know?"

"Yeah, you've got enough problems without all the added extra bullshit, I guess," she agreed. "Speaking of, how is your sister doing, anyways?"

Seth laughed. "Oh, God. So, she's got this high school class that's making her carry around some robot baby that cries, right? They paired her up with the one guy in the class who wants nothing to do with her, and as it turns out, she has a crush on him. Girls are so fucking weird, right? I hear her talk all this wild shit about him, and then suddenly she's like, in love with the guy." He shook his head and took a swig of his own beer while Tempest's back was turned. She had said something to him about drinking beer, and told him the next time she'd seen him drinking it had better be from the 'real stuff'.

Gina laughed, taking the last sip of her drink after she realized all that remained was ice. She set it down and shrugged broadly. "Listen, she's like, what, seventeen? Hopefully, she'll grow out of it. Although, some girls don't ever figure out how to tell men they're interested. I mean, not me, but a lot of them."

Seth raised his eyebrows. He'd never known Gina even had been interested in anyone. She was pretty enough, sure, but she always seemed absorbed with whatever project Grayson had her chasing down. "Really?" he said, his voice doubtful. He put his elbow down on the bar, leaning forward. "What would you do?"

Gina smirked. "I'd say.... I think we have a lot in common, I'm attracted to you, and we should make out." She tilted her head. "Was that straightforward enough?"

"Yes, I think I'd be inclined to say it was."

Ten minutes later, the two of them were in the stockroom for the bar, furiously kissing and groping eachother. That was when Gina's phone rang.

"What?! she snapped, after the fourth time he'd called. She held her shirt closed by clasping her hand around where it had been unbuttoned, eyes to the side as she growled at Grayson for interrupting her.

"It's Midnight. They're on the move. Quinn is with Lily now working on extraction and protection for the guilds and their families and friends. I need you to keep your head down and get back here as soon as you can. Chandra can't reach her sister, so she's in full panic mode. I can't manage anything when she's like this!" he cried.

Gina went rigid, so much so that Seth, who was still there but had gladly taken a breather, tilted his head at her. He stood up from the box of Bacardi he'd been sitting on and put his hand on her shoulder. "What? What is it?"

Gina hung up her phone wordlessly and looked at him, gaze flat. "We have to go."

Ten minutes later, they were in Seth's Dodge Ram, headed towards the last known location of his sister - Tristan's house.

[Summer Bellwood]

Summer drove in silence as she and Tristan headed back to his house. He'd agreed to take the baby for the weekend, thank god, which meant Summer could actually have a social life. She was looking forward to it, and she was looking forward to being able to sort her thoughts out over this whole weird situation without having someone breathing down her neck about it.

"Turn left here, right?" she asked, the only thing she'd really said since they'd gotten into her Mercedes.

"Yeah," Tristan said. He'd been looking out the window the entire time, thinking about this or that. He really didn't want to go home, but he didn't have a choice. He hoped his dad would be working late, that way he wouldn't be there to meet Summer or give him a hard time. As Summer pulled into the driveway, he thought something about his house looked a little off. The front blinds were almost always drawn, but as he looked at them, he could tell that they'd been pulled at. They were jagged and spaced awkwardly. The lamp in the living room was giving light off, weird, too. He saw from where he sat that it was unusually bright.

"Stay in the car," he said. He got out and shut her door quietly, ignoring her noises of protest. He slowly walked towards his front door, creeping almost like a cat would when hunting. Something was definitely wrong. He couldn't hear anything except for TV snow, and he could smell... vampire. He turned and motioned for Summer to get the hell out of there, but the car was empty already. Summer emerged from the darkness at his right side and he jumped.

  "I told you to stay in the car," he hissed.

Summer just stared at him. "So? Whatever you're freaked out about, I smell it too. It probably already heard us pull up, anyways, so we lost the element of surprise as soon as my HIDs hit your driveway. I mean, bright much? Come on, let's at least walk around the house first," she said. She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him into the bushes.

Summer's idea turned out to be a not bad one. They peered into various windows, trying to see if they could determine someone was still in the house. It was when they got to the glass window at the back they knew they couldn't just 'sneak by' without being caught - especially not when Summer caught the scent of blood.

"It's human," she said. "I thought your dad was a cat?"

"He is," Tristan said. He looked back at the wall, his heart in his stomach. He had to make a decision - now or never. He either ran into the house full tilt or he grabbed Summer and they ran away. He couldn't stand to leave without knowing what happened inside, though, and so he took a deep breath and reached over, sliding the glass door open and stepping onto the soft carpet of their living room. The trail of blood led through the house and into the garage, the door of which was slightly ajar. He could hear noises coming from inside, and he motioned again for Summer to stay back, but again, she just went right in after him.

She put her finger to her lips as he opened his mouth to scold her, and jerked her head back towards the rest of the house. She broke away from him to explore, and Tristan decided that it would be a good time to see what was going in with the garage without her creating a liability issue for him. With another hesitant glance, he stepped into the garage, and gasped outwardly by what he saw.

His mother had been bound and gagged, tied to a chair, and there was a pool of gasoline around her. Cynthia stood at the far end of the garage with a match between her fingers, smiling - like she'd been waiting for Tristan to join them.

"Oh, hello kitten," she cooed. "Your mother was asking about you just earlier. I told her you wouldn't forget to make an appearance," she sang, smiling brilliantly.

[Tristan DeMortei]

He thought his life was bad.  That was one thing that struck him later, when everything had the chance to really sink in, that he'd had the gall to think that his life was bad before.  He'd had no idea.

Rolling up in Summer's Mercedes, Tristan was actually impressed that they'd been getting along so well all this time.  Part of it, he felt, was that they both seemed to be shutting up at key points so that they didn't dissolve into insults (and he knew that he was putting out the effort not to be as aggressive and angry as he had a habit of being) that would badly damage their chances at a decent grade.  The last thing he wanted to do was retake this class and repeat this project, and having that mess up his graduation just wasn't an option.  That was what he was concerned with when Summer pulled into his driveway, his grade, graduating high school and the fact that he and Summer didn't like each other (but were somehow maintaining civility).  To him, graduating meant getting away from home sooner, which sounded like a great idea at the time.

It was still 'home', despite how much he hated being there sometimes, and he knew there was something wrong immediately.  The blinds were drawn like usual, but they were broken and bent, with far too much light coming from within.  Tristan knew what the house was supposed to look like, and his guess was that a lamp or two had been knocked over or that the lampshades were gone.  It wasn't a good sign, and his first thought was that his father had finally just lost it.  The Jag wasn't in the driveway, so he was confident that his father wasn't home at the moment, but that didn't mean that the asshole hadn't been there.  Tristan's heart felt like it dropped right into his stomach, realizing what the image in front of him would have suggested, and he told Summer to stay in the car while he jumped out and stalked up towards the house.  It was silent except for TV snow, the scent of vampire all over the area outside the front door, and that was enough to give him pause.  Why his house if it was a vampire? 

Seriously, he deserved some credit for not freaking out and completely rushing the situation, with or without Summer's obedience to his orders.  He nodded stiffly when she suggested walking around the house, only because the idea made sense; going in half-cocked was just going to land them both into more trouble if their luck didn't hold out, and Tristan's never did.  He'd exercise just a little caution, though that decision was nearly destroyed when they both smelled human blood.  It was one thing to smell blood around his home, but human?  Summer was slow to understand the problem, focusing on his dad being a cat, but his heart had dropped out of his stomach and into his feet rather swiftly, the panic relating to his mom's well-being a cold wave washing over him.  It was true that he could have taken Summer and left, but leaving his mother behind when there was still a chance that she'd be okay just wasn't open for consideration.  Summer didn't have to go in, but he did.

Seeing the trail of blood, stepping around it on his way to the garage, he wanted to be sick.  That was his mother's blood, and it meant that she was hurt badly.  He was glad that Summer wandered away to explore other areas of the house, leaving him to approach the garage on his own.  She shouldn't have been there to begin with, and now she was going to see his family destroy itself?  No, he didn't want that.  Let her stay on the other side of the house while he tried to tell himself that this wasn't going to be what he thought it was.  His dad was an asshole, but he had to love his wife even a little?  They'd gotten married, so he must.  He wouldn't kill her. 

"Please," he whispered to himself just outside of the door, not even really paying attention.  It wasn't like it mattered an instant later, since opening the door both confirmed and denied his worst fears; his mother was seriously injured and in big trouble, but it hadn't been his father.  It was that vampire bitch.

He had that brief second of horror to take in the sight of his mother, bloodied, gagged and tied to one of their dining room chairs, before the cloud of gasoline fumes hit him and nearly knocked him out.  He was almost instantly lightheaded from the sheer strength of the stench, but the scene in front of him was quite able to ground him once again.  Cynthia, and she had a match to go along with that shit-eating grin.  Tristan wanted to strangle her, but risking his mother just wasn't an option.

He didn't bitch about her calling him 'kitten' this time, more than willing to shut up in favor of getting his mom out of there.  "I don't know what you're doing here, Cynthia, but if you let her go, I won't fight you," he told her, being careful not to make any sudden movements that might cause the vampire to do something horrible.  "I know you don't care about her, you've never even talked to her."

God, it was so hard to swallow down that rage and desire to just jump at her, but Tristan had a little more self-control than that.  It wasn't self-preservation, because he was very selective about that, but for his mom?  She was the only one who really loved him.  How could he not try?

[Summer Bellwood]

 Summer was stalking through the rest of the house, her inner cat ready to burst through her skin. It'd been a while since she'd shifted out of necessity - that necessity being something other that she and Seth fighting, anyways. She checked each room slowly, sniffing without shame in every direction to try and suss out if there was anyone else in the house at all. When she was satisfied there was not, she began making her way back to the garage. She didn't see Tristan anymore, but she heard him talking, and then another female's voice over his.

"You can fight me if you want, but it won't change anything," the vampire was saying. She stood almost like some sort of creature, posed at the very far edge of the garage with that match pinched in between her manicured nails.

Summer tried to hide against the door, and she tried not to listen to what Tristan was saying, because she had a feeling he would not want her to hear the exchange in its entirety, but she couldn't help herself. She thought she was being pretty slick, too, until the vampire zeroed in on her.

"Oh, you brought me a gift? And she's a cat, also. Man, is everyone around here furry except for your mother?" Cynthia asked, her voice displaying obvious disgust. She rolled her black eyes, waving the hand with the match in it at them, which caused Summer to take a step back. She was behind Tristan to begin with, but now she was really behind him.

"And anyways," she said, tossing her long blonde hair off of her shoulder, "it really doesn't have anything to do with whether or not I care about her. Midnight's got free reign over the city for the next few days, as far as I hear it, and that means I don't have to play by any of those stupid rules that we had before. So, basically, both of you are coming with me, and I hope to god your coats have built-in asbestos or whatever else makes things fire resistant."

And she dropped the match.

"TRISTAN!" Summer didn't even know she was screaming, but she could hear herself doing it. She grabbed him as quickly as she was able to and yanked him out of the doorway of the garage, throwing herself on top of him. A huge plume of fire came out of the door after her, causing her a roar of pain. Thank her lucky stars she'd shifted in mid-leap, or else her hair would have been about two inches long at that point - and forget the eyebrows. She changed back almost instantly, but it was too late.

Cynthia came through the door a moment later, completely untouched by the fire, and held her hands up as if to say, 'Oops'. "If it makes you feel any better, she was already dead. They sure don't make humans like they used to - or, no, that's not right. Well, whatever," she said, waving her hand casually. "That fight? I'll have it now."

And with that, the vampire threw Summer out of the way with terribly force, going straight for Tristan. Summer hit a wall and slid down, almost comically, but she still was dazed enough not to be able to lend a hand. She struggled to stand up, smoke now billowing into the house and causing her sensitive eyes and nose to water. Tristan and the vampire were a flurry of blurred movement, and she blindly grabbed at a chair and hurled it at the blonde when she finally had some sense to her. It didn't seem to do any good, splintering on impact and sending shards of wood in every direction.

Summer was not as good at fighting as Seth was.

[Tristan DeMortei]

If Summer wasn't proud of herself for being able to drag Tristan away from the door, she should have been.  He moved fast to try to jump for his mother, screaming his rage, panic and horror without even bothering with words, and she managed to pluck him backwards and even throw herself on top of him, which was no small task.  It was good that she did, or he'd have been spending some time trying to heal up some serious burns, if the initial blast hadn't killed him outright.  Not that he was going to linger and thank her once they'd hit the ground and Cynthia appeared from the flames of the garage.  Tristan shoved his way out from under Summer, gray eyes searching desperately for even the slightest chance that Cynthia could have been wrong, but he knew better; even if she was lying, there was no way a human could have survived that fire.  His mother was dead.

He wasn't exactly proud to remember later that there was a moment of hesitation there, that brief period of disbelief and realization that the home he'd had was gone, and Cynthia was on the attack.  She surprised him by striking Summer first, and that pissed him off enough to snap him out of any hesitation.  Cynthia wanted that fight?  He was game.

Having a human for a mother meant that Tristan didn't have the benefits of a demi-form, but he wasn't upset about it.  He maintained his human form for a short period of time because he wanted it to be personal every last time he hit her, but he was still only a shapeshifter (and a young one, at that) and she was a vampire.  She tossed him into the wall hard enough to knock him right through that layer of drywall and the studs so that he splintered the other side of the wall.  It was at about the same time that Summer pitched a chair that shattered on impact at the vampire, which offered him a decent distraction.  When he rushed the bitch again, he was a black jaguar, all claws and teeth.  He wanted her dead for what she'd done.

[Summer Bellwood]

Cynthia was going to skin that cheetah for the chair. She deflected it without much effort, but the distraction had caused her some lag time with Tristan. He was already on top of her when she was able to get her bearings, but it didn't matter much. In his cat form, she couldn't roll his mind, but she was still strong, and she could still withstand much in the way of damage without being put out of commission. She managed to grab him by the throat, and she clamped down as hard as she could, allowing him to continue flailing and tearing into her flesh. She didn't want to shatter his windpipe right away, but rather wanted to choke him out into unconsciousness, where he would be more manageable.

Summer, meanwhile, got to Tristan's phone, which had been tossed onto the floor in the fray before he had changed. She picked it up and found his father's number, yelling over the noise of the fight. "Mr. DeMortei? Uh, this is Summer Bellwood? There's a vampire in your house, and I think - I think we're going to die," she spoke into the voicemail. She screamed before the message cut off as Tristan went sailing over her head, and dropped the phone to jump on Cynthia.

She didn't shift right away, grabbing Cynthia's face with her hands and clamping down. That was when she changed, taking one of her eyes with her. The vampire screamed and hit Summer with a bolt of burning energy, sliding her across the floor and into the table, which exploded as she knocked all of the legs out. She saw Tristan go by her in a blur, jumping on the back of the now-enraged vampire. There was so much screaming that she couldn't think straight.

[London DeMortei]

London and Tanith were already en route to his house when his phone rang from its position in the cup holder between them.  London loved his car, so even the cup holders were kept clean and non-sticky, so leaving his phone there wasn't a big deal, except that it meant that Tanith had full access to it when he didn't answer it.  She gave him a sharp look when he picked it up, looked at the name on it and set it down.

"It's your son, you're not going to answer it?"

"No.  He's working with a girl in his class on a project, so he won't be at home and we have too much going on for me to worry about whatever has him pissed off today," he told her, having already explained over time how much trouble his son was.  As far as the department knew, Tristan was in a constant state of teenaged angst and he took it out on his father through arguments and consistent rebellion.  London actually believed it, too.  If Tristan were more considerate of everyone around him instead of making everything more difficult, they'd get along better.  Tristan also never called him, so he really didn't even want to deal with whatever had pissed the kid off badly enough to make him call.

And leave a voicemail.

Wait.

Tanith had just stared at him for his logic, considering they were headed to his house to get his wife somewhere safe (London reasoned that Tristan was safe because he wasn't home, and that was something else he did care about and believe), but London wasn't taking notice of that.  He glanced back at his phone, a thoughtful look on his face over the call and voicemail.  His son didn't talk to him if he could help it, and certainly wouldn't call him, then leave a voicemail.

"Shit," he hissed, snatching the phone up and listening to the voicemail.  Imagine his surprise when he heard a girl's voice instead of his son's, complete with the sounds of a fight in the background, and the crackling of what sounded like fire.  He heard a sound that he found to be unmistakably an aggressive jaguar (took one to know one), and then the girl on the phone screamed before the message ended.  London dropped the phone and hit the gas, siren and the lights.  So much for a quiet, subtle extraction of his wife.

"It was a girl, Tristan must have shifted in the background and something's on fire," he explained, understanding that it meant that Tristan and the girl he was working on the project with had arrived back at the house, and everything must have gone to hell.  Carmine, please be okay, he silently prayed, because he hadn't heard her anywhere in there.  Tristan was still alive and fighting, but Carmine hadn't been screaming or yelling. 

[Seth Bellwood]

Gina had definitely been straight forward enough for him, and his only problem happened to be that her phone would not shut up.  She finally answered it after the fourth attempt whoever it was made at calling her, and Shane figured it was a good idea to grab a seat on the box of Bacardi he'd nearly tripped over when Gina had given him a good, forceful shove (right down his alley, that kind of action) so that he could take the opportunity to relearn how to breathe.  It worked, but he was trying not to pay attention to her phone call until he glanced up and saw the expression on her face.

Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

"What?  What is it?" he asked, standing up to set a hand on her shoulder.  She'd gone rigid and obviously their moment had passed.  If he hadn't known that whatever was wrong had to be major, he might have been unhappy about it.  As it was, he was straight worried over it, and once he'd gotten something resembling an explanation, he was beyond worry.  He was in his truck and headed for Tristan's house, where his sister was supposed to be.  As much as they didn't get along on a regular basis and as annoying as she could be, she was his sister, the smaller cat that needed to be protected.  Currently, she was in potential danger and he was too far away to do anything about it.  That was about to change.

[Gina Rose]

Gina sat in the truck, mostly silent as she tried to figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her night. No doubt Quinn and Lily were already being pimped out to Onyx, and since Gina was a free agent, she supposed she could stick with Seth. She neither cared nor thought about the other people that crossed her mind; they could all take care of themselves. No doubt Grayson had Valentina locked up so tightly that nobody would ever see her. She looked back at Seth, realizing that he was the only person she had even an ounce of anything invested in, and frowned.

"If she's with a jaguar, I think between the two of them - no, I hope between the two of them, they have one vampire covered," she said, her brow lofting. She didn't mean to sound insensitive, it was just that there was no fucking way she could see two shifters of that size and speed being handled by one vampire. Of course, Gina didn't know about Kiyoshi, or Raphael, or any of the other really bad vampires that were out there; if she did, she didn't indicate it.

As they rounded the corner - well, slid, actually, Gina could see flames billowing out of one side of the house. "Holy fuck!" she shouted, opening the door before Seth had come to a complete stop. She reached behind her and grabbed the shotgun that Seth kept in the truck without thinking, and racked it.

"Can you hear them inside?" she asked him as they rushed up the front walk. Gina wasn't a cat; she didn't have awesome senses. She also didn't want to run right into the fire, but you know, not a lot of options were open to her at the moment.

[Tanith Korakas]

Tanith had just known the night was going to be bad. It had started off with some voicemail Taran left her that she couldn't understand, because it sounded like he was talking in a hurricane. Then the SWAT team had gone all stupid, with an argument breaking out between the lion and one of the humans, to which Tanith had thrown a cup of pencils and pens at. It had shut them both up, but it hadn't won her any points. Then, she spilled her coffee all over her desk, and paperwork had to be redone.

That was where London had found her when he'd hit her up for a late night meal, and she was only glad to get the fuck out of the office. She left with Drew yelling after her, something about he was sorry on behalf of the morons he worked with, and she'd waved him off. They'd been on the way to the diner that they usually went to when London's phone rang. He picked it up, made a face, and put it down. Then he picked it up again.

"It's your son," she said with a tone that sounded very 'duh'. "Aren't you going to answer it?"

He picked it up and listened to the voicemail, and then Tanith's night went from bad to worse. He slammed on the gas and flipped the lights and siren, and Tanith nearly slid out of her seat. "Jesus Christ!" she shouted over the noise. He gave her a quick explanation, and she sobered up her anger pretty hastily. "What the fuck? Who? What? Wait, WHAT?" she shouted.

[Tristan DeMortei]

He'd torn Cynthia up, but that was small comfort when she was choking him out.  It had to be a hell of a sight to see a high school cheerleader type of girl holding up a male jaguar by the throat while he flailed, but that was the least of his concerns right then.  Honestly, he didn't understand why she didn't just snap his neck, especially since the entire time she held him, he was lashing out with his claws, but the idea of her taking him back to Midnight hadn't even occurred to him.  He was getting light-headed from lack of oxygen by the time Cynthia pitched him in Summer's direction, and though he didn't know why she'd thrown him instead of finishing the job, he hit the ground hard, tumbled over himself and gasped in great, hurried gulps of smoky air.  He gagged on the acrid scent of the fire itself as it spread through the garage and to the house, but it was the smell of burning flesh that threw him back into the fight.

God, his mother.

He leaped at Cynthia as the now one-eyed bitch shrieked and raged out, attaching himself to her back with the claws of all four feet, and he dug in as deep as he could, pulling and tearing all the while.  It was the work with his teeth that he was most excited by, though.  Tristan worked all of his rage and hate into sinking his teeth into her, into taking her apart, because she'd taken his life apart, and she'd enjoyed it even more than he was. 

[Seth Bellwood]

When he and Gina stopped in front of the burning house, Seth almost freaked out when he saw his sister's car parked outside.  So she was there, and the building was on fire.  Jesus Christ, Summer, you don't fuck around when you get into trouble.  He was going to freak the fuck out on her if they both survived, and he honestly couldn't have said whether he felt better about busting in there with his shotgun or in fur, but Gina made up his mind for him.

Good idea, anyway, since Gina was human and would need the firearm.  Think, Seth.

They hit the front walk at a run and he didn't bother turning the truck off.  If they needed a quick exit, that would be it, and it sounded like they would.  "Screaming.  I hear a lot of screaming, and a big cat, not a cheetah.  Must be the jaguar," he explained quickly, trying to figure out the best way in.  The garage was utterly impossible, that must was obvious, so the front door was probably the quickest.  They didn't exactly have a lot of time.

"I'm going in, I don't know if you want to.  Wait out here and make sure we don't get anymore trouble?" he suggested, because honestly?  If he got burned up or smoked out, he'd heal and recover; Gina wasn't so lucky.  He wanted a rematch on the make-out session, anyway.

With a deep breath of the relatively fresh air, Seth shot Gina a stupid grin, shoved the door open and threw himself inside, shifting in the process.  Hopefully, being closer to the ground would keep him from getting as much smoke.

[Cynthia]

 It didn't matter what Tristan could do to Cynthia, she'd already done worse. Sure, she was fighting back, but it had stopped doing a lot of good a few moments back there. She managed to phase out under the weight of him attacking her, only to bring up behind Summer. One eye, bloody, barely coherent, she'd still get her final say. She grabbed a piece of splintered wood off of the floor and jammed it down as hard as she could, right into the girl's chest. She didn't even have time to see if she'd hit anything vital, because that idiot Jaguar was on top of her again.

On the floor on her back, she smiled up at him, bloody and all sorts of jacked. "You can kill me, but it won't bring your dear old mom back from the dead. It was WORTH IT," she shrieked. That was the last thing she said before he split her throat open, and eventually she just stopped moving, though he probably hadn't stopped attacking.

Meanwhile, Summer had fallen onto her backside and was hyperventilating just about the time Seth came in. There was too much smoke, too much blood, too much everything. She couldn't help herself, and she started to cry. "Seth!?" she wheezed. She could smell him through the smoke and fire and blood, but she also thought it was her imagination, too.

"Tristan? Seth?"

She leaned over to one side, the giant piece of wood still sticking out of her chest. At least that bitch had missed her heart, but her body was trying to heal around it, and it was hurting an awful lot.

[Gina Rose]

 Gina had too much shit to try and worry about. "Don't worry. Anyone coming in our out that doesn't meet my approval is going to get it right in the face," she assured him. She held that shotgun like she'd been born with the damn thing in her hands. As Seth ducked into the house, she heard an awful screaming sound, but she knew she was better off for the time being. If anyone else decided to show up, she could at least handle that.

She didn't anticipate the fucking cops to show up, though. She ran to the front door and stuck her head in. "WE HAVE A PROBLEM," she screamed. "THE COPS ARE HERE!"

She turned back as two dark haired people got out, weapons drawn, and experienced an "Oh shi-" moment. She'd rather not be ambushed by Midnight people masquerading as police, and she'd really rather not get blamed for this entire mess, so she ducked inside the house and ran straight for the noise. She figured if she just yelled Seth's name out, he'd find her eventually instead of accidentally ripping her face off.

She didn't expect to trip over his sister, which she did, eating a face full of broken glass and splintered wood. She landed on the ground, the shotgun sliding away from her and out of reach. Only then did she realize she'd tripped over a body - she flipped over and recognized Summer ONLY because Seth had shown her a picture once.

"OH SHIT, SETH!" she screamed. Shit. Fuck. Shit.

[Tristan DeMortei]

Tristan did not stop attacking just because Cynthia had stopped moving; it might not bring his mother back (which Cynthia had been kind enough to point out), but for that instant in time, it made him feel better.  All he wanted was to take her apart, one tiny piece at a time.  Yes, he and his father were very much related, whether Tristan had ever realized their similarities, or not.  Actually, he might have been taking London's natural (and violently encouraged by outside forces) aggression a little further than his father was prone to doing; London didn't have a history of tearing girls into little bits.  The problem (besides displaying such alarming traits) was that he was completely and utterly in is own little world while he tore first into Cynthia's throat and then just kept at it until she was a pile of gore.  He missed the fact that Cynthia had taken Summer down, he didn't take notice of Gina, and he certainly hadn't realized that Seth was in the house somewhere.  He didn't care.  All he could care about was the scent of burning flesh that was so strong in his nostrils, the horrible knowledge that it was his mother he was smelling like a steak left on the grill too long, and the hot mess he was making on the rug as the house burned around them.  If Cynthia was recognizable as herself without DNA testing after this, he'd done his job wrong.

He wasn't doing it wrong.

Cynthia had stopped moving quite some time before something finally got through to him, and it wasn't what one would have expected, considering just how much was going on.  It was his father's entrance, the quiet horror in his voice as he said his wife's name that drew the jaguar's bright eyes to the dark-haired man and his equally dark featured companion.  It was the sudden realization that his father had actually loved his mother, that he could see it in his father's face before the man disappeared deeper into the smoke that it wasn't only his own world that was falling down around his ears.  Some part of him thought that maybe he should just let his father go, but that asshole was all he had left, wasn't he?  His mother was gone, so it was just his father, who was running off into the fire for no reason.  He didn't know, or if he did, he didn't WANT to know.

With a sidelong glance at Tanith, who Tristan definitely recognized now that he wasn't so concerned with making Cynthia completely unrecognizable, the jaguar slipped after his father, only shedding his form to try to stop his father's mad search.