Twenty-One

Held over his father by the back of his neck, Oliver didn't know what stung worse, the sheer disappointment that gleamed in Russle Johnson's eyes or the monstrous changes to his body. Russle's eyes gleamed liked two pools of blood. His teeth looked dagger-sharp.

Beside him, Rei kicked the air and snarled. Russle – no, Abraxas – looked between the two of them and smirked. "It seems the prodigal son and the blood whore have returned, eh?" he said. He shook Oliver first, then Rei, who sputtered. Bony, overtanned arms stretched out from beneath Russle's shoulderblades and arched over his head. Drool leaked from the corner of his mouth as he ran his tongue around.

"Ahh..." He closed his eyes, a sort of ecstasy on his face, before opening them back up and looking back and forth. "Which of you should I devour first?"

"Wha--" Oliver was cut off by a strong blast of wind to his gut. He flew back until he hit something hard – a wall? - and fell to the ground. From somewhere else, Rei screamed.

Russle's shiny loafers clicked on the sidewalk. Hands in his blazer pockets, he took slow, even strides towards Oliver's crumpled form.

"Tsk, tsk," he said before licking his lips again. "You thought you were enough to protect her? And your blood whore? How sad."

Oliver stared up at him from a ground, every cell in his body screaming. "She's not..." He shook his head, though it did nothing to still the angry buzzing in his brain. "She's not a--"

Bony fingers grabbed him by the throat and lifted him, kicking and gasping, back into the air. As hard as he tried to pry himself free, Abraxas's hold wouldn't loosen. The buzzing in his brain grew louder, like that of radio static. Russle's – Abraxas's! - face turned fuzzier and fuzzier the more Oliver hung there, kicking.

With what remained of his energy, Oliver focused on the palms of his hands. Warmth surged down his tingling arms. Smoke, then flames, erupted from the space between his hands and Abraxas's.

Abraxas dropped him with an inhuman shriek. Oliver fell knees-first, choking on the air that was suddenly refilling his lungs. With watery vision, he put one hand to his throat and the other to the cement and fixed Abraxas with as fierce of a stare as he could manage.

"Fuck." Abraxas shook one of his branch-like arms, the faintest hints of smoke permeating from its fingertips. With wide eyes, he said, "That hurt."

"It..." Oliver paused to cough. "It was supposed to."

As his vision began to clear, he noted a blur of black and red from behind Abraxas. Moments later Rei's arms were wrapped around Abraxas's neck and yanked his head back. Teeth bared, she dug her nails into his collarbones with a shriek and went for his neck.

Before her fangs could puncture Abraxas's skin, Abraxas grabbed her by the back her duster and threw her away from him.

"I've already had it with the prodigal son," Abraxas growled, dusting off his sleeves. "I don't need your insolence, too."

Rei's body hit the street and skid across the road. Oliver's vision turned blurred, bathing everything in various shades of red. With a pained grunt, he stretched his nails out to their full length, lashed his tail against the stone and grass, and clenched his jaw.

"Don't. Fucking. Touch her."

The air exploded with cinders. Oliver roared and lunged for Abraxas, weaving between the Scourge's twig-like appendages and planting his claws in Abraxas's chest. The two of them fell backwards. Abraxas's head bounced against the ground.

His smile split his face in two. "Touched a nerve, did I? Interesting how possessive you can be..."

At this, Oliver raked his claws down Abraxas's front, popping buttons free and ripping fabric in his wake. His heart beat faster than hummingbird wings. Ashes coated his tongue. His vision was so red it was almost black.

Don't lose control... Don't lose control... If you do then he wins. Don't lose control.

"You know, it would be so easy to just..." Abraxas stopped and looked down at the front of his body. Blood streamed from the freshly-gouged caverns Oliver had made. Then the red left his eyes and when he screamed, it wasn't in Abraxas's snake-like lilt but in a voice Oliver had heard time and time again. A whooshing like the inside of a vacuum filled Oliver's ears.

Russle Johnson screamed again, the sound almost inhuman. Oliver clamped his hands over his ears and screamed back. Fire seared through his brain.

He scrambled to his feet. What the fuck is happening?

Like there were hinges in his heels, Russle rose from the ground in one single, fluid motion, hands crossed over his chest and eyes closed. When he rocked to a stop, his eyes snapped open once more, red as rubies.

"Did I scare you, Oliver?" The snake-like hissing was back to his words. "Did I terrify you?" Abraxas waved his hands in front of him and grinned. "Did I make you feel bad, son? Tell me, did that feel good?"

Oliver's hand remained over his ears. With embers trailing from his fingertips and singeing his hair, he squeezed his eyes shut and screamed again. "Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

Bits and pieces of memory zoomed through his head. His father's stern face. Placards and trophies with scratched-out names.

A flash of red. Oliver fell to his knees. A flash of black. He felt as though all the air had been sucked from his body in one fell swoop. Red. Rei and Russle were screaming. Black. Oliver couldn't hear anything at all.

Red. Abraxas's face was a mere hair's width away from Oliver's. Had her leaned any closer, their noses would be touching.

"Tell me, Oliver," he said, taking Oliver by the chin and tilting his face up, "did it feel good to do that?" With his free hand, he traced the grooves Oliver had made in his chest. "Did it feel good to make your daddy suffer?"

Oliver wrenched his face away and scrambled backwards, heart in his ears. "Don't touch me."

"But that did feel good, didn't it? It's only fair, isn't it?" He stopped to gesture in Rei's direction and freeze her in place then turned back. "Come on. Tell me it felt good. After all these years, it had to have, right?"

"You're not my father," Oliver replied. He lightly jabbed at the sides of his neck and winced.

"No, but you wish I was." Abraxas gestured again and Rei floated through the air to Oliver's side. Though she appeared unable to move, the look in her eyes was murderous.

"Indeed," Abraxas went on, "if I was your father, I would be very disappointed in you right now. Look at this one – a pathetic blood whore for a girlfriend?" He dropped her and she hit the ground, knees and palms first. "For shame, Oliver. For shame."

"She's not--"

Rei forced herself to her feet with a grunt. Clutching one arm, fangs bared, she growled. "Shut the fuck up, you goddamn parasite."

The air turned a few degrees colder. Her hair seemed to take a life of its own, bristling like a nest of angered snakes and whipping the air. Several strands snapped against her skin, bringing blood to the surface that trailed down her arms and pooled into her hands. In the blink of an eye, she held a long staff in her grip, wreathed in blood, with a curved blade at one end.

She shifted to a crouching sort of stance and aimed the tip of the blade at the center of Abraxas's chest.

"Aw, poor girl. Did I upset you?" Abraxas smirked, hand over the spot Rei's weapon aimed at. He chuckled. "It was the 'blood whore' thing, wasn't it." His gaze flicked to the blade end and chuckled. "It was totally the 'blood whore' thing."

Heat ghosted over the tips of Oliver's palms. With another explosion of embers, he had a fully-formed mass of flames in his fingers. As they licked up his knuckles, Abraxas shifted his focus to them and watched them move.

The next moment, Rei swung. Oliver's vision went black.

#

"Yaknow, if you're going to stab someone, you really should make sure they won't come back first."

Oliver's vision flickered like an old static television, first black then grey and black again. Pain stabbed through him from his wrists, pinned behind him. Everything from his neck up was weighted; his chin hung mere inches over the center of his chest.

He pulled at his tied-up hands and cold fingers grasped his own. Long. Tapered to well-filed points. They threaded through his and gave his hands a shake.

Rei...

"Hey." More hands grabbed Oliver's chin and jerked his face skywards. Abraxas – sans Russle's body – stared down at him with an impish grin. "There you are!" He pat Oliver's cheek with his free hand, teeth-and-steel necklace jingling. "I was hoping you'd wake up soon. Possession tends to take it out of you, hmm?"

"Whamr..." Oliver's tongue was a block of wood in his mouth.

"No, no, no. Don't talk. You're hurting my ears."

Fire seared through his veins and swirled in his stomach in a thick coil. Dick. Just as soon as it had come, the anger passed, leaving empty spaces where the warmth had been.

"Besides." Abraxas squeezed Oliver's cheeks in his fingers. "Ruins the satisfaction I could get in telling you about your delightful daddy." He looked up and dug his nails in. "You sure fucked up, didn't you?"

Oliver's heart beat in his ears. He doesn't mean...

Abraxas met his gaze once more. "That's right! Your favorite blood whore stabbed your father! I'm sure that made you happy though." He waited a moment, scanning Oliver's sleep-addled gaze. Oliver stared blankly ahead.

"No change in emotion." Abraxas blinked. "Interesting. I was hoping you'd feel something about tha – ah, and there's anger. Anger is good. It means you're waking up. Means you care. I like seeing that you care, because it means I can also see how you look when I take what you care about and destroy it." His grin grew. With the tilt of his head, he added, "Like Lilith."

Oliver squeezed Rei's hands and gritted his teeth until he was sure both would shatter. Despite the heat he gave off and the way his tail lashed, the binding around his wrists didn't melt away. That didn't stop Rei from fighting to get her fingers free, or the pained gasps that spit from her mouth.

"Stop that!" she said. "You're hurting me!"

"She deserves it, though, doesn't she?" Abraxas snapped his fingers in front of Oliver's nose when his gaze strayed. "Focus on me, Oliver. Focus. On. Me. Now." He bopped Oliver's nose. "Doesn't she deserve it? She stabbed your daddy, after all. Without following protocol. He's probably lying in a street somewhere, poor sap." All at once, he dissolved in a cloud of smoke and reformed several feet away.

Oliver's head returned to its hanged position. The emptiness swelled inside him, flooding his veins and surging to his brain. The tips of his shoes brushed against the concrete flooring. Flecks of red painted the ground.

"And that's just fitting, isn't it? The person you love killing the person you hate?"

He scuffed the tip of his shoe against the floor. "I never hated him." Though God knows I wanted to.

"Interesting you should say that." He leaned against a metal table, long nails clicking. "That's not what I gathered, and I've been following you for a while."

Oliver returned his gaze to the floor. "Not all is as it seems."

"No." Click. Click. Click. "I suppose not." Abraxas lifted one hand and examined his nails, deep red and sharpened to points. The teeth on his necklace jingled. "You have to feel a bit happy for it, at least."

Rei spat and wrenched her fingers free. "Why would you say such a thing?" she asked, voice laced with venom. "The only person I want to see dead is you."

Abraxas's fangs gleamed. "Sounds like I hit a nerve, blood whore."

Her restraints squeak in protest. The hairs along Oliver's arms rose with the drop in temperature.

"You seem quite fond of willy-nilly terms, don't you think?" she asked.

"I mean..." Smoke obscured his hands. When it cleared, he held a small, black device. "I'm over here, free and moving, and you're tied down." He bounced the device in his palm. "So really, I think I have the right to those terms."

"Bullshit." Crackling, then more squeaking. Chills shot up Oliver's arms as his fingers brushed... Ice?

Abraxas's smile grew. "Those are top-of-the-line, magic-proof restraints, honey. Only way you're getting out is if I let you out." He stopped juggling the device. "That's not going to happen. Not yet." He paused. "Tell me, Oli. What's Little Dove's number?"

The ice in his veins turned to lava. Oliver jut out his chin and narrowed his eyes. "Like I'd tell you."

With an explosion of smoke, Abraxas rematerialized just inches in front of Oliver and grabbed him by the chin. His nails dug into Oliver's cheek. "I can be very persuasive," he said with a pout.

Oliver's eyes rolled up into his skull. Ringing filled his ears. Abraxas's voice echoed in his head.

"If you'd rather, I could just... break in here. Invade your memories. That is, if you don't want to be good..."

With a snap, Oliver returned to his senses. His temples pulsed. The taste of metal seared his tongue, mixed with flakes of ash.

Blood and ash and chaos – the formula for a Scourge. Oliver frowned. And a lack of humanity. Staring into Abraxas's eyes, a sudden thought came to him. Is this what I can become? What I will become?

"The numbers, Oliver. Lilith's number, to be precise." Abraxas flipped open the phone and hovered his thumb over the buttons. "Start reading."

"What's the point?" Oliver was almost surprised by how flat his voice sounded out of his mouth. "We're not alive, remember?"

"You think I didn't think of that?" Abraxas let him go to bounce a finger off his nose. "But she's not a normal human girl, is she? Besides, I know my way around." With a wink, he snubbed Oliver's nose and ran his thumb over the screen. "Now, Oli, the numbers."

As if on cue, Rei screamed into the dark and thrashed against Oliver's back. Oliver's hair sizzled. The scent of burning flesh filled his nose.

"The numbers, Oliver!" His voice echoed around the room and stabbed at Oliver's chest. "Now!"

Defeated, Oliver slumped forward and a string of numbers spilled from his lips. The phone beeped with every button that Abraxas pushed. Rei's screamed died to pained whimpers, hoarse and shaky.

With the last number, Abraxas held the phone to the side of his face, muttered a string of foreign words, and grinned. "Hello, Lilith?" His voice was different now. Deeper. "Oh, no, don't hang up. That's fine. Listen – she must be around, right?" His smile grew. "Excellent. When she gets out of the bathroom, can you tell her something for me? Uh-huh." His smile shriveled up. "Uh-huh. Well, Jack, it's a very simple thing, really. Yes. No, not directly, but I know her through Oliver. That's why I'm calling, actually. I had some things to tell her about him that are best said in person. Uh-huh."

He reached out and wound a lock of Oliver's hair around her finger. "Right. Well, tell her that I'll be by her house in an hour, if she wants to talk. And that I look forward to seeing her. Yes. Uh-huh." Oliver fought a groan as Abraxas pulled. "Thank you very much, Jack. Bye!"

Then the phone snapped shut. With the wave of his hand, the phone disappeared in a cloud of smoke. He pulled at Oliver's hair again and leaned in close. "She's on her way."