Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men. Ilehana Xavier belongs to Corrinth and is used with permission. Blaze, Shockwave and Iona belong to Lamby and should not be used without my permission.
Scene 09The tension in the air was tangible as the two girls rejoined their friends. In the breeze from the open window, the pages of the open book seemed to have a life of their own, flickering backwards and forwards like lightning across the deep black sky. It lay in the centre of the floor, propped up at an angle on an old shoebox of Sam's, almost like an icon on some mystical altar. Unnerved by her spat with Sam, wondering what had given her the nerve to argue with the older girl, Iona took her seat on Vertigo's bed.
Shockwave didn't instantly sit, shutting the door behind her and latching the lock. Nobody said anything or asked what she was doing as she wandered next around the room, lighting a few scattered candles with a lighter. Sam then switched on the bedside lamps, rather than having the room illuminated by the big central light. The only thing any of the others thought on Sam's strange behaviour was why none of them had thought of it before.
The distracted laughter that echoed up from downstairs was an uncomfortable interruption to their individual musings. Sam sat on her bed, so now the four girls surrounded the book on each side. Still not one of them spoke, eyes drifting from the book to the others and back to the tome again. The atmosphere seemed almost thick with power, like incense, although it could have been the flowering honeysuckle below their window. A sickly sweet stench, it made Wolfsbane want to sneeze in disgust. Fighting the impulse unless one of the others took offence to the action, Wolfsbane rubbed her sensitive nose with the back of a hand and didn't make eye contact as Vertigo looked at her.
"So…" Vertigo began, before clearing her throat and starting again, the energy that drifted unseen between them all and the book making the hairs on the back of her neck tingle as though she was afraid. "So, does anybody have any ideas where we're supposed to start?"
For a moment again, nobody answered. Sam was staring at the book, frowning, as though it was talking to her. Could she hear something the others couldn't, Iona pondered. In the ominous darkness it was hard to easily dismiss the idea. Iona didn't know what disturbed her the most, that Sam might be hearing voices from the book, or that the book was talking to Sam and not to her.
"We've tried randomly blasting it. We know what happens then." Shockwave spoke softly, voice much more even than Vertigo's had been just moments before. "We need to try and understand some of the symbols, see if any of them will channel our powers in different ways…" Shockwave's deep dark eyes met Wolfsbane's with a look that was electrifyingly intense. Wolfsbane gulped, but nodded and made her way to the floor. Like a nun at prayer she knelt besides the heavy tome, her fingers reaching out gently to brush the soft leather pages, the symbols written in blood.
"I don't understand it all." She admitted; comforted slightly when Iona came to kneel besides her friend, and at the same time suddenly very possessive that she was the only one who could read what the book said. "But this symbol here comes up a lot. I recognise it, its similar to the Ancient Norse word for Power. The same here, the word for Gift… And this one… World's End."
"A way to give power to Apocalypse…" Vertigo surmised, voice breathless and guttural. "What do we get in return I wonder?"
"Only one way to find out." Iona answered, big eyes captivated by the writing she couldn't understand, but that seemed to dance in the firelight on the page in front of her. She reached out; the treacherous touch of her mutant power a longing within her to be set free. For a moment, there was a small fear inside of her like there had been with Sam that she might damage the book. But again, the pages were not scalded by her powers, and slowly the words on the page began to glow…
Downstairs, screams filled the air where laughter had played before, as the state-of-the-art projector exploded in a shower of golden sparks. Suddenly the whole mansion was plunged into darkness so complete, so suffocating like had never been seen before, amplified by the new moon outside. Storm felt sudden panic overwhelm her, even though she knew where she had been not seconds before, her claustrophobia could not differentiate between darkness in an open space and darkness in a shallow grave… Logan smelt her fear, used his mutant senses to reach her through the crowd of panicked kids, as over it all Scott tried to bring order to the chaos.
"Storm, Storm, its okay…" He tried to soothe his friend, but she was a wreck already. "Ilehana?" He asked of the presence next to him, hoping she could help.
"I'll look after her. Go check the circuit breakers." Vixen remained calm, like Logan just switching to using her other senses if her eyes no longer worked. In her case, they included telepathy, a skill she used now to calm Storm as Logan did as he was told.
"There is no need to panic." Half spoken words, half telepathic command, Xavier Senior arrived in the room almost lazily. "Jubilee, some light if you don't mind?"
Jubilee did as she was asked; balling her hands together she employed her power to make a blue sheen like a child's nightlight in the centre of the room. All eyes seemed to suddenly be on her, but she held firm. And as another mutant, a teenage boy named Berserker did a similar trick with his pale orange energy; the room began to be a cosily lit refuge in a sea of dark and troubled faces.
"Now," Xavier began as if he were addressing a scout campfire "Is everybody here?" There were vague nods, and nobody spoke out that anyone was missing. "Good. Well then, when I was a boy, a blackout like this was always a good excuse to tell ghost stories… Speak up; does anyone have a good one? Shadowcat, perhaps you know one that would do?"
"Of course Professor." Kitty smiled, "But mine's a true story. It all happened not so long ago, in a house not too different to this one…"
In the room upstairs, the lamps had fizzed out, but the few scattered candles still burned luminously. With a gasp, Iona pulled her fingers away from the pages of the book grimly. The other girls blinked as their eyes adapted to the lower light and they glanced at each other nervously. Vertigo offered Iona a hand as the smaller girl scrabbled her way back to her seat on the bed like a small and very scared mouse. Vertigo could hardly blame the kid; she was shaking a little herself as she put a comforting arm around Iona.
"My turn…" Wolfsbane was captivated, predatory eyes glowing and intense like the other girls had never seen in her before. Suddenly it wasn't so hard to believe that she was a werewolf, tied to dark natural forces not another amongst them understood.
"But you can't blast it…" Sam began, pointing out the crucial difference between Wolfsbane's powers and the others. But Wolfsbane had already thought of that. Shrugging off her jumper and kicking off her shoes, the animorph concentrated hard. Slowly, very slowly at first but picking up speed all the time, a russet-grey wolf took form where the girl had been sat, its left forepaw touching a page of the mysterious book. Snarling as she shook herself free of the binding human clothes, Wolfsbane pushed her claws into the page so hard that blood began to flow. Blood from the writing, or blood from the force of her own claws being pushed back into her foot through the invincible nature of the tome, no one could tell.
"Wolfsbane, stop it!" Vertigo was scared now; the way the wolf stared at the tome, as if she were reading the strange symbols over and over to herself, was too much. But as she started forward, leaving Iona alone and unprotected to pull her other friend away, the wolf turned on her, madness glinting behind her empty eyes…
