WARNING: OFFENSIVE

[Evan Irons]

list incoming

[Evan Irons]

Look both ways before stepping out into traffic.  Evan knew this, did exactly as he was supposed to, and he'd glanced down to light a cigarette in the time it took the giant black Escalade to appear and plow into him with enough force that even his very durable supernatural constitution was utterly rocked instantaneously. 

He was in bad shape.  He knew it even in the street, when the big man in the even bigger vehicle had gotten out not to lose his shit because he hit someone, but to scrape Evan off of the sidewalk and stash him in the back of the black Escalade, not that it had slowed his mouth down all that much.

"I don't know about you, but I...I'm not good to drive," he slurred while the guy tossed him in back, and it might have been the slightest bit satisfying that he got a huffed laugh, even if he was otherwise ignored.  He lost track of time, which meant it could have been a minute or an hour that he was back there before he was at it again, head tilting and then exploding with pain from doing so.

"Y'know, way easier ways to get a guy's attention.  Not partial to flowers, but sure you could'a found something," he offered up drunkenly when consciousness rolled back in, swallowing down the agony that tore through him, and that wasn't good.  The driver didn't seem to notice anything, but Evan knew what it was, and if he wasn't the one experiencing it, he would have been a lot more desperate to make tracks.  As it was, flares meant he was too far gone to get too far on his own unless he could stop them, and he was pretty well fucked physically.  It had been a long time since he'd last been pulverized like this, and while the pain was excruciating and something he could do without, it wasn't the part that was most upsetting - he was alone and vulnerable.

The next one knocked him out cold, his inner fire flaring up spectacularly, but the pain of it dwarfed the damage that had been done, like being burned alive each and every time it burst forth from him.  A phoenix was usually immune to their own fire, for obvious reasons, but in death they literally burned out, and it was the most horrifically painful experience of their lives every time.  When Evan put it off, it was because it was beyond simply dying as mortals knew it, and that was without the fear of being brought down among enemies.  When next he regained consciousness, he was being moved none too gently, and he didn't even have words for how he felt.  That alone was telling.

"He's fucking burning up, Loic, what do you want me to do with him?"

"I have no fucking clue, why would Niall send him to me?  I don't even know what he is," another voice snapped, presumably Loic, and at least there was that.  Someone knew what was going on, but it wasn't these two stooges.

"Whatever he is, i need to drop him before he actually starts burning me, where do you want him?"

"Wait, do you mean--"  The man didn't finish his statement before reaching out to touch him, and while the touch was no different than anyone else's, Evan was a little pleased with the timing of that particular flare, even if Cerberus dumped him right there on the rug with a shout and Loic yanked his burned hand away.  Evan passed back out, but both of them had gotten theirs.  He came to again to find that he was actually still on the rug, though the two men were using it like a gurney to carry him somewhere, Loic bitching all the way about the fact that it was blah-blah years old and priceless.

"My bad, I'll try to die less inconveniently," he muttered.

He was left in a room on that rug while Cerberus gave a completely irreverent salute and left Loic standing there, trying to figure out what the fuck was happening.  He could sense the fiery beacons the really unassuming and utterly wrecked man that had been dumped on him was putting out, the magic hemorrhaging from him each time it burst forth.  He wasn't thrilled that a priceless rug was now covered in the man's blood and likely about to burn up, but at least he was on a cement floor to do it, so hopefully the rest of the house wouldn't go up with him.  That was the least of his worries, considering it was the heat and sense of fire about him that was making Loic think that perhaps he knew what kind of creature the man was, and he wasn't particularly thrilled about having one die in his home, assuming the remark from the guy was to be trusted. 

He just wasn't sure if he should be calling a healer, finding somewhere to dump him before he actually burst into flames, or trying to get information about what to do with him after he was reborn (and how that whole thing worked).  He knew immediately that he had no pull with him, which wasn't terribly surprising if he was indeed a phoenix, but watching one apparently in its death throes was surprisingly....affecting.  It was sad, mostly, and he didn't know where that came from, but it was the primary feeling keeping him from trying to find somewhere to toss him that would keep him from dying right there on that rug.  It was over an hour before he started to see something other than just the man in the magical flares, like he was losing his form with each burst of flame, and it started with his eyes and mouth, actually, like he was on fire and burning from within with a bright glow that became visible when he screamed with the most recent magical outpouring, and on the next one came the wings and feathers - feathers that Loic might have called iridescent only if he was too uncultured to understand that the shifting colors came from within instead of being affected by the light striking them.  They made their own light, and even in the grief of such a creature lighting up like this, they were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Maybe it was because this was the dying gasp of such a fantasical creature that made them that much more beautiful.  It was the way of a phoenix to burn its brightest when it was about to go out, and Loic had accidentally earned a front row seat to this one.  The next flash of flame and light had a creature resembling a bird laid out on the carpet, and Loic's breath caught.  He thought it resembled a bird for the same reason that he struggled to use the word 'iridescent' for its feathers.  At a most basic description, bird was correct, and he struggled to decide if it looked more like a bird of paradise, beautiful and peaceful, or like a raptor with its graceful and deadly talons and hooked beak.  It had sharp eyes, still aglow with its internal fire, but a maddeningly beautiful voice, calling out with the most excruciatingly despairing song.  Even Loic, who was not the most emotionally available individual, found himself choking up, and he nearly stepped away just to escape it, but how could he leave?

The answer to that question came whether he was ready for it or not, as his front door essentially exploded inward with a scream of rage that felt like it reached all the way down into whatever was left of his soul.  It drew him out of the entrancement of the phoenix dying before him with a jolt, and he literally impacted the doorway when he jumped, then darted up the stairs to find himself face to face with a devastatingly beautiful woman whose hair was so red he would have sworn it was actually on fire.

Wait, no, it was.  It was on fire, and her eyes glowed with that same internal flame that the man downstairs had before he'd lost his human form.  "Oh, shit," he breathed.

She squared her shoulders, head tilting as she regarded him, and then she was on him fast enough that even all of his instincts for battle hadn't done more for him than allow him to grab at her arm as she wrapped her hand around his throat and smashed him into the wall beside the basement door.  He gasped despite not needing to breathe, her grip burning into his skin like a hot iron everywhere he touched her, and if she didn't release him, he was pretty certain that she'd just burn him alive right there. 

"Where.  Is he?" she demanded, her voice lovely and promising no less than the immolation that he was already afraid of, and he struggled to draw the air in that was required for speech under her touch.  Again, she tilted her head like the bird her other form must have also resembled, like she was puzzling him out before he burned him up.

"Downstairs, downstairs!  He was dropped here, I didn't know how to help him," he told her quickly, gesturing with the arm nearest the door to the basement, and she jerked her head towards it, then released him without another word.  She swept down the stairs, and it was only then that he even realized that she was wearing a long dress that clung to her form, spitting embers around her that sputtered out in her wake.  He wasn't so sure that he wanted to follow her, but he did in case he could help and somehow prevent her from setting the entire place ablaze. 

She was knelt at the side of the dying phoenix on the rug, and if he thought she'd missed the blood all over it, he was insane, but she was so much more concerned with Evan himself.  She'd been like a thing possessed from the first flare that he'd put up, and it had taken her this long to locate him, what with him having been on the move when it started.  There were other creatures that would be searching for him, and moving him again would be the best way to keep them away from him, not to mention getting him to the safety of her home, but he was so far along that she wasn't sure she could do anything until he'd finished.

"Oh, my child, you've really made a mess of yourself this time, haven't you?" she sang at him softly, sadly, as she reached out to stroke his face.  He hadn't told her what he was into, but he'd always been more impulsive than she liked and so very in love with the human race.  She had those that she liked, but he actively chose to live and exist among them, where she liked her castle in the sky and inviting only those that she chose into her presence.  She wouldn't truly change anything about him, but it was times like these when he left her on a mad search for him that she wished he could be more cautious.

There was very little apology in the response he gave, but it was all pain, and she shushed him softly.  "I'm here, and I won't let anyone have you.  Go on, get it over with, you'll be safe," she promised, voice gentle, but firm.  Holding out for as long as he had gave her the time and the beacon to find him, but now it would only serve to help draw others in and keep them in this awful place longer than necessary.  Granted, she knew that it was easier said than done to die, especially for something as long-lived as they were - there was something deep inside of them that fought to survive, and Evan more than most.  "Shh, I'm here, let go."

It took another thirty minutes before the phoenix on the rug went up like a bonfire with a scream, setting the rug up with him, though the flames ebbed before they reached the outer edges.  Katrina didn't move, and patiently waited as the flames died down to smoldering ashes - ashes that shifted around after another moment, which was when she reached into them to scoop something small and seemingly very fragile from them.  She clutched this thing to her chest, her hands glowing with that same fire that had been part of her since she'd appeared prepared for a small war to find him, and she rose, regarding Loic harshly.

He threw his hands up, stepping away from the door and gesturing her through it.  "I'm not here to stop you.  Do you need a ride somewhere?"

"No.  I brought my own," she snapped back, and he followed her at a distance of a few feet until she got out the front door, where he could see that she was telling the truth.  There was an elegant black car waiting for her outside, which she slid into the back of when her driver stepped out to open the door for her.  She rolled down the window and stared at him for a few seconds.  "Release the shapeshifters, they don't belong to you."

With that said, she turned away and the car pulled out before she'd even rolled up her window.  He stared after it, a little shellshocked after the whole thing, but he got the very real impression that it could have gone much worse.  The burns were healing slowly, which just went to show how badly she could have hurt even someone like him, and he looked to the house.  Release the shapeshifters, indeed.  Consider that done, if it meant never having to see her again.