Chapter 15: Catastrophic Conventions

--- Coraline Hawkins ---

Everything hurt, that was the first thing that she realized upon regaining consciousness.

Slowly she opened her eyes to see a growing cloud of smoke looming above her and darkening the room. Her thoughts were fuzzy, slow to come together for a moment, but they were slowly speeding up.

As painful as it was she forced herself to sit up, feeling her entire arm burn with the action. (Did I… Did I break it?)

She looked down at her arm and found a black vine full of thorns that wrapped around her middle finger before climbing over the back of her hand and wrapping itself around her entire arm as it grew all the way up her arm where it disappeared mid bicep as it met a wreath like plant that ringed her bicep.

(Is this… is this my contractor’s mark?) She wondered before looking around in a daze. (But then… where’s my contract?)

The entire vine tightened around her arm, feeling like every thorn on it was digging into her skin as it forced her to hiss through her teeth.

She shook her head deciding that whatever this was was a later problem, one she’d ask her dad about even if it meant owning up to what she’d done.

(Wait…) “Dad!” Her eyes went wide as she remembered that he was here somewhere, and with him came the reminder that she hadn’t come here alone. “Miles! Micki!”

She pushed through her pain and forced herself to climb back to her feet, letting her get a better look at the chaos around her.

All of the exhibits that had made up the convention were blasted to pieces, half of them on fire and the other half crushed under what looked like debris from the ceiling. While she knew there weren’t too many people at the center, the few that she could see were either laying limply on the ground or running through the smoke as they cried out for their loved ones.

Something she found herself mimicking as she cried, “Miles?! Micki?! Dad?!” in between stumbling over the debris that littered the floor.

Around her people she didn’t recognize rushed past her, their forms quickly fading into the smoke and ash that seemed to thicken as the fires grew worse. The flames devouring everything they touched without discrimination, almost as if they were possessed.

She winced as the thorns on her arm tightened once more, and -as she felt warmth smearing between her fingers- drawing blood from her.

“Oh… that’s bad…” She really needed to find her dad.

Picking up the pace she moved even more quickly through the smoke, still calling out for her family in vain. “Micki! Miles! Dad!”

A flash of light through the smoke drew her attention to the side and a second flash helped her find body laying under some debris. A familiar body.

“Micki!” She cried, rushing forward and dropping to her knees beside her best friend.

“C-Cory?” The blond girl asked in a daze. “What… What happened?”

“I… I don’t know…” The thorns on her arm was one thing, as was the blast back when her spell backfired, the rest of this though (it’s too much to be just me.)

Micki frowned. “Where’s… Where’s Miles?”

She couldn’t help but grimace, both because of the question and because of how heavy the debris crushing her friend looked. “I… I haven’t found him yet.”

Micki nodded before looking down at the debris on top of her with an annoyed look. “Help me… Help me push this off.”

“Are you… are you sure that’s a good idea?” She frowned. “Maybe, maybe I should find some help?”

Micki let out a bitter laugh as she looked around. “I think… I think everyone needs a bit of… help right now… Let’s at least try…”

She didn’t like it but she also couldn’t argue Micki’s point. “Alright, just, just give me a second.”

Once she had a decent grip on the thing pinning Micki down she gave the other girl a nod. “On three… One… Two… Three!”

She pushed against the debris as hard as she could and felt it barely budging. “This isn’t working…” She told Micki as she continued to struggle.

“Just… get off me!” The other girl growled just before the debris finally gave and slid off of her.

“Alrights…” She gasped, before turning to Micki. “Let’s- Oh, fuck!”

Micki blinked before gaining a smirk. “Maybe later but… Oh… ” The other girl’s eyes went wide as she realized there was a piece of rebar sticking through her side. “Fuck…”

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--- Catherine Freeman ---

The boiling finally stopped, and she felt her mind finally coming back to itself. “What… what just happened?”

“Ya frenzied.” An old familiar voice informed her.

“Hendrickson?” She checked, before realizing that she was bound in ropes.

“Yep.” The old man nodded, putting out his blunt on the heel of his boot. “When that box snapped shut you and the ginger both frenzied like nothing else. Would’ve taken a bite out of me if I hadn’t locked you both down.”

She shivered, knowing that given how it was Hendrickson she tried to take a bite out of she was lucky he didn’t just put her down. “Sorry.”

Hendrickson waved her off. “Don’t worry, ya clearly weren’t in the right of it. Any idea what happened?”

“No just… my blood… it was boiling hotter than ever before.” She tried to explain. “Haven’t felt anything like that since the time I came back from having my chest ripped open.”

“And you’ve cooled off now?” Hendrickson check, a edge of something to his voice as he moved closer.

“Y-yeah.” She nodded, before lying. “Don’t feel anything.”

Honestly, she wanted a drink like nothing else, but she wasn’t stupid enough to admit to that. (I’ve enough self control to get back to base, or at least somewhere quiet first.)

“Good.” Hendrickson told her as he began setting her free. “Because everything has gone to hell in a handbasket since you went out of it.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned, rubbing some feeling back into her limbs as she was freed.

Hendrickson motioned towards the tent exit. “Step out and you’ll see.”

Curious to see how bad it was she did as he said and grimaced as she looked over the convention center, filled with smoke, fire, and limp bodies amongst all of the debris. “Fuck, it looks like a bomb went off in here.”

“About a dozen bombs.” Hendrickson corrected her. “Every bit of magic in the center went crazy at once. Don’t know if it was your box or something else, but whatever this is, someone went outside and they say it’s somehow even worse.”

She grimaced at that, before reluctantly asking, “On a scale of one to ten…”

“My ten or yours?”

“Mine.” She had no desire to know what a ten on Hendrickson’s scale looked like.

Hendrickson considered it for a moment as he scratched at his neck. “Mm, it looks like the biblical second coming of the Rift Riots.”

“Fuck.” She cursed, before glancing back at Eric and then the box that Hendrickson had bound in chains and put a padlock on. (Which given how it bit me, I can’t blame him for…)

“I’ll watch your boy until he comes to.” Hendrickson assured her. “But I want Pierce and the rest of your little club doing what you can to minimize this shit. The riots were bad business for all of us.”

“Yeah, none of us want to go back to the bad old days.” She agreed.

“Don’t forget some saw those as the good old days.” Hendrickson warned her, something dangerous in his gaze. “Those were the ones to make them the bad old days.”

“R-right.” She shivered, before stepping out into the smoke.

Despite her desire to run straight to Pierce and figure out what kind of crazy had hit the city, whatever the box had done to her had drained her dry of blood. And while her fear of Hendrickson was enough to keep her in line while around him, it wasn’t enough to keep her from following the scent of blood she could smell underneath the smoke and ash.

(If I’m lucky I can find someone with something small and nick a pint. If they were unlucky, well I can take more than a pint off someone who’s dead.) It was perhaps a little cold blooded but given the circumstances she felt that it might just be necessary if the riots were starting up again.

As she neared the source of the scent she found two girls amongst the debris, one of whom had been unfortunate enough to get impaled by something falling from the ceiling and the other looking a lot like, “Coraline?”

Her nephew’s best friend to her with a surprised look. “Catherine!”

With that confirmed she realized the other girl -the one with a piece of rebar through what was probably her liver- was Miles’s other friend, Micki.

“Fuck…” She grimaced upon seeing the girl she’d practically watch grow up beside her nephew.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.” The girl agreed with a pained laugh.

She frowned looking around at all of the fire and smoke. “We need to get you two out of here.”

“I’d like that… but, uh… I’m kind of pinned…” Micki tried joking.

She looked at the girl for a moment before glancing at Coraline. “Your dad is, James Hawkins, right? The practitioner.”

“Y-yeah.” Coraline nodded.

“Okay.” She nodded herself. “Then the two of you know not to spread this around.”

She made her way over to Micki and crouched down on the side of the girl with the rebar before warning her that, “This is going to hurt.” a second before quickly snapping the metal rod.

“FUUCCKK!!!” The girl screamed as she rolled over, now free of the thing pinning her down.

“Micki!” Coraline yelled, rushing to the other girl’s side.

Part of her wished she could use her blood to mend the girl, but whatever had happened to her and Eric had left her far too low to use her blood without frenzying. In which case she’d be a bigger threat to the girl’s life than a piece of metal.

“I’m okay, I’m okay, just… fuck!” Micki tried to assure her friend, before cursing in pain.

She wanted to stay with the two, for her nephew’s sake if nothing else, but there was just too much going on for her to help them more than she already had. (Especially with the way I keep eyeing Coraline’s arm…)

Turning away from the girl she’d known for nearly a decade, she apologized and told them, “Right, sorry, there’s a lot going on right now and I need to keep moving. Find your dad. I know he’s got some healing magic on him and can probably help you guys.”

Coraline frowned. “Wait, what about Miles?”

She froze. “What about Miles?” It clicked in her head. (If they’re here, then…)

Her eyes widened as she began looking all around them, and as dangerous as she was she called upon her blood and began reaching out with it.

While the strongest pull she could feel came from Eric back with old man Hendrickson due to their shared bloodline, the fact was the spell also let her feel the blood -if weakly- of anyone she shared blood with. Gift of blood or not.

Which is why the moment she felt a weak pull coming from another direction she immediately sprinted for it, the shadows wrapping around her as she quickly leapt over anything that got in her path without care for being caught.

She didn’t stop for one moment until the source of her blood was in sight, and even then she only froze in terror because of how horrifyingly still he was.

(Oh, no...)