Author's Note: This is a part of a challenge elsewhere, and will (no doubt) be multiple chapters long. Hence my, uh, taking my sweet time with it. While I think this here is a PG-13 rating, I have a feeling some will rank R. If I feel chapters are above that, you'll just get the chapter after that, with a request to reference my userinfo for the appropriate link. This challenge, I'm not going to be very creative with the names, calling each chapter by its prompt name. WHAT BETTER WAY COULD IT BE. This is the same incarnation of Sparda and Eva as is seen in my Gluttony story, fyi.
Also: Forgive me if I missed converting HTML to Word format, and yes, this story does take place in the present day. It's not canon. Repeat: IT IS NOT CANON. :(
Abduction
By: Kara/Carmen Wayne (reference nephilim on insanejournal to get everything, if you'd like, or nationstate on greatestjournal, or even exorcism on livejournal; pick!)
The woman could honestly say she was beginning to panic. It had been a long time coming, she figured. It had, but that didn't stop her from striking up at the cover above her with a forearm in a desperate attempt to force it open. The metal was too much, however, and something sharp in the darkness ripped at the flesh on her arm viciously, and in a matter of seconds, burning warmth rolled over her flesh and dropped against the thin silk that wrapped her torso.
It made her panic, being dropped roughly into the cluttered trunk of the old Lincoln Town car. Not for the fact that she was in danger, but for the fact that she was with child, and keeping herself safe was pivotal to keeping the child in her belly safe. Granted, she was only a few weeks along, but that didn't make it any easier. She'd already had to pivot around to avoid a blow to the stomach, instead receiving it to her flank, and costing her a couple of ribs, so she was honestly unsure how much more she could avoid before her child was put to ultimate risk.
Her captors were good. Really good. They'd waited until her husband was away, and they waited until she was fast asleep. The alarm was triggered, sure enough, but too late for her to make a successful escape to one of the house's secret passages. She didn't even have enough time to get a weapon, before she found the whip baton headed towards her, and she had to turn to take it to her side. It dropped her, and that was how she found herself being roughly stuffed painfully into the back of the car. Shitty ass car, too. It smelled awful. Like vomit and decay, frankly, and if she didn't know better, she would have thought there another body in the trunk with her. Now, the likelihood of there having been prior was high, but not at that time. She'd seen it before they dropped her in, since they didn't bother to sack her head. What was the point? She knew who they were.
She had been promising herself she was going to stay alert the entire time in that trunk, as her hands desperately felt around for a security latch, or some wires to pull the backlights out of commission, anything to give some sort of chance for escape. It was futile, she knew, since they would have made sure to rectify all those possibilities, but it was better than just laying there.
Fingers nearly went raw as she grabbed and tugged everything in testing, but it didn't seem to be in vain as she finally found her fingers hitting duct tape towards one end of the small confines. The tape bubbled slightly, in actual rows. Wires? It was in the right area for the backlight… had they duct taped the wires down? It'd figure that was one of the few things they could do, shy of ripping them out themselves and risking getting the eyes of police officers on them.
She felt a little victorious, honestly, as she started trying to pry the tape off from where it was firmly set. Get the wires pulled, and pray for a cop to catch the car rolling by with a light out. That's what she hoped for. Something, anything, to give her a fighting chance…
Outside of the small space, the shrill spin of tires caught her attention, along with the unnatural sway of the entire vehicle. It was spinning out of control, and Eva's first impulse was to pull together with her knees to her chest and her arms around her head. It was learned, quickly, that that was the smartest move for her to do, as the car began to tilt and shake violently. Her body was pummeled with the hard, loose items in the trunk, but at least her stomach and her head was safe, and she prayed that she would survive whatever was happening; to not die in the back of an old, dingy car like that.
Sifting out names from the basket that was passed to her was as aggravating as when it was a night she had to drop her name into it. It meant another night with a skeevy socialite that was convinced that he was everything, and that Eva LaClaire, the intelligent Frenchwoman that was fresh to America, would simply be unable to live without. She was a bit bright eyed and bushy tailed, which helped her not in the grand scheme of things. However, with every night that passed like this, with every event that seemed to slowly shatter what part of her remained innocent and pure, that began to slowly whither until she was suspicious of anyone and everyone at these Hollywood gatherings.
That night, it was Jean-Paul Bernard; a fellow Frenchman, albeit in America for far longer than she, that had long been attempting to get his hands on her. He was fawned over by the general public as a sex icon and action star respectively, but honestly, Eva was unsure what was so attractive about the man who was as blond as she, and who had hair about as long as she. Especially so, that night after she drew his name, and she found herself sitting across from him in one of the large home's bedrooms. He was the epitome of the French stereotype, and it made her gag. Rather unwashed, crude as hell, and a proud 'Christian'.
"It was only a matter of time before you and I would be brought together," he said with words almost completely absent of the accent of his home tongue. "I'm sure many would agree."
He swayed over to her. She had been sitting in a rather plush armchair with her legs crossed and her hands folded together. Rather uptight, he'd pointed out, the moment he walked in to find her sitting exactly like that. As she was opening her mouth to speak, he was dropping down to place his hands on the arms of the armchair to brace upon as he leant close to her face. While the urge was to stop speaking and draw back, she remained still and unaffected as she spoke. "Because the millions of individuals on the internet and standing in crowds outside the buildings of late night talk shows you're being interviewed on really are prophetic and matter so much." Her accent was far more obvious.
"They say you are one vicious kitty-kitty, LaClaire." His breath stank of badly mixed alcohol. "Want to prove them right?"
His right hand lifted, fingers brushing past the right side of her jawbone. It was the seduction of a sixteen year old boy, really. His well-kept fingers were soft and lacked the calluses that a man his age should have had, proving he hadn't seen a rough day of work in his life. Not exactly Eva's cup of tea, but certainly expected. Most the men who roamed in the ranks of the 'Hollywood Elite' were as soft as any woman. It would have been boring enough for her to forgo these evening affairs all together, if not for the reason behind her participation.
Moving to stand, Eva gave little care to the fact that she was pushing the broad-shouldered, pathetic example of a Frenchman back from his leering position. It seemed to only further his impression of her being quite the vivacious lover in bed, as he chuckled and made a grab for her. How stunned he was, when he found one of her hands slapping each of his away with a loud pop each time.
As she slapped with the one hand, her other calmly wiped at the eyeliner slipped around the bottom of her right eye, and she said, "I say you prepare for me, as I leave for a moment to prepare myself." She began to sashay away, waggling taunting fingers at him. "After all, they say you are quite selfish in bed, Bernard."
The disgusting man said something in retort to her, but Eva tuned him out to her own thoughts. Absolutely disgusting. At least Eva's plans for that night would, if all went well, lead her to not having to share a bed with him, as it was entirely true, her comment. Having been director to several rather large movie productions, Eva found herself discussing rather raw, explicit affairs with many actors and actresses. Her own presence at these weekly affairs was on account of the glib attitudes many seemed to have of the events that transpired there. There was only so much she could handle, on prime example, of an actress, as famous as Jean-Paul really, laughing about her father's secret exploits with a fifteen-year-old girl before Eva simply stood up and left the makeup trailer.
She loathed Hollywood for all its beauty and splendor. Of its actors and actresses, displaying themselves as protestors of war, as advocates of free speech and freedom of love, who in reality were worse than most criminals. Sacrificing their souls to Hell for the sake of their fame and beauty and fortune. Of the murders left unsolved due to police in with hands in the pockets of them all.
The large mansion that many of the ritualistic sins were held in belonged to a socialite that Eva was unsure of, to be honest. She didn't much care, either. Along the grapevine, she'd heard of demands from those they worshipped to make child sacrifices that night. Eva was unsure of the legitimacy of the claims that the order came from gods, as she had frankly never seen or heard from these gods herself, and being a woman of religion in her solitude (she admitted the hypocrisy of it), she didn't exactly believe them gods anyway.
Children drew the line for her, for her own, personal reasons. There was something about that knowledge, proven when they were brought out into the main hall for ritualistic preparations, that drove her to do more than simply attend and gather names for a time of comeuppance she was uncertain would ever arrive. Police in the pockets and all.
Which was why, after a series of dodges and avoidances of roaming security and attendees, Eva was making quick steps down the stone steps of a wine cellar. One of her previous nights there had her stumbling upon it by accident, when pretending to enjoy a game of cat and mouse with a rather frisky elder gentleman (a term not used too loosely, as he ended up being exactly that: a widower, a gentleman, only wishing for a companion to joke and frolic with for a night). While down there, she'd noticed a line of gas tanks kept in a corner for safe keeping, full and flammable.
And she had a small pistol on her, ready to cause quite the stir with a well placed .22. Enough tanks were down there, as well, to cause quite the nasty hole. At least, the last time she was there, which was why she was thumping down the stairs on pantyhose wrapped feet, black heels in hand to keep her movements far more quiet.
In vain, however, in vain. The moment she rounded the steps to locate the dimly lit wall via emergency lights, with the containers lining it, she found herself nearly slamming into a man, taller, broader than even Jean-Paul. In the dark light, the huffing man who had to step back to avoid collision was hard to identify, though his hair appeared to be a shock of white in the dark. Perhaps it was deceptive in those shadows, but Eva could only assume he was a fairer blond than she, because he appeared too young to be so wholly gray.
He was well dressed, and intoxicating with the cologne he wore. Not a bit of alcohol coated his breath as he spoke, with a simple, "The evening fuck of the illustrious Jean-Paul Bernard, running for her life? To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"
It was condescending and insulting. Instead of alcohol, his words were laden with the same distasteful manner in which Eva would speak to others at those nightly affairs. She found herself getting her back up, and crossing her arms. "Who are you?"
There was no light to bite painfully at her eyes as Eva found herself slowly coming to. Honestly, she would have thought herself still in the trunk, if not for the fresh night air that wafted over her face.
Truth to have it, she was indeed still in the trunk; or, rather, the lid of it, which hung open from underneath the overturned Lincoln. Her head throbbed, the warmth of blood over her cheek cooling in the wind. Her body was covered in the rough objects that had been in the trunk before she was thrown in there, and her side was roughly hooked against that same sharp edge that had sliced her arm from before. The only saving grace she had was the fact that the trunk's lip had kept her from rolling off from where she was hooked by nightgown and flesh. As it was, pulling herself up and off was ripping slightly at the same side that her bruised, if not broken, ribs were on. Had she rolled off, she fathomed the resulting tear in her flesh would have been akin to a large rip in fabric.
Her body ached, growing bruises and bleeding cuts riddling her flesh. The pain was a blessing in disguise, however, as the ground of the tree-covered area the car had crashed and rolled into was covered in rough vines and rocks. Slices in the bottoms of her bare feet were nothing compared to her ribs, and to the gash in her head that had her toppling about like a child's wobbly toy as she clamored her way to the front of the car. Not after taking up a tire iron once tangled in her ankles, however. Just in case.
The men, her captors, were quite obviously in worse condition than she. Both men looked positively battered, with the back of one's head ruptured as much as the side of the other. Small holes resided on the opposite sides of their skulls. They were flopped grotesquely about, with legs caught up in their seatbelts and shattered arms splayed about in ways absolutely impossible if they weren't shattered into a bunch of pieces.
Eva had very little sympathy, and had it not been so obvious that they had been taken care of, that tire iron would have ended up in one of their heads. However, she did take to pillaging the driver of his boots and his shirt. Not like he much needed them, anyway, and although his feet were obviously much larger than hers, the boots did the job after being tied tight with trembling fingers. And once the shirt was pulled on, bloody as it was, and buttoned halfway down before being tied at the waist, Eva place a hand on her stomach and whispered, "You better be okay in there."
The whole situation just sucked, but started to look up when her eyes landed on a little silver object near the roof console of the car. The console wasn't standard to the Towncar, and looked it. Probably used for hiding weapons and the like, she assumed, as she slowly bent into the car to grab the cell phone laying there carelessly.
She opened up the device to find it state-of-the-art, and full charged. Which was an absolute blessing, and had her eyes turning upwards and passing a soft, "Thank you," to the sky, just before her thumbs began to work at the buttons, to quickly dial her husband's phone. Surely--surely he had his phone on him. Yes, he was bad about answering it, but she hoped that just once he would, because if she needed him ever so urgently to, then would be the time.
Her husband had a fascination with being absolutely inane at times. Absolutely inane, such as not being too fond of hearing phones ringing when he called them. A man with the worst habit of calling his own phone and leaving voicemail reminders of things for himself, he took particular care to program a song to play in place of actual ringing. Once a week, he changed it, and that week Eva was greeted with the painful strums of the Chicken Dance. While his simplicity in pleasure was admirable, it was on that basis alone that she just about hurled the phone out into the darkness.
The urge grew, when she heard his voice gruffly demand a message be left, and that he'd get back to it when he got back to it. Frustrated, because she was positive he wouldn't bother to check his voicemail, she left a quiet, "Sparda, love. If you get this, look for this number in your phone. Call me. And if you don't get this by the time I get back to you, I'm caving your skull in with this tire iron in my hand."
The phone was clapped shut, and slipped into a breast pocket on the dirty, torn shirt. After assuring that both head and arm wounds had coagulated enough to not warrant her stripping the other body's shirt for bandaging, Eva did a quick skim of the second body to look for weapons. The first she'd stripped the clothes of was robbed of his, and disparagingly enough, so was the other. But that was fine, she had her tire iron.
Taking a deep breath, Eva looked for the path of the car's tumble in the moonlight, to find her way back up to the street.