sirenspull_logs | Eat the terror, Lick the spark

Two nights, now, he'd followed him home. The beauty of the hunt was in making sure that it all went bad for the prey, not for the hunter himself. The wolf didn't want the rabbit to rip out his throat, after all. For that, it meant taking care to study, letting his intuition have free reign to build a workable plan--something that would work.

There was a reason he hadn't brought Peter with him. If this worked to plan, then he would be able to hide, even right there in Peter's apartment, without raising any suspicions, and he thought the other man might forgive him his indulgence if it worked. A back up plan, essentially, that would stop anything like Claire happening again, and make accusations against the other man's character, in turn, that much harder to lay down.

So he had watched, and planned, found out something very interesting about the company Sam kept, and then the following day he had unlocked Sam's door with a twist of his hand and let himself in.

The dog he'd heard before - Gizmo - had made a riot when he'd first come in, but Sylar had come prepared with some of Mr Muggles' favourite doggy treats, and he crouched down and let the dog familiarise herself with him, sniffing his hands and then going on for his pockets. Unfortunately it only meant she followed him when he head out back, and that was where she ran to Sam from when he came in. He didn't waste any time, stepping out after her as Sam bent down for cuddles.

"I've found myself wondering whether shapeshifters can speak to the animals they transform into. If so, you really should teach her about stranger danger."

Cold swept through him in a rush that seemed to suck out his breath and stop his heart. It had been a week since he'd heard that voice, but he remembered it, and when his wide eyes flicked upwards they fixed an a face he wished wasn't familiar. Gizmo stilled under him, sensing his panic.

The questions that should have come - How did he find me, How did he get in, Is Edgeworth okay, What am I going to do - didn't come. Whether it was the nature of being a shapeshifter or simply having lived through too many dangerous situations, Sam thought nothing; he acted.

Instinct. Fight or flight. Survival.

The crouched Southerner was suddenly a bundle of boots and clothes, a two-second-too-fast watch hitting the floor by the time a black fly rose into the air. Then even that disappeared, shifting seamlessly into invisibility as Sam became a hellhound.

It was all very fast--much faster than he'd expected. He was sharp enough to see the fly that Sam changed into, but before he could reach out and catch it the fly vanished, taking with it even thought itself. Cold predatory action, and Sylar, who recognised it for what it was, could do little but respond in like.

He could attack invisible things, but if that invisibility came with phasing, then it would do no good at all.

But Sam did leave behind one weak spot.

He gathered the frightened dog up in his arms with a pull of telekinesis, getting a bitten hand in the process, crouching down just behind him with his hand to the animal's head.

"You don't want to do that."

Sharp, painful indecision twisted his heart. The last thing Sam wanted was for anything to suffer or die for his sake. He'd had enough of that in his own world, when it had been Maryann coming after him. When Tommy had faced werewolves in his place, and died for it.

But if he stayed here, Sylar would kill him. Painfully. ...And Edgeworth wouldn't know the threat this man posed. If he was going to warn him, he'd have to survive this. Sam didn't want to die. He wasn't ready.

He was sorry, Gizmo.

Four heavily-muscled, invisible legs carry him out of the room and into the hallway, racing the back bedroom - and more importantly, its wide window.

Whether or not Sylar had superhero in his bundle of stolen powers, he'd hear the crash of broken glass as Sam shoved a hellhound's weight against the window, growing wings.

There was a gust of wind as Sam roared past him, all muscle and power rendered invisible. Really? He'd sacrifice the dog for his own life? That was cold.

"Apparently you do."

He turned after him, letting the dog go just as easily as he had taken her hostage, and whirled into shadow, reappearing in the doorway of the next room. He hadn't predicted invisibility in Sam's list of powers, and it was forcing him to think on his feet, but the moment the glass smashed he was throwing his hand up, and he caught the owl just as it finished transforming, wings wide.

Trapped in telekinesis, pressing in on all sides, transformation as much as movement were stopped dead. But he couldn't exactly pick apart a power when it was in the head of an owl, which caused a whole host of entirely new problems, such as how to get him to change back.

A flick of his hand, and the owl was flattened against the wall behind him, and then as he found his place between the wall and the window, he brought knives into play from the kitchen, driving one five inch blade through each outstretched wing, at about his own eyelevel, working on a hunch that the pain would make Sam change back. He'd barely even worked up a sweat.

It was like suddenly being encased in lead. Nothing holding him back, no rope or wire, just sudden paralysis. Before him was wide, open sky, freedom and life, but he couldn't twitch a muscle towards it. Couldn't do anything but scream inside his head as he was slammed back against the wall. Caught. The force alone was enough to dizzy his small, far more fragile body. He could hear barking from another room, the scraping of Gizmo's claws as she began running towards the bedroom. Thank god, she was still alive.

The relief didn't last. Twin blades slid through his wings and into the wall like they were gliding through water, severing muscle and sinew with terrible ease. The pain was incredible. The owl's already overtaxed heart jumped against his ribcage, and Sam shifted back rather than risk a heart attack.

The knife handles stood out from the palms of his hands like black pins, hardly displaced by the sudden thickening of their target. A brief try to pull them out was quickly forgotten in a bundle of screaming nerves, sharp even under the adrenaline pounding in his blood. Naked, caught, doomed, Sam panted and sweat in pain against his bedroom wall. There was no shifting out of this - if he became smaller the knives would tear open whatever new limbs he grew. He turned scared blue eyes on Sylar, watching the man in misery and fear as he caught his breath, hoping Edgeworth wouldn't come home early.

He didn't want him to see this.

Sylar watched, quietly, as the other man transformed back into his human form. Perfect. That was precisely what he wanted.

He could feel it now, the thrill of the hunt, the thundering beat of the heart in Sam's chest, fuelled by adrenaline, by fear and by his pain, by the futility of the situation he now found himself in. Gizmo thundered into the room, scurrying toward him with her tail between her legs, and Sylar - still with his hand held up to stop Sam from pulling his hands through the knives and off the wall - knelt to meet her.

"Good girl. Daddy was going to let the bad man hurt you. Yes he was." He petted her head, reassuring, looking up at the other man. "Bad Daddy."

Slowly he stood back up, and with a flick of his hand toward the door, with a grim finality, he snapped it shut.

"You understand--none of this is personal. I just don't have much of a choice. I'm sure your friend Edgeworth won't see it that way, but then, it won't matter much once I've disappeared." He tilted his head. "Tell me something... How versatile do you think your power is?"

"I'm sure you're just torn up about it," Sam managed with a dry throat and a dryer tone, swallowing. He wanted to bark at the bastard to get the fuck away from her (or to put her in another room), but he knew enough to know when talking wouldn't do any good.

Over Sylar's shoulder Sam could see what a beautiful day outside it still was. Sunny, warm, a cool breeze curling in from the shattered window. He winced when the door shut, felt his legs shake.

"Right. Just business." Sylar's calm was oppressive. The slicked-back, pretty-boy arrogance acting like this was just another day and Sam's life was just a means to an end. He wanted to knock the fucker's shiny teeth in.

"...Don't fuckin' lie to me. You've got options. You just don't fuckin' - care." His shoulders were aching now too, strung out too tense from his martyred pose. "What do you mean?"

There was blood dripping down from Sam's hands, and Gizmo sniffed her way closer to nose at it. Poor, hurt Daddy. He tilted his head, stepping just a little closer.

"I've got options, but that's just the problem isn't it? If you didn't want to die, then someone else would have to take the fall instead. You'd condone that, would you?" He smiled, glanced once toward the dog. "Of course you would. You were going to leave her here to die if it meant getting out of here. What a saint you are."

He lifted his other hand, as though to cut into Sam's temple, but hesitated again, still with his hand raised, his eyes overbright.

"That's right! You're not a saint at all. Mr. Of Course I Haven't Killed Anyone. When we both know that's nowhere near the truth. So out with it--who did you kill?" The slight inclination of his head was the only hint of his using telepathy.

"Says the cocksucker who would've killed a dog in the first place." Hate burned like bile in his throat. For a moment the rage was stronger than the pain of pierced hands, stronger even than his fear of dying. I'm not a saint. He'd never fucking claimed to be. He'd never asked anyone to expect that level of perfection from him. Sam is so good, Sam is so nice, Sam will help you with whatever you need, Sam will lie down and die like a good dog when you need him to because that's just who he is.

They didn't know him. That wasn't him. You don't know me.

His chest was heaving, head low, and if Sylar stepped any closer Sam was going to bite his goddamn nose off.

"Go to hell." Two years he'd been here, and the only person who knew what Sam had done - the dark night in the woods, the confrontation, the bullets that ended the lives of the woman who'd used him and the man who'd stolen from him - was the Devil himself. And that was how it was going to stay. "I'm not givin' you anything."

"I could rip it right out of your head if I wanted," he remarked. He'd heard the shout of projected, angry thought, but hadn't pushed for any more, and after a moment he shook his head and stepped back, squirreling it all away, the trapped feeling of a man who was playing nice because it was expected, but nobody really understood. "But that's not really what I'm here for. Just like I wasn't here for her."

He wanted to keep his nose, thank you very much.

"I know it hurts. Nobody can see the real you because if they did they'd be horrified. You have to be someone that you're not just to blend in, when in fact you're so much more special. But nobody understands, and you keep playing housepet when all you want to do is rake your claws through them and see how they bleed."

Now that he hung back, there really wasn't much for it, and he raised his hand up higher, pointing his finger at Sam's temple.

"I'm only here to take your ability. You can keep the rest."

And he began to cut.

There was so much he wanted to say to that. More assumptions, the awful feeling of someone peering in on him when pinning him to the wall like a butterfly to a cork-board wasn't enough. Just some young upstart who a week ago had all but forgotten his name.

But then he felt a stab of pain deeper and sharper than Maryann's blade through his heart, an agony that brought it all back in a rush. He couldn't help it - he screamed. He was going to die. Sylar was killing him. No V to save him this time, and goddamn, wasn't it a shame that Eric hadn't fed from him, or fed him, or whatever it was vampires did to know when someone like Sookie was in trouble, whatever brought them out of their coffins and running out to save someone just by knowing they were -

Sam's eyes shot wide.

Lucifer! Lucifer - help.

It took only a second between getting the prayer, wondering if it was a joke, realizing it wasn't, and appearing. He grabbed Sylar's hand, wrenched it behind his back.

At the first sign of struggle, he decided he'd telepathically remove Sylar's lungs. Let him regenerate from that--it'd be the longest thirty seconds of his life, Lucifer figured.

Lucifer glanced at Sam, the blood, the knives, and opted to try to break the drywall with Sylar's face. "You just can't keep your hands to yourself, can you?"

Sylar heard it too--the panic, the prayer, and his own eyes widened imperceptively. That was all that he had time to do before someone was wrenching his cutting hand down, sending his careful telekinesis flying up in such a way as to carve a path through the bedroom wall above Sam's head.

He didn't care that he knew who it was, that it was the master of Hell himself, because when his face hit the wall, dashed through plaster against brick, breaking his nose and near taking off half the rest of his face in the process, he threw up his hand in defense none the less, send a whirl of telekinesis over his shoulder to get his attacker off him.

And suddenly couldn't breathe at all.

His nails raked the wall and broke, and his remaining eye rolled back, but he hadn't even the breath to snarl. Instead, his fingertips began to glow; the only way to expess what he was feeling--murderous.

Edited 2012-03-14 15:51 (UTC)

It was like a dream. Sam watched the action before him with a vague sense of irreality. Plaster fell over him in gentle snowflakes, whitening his hair and getting into his lungs. He coughed, blinked through the haze and the blood trickling down his forehead, sticky and hot. Small, physical signs that he was still alive. Sam watched Sylar's head disappear into the adjacent wall, heard the sickening crack and wondered at it.

...This was real, wasn't it? He'd really come.

Something furry was shaking against his leg - Gizmo, seeking protection. It's all right, he wanted to tell her. Instead, all that came out was "Lucifer."

There were worlds of gratitude in that rasped-out name, a rush of warmth and affection for the angel taking vengeance upon his enemy. His savior.

Lucifer saw the fingers begin to glow, and reacted by looking at Sam, and yanking a knife out of his hand. And then sawing Sylar's hand off in an impossibly, inhumanly strong motion.

"You don't get it." He threw him to the ground. "All the powers you steal, and you've just made this easier for me. I know how to kill you...but I won't."

He glowered cruelly at him, and jammed the point of the knife under his jaw. And began literally peeling the skin off his face. "I won't, because I can keep you going for a thousand years just. like. this. That?" A bloody gesture at Sam, before he viciously began flaying him again. "He's off limits. And if you ever threaten me or anything of mine again, I will leave you so broken you won't know how to stop pissing yourself."

As soon as he had lungs back, and a mouth, he was able to scream - wail, even - because the only thing more painful than having his hand cut off was growing it back.

He was shaking by the time he hit the floor, frightened and wild eyed, staring up at Lucifer as he swooped down, an avenging angel, driving a knife to his throat and cutting ruthlessly. There wasn't a moment's hesitation, and why should there be? This was Satan after all, and if they had anything in common it was that they were both ruthless. He howled again, curled his newly grown fingers in, outward again, and flattened both wrists above his head.

And then smirked through the pain as he melted the knife with a look, and spoke through what was left of his lips.

"I'm not a mind-reader. Oh--wait..."

Edited 2012-03-14 22:29 (UTC)

"Nnngh-!" His expression twisted, the serrated kitchen knife ripped free from his right hand. Sam caught his breath and brought the hand forward, flexed his fingers weakly and winced. But it could still bend, which was all he needed to pull the second knife free. Blood dripped to the floor and Sam lurched from the wall, feebly clenching the knife handle. He tried to flex his left hand. It hung limply at the end of his wrist, unresponsive. Sylar had severed the central nerves.

Sylar. Sam swallowed and looked down with disgust at the half-faceless, grinning thing on his bedroom floor. Logically, he knew he should have expected such a gruesome response from Lucifer. The sight still turned his stomach all the same. ...But not enough to ask it to stop. Obviously it couldn't be that horrible for the bastard, not if Sylar could still manage humor.

"Don't waste your breath," Sam told Lucifer distantly. All he could muster for Sylar was a sick churning in his stomach. "He's a worm. ...Even if it's a worm with teeth. You can talk all you want, it's never gonna sink in for him."

Lucifer smiled as the metal melted...and then he heated it until it glowed, so molten steel poured over the exposed muscle of Sylar's face.

"You're right, Sam. I think this needs to be a learning experience. Something hands on." He gripped a flap of flesh and yanked, like a magician pulling a tablecloth from under a set table. It left him with what almost looked like a torn rubber Halloween mask. Which he wagged at Sylar's remaining eye, before he leaned down and blew ice over it. With no eyelid to shield it, he imagined that would be a certain kind of agony; at least, he hadn't met a human yet who'd enjoyed it.

"It's so easy to remember, Sylar. Don't touch. Just behave yourself. I'd love to stay and drive this lesson home for you, but someone needs a visit to the doctor." He stood, stretched, and snapped his fingers to send Sylar's limbs flying in pieces like shrapnel in four different directions. "Mull that over as you regrow yourself, would you? I'll be in touch."

Then he turned his bloodied attention to Sam, looking him over and assessing his injuries. "Hm-hmm, do I take you to the hospital or to my brother...?"

Sam realized what Lucifer was going to do the moment he grabbed Sylar's face and turned his head with a wince, listening to what followed and swallowing back bile. There was a wet ripping sound that sent Gizmo running from the room, and when Sam looked back he had to clench his jaw against his gag reflex. What a fucking mess.

He shook his head, eyes closed. "Get the fucker outta my home first." There was no hiding the scene from Edgeworth at this point - blood was pooling over the floor and splattered on the punctured, damaged walls, but there didn't need to be body parts for him to find. ...Or a regenerated Sylar, for that matter.

By that point, Sylar was dead; bleeding out from four arteries at once, compounded with shock, would do terrible things to a human. Lucifer made a shooing gesture and the body was gone, dumped in the salty ocean a mile away.

"You know, I doubt he learned a thing today. Shame." But more seriously he turned to Sam again. "Are you all right?"

He considered asking where Lucifer had sent him, but the truth was that as long as it wasn't here Sam didn't really care. He leaned back against the wall, collecting himself. Superhuman senses sucked sometimes - the stench of blood and sweat and fear in here was overpowering.

"Peachy," he muttered sourly, but after a moment he shook his head. "Sorry. Thank you. For comin'. If you hadn't shown up when you did..."

Well. Sam swallowed and opened his eyes, wiped his arm across his forehead, smearing the trickle of blood from Sylar's interrupted incision. "I thought for sure that was it. It almost was. I owe you."

"I'm glad you thought to call me." As if Lucifer didn't end most of their conversations reminding him to pray if he got in trouble. And oh, look: Sam had got into trouble. At least it wasn't Lucifer's fault; that was actually something of a shock.

"I'll take you to my place." Naked and all. It wasn't like the angels cared. "Just keep an eye out for the hellhound."

So saying he took them both straight to his own apartment, and set him on the little-used bed he and Michael had set up just to have. And sure enough, Gwolithua the hellhound padded in and started licking blood off of Sam.

"Even if it took me too damn long to do it." If he'd remembered Lucifer's proposal the moment he'd seen Sylar in his home, it wouldn't have come to this.

Before he could say anything to the plan, he was already somewhere new, falling back on a mattress. Something wet touched his hand - the hellhound's tongue - and he drew it back to his chest, his nostrils flaring as he fixed a stare on where the assumed creature was. Sorry, boy - he wasn't ready for a tongue-bath.

"...I didn't even know you had an apartment." Part of him had figured Lucifer subsisted by just appearing in and out of other people's homes. "Where are we?"

Lucifer whistled and motioned, and the hellhound reluctantly padded out. The puppy was equally as curious, but much more wary about the smell of blood and pain.

"Michael set it up. It's a sort of safe haven for us, which is why I can't tell you where it is. Nothing personal." He began gathering things to help to stop the bleeding, then exhaled in irritation with himself. The only reason his healing hadn't worked on Fred was because she had already been dead.

"I'll try to patch you up. If I can't, Michael will come around."

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...superhero *hearing* why do I forget words

It was totally obvious~ <3

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Let me know if you need me to reword things; Lucifer's a godmod in canon so it's hard D:

It's all good!

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...superhero hearing why do I forget words