Burnination!

Who: Thom, Kaysen, Isaac, Chance
Where: Thom's house / front lawn
When: After dark

Thom had spent most of the day setting up the spell. Thankfully he'd been able to do the set up in his back yard, so he hadn't got really weird looks from people walking past on the street - though the street was largely quiet. This was a nice neighbourhood - most people around here had the money to get the hell out of dodge for a while, thinking that visiting relative out of state was a plan right now, or that this was the perfect opportunity for that Caribbean cruise they'd always talked about. He'd finished the spell as the sun set below the horizon, a shimmering along the entire boundary for a few minutes the only suggestion it had been successful. It was still there, he knew, if you looked, but only an inch strip of shimmer hovering over the ground. You could see if it you shined a flashlight beam at it.

Since then, since night fell, Thom had been as nervous as all hell, wondering why the hell he'd ever actually agreed to this. This was insane. Totally and utterly insane. He should have taken Kaysen and locked her up in the basement and kept her there. Shit, he should have taken her and left town, just done what everyone else was doing and run. She'd be safe that way. And, instead, what was he doing? Allowing her to fight with her only protection an untested spell at the very limits of his abilities. Fuck. So, he was pacing, keeping between her and the boundary at all times.

Kaysen had an idea. She was actually trying to come at all of this weirdness in a rational manner. So, she was prepared. Or, what she was thinking was prepared. She had Kurt's lighter, a shit ton of candles, and candle holders--just in case wind started to kick up. And she walked out when she saw the weird spelly-type-effects. Which she had to admit were really neat looking. However, she didn't have much time to geek about that, she had her own shit to be doing. So. She walked out towards the edge of the lawn, about as far back as she thought her range would still make her useful. Then she started making herself a circle of candles. She was planning to sit in the middle, and be able to draw off of all of them. And, to see if she was even up to this shit, when she had the candles in place, she lit the first one, then a second. After that, she concentrated on jumping the flame from wick to wick, something which took longer than with the lighter, but she was managing to do better than she'd ever tried before. Of course, the candles were all close together too but that was hardly the point. She felt like she was better at this. Maybe her fucking around with it actually paid off. She could hope. This wasn't going to work if she couldn't manage it.

What she was really counting on was being shit scared when and if vampires showed up. She knew on a fundamental level she could do a lot more with her abilities when they were reactive.

Isaac emphatically did not like this idea. He'd been not liking it all day. He had in fact stopped himself more than three or four times from going to his sister and begging her not to try this. They could test her abilities some other time, some other way, she could work on killing something else, besides vampires that were apparently slaughtering parts of the whole fucking town in chunks. It was easier to resist in the daylight, where he could reassure himself a billion times that Thom's spell would work. That even if it didn't, they could all get back in the house fast enough. It didn't look so optimistic once the sun went down. In fact, he had a persistent cramp in his stomach. He was out on the lawn, halfway between Kaysen's back and the porch, every muscle ready to grab her and book, even if he ended up with his ass on fire again. He was twitchy and nervous as fuck and not at all happy about life at the moment.

Thom did another walk along the edge of the front yard, checking the boundary. It still seemed to be in place, but until a vampire showed up, they wouldn't know how well it would work. That done, he skirted around Kaysen's circle and headed for Isaac. "If anything happens, you get her inside - I'll hold them off," he told his friend.

Kaysen was doing alright with getting the candles lit. She smiled even as she did it. As it actually seemed to work out for her. Soon, she had all of them lit, and she grinned, all pleased with herself. She even looked over at Thom and Isaac, to see if they were paying attention or not, though they looked more along the lines of dramatic and serious rather than 'hey, neat trick'. What with the talking amongst themselves. So, she stopped looking over, and started something else instead. Which was jumping the flame from the candle, and up between her fingers, separating it out from the wick. This was harder than it looked in the movies. She gave it up even though she could kind of get it to work after a few minutes, and tried a different tactic. She jumped the flame down to the grass in front of her, then started rushing it towards the sidewalk in a line. That worked a lot better. And in order to make sure the flames didn't get out of control, she kept it in a concentrated line. It burned out behind itself, almost like a little entity of it's own, where it sat at the edge of the sidewalk and burned merrily, a pet flame-thingy.

Isaac was watching her, and though they were neat tricks -- especially the little fire-snake thing she'd just done -- that on top of the idea that she was actually going to be fending of vampires made him feel a little like he'd lost his fucking marbles. He looked at Thom blankly for a half-second then blinked. "Right, inside, yeah," he said, shaking it off. Even if it was pretty goddamn insane, he could deal with that later. His eyes ticked from Kaysen back to his best friend. "We won't let anything happen to her, right, man?" Oh yes. He needed that reassurance.

"I promise you," Thom said, seriously. He'd give his life first - a fact that he was strangely okay with. The idea of dying for her didn't faze him at all - he was more freaked by the fact he wasn't freaked by it, in fact. He'd given serious consideration to arming Isaac, asking him to stand with him, but had rejected the idea out of hand. Isaac didn't know what he was doing here. Hell, Thom didn't know whether he really knew what he was doing out here, but he wasn't going to get his best friend killed needlessly. If everything went wrong, he'd be better off, and Kaysen would be better off, inside. "The spell'll hold," he added with a confidence he didn't entirely hold internally. Sounded good though.

Kaysen was concentrating. With the flames all around her, she could draw off of them, feel them in a way she couldn't describe. But with that feeling came the energy they could provide her. And she in turn fed that back into what she was doing with the little fire snake thing. She narrowed her concentration down, and tried to make the flames shoot up higher. It worked a bit, worked better than she had thought it might. What she really had to learn to do was jump it, and jump it farther than she thought she could. Again, she was really mostly thinking about how scared she was going to be. It also occurred to her that she should probably be scared right now, but she wasn't yet. Not quite like she thought she should be. Her attention was less on her surroundings, however, and much more on what she was doing with the fire. So...maybe it was understandable. She started looking around, letting the little burning bit at the edge of the lawn stay where it was, and not spread. She was looking for vampires. Not that she really knew what she was looking for on that score--really, she wouldn't know one so well. She'd been either rescued, or brought inside to safety for the most part, though she thought when she'd been home and watching out the window that she'd seen like...blurry things moving around. She guessed those were vampires. So maybe she was looking for a blur. "Heeeeere vampires..." she mumbled under her breath.

The spell'll hold, spell'll hold, spell'll hold, Isaac repeated to himself, giving Thom a nod. His gaze was drawn back to his sister and mostly stayed there, breaking off now and then to glance around them. He couldn't really see the spell very well, and he felt like the biggest moron in the world, standing out on the front yard when going outside at night had been a huge no-no for days now. The term 'sitting ducks' came to mind and he tried to push it away. He edged in a bit closer to Kaysen's back. If he did have to snatch and run, he'd better be ready.

They were sitting ducks - or so it seemed to the three vampires who appeared out of the night, attracted by the flames. Thom tensed as he saw them, swallowing his nerves and the fear that appeared in the pit of his stomach and moving to the front of the plot, staying far enough back that he'd at least have a chance if the spell didn't hold, but far enough forward to give the others some protection. The vampires laughed, almost as if they didn't believe their luck and sprang - only to be thrown back as though they'd hit an invisible wall. Which, really, they had.

Oh hey! There was that Shit Scared she'd been waiting for! Right there! Though it helped that they got bounced back but she even let out a squeak as logic said they were going to just rush them and eat them. But hey--Thom's spell worked. So after a second of blinking and realizing this, she did her part. The closest vamp was fairly nearby to the flames, and she pushed with everything she had, not noticing the flames of the candles around her shot up a few inches as well, and she caught the first on fire. And that was all it took. From there she just kept pushing, not needing to move it so much as make it worse. Bring the flames up, roar them and encourage them to consume what it had started to feed on. It was a whole lot easier to convince fire to merrily eat up things than continue burning when there was nothing left for it to feed on but energy she was putting into it. And she'd had far too much practice with that in the Inbetween. But this...this was better.

Isaac saw them as soon as Thom moved, and was about halfway through an automatic reach for his sister when the one bounced off of the invisible wall. It about gave him a heart attack, but that was good, right? Really good. He hoped it kept doing that. With the good and the vampire repellent. And then there was fire. Lots of it, and the vamp was making the most godawful noise and christ, that was pretty damn cool. He looked nervously between her and them, but didn't make any move to drag her away.

There was that smell that Thom had warned about, that horrible, wrenching smell of burning flesh, the high pitched screams that ripped through the night as it lit up, the flames licking over the vampire. Thom did nothing but stand there and watch, his eyes flickering between the vampire and the spell, the shimmering line now clear in the light. He eyed it, watching for any sign that it was breaking. The book had said that it'd last until sunrise, but the protector wasn't taking any chances.

For Kaysen, it was strange. It was almost like time had slowed down around her. Like it wasn't actually real. More like...something she was watching as opposed to something she was doing. But there was one thing that was built up in the little fire elemental and that was anger. It had been building in her for years. And she drew on that then. She knew she already had the one vamp good enough but she pushed it harder anyways, flared it up, really tried to get it done fast and she started jumping the flames to the other two, one that was trying to scramble back and away, the other which was actually trying to run at them again. She was mumbling incoherently under her breath, and didn't quite realize it. She just channeled the energy and essence of fire, letting all of the passionate, irrational blackness that came along with the deal loose.

It was almost a little frightening to see. The fact that Kaysen didn't burn was one thing. This? Was entirely another. It was chaos outside of their square of protection, as three of them were now on fire and stinking up the place. Isaac's gaze darted quickly to the St. James house next door, and wondered if their parents were freaked the fuck out yet. Probably so, and he hoped to whatever gods were around that they weren't watching out a window or something. This would be a bitch to explain. He started watching the barrier again, looking for more of those dark blurs attracted by all the noise and light.

The screaming started to dull and fade as one by one the vampires fell to the floor, still burning and twitching. But they were down, and the barrier had held. Thom's heart was hammering - that had been destruction like he'd never seen and it was rather frightening, all in all. The reality was something else, something he never could have imagined. And Kaysen had done that.

She killed the fire on the one who dropped and stopped it's screeching when it was over, and concentrated on the other two, pushing and pushing and she could feel almost a lightheaded, disconnected feeling rising up like a cold touch on the back of her head. It was something she was already thinking she'd be paying for, she'd exhaust herself with this shit, but for right now, she could sustain. There was still the detached sort of feeling in her, even as she poured out all of that rage on the vamps. She even sort of lost touch with the idea that she was sitting on Thom's lawn. That he was around her somewhere, and so was her brother. That they were watching this. It wasn't that she didn't hear the screams. Or smell that puke-worthy stench of dead burning flesh, she was just too focused lately to be effected quite yet. Which didn't in any way mean she wouldn't be later.

Isaac watched dumbly as the other two turned into crispy critters. Once they had dropped as well -- one of them halfway out in the street as it tried to run far too late -- he let out the breath he'd been unaware he was holding. "Holy shit," he murmured to no one in particular. "Fuck. Yes." His sister was full of it, she was a superhero, he was totally fucking convinced now.

Thom, on the other hand, said nothing. He wanted to go out there, to take the stakes from the chest his mother had given him and make totally damn sure those things were dead. But he didn't - there could be more out there in the dark. He wanted to though, he wanted to cross that line and make sure. Instead he just watched, ignoring the others as he stood there, aside from them and watched the shapes in the street, the shimmering of the boundary fading as the night took over once more.

Kaysen was breathing hard. It was deep, fast, and she was trying to get herself back under...what, control? She felt wild. She felt like control had left the building. It was almost like she was drifting back into herself, and with that came more awareness of everything around her. There was an internal oh fuck that went on, because she'd just burned three people to death. And they'd screamed. OH shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. She leaned heavily on one arm as she nearly doubled over herself and the flames around her went back to normal.

It'd been a draining day, physically and emotionally, for Chance. He felt heavy everywhere, like he couldn't really move, like he had absolutely no energy whatsoever, but somehow he managed to get through the day in a relatively calm manner. No intense freak outs, no breaking things and he didn't raise his voice once, even when his mom tried to comfort him. Chance was pretty sure all of that stuff would come in time, but he was just too tired to deal with it all now. It wasn't until after sunset that he finally made the decision to go see Kaysen, despite his better judgment telling him to stay in. It wasn't safe, it was stupid and dangerous, but at this point, he didn't care.

He just wanted to see her, talk to her... maybe hug her if she'd let him. Phone calls and texts weren't going to cut it this time. Any argument they had before was forgotten for the moment as he pulled up to her house across the street and noticed that Kaysen was actually outside. At Thom's. Just the fact that she was outside induced a bit of panic, and Chance fumbled to get out of the car. The smell hit him first. The charred body that lay practically in the street was next. And then he noticed the candles around Kaysen. The candles and smell of burning flesh was enough for Chance to put two and two together and his first instinctive thought was that they were all insane. Not only for being outside and fucking around with vampires of all things, if that's what had happened, which it appeared like it had, - but outside, in the front yard - where anyone could look out their window and see what was going on? He began to move across the street toward the yard, completely focused on getting to her side, not knowing, or caring, if she actually needed him or not. Calling out for her, he was oblivious to the fast moving shadows behind him. Oblivious until strong hands reached out and snatched at his shirt, tearing the fabric as they pulled him back across the street, causing him to shout in surprise. He wasn't really aware of what was going on, only that it was bad, probably vampire bad, and he was trying to struggle and fight back and doing a horribly pathetic job of it against their strength. It was a strange and out of place thought that he had - hoping that if they were going to kill him they would drag him off somewhere else so Kaysen wouldn't have to see it.

Isaac was immediately at his sister's side as he saw her kind of crumple a little, dropping to his knees on the other side of the candles and reaching out to steady her. "You okay?" he murmured, and was about to launch into 'maybe that's enough for tonight, we should go inside,' when a voice called her name. A male voice. Isaac's head snapped up just in time to see -- sort of, there were still bright afterimages fucking up his vision -- dark shadows light on another dark shadow and start dragging. That had sounded kind of like Chance Reed. Oh fucking hell, please don't let that be Reed. Please please fucking Christ --

Kaysen didn't actually need the confirmation it was Chance. She'd had nightmares with him screaming in it, and other screaming, and there was just something that you knew when you heard someone you really cared about sound like that. Her eyes shot up and she was trying to move before she even thought about it. The candle flames shot up again, bleeding into one another in a circle she wasn't even noticing, but it lit up the night well. What happened next was she was starting to race that fire outwards towards the street, fully intending on burning anything moving out there that was anywhere near Chance. Because he was not allowed to get hurt here. He definitely wasn't allowed under any fucking circumstances to die.

"Run - this way!" Thom shouted, half an eye on Kaysen to make sure she wasn't going to do anything stupid like try and get to the street, the rest of his attention on Chance. Fuck - where the hell did he come from? "It's safe here, they can't follow you!" he shouted as he saw the flames go racing by him.

Isaac's arms had automatically locked around Kaysen the instant he realized what was about to happen and she tried to bolt out of the circle. Because that was a big huge No. They were protected here, apparently, and where Chance was, was not. So therefore, it logically stood to reason that his baby sister was staying right the fuck where she was. He squinted against the fire flare-up and held on tight.

Chance heard Thom shout, not really understanding what he was saying - or understanding it but not quite getting it. Yeah, they could follow him, straight to Kaysen - at least that was his rational thought. But then, that really might not have meant anything at the moment, because he was trying to get to her regardless, but it was hard with two bloodsucking fiends stronger than you keeping ahold and throwing you to the ground. Even so, he wasn't as weak as he thought he would have been because it felt like his strength was restoring itself somehow. He chalked it up to adrenaline and shoved with all his might at the vampire about to tear into his neck, using his feet to kick it away from him while throwing a punch at the other trying to pin him down. Chance wasn't stupid enough to think he could take down these things on his own, and if it came down to it, he would have just let the vampires just kill him - as he'd be back anyway - but he didn't want to die in front of the other three watching from Thom's yard. One hand gripped his hair and yanked his head back to expose his throat, and Chance clenched his eyes shut to brace for pain. Suddenly screaming filled the night, only it wasn't coming from him. As intense heat surrounded him, Chance was dropped back to the ground to watch in shock as one of the vampires took into the street, engulfed in flames. He squinted against the way it lit up the night, knowing exactly where - and who - it had come from. Chance pulled himself together quickly and scrambled to his feet, determined to get to Kaysen while the other vampire was momentarily stunned by fiery turn of events.

Kaysen wasn't paying nearly as good attention as she should have been. That kind of happened when you were in full fledged panic mode. So, things got burned. Like Chance's vehicle. Like the lower branches of the tree in the strip of grass on the other side of the sidewalk. Like the rest of the grass in front of her. The vamps went up too, and while she struggled with Isaac, she didn't actually get free, and she just kept it flaring. For a few seconds, almost everything looked like it was on fire. Like the world lit up, the air, the streets. When it ended, she collapsed--not that she hit the ground with as tight as Isaac was holding onto her, but like a switch, the fire seemed to be gone, evaporating up into nothing since it's feeding source had been cut off.

"Jesus fuck," Isaac breathed once everything went dark again. He readjusted his grip on his limp sister, aiming it more toward support than restraint. God that had been ... wow. He felt like all his skin was kind of tight just from being in the circle of candles with her; the same feeling from standing too close to a bonfire for a while. He'd seen while there was still a bunch of light that Chance was on his way to them, apparently not dead. "He's okay, it's all right, you did good, he's okay," he was murmuring to Kaysen -- whom he didn't even really know was conscious or not. But still. Maybe she'd hear it. She slipped a little and he bent, sweeping an arm under her knees to pick her up completely.

Thom looked round as the night went dark, just in time to see Kaysen drop and he reached her and Isaac as his friend started lifting. "Is she okay? What happened to her? Get her inside - now," he said, urgently, flapping a little too much. Shit, this could be bad - what had happened? Shit, shit, shit.

He was still a bit in shock from everything - what with everything around them seemingly on fire one minute and the next... not so much. But that was all forgotten the minute he saw Kaysen limp in Isaac's arms. He ran forward, resisting the urge to snatch her from Isaac. He was pretty sure that wouldn't be welcome. "Is she okay?" Chance breathed. "Shit. Is she hurt? Kaysen." He tried to look for anything noticeable, anything he could heal. Was she breathing at least? He was fine with Thom's order to get Kaysen inside - but he had no intention of doing anything else but following.

Isaac's arms tightened on his sister a bit, instinctively, as Chance came running up. He knew that he'd be snatchy, but he was her brother, he could do that. But nobody tried to take her from him, so he was good. "She's out, but I think she's okay," he told the both of them, though he honestly had no fucking idea. She could've blown a fuse in her brain or some shit and he wouldn't know. Nor was that something he was going to spend more than .2 seconds thinking about, because such were the things that fucking freakouts were made of. She was definitely breathing, that was something. He'd focus on that. He didn't argue in the least about going inside; that was where he'd wanted her to stay all goddamn night in the first place. Isaac turned and headed into Thom's house, through the open door, and immediately to a couch to put her down on.

Thom was last inside, bolting the door against the night before hurrying to the living room. "Is she okay - what happened?" he asked Isaac, before turning to Chance. "Heal her - you can do that - heal her, make her better," he demanded, not caring that he was revealing the guy's secrets. Fuck that.

Chance knelt down beside Kaysen, reaching out to stroke his finger along her cheek. He wanted to shake her and wake her up, but he didn't know what was wrong with her... all he knew was that she was breathing. He looked up sharply at Thom. "I don't know what's wrong with her, or if she's even hurt," Chance explained, eyes ticking to Isaac briefly before shifting his attention back to Thom. He didn't feel like answering questions now. "I don't know if I can heal her. But she told me you got her a book on elementals. Did you read? Did it mention anything at all about the drawbacks to this shit? Did you research it at all?"

Isaac? On top of being distressed, was now officially confused. He gave Thom a 'what the fuck?' look that shifted to Chance and then back. He could heal her? Now he wished he'd pursued how the hell the dude got them out of the In Between. He didn't know what the fuck was going on, and Thom sounding pissed-panicky really wasn't helping. Isaac didn't think he'd ever heard that tone come out of his best friend before. "She just ... kinda fainted," he answered the question directed at him belatedly. He knelt down next to Chance to take her hand. "Hey, Kaysen?" he said to her gently. Since, hi, nobody else was trying it. "Yak-Butter, c'mon now. Wake up, sweetie, we need you before there's a riot." Please don't be brainfried, pleasepleaseplease --

"Course I read it!" Thom told Chance, hotly - not liking the guy's tone of voice, though the part of him that wasn't completely panicking right now was calmly pointing out that he was her boyfriend and had every right to be worried and that Thom shouldn't rise to it. "And no, it didn't... She just fainted?" Thom asked Isaac, kneeling down at her side. "You sure - she's okay?"

"I don't know," Chance replied, not even caring if he was speaking to him or not. He was trying not to freak out on everyone for even putting her in the position where she could get hurt. "Sometimes... when she gets overheated... I don't know. Maybe it just used up all of her energy. I don't think she's ever done something to that magnitude before. Not that I've seen. Kaysen," Chance said quietly, reaching out to take her hand in his. He brought her fingers up to his lips and somewhere he knew she was okay. "I think she just needs to sleep. We need to keep an eye on her tonight, though."

Isaac shot an annoyed look at the side of Chance's head for answering, but it didn't last long. If he knew, then the knew. And it seemed like everybody in the fucking room -- conscious or not -- knew more than he did, so fuck it, right? Right. Fuck it. They were all side-by-side, shuffled in close to her, and he relinquished the hand that he'd picked up. "Shouldn't crowd her," he muttered, pushing back and standing up. He moved to her head instead and kind of adjusted the pillows under it.

"Right, right," Thom agreed, forcing himself to calm down. Kaysen had no obvious wounds, she was just out. He felt a spike of annoyance that Chance obviously knew more about the elemental stuff than he did, but then, of course he did. Thom was trying to play this from the sidelines - hell, he'd only just managed to get Kaysen to even start talking to him. All he knew was what had been in that book, and there hadn't been a whole lot of practicality in there. So, he drew back, sitting down on the couch, his eyes on the group.

Not entirely oblivious to the atmosphere in the room, but not really caring, Chance stayed kneeling on the floor next to her. He didn't feel he was crowding her - the other two were. Keeping ahold of her hand, he looked up at Isaac. "What were you guys doing outside?" he questioned calmly, though the irritation was simmering beneath the surface. It didn't make any sense to Chance - none at all. Kaysen could have been hurt, or killed. Hell, all three of them could have.

"Kaysen wanted to do something," Thom said, answering ahead of Isaac, because he knew he had been more involved in it. "So I set up a boundary - the vampires couldn't come onto the property at all. What were you doing out, after dark? You could have been killed. We had precautions, they couldn't get to us..."

"I came to see her." That much was obvious, in Chance's mind. He searched Kaysen's face, making sure the steady rise and fall of her chest continued with each breath. "I had my own precautions," he added without further explanations. He hadn't really. Except that he wasn't afraid of dying, if that's what would have happened. In all honesty, he hadn't given it much thought. He'd just wanted to see her.

That? Convinced Isaac without question that Chance was either suicidal or unaccountably stupid. He wasn't sure which. But he wasn't going to say anything. The last thing they really needed was a group fist-fight over Kaysen's unconscious body, even if all of them probably were itching for one. "Well you should stay here until dawn at least," was what he did say, and it was quiet. He glanced at Thom, but was fairly certain he wouldn't be turning anybody back out onto the street. "The house is warded out the ass."

"Yeah," Thom confirmed. "Stay til morning - she'll want to know you're okay when she wakes up anyhow and nothing's getting in here. Look - I'm gonna go check the perimeter. I'll - I won't be long," he said, standing. He couldn't sit here and do nothing. She was just unconscious, she was fine and he needed to go and lose it somewhere else for a bit. Just a few minutes. That was all as he headed across the basement and up the stairs without another word.

Chance watched Thom leave, feeling the tiny twinge of panic. He didn't want to be left alone with Isaac but well... there they were. He glanced at Kaysen's brother, but made no move to get up. He wasn't going to leave Kaysen's side, and being what he was, he'd learned awhile ago he didn't need much sleep. Between what had happened to her, and Devon... he doubted he'd even want to sleep if he could.

Isaac watched Thom go too, holding the same wish not to be left alone with Chance. Not that he thought anything would happen, he just ... didn't want to. But he didn't want to leave Kaysen, either. So he shuffled over to a chair and slumped into it, rubbing his hands over his face. He was tired as fuck, but too wired to even consider sleeping. Not until the sun came up, at least. So he'd just ... wait. Be there when she woke up, and wait.