8087/Birthright: What do you know about it

Birthright: What do you know about it
Date of Scene:	04 October 2021
Location:	The Laughing Magician
Synopsis:	Attempted murder, a rotting corpse, burns and blisters, John really should have thought it through. Just another day ending in Y, innit?
Cast of Characters:	John Constantine, Bart Allen, Lydia Dietrich, Phoebe Beacon

---

John Constantine has posed:
    Monday nights at the Laughing Magician typically aren't too busy. They're even less so when John decides to close the place down to normal business and use it as a meeting place to discuss some mystical problem or the other that's come up.

    Tonight that problem is Phoebe Beacon.

    The proprietor, or one half of them, is sitting at the bar on that stool no one ever wants to sit on with all his typical 'sitting at the bar' supplies nearby - ashtray, Silk Cuts, Zippo, bottle, glass half full. The other half is behind the bar... polishing glasses. Chas isn't doing so with such determination and focus that he might actually be trying to polish holes in them though, so things aren't *terrible*.

    The jukebox is turned down low and playing the typical mix of Punk and Classic - rock both.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen showed up at the bar in costume this time. The young man has been here once before and the red hair and height and build may give him away a bit, but he figured best to be in costume unless he is told not to. He comes into the place looking about and waiting to see whats going on.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia has heard that John was pulling a meeting together to try to figure out how to help Phoebe not become some sort of sacrifice to an evil necromancer. Having been there for some of the necromancer's attempts she figures that she should join them to help however she can.

She walks into the bar wearing a simple charcoal grey woolen a-line skirt, and a warm looking green turtleneck sweater, and as always, she's surrounded by her bioluminescent green mists.

She walks up to the bar and gives John and Phoebe a nod. "Evening John, Phoebe." Bart gets a curious glance though. She wasn't expecting actual super heroes to be involved in something like this. She gives him a pleasant smile and introduces herself. "Hello, I don't think we've met before. I'm Lydia. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe was here, in some capacity. She had come downstairs after confirming that yes, fire-lobbing step-dads were a cause for cancellation of her work contract, and she was on the edge of asking if John would help her forge papers when she arrives to a meeting being formed! She was wearing a dark green T-shirt with a skull and a butterfly on it, promoting some badn, and a pair of jeans, and her sturdy boots -- only to find people arriving who she knew were *not* drinkers.

    "... did I miss an announcement?" she asks of Chas, and then -- Bart.

    Err... Impulse.

    Lydia!" she states, and then she also turns to John and Chas, and motions.

    "This is... Impulse. He's..." she pauses a moment, and straightens up. "He's a friend from Gotham." she explains, knowing at least Chas knows. "He also helped at the mall and brought me injured people so I could stay out."

John Constantine has posed:
    John opens his mouth and just the *expression* screams that something snarky is about to come from it when Bart enters. He's cut short however by Chas and that, "John," he always pipes up with, the low one that comes out all drawn out. It's so easy to imagine the 'be nice' behind it.

    "He lets me have no fun, luv," John opines to Lyida. He takes a drag from the cigarette dangling between his lips and in just a moment, he's surrounded by a grey cloud of smoke, it's not green, it's not ectoplasmic, but it's a little misty.

    "Just tryin' to figure out what to do about you," he replies to Phoebe and Chas is quick to add, "About your *cousin*, kid." Lest John's mouth end up making the girl believe *she's* the problem.

    "So... let's start this by everyone tellin' me everything *they* know or might have seen or felt or... just whatever, nothing's too small, anything could have been something I've missed and that could be the key," maybe if he had a gavel, he'd bang it on the bar and bring the meeting officially to order, but John has no such thing so he just downs the rest of his scotch from the glass and refills it instead.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen nods his head in greeting to Lydia, and then to John he will say "Well, we have the videos from all the news stuff from the first time we encountered her, and then the place we found, came more across as a bit of a cult or something. They were trying to use Phoebe as a healing battery, but the girl teleported or something out before we got to her.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
"That lines up with what I know of Khonsu," Lydia says, settling down on one of the barstools. "My sources tell me that Khonsu is one of the older gods in Egypt. Well over three thousand years old. He's a moon god of healing, which explains why they wanted to use Phoebe as a healing battery."

She shakes her head. "Seems a bit extreme for me, though." Turning to John she asks, "Mind if I fix myself a drink?"

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "What do you want, Lydia?" Phoebe asks, and then she moves behind the counter a bit to get herself and Bart sprites.

    "Asenath is my cousin Julia Johnson, but has a couple different names. She's a necromancer, sends demon dogs that materialize in prox to my aura -- which thanks to John" she nods in John's direction, credit where it's due "is kept under wraps. She was behind my kidnapping, and another one of my friends from Gotham was able to determine she was a blood relation to me, and positively identified her as the Lady in Red." Phoebe states, and then she leans against the back of the bar.

    "She also has somewhere between three and four dozen two-ounce vials of my blood, from when she tortured me in the Dark, in the Silo, after I made the escape attempt, right after Mickey tried to teach me a lesson and beat me most of the way to death. So she's attached to him. I suspect attached to him getting out, since we saw him at the Tomb artifact premiere." she states, looking to Bart a moment, then looking back to John.

    She takes a deep breath, and looks up. "The Priest is also a priestess. Red Robin and I discussed it briefly, The remains are too feminine, and it's too soon for the Dynastic inbreeding birth defects to really take hold, *if* the age can be judged by any of the actual artifacts. The large blue pallete was a fake. Dating it lead it back only about two hundred years."

John Constantine has posed:
    Chas is quick to pipe in with, "I got it, whatcha want?"

    "Who teleported out?" John asks of Bart. He's guessing it's likely the woman forever to be known as The Bitch or the word that starts with 'c' that Americans find offensive in his mind, but he needs to be sure, smallest details and all that.

    "So... wouldn't stake my reputation on it yet," as if he has any but a bad one anyway, "...but if I had guess, based on what's been shown so far, I'd guess that our little Beacon is some sort of direct descendant of this Khonsu. But what's up with the Bitch in Red?" That last little bit, he seems more speaking to himself than to the class, or maybe he is speaking to the class? "...and what does *necromancy* have to do with it?"

    John's attention shifts directly to Phoebe. "She has *your* blood? Your *blood*?" As if saying it differently makes the question any different? "She has *your blood*? If there's a point get to it! "Phoebe, did it not occur to you that if I can track *her* with *your* blood that tracking her location if she has *your* blood with *your* blood would be even easier?"

    One corner of his mouth turns up into what might be a smile, could be a sneer? He finishes off the glass of scotch he just poured and pours another. Wheels, they're spinning.

    Chas stops polishing glasses to watch the thought process and the micro changes in John's expression. He looks *worried*.

    "It's about time I *really* leave my calling card," he mumbles before he's up and heading for the back room. "Phoebe! I'm going to need some of your blood!" he calls out along the way.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen looks over and says "Julia, we have a superb tracker, and she was tracking her down and she just vanished one moment a trail, and then notta. And if it was anything besides teleportation, she would have been able to keep track of her." He looks over to Lydia "Lydia Dietrich, you wrote Sundown, that won all those awards right?"

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
"A Manhattan if you could, please, Chas," Lydia tells the bartender. Hopefully he remembers how to make them, or at least will come up with something close.

She turns back to the general assembly. "Again, this seems to be a bit extreme for somebody who worships a god of healing. Usually they shy away from things like necromancy and human sacrifices. Seems antithetical to the whole thing."

She nods at John when he mentions that phoebe might be a descendant of Khonsu. "That makes more sense," she says. "I know a thing or two about being descended from somebody like Khonsu. It puts a target on your back because your blood ties you to that lineage and can be very powerful.

"Be careful when you use blood magic," she tells John, perhaps unnecessarily. "When you trace her using Phoebe's blood, odds are she'll be alerted and can probably trace you back. I doubt you'll want her to know where Phoebe has been living lately."

Bart however, gets her gaping. "What? How? /Awards/? What kind of awards smutty lesbian vampire romances can get anyway?"

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe looks mildly peturbed in John's direction, and then she brings up her hands, nearly spilling her Sprite as she motions at John,

    "... what part of 'she stuck me with needles and took my blood' did NOT indicate that she *might* have my blood? Didn't that bottle have my blood on it? And the artifacts? I don't even know what kind of warding she might have on where she's storing it and -- oh faffernaffy. Why is it always blood."

    Phoebe hops over the counter and looks back to Lydia as she walks backwards towards the back room. "First I'm hearing about it, really. /I/ thought I was just some unwanted kid in Gotham. Now I'm an unwanted kid with magic bloodlines." she shrugs, "and I'm pretty sure if it came down to it, John could take her on based on spite alone at this point."

John Constantine has posed:
    "She'd be stupid to show up here, she can't get through the wards and I'd be alerted the second, the micro-second she tried to cross through the doors..." John's commenting as he comes back out from the back with that familiar gold bowl, a small dagger, some sort of black powder in a vial? But he stops in his tracks and damnit, there's that look again.

    Chas looks more *worried*. "John..." Same drawn out as before, but this time it's more a 'think about it first' than a 'be nice'.

    He pays it no mind, does he ever? John settles himself down in the middle of the floor, yanks a piece of chalk from his pocket and draws a circle. Protect those outside it and focus the energy of the person inside it. A circle in a circle. The practiced ease with which he draws the things, all the squiggles and swirls, the runes and sigils... it's impressive. He must have practiced a *lot* of mandalas.

    "Set owes me a favor," he brings up as he's working, just as if he might be talking about the fact that the forecast calls for rain tomorrow. "But even so, might need a power boost to make that call, you up to going to Egypt next week, Lydia?" ... to Egypt, to summon an Egyptian God of Death? "You too... uh... Impulse is it?" He can't help but to snigger a little. Codenames, whatever.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen looks over and says says "Well it aint happened yet, but trust me, it will be well received." He looks over to John and frowns a bit but says "If we need to go to Egypt, I can get us there in a couple minutes, any place in particular you need? I can bring my Impulseshaw and carrying two maybe 3 of you at once.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia's eyebrows shoot up in surprise at John. "You're going straight to Set? Isn't that the nuclear option? Shouldn't we try something a little more..." she waves a hand trying to come up with an apt word. "Subtle?" She shakes her head, "I know subtlety isn't your strong suit, John, but we might want to put our heads together to come up with an alternative before we go right to Set."

"I can be available if we need to go to Egypt." She nods to Impulse, "I appreciate the offer but I've got teleporters on call that I can use. Besides. I may stay there for a few days afterwards to visit a few friends."

She chuckles at Phoebe. "Trust me. I know how that feels. One day I'm just some unemployed English teacher and the next I'm shtupping the leader of the Brotherhood and find out that I'm a direct descendant of an ancient Egyptian queen." Not to mention that ancient Egyptian queen is a vampire now and her mentor in magics. It's a crazy world.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe ducks back into the Back Room of the Laughing Magician. It doesn't have the books, and she taps herself down a moment and goes "Eh. My knife's upstairs." with a resigned look at the wall as she tilts her head back. This seems strangely pase to her, and she looks to Lydia and rubs the back of her head "Ah... Set owes John a favor." she states, and then looks to John, and then to Impulse. "And it's true. And look, don't take anything from him too personally." she states quietly to the redheaded boy. "He's just... that way."

    Phoebe looks to Lydia, and she gives a shrug a moment at the details, and she takes a breath. "Look, it... doesn't really matter where I'm from. What matters is finding out a way that I can go on without being hounded by demon dogs. And maybe, just maybe, that won't be the focus of any lessons." she states, and she looks at the Circle a moment, and her eyebrows rise up. She might recognize this one.

    "Am I in or out?"

John Constantine has posed:
    "...my House will drop us off in a blink, less than the time it takes to open a door," John murmurs with a gesture in Bart's direction. It's not as if John *can't* open a portal magically otherwise, but that expends energy for spellwork that might be needed later. Why other when his House is so willing to do the hard work for him? Shortcuts. That's John in a nutshell.

    Of course it might leave poor Impulse wondering what the hell kind of house the man has?

    "He owes me," John repeats. He absently holds up a his left hand to reveal a burn scar in the shape of the mark of Set. "I gave him an edge that let him defeat Apep." Again, it's going to rain tomorrow, innit? "Got to mark 'ride a God' off my bucket list in the process, that was interesting." Murmured, distracted, as he checks and double checks his double circles.

    Chas is now polishing glasses like he might be trying to rub holes in them, but he stays silent.

    "Out, after you donate." John holds the dagger out to Phoebe. "Enough to coat the bottom of the bowl," he instructs, but she's done this before. "Don't touch me, don't break the circle no matter what." That last is to everyone in the room.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen frowns a bit be it at John, or all the speaking of teleporting cheaters, He will move to sit on one of the stools, and tries not to bang his heels against the legs of the stool which takes a bit of willpower for the young man, as these things are slow and he does not understand them.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia just shrugs. Everybody so blase about calling up a freakin' god that she might as well just go with it. She takes a sip of her Manhattan as she watches the proceedings with interest. It's not every day you get to watch somebody perform blood magic.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Are you a hundred percent sure?" Phoebe asks in the softest breath, just to him, dark eyes showing a lot of concern over the manic and sudden change in direction, and she takes a breath and lowers her shoulders. She looks to Impulse and Lydia a moment, and to Chas, who assuredly can read her expression of worry before she turns back to John, and lowers her gaze to her left arm. "I have a bad feeling this time John." she admits quietly -- but she trusts him. If the fire wasn't a show of trust, then moving ahead when she wasn't sure is a hell of a vote.

    Phoebe takes the knife up in her right hand. She settles it against her left forearm, and then gives a push of the tip in, and after a sharp intake of breath she slices downward along her skin pulling the wound open slightly to drop blood into the bowl, the wound is already healing by the time she tilts her arm, careful as all get-out to not nick the white circle at her wrist, a few ounces of blood to the bowl.

    "... be safe."

    And with her part done, Phoebe turns the knife back over to John, and exits the circle carefully. She remains in the Back Room, but looks over her shoulder.

    "D-Chas -- can you throw me a cloth?"

John Constantine has posed:
    "Always, luv." Be safe that is. But that isn't exactly true, is it? "Lydia... Impulse..." He really does *try* to not say that name with a snigger. A for effort or sumsuch. "Other side of the door, luv," he tells Phoebe with a nod in that direction.

    The wards in the backroom are even more ridiculous than the ones in the front and all it'll take is a quick few words from John to close the door and lock himself right up in there should anything go terribly south... right in there with whatever the 'going south' brings to the table.

    Lyida might be a little disappointed by what happens next. It's not all that showy. First John twirls and tilts the bowl until Phoebe's blood's all coating up the sides and the bottom of it. Then he adds a little of that black powder. It's his secret ingredient for the evening, a special blend of grave dirt and Midnite only knows what, that seek out not only Phoebe's blood - that's outside her body - but any necromantic rituals it might be being used for... any spellwork it might be attached to. He sets the whole thing to blaze with a little Hellfire dancing on his finger tips and rises to his knees inside the circles, in front of that bowl.

    The chanting, when it starts, is in Haitian Creole in order to draw on the power of the special ingredients. Individual words aren't important even if one can understand them, but the intent, the gist of it all, is to seek and fucking *destroy*. John is not above black magic and that's exactly what he's doing here. It's destructive, meant to harm, maim, perchance *kill* if the Bitch in Red is anywhere near any of that blood at the time.

    His eyes roll back to reveal whites that aren't white, but as black as the magic he's pouring into that flaming bowl of blood, grave dirt and Midnite Only Knows. The chanting grows louder, more intense, John's voice doesn't even sound like his own, it's too deep, gravely, kinda creepy.

    Chas puts down the glass he's polishing and moves to the doorway, tense... but quiet. Coiled and ready to spring if need be. "Get back, Phoebe, now."

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen was starting to eat the popcorn, which is to say it is gone and he had started on the second bowl in seconds. He will move to stand beside Phoebe. He is protective of the girl to it seems. He will watch what's going on but he also keeps looking about to make sure nothing is somehow sneaking up on them.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia moves to stand in the back room with Phoebe, the little hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. This is black magic pure and simple and everything about the woman is opposed to this. Her bloodline has always opposed black mange and her coven? Well. Her coven is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum.

She has to grit her teeth to stand still and not interrupt the ritual. It may be black but it's for a good cause, she reasons. But that's how you get into black magic in the first place, a voice in her head tells her. First it's a little bit of darkness here and then and then before you know it you're summoning demons.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe exits the room, grabbing a cloth as she's healing, mostly to wipe up the blood to destroy it with peroxide in a bit, but she ushes Lydia out of the room, along with herself.

    Phoebe doesn't seem to be very bothered by it, the black magic. She herself is still practically glowing in the Astral after last night's fun, and she stands in front of the door, tense, watching John, her fingers curling quietly as she pulls back at Chas's suggestion -- making sure Lydia does too. Bart she figured would be smart enough to pull back.

    That stuff, the graveyard dirt and the powder as black as John's lungs might have been spill into the blood. A dark cloud rises from the bowl, and Phoebe physically tenses.

    She brings her hand to her left wrist, covering it, trying not to *scratch*. "Chas --" she whispers quietly. "I don't *like* this."

    And the smoke from the blood billows out. A cloud forms, flashing as if with lightning. The words are echoed, mockingly, laughingly, and there is a footfall in front of John.

    Cowrie shells shake as mocking lips part, a lizard's tongue runs over them and jagged teeth alike as the feminine form of a lady in a red coat stands before JOhn, as if invited in.

    "You think you can use the paths I have traveled since you were in diapers against me, John Constantine?" a twisted voice hisses. The voice sounds like the scratching of metal on metal, the feeling of your tongue licking along the grain of a popsicle stick. The audio equivelent of a rusty needle piercing through all five digits of your left hand at once.

    "Foolish boy."

John Constantine has posed:
    With nothing more than a flick of a wrist, the smallest gesture with his hand, the door to the backroom shuts. Emergency protocol activated, seriously, it's a thing. It happens just in time for Chas to nearly end up with a broken nose from it as he tried to rush in.

    Instead, the Best Mate and Best Cabbie in all the realms between heaven and Hell ends up beating on the closed door, ratting the handle and screaming John's name.

    Inside the room, John doesn't hesitate. He shoves himself to his feet, throws his hands out to his sides and speaks two words, in English. "Intruder Alert." No seriously, that's it. That's all it takes for the entire room to light up with sigils and runes and words scrawled in ancient languages. Some painted, some powered by his very own blood seeped into the walls. It may have been black magic he used in his first spell, but it's exactly the opposite that comes out of all the hours and hours and hours, days, weeks, blood, sweat, tears and talent put into warding in this room.

    More ridiculous than out there, with the others, the wards in here. This is the 'bomb shelter', this is the safe place where him and all of 'his' can hide if a mystical equivalent of an atomic bomb is ever dropped. ...and what he pulls down now is a protection of such *Holy* magnitude that it almost tops the holiness of the archangel he once summoned in the bar proper.

    It'll hurt. It'll hurt him in the process, but whatever she is, whatever it is that she's sent? It's gotta be more evil than he is.

    The last thing he does before that God Awful (No pun intended) bright magic of protection snakes its way out of the walls to wrap itself around the Bitch in Red is stoop to coat his fingers in the blood of the girl standing outside and snap them with a muttered, "Tether," spoken in that same Haitian Creole, in an attempt to tether whatever happens here, to this thing in the room, back to whoever sent it.

    ...and then he's on his knees, a little screaming of his own happening when the Holiness of that spell hits his demon blooded, cursed self as hard as it hits her necromancer Bitch Self.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen looks over to Phoebe, and says "Does he need my help?" He says this calmly as he places a hand to the door, and if you pay close attention the young man's form starts to blur around the edges "Do I go help him?" He waits for Phoebe's confirmation trusting his friend in this as he is pretty sure he can get out of the room without messing with these wards.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
"John," Lydia calls out worriedly, "I think you should sto-" She doesn't get a chance to finish her sentence though when the door slams shut. Then she can feel the holy power of the sigils blast through the door, and she winces. And then there is screaming.

"This isn't good," she says, trying the door, but finding it locked. She puts a hand on it and concentrates, and feels the magic that's used to seal them in. "He's sealed the door," she tells the others. "Magically warded and locked. I might be able to break it given time, but that's time we don't have."

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "John! /JOHN/!" Phoebe calls out, her voice going hoarse. The door is already crowded, so she just backs up, feeling her heart beating fast as panic sets in, backing up, looking to Bart, to Lydia and Chas's back, and she sinks down to the floor, her legs in a W as she quietly whispers, and then brings her hands up to cover her mouth in mixed horror, and then reaches back for Impulse to take his hand. Don't Go.

    On the other side of that door, the blast does the trick. The blood is tracing, and the body that was covered with red cloth, the proxy she was using, collapses down to its knees. The shells and jagged teeth disappear, and instead it's revealed to be a partially mummafied body, its skin blankened. The red cloth that had formed the cloak is now ragged and over its shoulders, and all over its face, one place where the raised skin of past tattooing was not obvious, were sigils. Control. Drain. Kill. Knives clatter to its side -- cheap, flat metal. It could have killed dozens of normal people. It could have seriously hurt John, and maybe even have pushed Phoebe to her own limit to withstand the damages, aura or no.

    This wasn't a message. This was an attempted murder, trying to trace back.

    The magic, that tether, is still strong, tracing, trailing back -- and splits. And Splits.

    And Splits.

    The Lady in Red has sent Phoebe's blood to so many different places, hiding, warded. Used. Corrupted. Gotham. Cairo. London. New York. Moscow. Tokyo. Madrid and Rome amd Melbourne and Buenos Aires and so many places between.

    As its purpose was disrupted, the corpse begins to deteriorate. It smells awful.

John Constantine has posed:
    The door handle clicks and it opens, just a crack.

    "Chas..." John's voice is barely a croak of a whisper from that little crack in the door.

    Who'll get through it first? Might turn into one of those Scooby Doo scenes, where everyone is trying to fit through the same narrow doorway at the same time? But sure as shit, Chas will *try* to be the first one in, still yelling John's name.

    Imagine the *worst* sunburn, the kind that leaves big yellow blisters that will pop and bust and weep for weeks? Now imagine that being every inch of your body. Despite it, John's managed to push himself back against a wall so that he's at least sitting up when the charge for the door happens. He blows a little puff of air through his nose that causes the nasty yellow blister that somehow managed to form over his left nostril to pop. Underneath the blisters his skin is a bright, angry shade of red. His lips are blistered, one eyelid. His white shirt is stained that pale, yucky yellow from blisters that have likely popped beneath it. Gross.

    Magic's messy, innit?

    First, second or last in, Chas skids to a halt. "John..." Barely a whisper. Then, "Phoebe!" Do something!

    "Bollocks, I forgot my sunscreen," John quips in that croak of a voice.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen will move to hug Phoebe, and when she is called for.. Bart will pick her up and it almost appears the two of them teleport to John. He winces a bit to look at the man, and says "You need bandages and ointment?" And then the young man is gone and back again with arm loads of bandages and burn cream. Do those boxes have an Black O on the side of them. Yep.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia lets the others go in first, and brings up the rear. "Holy hell," she breathes when she gets a good look John. She wants to say 'I told you so' so badly but holds her tongue. She's not the kind of person to be so petty when somebody's so obviously injured.

"What did you /do/ to yourself, John?" she asks, looking about the room. She notices the deteriorating corpse on the floor and her eyes go wide, "And what the hell is /that/?"

Impulse's disappearing trick catches Lydia by surprise. "How did you..." She shakes her head. Nevermind. It's magic or superpowers or whatever. She should be used to it.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "-- Holy Balls." Phoebe whispers. They teleported the whole twelve feet, but once she's on the floor, Phoebe rushes to John's side, eyeballing the corpse that's really beginning to stink up the room.

    "He protected us. That's what he did." Phoebe states, shuffling closer to John on her knees before she huffs out a breath and she hesitantly raises her hands, trying to find a Good Place to put them before she gives a grim expression, and places her hands on his shoulders.

    "Impulse, just-- put those down. Go upstairs to the bathroom and grab the pink towel." she asks of the speedster, knowing that it'll take him all of three seconds to find it "And just make the water as hot as you can stand it. This stuff is gross."

    Magic is messy. And gross. Especially necromancy?

    And she settles her self behind John, her hands on his shoulders, and is very, Very careful to *only* use Healing from her trio of light-sided powers.

    "... did you get her?" she asks quietly, her eyes closed, her face one of the utmost concentration.

John Constantine has posed:
    "You should see the other bloke," John replies to Lydia. "...fell asleep in the tanning bed..." Ha-ha! But see, jokes or snark? It's how he deals and how he's keeping from sobbing like an infant. As it is, he almost does let a little sob of a sound escape when he tries to reach into his pocket for his Silks.

    When Phoebe moves in behind him, which means moving *him*, his breath hitches in his chest and tears do spring to his eyes, but they don't fall. He blinks those away really quick. "She felt it... maybe worse than I did, but she's still alive." Add gritted teeth and a clenched jaw to the croak of his voice and he might be a little difficult to understand.

    "If she'd sprung that thing outside my wards when I wasn't prepared or expecting an attack..."

    And Chas, poor, poor, long suffering Chas bites back anything he wants to say to just lean against that big solid oak table in the room.

    "Lydia, check that thing... see if you can figure out any of the spell work... check if for Phoebe's blood too." That thing? Would be the rotting corpse.

    Magic is messy, innit? And gross.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen is on the ball, but it takes him a bit longer than 3 seconds, he has to wait for the water to come out of the faucet after all. He does put his hands in the water vibrating them getting the water hot with agitating the molecules and makes sure it is not to the point it will but but plenty hot and then Impulse is back beside the group steaming pink towel in hand. "Ok got it."

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia looks a little queasy at the idea of 'checking that thing,' but manages to swallow her disgust and goes to check it out. She doesn't touch it with her hands. No way, no how. Instead she uses tendrils of ectoplasm to roll the corpse on it's back.

"It's got sigils tattooed into it's skin. The stuff on it's face is made of blood." She mutters something in Hebrew and very cautiously touches the blood, and makes a grasping motion. Flares of amber alight her ectoplasm and a few ghostly images flick by, too quick to really see, but it parts crucial information to the witch. "The blood is Phoebes. And a sheep? Maybe a goat. The spell was designed to work with humans."

She uses her ectoplasm to carefully peel the clothes off the corpse. "Male. Looks like he's been dead for a while. I couldn't hazard a guess for how long. I'm not a pathologist. He's got tattoos on his arms." She turns the body over onto its side so she can see the tattoos more clearly. "They... they look like the same kind of hieroglyphs that was back at the museum."

She finally lets it go and lets the body flop back on it's back and quickly makes her way back to the rest of the folks. "Eugh." she says with a shudder. "I hope I never have to get close to a corpse that old again." She turns to Chas, "Hit me with some whiskey, if you could." She eyeballs the sunburnt mage and adds, "Probably pour a stiff one for John, too. He looks like he needs it."

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe tries to be gentle. The healing magic first tends to the jangled nerves, easing them. And then to the blisters, cooling the skin, easing the yellowish, painful pustules back and eliminating what she can. And then the general feeling of her healing, the cool water effect running the wrong way through veins, the tingling sensation of nerves rebuilding, reacting against the healing magic, drawing away the pain and the damage, changing, exchanging, refreshing. It's a slower process as Phoebe pulls back hard on the Holy aspect of her power, though John may be able to feel her touch tense a little bit at the talk of the tattoos on his arms.

    John's skin returns to its normal color, slowly, now that all the blisters of yellow gunk are retracted.

    "Impulse, give John the towel, please." she asks. "So you can clean up a bit. This stuff even smells gross."

John Constantine has posed:
    Somewhere between healed and not, John grits out, "She's using yyour blood... to power these things." It's a guess and his tone implies such. "That's why she can't kill you, luv, she needs your blood to work her magic."

    But how does it *connect*, Phoebe's blood and necromancy?

    When the last of the pain's finally gone? John lights a cigarette. "...or maybe she's using yyour blood so they'll target you." More guessing, his tone taking on that dangerous edge of frustration. Man hates not having the answers, it's the sort of thing that drives in into a manic state of 'gotta find it', keeps him up for days, pouring over books, working spells, dancing on the edge of what's safe and what isn't.

    He coughs a little bit on that first drag, that 'hairball' sound again. What he spits up is about as disgusting as it comes, all skin and tissue and gross yellow gunk.

    "Lovely," Chas mutters before he gives Lydia a little bobble headed nod and heads on out to fix drinks before he strangles his best friend over the recklessness.

    John pushes himself to his feet slowly, pain's gone, memory of it hasn't faded yet and he's still moving a little like he expects all his nerves to be set on fire by the action.

    "Any ideas?" he asks Lydia while he does his own little visual inspection of the corpse.

    He holds out a hand for that towel and can't help but to ask, "Why the code name shite, mate? I mean... it's not like I can't tell you're you."

    He is pointedly not looking at Phoebe. John *hates* when she has to heal him. Guilt. It makes him feel all sorts of guilty.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen will hand the towel over, and says "You maybe have a clue, but I did not know who all would be here, and what we might encounter. While most of my family are in the future, and my friends are superheroes, there are a few friends not in the business I would rather not get attention because they are friends of Impulse, so if I think there might be bad guys around or those who I don't know I mask up."

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
"Blood has power," Lydia says simply enough. "Especially blood that has the kind of lineage she has." She nods to indicate Phoebe. She takes the glass of whiskey and downs it one shot, burning away the aftertaste of smelling the corpse from up close. She coughs a little bit but retains her composure.

"I'm not well versed in necromancy, but the simplest answer seems to be that Phoebe's blood gives necromantic spells that extra added *oomph*" She scowls. "That seems a /too/ simplistic answer though. There's an endgame here and it eludes me."

She rubs her face and just takes a wild stab at it. "She's collecting a lot of power, so she's planning something big. Maybe she's preparing to summon Khonsu so she can kill him? Use him as a sacrifice to summon something deeper, darker?"

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Because some of them have family without access to safehouses or superpowers. It's just a layer of protection." Phoebe states in Bart's defense, still sitting on the floor, her head back. Ugh. She *tasted* that. Her nose wrinkles and she grabs the cloth she used to wipe off her arm, and uses it to grab that gross loogie of holy yellow gunk, skin and tissue, and she stands a moment more, looking to the poor deceased.

    The tattoos matched the artifact -- was this a family member, too?

    She comes out from the room, her nose wrinkling a moment and goes "I think I need something stronger than Sprite. I can't get the ashy taste out of my mouth." she states. Her *one* complaint about healing John. Weird... demon blooded... oddness.

    "... what'll we do with the remains?" she asks, turning a little to John.

John Constantine has posed:
    "You're not goin' to like this, luvs..." Both girls addressed there. "Puttin' it on ice for the night, I don't have the battery power to do what needs done." His faded denim blues shit toward a shelf, a glass case on the shelf and the mummified looking hand in the case.

    Hand of Glory that, seems he plans on having a little chat with the dead guy.

    "Lydia, you up for a road trip? Well, a step through my House to a little village I've been meaning to visit." He keeps that vague, he still hasn't decided if taking the kid along on that one would be a good idea or not.