Cain and Nyx
Cain went hunting for a girl who had a particular look. Girl with brown hair, and a certain style of features. A Dawn look-a-like, more or less. Others may use voodoo dolls, but he thought this might get his message across better. He found one.
Later, he set up the video camera while the girl he'd discovered struggled to scream through her gag. He pressed record, standing in fromt of the camera so they couldn't see the girl tied to the frame behind him. "Hey, just thought I'd drop all of you folk up at the Mansion a line. See, I really didn't appreciate being dropped like that. Kinda pissed me off, just a tad." He scratched his head. "So, I thought...what annoys good guys the most? I think this will work. I only have three hours on the tape, so I better get started. I could draw it out for even longer, but thanks to the limits of technology, I'll havta cut it short. Dawnie, Key girl, this is what I will do to you, when I catch you." He stepped back and took off the gag.
"Pl,pl, please, let me go," the girl whimpered.
"What's your name? Say it for the cameras!" Cain walked off camera, and zoomed in on her tear streaked face.
"Anna!"
Cain made a buzzer noise. "Wrong answer!" He flicked acid on her skin and she screamed. He panned down to where the droplets burnt through her clothes.
"Dawn! My name is Dawn!"
"Good girl! You get a whole nother five minutes of life." Cain came back around and looked into the camera. "Course, that's more of a punishment then a reward, but I think you're getting the idea. And just think, if you hadn't pissed me off so much, she might have lived." Cain shook his head. "Tsk, tsk. Course, somebody else would have died, but that would have been just a quick snap. This is going to take three, lovely, scream filled hours." Cain went to work and systematically tortured the girl into a heap of bleeding agony. At one point, Cain had to wipe the lens of the camera clean. Whistling, Cain washed his hands and then stepped up to the camera again. "Here endeth the lesson. Don't annoy me. Don't try to humilate me. Otherwise, you get more home videos like this one. I've already found my Rogue copy. She goes to a high school near here. She loves Tennyson, art films in French, and guess what? She has a cat too. A black one with green eyes." Cain reached behind his back and neatly sliced the girl's throat, ending the annoying moaning. "See you all soon, I hope." He turned off the machine. After cleaning up, he posted the video tape, addressing it to Dawn, care of Nyx. He got someone else to send it though. They knew his scent, and he couldn't really try the cover his scent with perfume thing again.
~*~*~*~
Nyx received the parcel and sniffed it carefully. Nothing out of the ordinary. She went to find Dawn. "Hey, Dawnie, package for ya."
Dawn
Dawn opened the package. "Huh, it's a video, but it's not labeled. Let's pop it in and see what it is." She and Nyx went down to the rec room, and saw that most of their friends were down there just hanging out, but nobody was watching tv. Smiling, Dawn popped the tape into the VCR. After about 30 seconds, she screamed, but she just couldn't turn it off, it was like watching a train wreck, morbidly fascinating.
"OH JANUZS WHY?! Oh god, he killed her because of me. He killed her because she looked like me!" She fell, sobbing into Nyx;s arms.
Nyx, Vortigern and Mordred
"Oh, mother of all," Nyx whispered as she stroked Dawn's hair and stared at the continuing footage. "Dawnie, it wasn't your fault. Never. Was it my fault he sent me kittens? How can you blame yourself?" She noticed somewhere in the back of her mind that he was very inventive, and quite good, really. If it hadn't been hurting Dawn so much, she would've applauded.
"Dear god..." Mordred said. Vortigern had curled up in Mordred's arms, shaking hard.
"He's going to come back. Oh, god..." Mordred stroked Vprtigern's hair as Cain continued his horrible artistry on the screen. "He's going to come back, and we're all going to die." Vortigern was white with fear.
"No, we're not," Nyx said firmly. Octavian got up from his seat and reached out to turn it off. "Fast forward. I bet he put a message on the end." Octavian did as she requested. They watched Cain's last message.
Dawn
"Yes, he's going to kill us all!" Dawn sobbed. "He did it because she looked like me. He wants to do that to me! And Januzs can't help me, and Dagon can't help me, and Glorificus is after me too. . . My whole world is crumbling again, just when I thought it was getting together again. I get everybody killed." Dawn sobbed in Nyx's arms.
Nathan and Nyx
"He's not after you. He's after Rogue." Nyx cuddled Dawn. "And the other gods will sort Loki out if Cain steps out of line. There are rules to this."
Nathan came in the room, took one look at the people there and started shaking. He saw blood and fire. His cards fluttered to the ground as his hands went numb. Blood ran down Nyx's face and he saw the gleam of bone and the gleam of blood from Vortigern's chest. "Oh god." He started to back away, looked in the hallway, and saw fire. "Oh dear god." Flames swept through the school, and Cain came striding up the halls, blood drenching his clothes. "He's coming. Dies Irae." But there were odd flickers around Cain, that hurt his eyes and made them tear. "I can't see where he is. Flames clouding my vivion. Oh dear god." He broke and ran. He stumbled away from students, eyes wide and staring as he took in the blood covering them. "Oh god."
Nathan
Nathan ran for the outside, sobbing harshly, tears making wet tracks down his cheeks as he sought to escape his visions. He made the mistake of turning to look back at the school, and screamed. Flames shot from the windows and the screams of trapped students echoed through his mind. He stumbled away, and fell over his own feet before getting up and running. He hit the fence surrounding the school, scrabbled at it with his hands, the pain breaking his vision for moments at a time, and then sank down against it crying. His shoulders shook and then he started to cough, blood coming to his lips as he wept and coughed the chest tearing coughs. "Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god..."
Scott
Scott ran after Nathan, and managed to catch him when he stumbled.
"Seraph, what did you see?" he asked gently.
Nathan
Nathan shook his head wildly and tried to get free. "Blood, oh god, the blood and dark flames...darkness rolling in, covering all, like blood on slick water." Nathan screamed again, a high hoarse sound like an animal in a trap. "Flames, blood and fire! Dies Irae!"
Scott
"Nathan, Nathan, calm down. Just breathe. Look awayfrom the mansion and calm down. Tell me, slowly, and calmly, what's going to happen," Scott directed, gently rubbing circles into the smaller man's back, trying to soothe him.
Nathan
"I can't, I can't, ca, can't." Nathan couldn't stop the tears, and another fit of coughing overtook him. "Oh, god, he comes wreathed in flames and drinking blood. Laughter. Oh god. You have no idea how the laughter rings it all." He twisted his head and moaned as he saw a student dying on the grass. "Everywhere, the blood. Death. So much death. Flames, blood and gunfire. There!" He pointed. "A girl dies there. And there, his throat is ripped out. And the flames rise and the smoke circles onto heaven like a burnt offering. And he laughs."
Scott
Scott gently rocked the smaller man back and forth, trying to calm him down. "It will be okay. I promise you, we'll prevent it. Visions come so that people can change the outcome. I won't let anybody hurt my family."
Nathan
"Never so bad, never so bad, never so bad, oh god, why can't I just die already? I want to rest. I want to sleep. Oh god, I want to die." Nathan coughed into his cupped hands, and then wiped his bloody hands on his jeans. "Can't be too soon. Dies Irae. Oh god, the laughter...but something." Nathan looked around with sudden alertness. "Something...but I can't see it clearly. Gods fog my eyes. Them and theirs. As Cain is wreathed in flame, as Nyx is cloaked in darkness, as the Key shines like the earth...all three have a part to play here. And another. But he is not here yet."