The building inside was dark and pungent. It hadn't rained in the city for weeks and the walls, damp from the inside out, were slowly rotting, the fermenting bodies of dead poisoned rats slowly expanding, writhing in a grotesque imitation of life as the muscles atrophied and the internal organs swelled, adding to the bouquet.
The stench burned Joss' nostrils as she followed her nightmare up three flights of deserted stairs.
At the other end of the passage; lucky thirteen.
The door was slightly ajar, in any other circumstances it might even have looked welcoming.
"Said the spider to the fly." Joss muttered under her breath. She remembered that she happened to be the fly in question and stopped smirking.
Nobody left their front door open like that in this neighbourhood, she could here the sounds of several television sets behind the doors that reached between her and her target. The sounds and smells of someone realising that they had burnt a microwave meal, a couple arguing, someone sobbing inconsolably.
Joss cast another doubtful look at the door.
"Oh there's not a chance in hell." She knew he had gone in there, and what sort of person leaves their front door open like that unless they knew someone was planning on coming through it?
She turned and swiftly ascended the next two flights of stairs that led up to the roof, four small black paws making no sound as they crossed the old creaking floorboards.
The door onto the roof was hanging loosely from its hinges, Joss slipped through and out on to the flat darkness. She switched forms to that of a large lynx to reassure herself and her golden eyes picked out the top of the fire escape that led down his side of the building. Refusing to pause for thought she made to move across the roof when her ears picked up the sound of another breathing. That slight nasal whistling that normally sent her to distraction now shot lead through veins as she remembered what Ferdinand had told her.
"Apparently he spends a lot of time on the roof."
Joss turned, hardly daring to breathe and saw, for the first time, the shape of another. Sitting on the ledge, right on the edge of the concrete slab that marked the corner of the building. Legs hanging over the edge below him. Lynaes.
Instinctively, Joss switched form again, becoming a full grown Bengal tiger, the largest form available to her. Cursing the fact that Ligers were not naturally occurring and thus, out of her domain. She held back the low rumbling in her chest that threatened to give her away and forced herself to focus. He didn't seem to have noticed her presence yet, she could just sneak up behind him and send him reeling down to sidewalk below, the concrete would break his fall. Maybe bury the two knives she'd had Ferdinand make her in his stinking back; just to be sure.
Alternatively, she could always run. It had worked the first time, but, she reminded herself, she had come looking for him this time.
Why?
Joss made a mental note to ask Professor Xavier if it was normal to have an irritating little voice such as this in ones head. He'd probably tell her it was her conscience. Maybe it was him.
Professor? She tried…..no answer.
Joss turned her attention back to Lynaes, though her eyes had never left him, and for no reason that she could explain, changed back to her usual form. Long coat billowing in the wind around her, she drew her knives and scuffed the heel of her foot deliberately.
Lynaes lifted his head and turned slightly, hunched shoulders giving him the look of a bald-headed vulture.
Joss squared her chin defiantly and met his pink gaze. His thin mouth was curled in the trace of a smile and she felt her stomach jump as she realised that he wasn't surprised to see her.
"Little sister." He swung his legs around to meet the roof on which Joss was standing. She felt sick; only one person in the whole world had earned the right to call her that and she had left him to come here and kill the one who now presumed to adopt it himself.
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Raven hung up the club phone and shook her head at those watching expectantly.
"Scotch doesn't know where she is, nor do Spider, Dash or Theo." The others of 'The Black Lily' slumped their shoulders dejectedly, apparently those were the four people who, between them, always knew what was going on in any part of the city at any given time and just who was involved. Unfortunately, this time they had fallen short.
Logan swore and kicked a barstool, Scott was tempted to do the same when suddenly his cell phone rang.
"Scott." Came Jeans voice immediately as he answered. "We've found her." He brought a hand to his head in relief and motioned to Raven for a pen and paper as his fiancé recited an address to him. "Scott." She cautioned as he thanked her. "You have to get there now. Joscelyn is in a huge amount of danger." He rang off.
Logan was eyeing him anxiously.
"She found him." Was all Scott needed to say. Logan snatched the scrap of paper from Scott's hand and tore out of the door. Scott paused to say something to the others watching him but, remembering that they had in fact been nothing but a hindrance, took of at a run after Logan.
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Lynaes was watching her intently, Joss had adopted a rather convincing air of bravado as he sat across the roof from her. Only two words had been spoken in what felt like an eternity but was, in reality, no more than a few seconds.
"You'd left your front door open." She told him airily, struggling to keep her voice level. "I thought I'd do the neighbourly thing and let you know."
Faced with this huge piece of her past, Joss had once again lapsed into a heavy Irish accent. She had noticed as she spoke that Lynaes did not appear to have any discernable accent at all. He simply spoke the words with no trace of dialect. This man didn't belong anywhere.
He snickered.
"How kind, dear little thing." He stood, his tall frame blocking out the full moon that had shone reassuringly behind him. "Such a little thing you were. So disappointed to loose you I was."
Deciding that now was really not the time to begin criticising his sentence construction, Joss allowed a low rumbling growl to escape her chest. She flexed her wrists, adjusting her grip on the custom made handles. They would never fit any hands as well as they fit hers. The curved blades glinted in the moonlight. Lynaes smiled condescendingly.
"Ah, I see. Here to avenge the murder of our parents are we? How very Bruce Wayne." Joss bit back a whimper, instead snarling as he took a step forward.
"I should have killed you when you had your back turned. You deserve none of the honour that comes with a fair fight." He gave her a sickly smile. And drew his right arm up from his side. Joss heard the sound of bones cracking and bending as it began to lengthen.
"You know." He commented conversationally. "That very first time you turned, when I was done tearing your parents to shreds that is; I have to admit to being more than a little taken aback. Of course now it's obvious that you are just another one in the ever increasing number of mutants but at the time I have to say it came as rather a surprise."
His elbow swung backwards at an unnatural angle as his hand began, slowly, to change. Joss was frozen in fear, her mind completely blank as she was taken over by blind panic. She could barely hear over the sound of her heart beating, the blood roaring in her ears.
Lynaes' pale long fingers continued to lengthen, curving sideways and started to meld together to create a bizarrely shaped fleshy point which took on a shine as it hardened into a cruel looking claw, almost a foot in length and wicked sharp.
The same voice of reason that had been annoying Joss all night now offered up its first piece of useful advice. She dropped into a fighting stance; legs bent, shoulders above her knees, one armed hand raised in front of her chest, the other by her side. Her gold eyes flashed dangerously as adrenalin coursed through her veins, Joss had never before backed out of a challenge that she had thrown down, this was not going to be the first.
Lynaes moved to match her and they began to circle one and other like wolves.
"There aren't any special precautions I need to know about are there?" she asked as they sized each other up. "Once I've killed you I mean. You know; stake through the heart, burying at a crossroads, that sort of thing."
She recoiled as the air inches from her face was shorn in half.
"Just make sure that your soul is at peace with God before I win." He advised, forcing her back with another swipe at her midriff.
"Oh don't be so sure. I'm not six years old anymore." She retorted making an attack of her own. Feigning to the left she dove under his arm raised on the defensive and rolled behind him where she drove a long blade deep into his left calf, feeling his muscle give way as she drew the point down. First blood.
Lynaes let out a strangled cry of pain and lashed out behind him, bringing his clawed limb slicing through the air. Joss dropped to the ground but was too slow to avoid it completely; he scored a line across the back of her head, behind her eyes. She scrambled backwards, regaining her footing out of harms way. The cut in her head was not too deep but head wounds bleed profusely and already she could feel the slick warmth running down the back of her neck.
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Hank switched on the external com in the cockpit of the Blackbird and urged the others to hurry.
"The jet's ready people, lets go!" Storm and Jean hastened across the hanger and up the ramp of the X-Men's jet, decked out in the usual black leather suits worn for all their missions.
"Logan and Scott are both on their way to the address that Professor Xavier got but they're on the other side of he city and, given the traffic I'd say they'll be at east twenty minutes." The others strapped themselves in Storm took the controls.
"Lets just hope we get there in time."
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Logan pounded down the street, Scott was half a block behind but tiring. Logan's healing factor was rejuvenating his body as he ran but he was determined to go faster.
He swore he was never going to let the damned kid out of his sight again.