Black Cat, White Moon
Chapter Seven
Confrontations
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For the first time in his life, Reid refused to analyze something. The BAU agent didn't want to think about the almost supernatural bond growing quickly between himself and Razielle, a woman he barely even knew. He didn't want to deal with the questions the analytical part of him had for himself. For once, the young genius didn't think the answers were important.
Still, the questions tried to force him to announce their presence. How had he found himself in this position? How had he fallen for this strange, bloodthirsty woman so very quickly? Why did it feel as if his heart had been ripped out of his chest every time she so much as left the room? Why had his body thrilled at the pain of her teeth sinking into his throat? And why, in the name of all that was holy, had he allowed her to seal their bond even though he knew just what she was? How dangerous and potentially lethal, she was? This woman was, if she - and the evidence of his eyes could be believed - a demon. Or something like one. And yet he had let this creature bond herself to him irrevocably.
It doesn't matter, he whispered to himself. He wasn't going to confront the issues if he didn't have to. He was just going to hold Razielle tight to his chest, letting the shower pound them both with steaming, hot water. He only wanted to hold her, feel her in his arms, so slender and strong, so silken soft. Her wet hair hung down her back in a dripping wet curtain. He coiled a strand of it around one finger, gave it a gentle yank.
For the last fifteen minutes, her eyes had told him her mind was far away, wandering a dark path he wasn't sure he was strong enough to trod. Spencer wanted her back with him, in the here and now, wanted her to focus on her surroundings. Her journey down that eldritch mental path filled him with a dark dread.
Razielle looked up at him, smiling. Her beauty brought the ache in his body rushing back, and he clenched his teeth, laying his cheek on top of her head to avoid looking at her. Looking at her would make it so much worse.
"Your shirt's getting wet," she whispered.
He shrugged, and the white collared shirt clung to him, both button-down shirt and undershirt soaking wet and sticking to his skin. Beads of water collected on the drenched fabric. His skin was like ice where the wet cloth touched him, but the genius ignored the chill. His pants were getting wet too, but he didn't care. Reid had stepped into the shower cubicle fully dressed, ignoring the heaviness of his clothes and cold they forced on his body. More important things had called him there.
The twenty-something agent had heard Razielle sobbing in the shower. He'd seen her huddled beneath the steaming, pounding spray, shivering, in her black leather clothes. She'd been so shell-shocked that she hadn't even bothered to take off her clothes. She'd just collapsed in the shower, tears streaming down her cheeks. Now they stood, the water pounding them like hot summer rain, and they held each other close, and Razielle tried to get somewhat clean. For some reason, the bounty hunter/assassin couldn't seem to find it in herself to completely undress. Perhaps it was the exhaustion struggling to bring her down.
Maybe it was Spencer's presence. He made her nervous.
"It has to wait," she whispered. "The rest of the bonding has to wait until we get your mother, and my brother and sisters back, and we're free to go to the Cradle"
"The Cradle?"
"It's where I grew up," Razielle murmured softly, closing her eyes and tilting her head back. Nearly scalding water pounded her skin and skimmed across her collar bones and the tops of her breasts, rolling over the leather corset. The feel of the water hitting the leather felt nice, like a massage. It eased some of the tension in her body.
"Why would Dragon take them?" Spencer asked.
Razielle glanced at him, her eyes like meadow grass in the steamy cubicle. Damp curls clung to her cheeks and neck. She almost looked completely relaxed.
Almost.
"I don't know. Moving against my family like this is an act of treason, an act of aggression against my race. It's considered an act of war - instigated by Dragon on the behalf of the Echidnae - by the Council of Seven unless Dragon is employed by someone else. And no one is stupid enough to risk my mother's wrath, she's slaughtered thousands for less," she replied, intent on scrubbing the skin over the soft swell of her breasts. The bruise began three inches above where the leather of her corset began, and spread beneath the leather and down. The ordinarily white flesh was black with bruising, but there was no bullet wound.
Her back was even worse, visible through the loose lacing of her corset that bared most of her back, almost pitch black bleeding to livid purple, blue, and red, but the gaping hole he knew had been there, the exit wound for the bullet, was gone now. In the time between being shot and making her way to the shower, the wound had closed. He'd found the bloody bullets in the bathroom sink.
He was surprised she could scrub the blood away so viciously. It had to hurt, he could feel it, almost like the feeling he got from a rug burn, but on his chest and back, and she was shielding him, he knew that, too. It had to burn viciously to her.
"I feel dirty," she whispered, catching his thoughts, and rinsed herself off under the pounding spray. The water ran into the drain in a red flood. The water cleaned the scarlet stains from the leather, as well. The huntress sighed, reveling in feeling clean for the first time since she'd taken the case against Spencer. "It was my blood, and his. I want it off. I could care less if it hurts."
For a time, there was sweet silence. Razielle scrubbed until her flesh showed pink and clear of blood beneath the pounding spray. Then she washed her hair. Not once did she acknowledge that her clothes would be ruined as soon as she got out of the shower. It didn't matter to her. What mattered was cleaning the blood and making sure Reid didn't see her naked. She just wasn't ready for that yet. And for Reid's part, he merely rubbed the lethal woman's shoulders and neck, trying to ease the painful tension he knew was there. Even when his fingers began to cramp, he kept going.
Eventually, however, he knew he had to ask the next question.
"What do we do after we get out of the shower?"
The minutes stolen in this pristine white room, with the pounding rain of the shower spray and the huge clouds of steem, seemed so inordinately precious. He didn't want to leave. It wasn't about sex - they were both fully clothed, still, and didn't have the time even if they were so inclined to do anything physical except embrace. He just wanted to stay with her always, stay with her and hold her close and never let go. It was as if the death and bloodshed waiting for them out in the world was held at bay by the warm room full of pouring rain and heat and closeness.
She caught her hair over her shoulder, and he saw how the water droplets caught on the wispy hairs at the nape of her slender neck, how when they finally were heavy enough to drop, they rolled down her back in tiny streams. He gently caressed her back, skirting the edges of that horrible, massive bruise, and she sighed, relaxing a little more.
"I don't know. It depends on what Uncle Jason decides. He technically outranks me. What he decides, I'll do, unless Mother says otherwise. I doubt she will. Uncle Jason is older than she, so she tends to listen to him because he's a better tactician and strategist, better at figuring things out."
She wrung out her hair, and the water that splashed onto the floor of the shower cubicle was bright crimson. Razielle sighed.
"What is it?" He asked softly, wiping an ineffectual finger at his eyes. The water still dripped into them.
"I hate having blood in my hair."
"You're scared, aren't you?" Reid asked with a sudden flash of insight. The shock rang in his voice. Somehow, the idea struck him as incredibly absurd, but she was holding herself so carefully, and trying to avoid the subject of her missing siblings and the waiting fight outside the bathroom. The quest to find their families was going to be hard. And despite her rather unique repertoire, Spencer could tell Razielle didn't think she had what it took to save her siblings.
She shrugged, wincing and hissing in pain as tensed and knotted muscles shrieked in protest. Instinctively, he cupped the nape of her neck and began gently massaging. He could feel a knot right at the top of her spine. It must have been killing her.
She sighed and murmured, "No. Angry. Not afraid. To hurt you, your blood, or my blood is an act of war. He won't hurt them. I won't let him. But I'm furious. I want to… do things. But I don't want to scare you."
"What will make it better?" Reid asked. He tried to keep his voice steady. The young genius had no illusions about his bravery. Generally, he didn't do well with violence. He either had nightmares, took narcotics, or cried. Sometimes a combination of the three. So if the bounty hunter in his arms was worried about scaring him, she probably had a good reason.
But... but he wanted to be someone she could confide in.
"Shooting the monster in the head," Razielle growled, anger rolling off of her in poisonous waves. "Like I did to Sebastian. Unlike the little Knight Scare, Dragon can be killed relatively easy. Or tearing him open with my bare…." She turned a little and caught a good look at the chalky pallor of Reid's face, and buried her face in his chest rather than continue with her rant and frighten him further.
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Dragon was expecting Razielle to drop in and try to pull rank, try to bully him into returning her siblings and her future mother-in-law. He'd expected the frigid fury in her eyes, the gun even now pointed at his head. He expected the so-called human, Spencer Reid, Doctor with three doctorates and less than a quarter of a century to his name, to be there, looking pathetic and pale, frightened of the doings of his betters. This he expected.
He had not expected, and was thus shudderingly terrified of, the Lord Jason Gideon, the Knight Lyon, the Nephilaea's oldest brother, and her only superior in physical combat. He hadn't realized that the man leading the BAU was the man who'd killed more demons and other non-humans than even the great Michael of Heaven's Gate and the Princess Gabrielle of Darkholme combined.
If he'd known, he would've charged his employer far more money. And hired some bodyguards.
"Where are the children, and Mrs. Reid?" Lord Gideon demanded.
"I'm afraid that information is part of my client confidentiality clause, Lord Gideon. I can't give you that information."
"Then who hired you?"
"I can't give you that, either," Dragon hissed at him, eyeing the gaping maw of Jackal, Razielle's favorite gun, pointed right at his face.
Lord Gideon's gun was pressed against his right temple, where the third lobe of his brain pressed against his skull, the part of his brain that controlled automatic functions like breathing and heartbeat. Shoot him there, and by the time he regenerated, he'd be chained and at Razielle's mercy, to torture until she got the whereabouts of her siblings out of him. And the little hellcat looked close to playing Autopsy with his body - while he was still alive.
"Can't or won't?" Razielle snarled, cocking Jackal's hammer. A bullet slid into the chamber with a hard click!
"Oh, it's won't. He knows that." Gideon smiled almost indulgently. "Tell, or I'll give you to my niece, and when she's done, she'll give you over to her mother, and you know what Shekinah will do to you."
Dragon visibly paled. No mean feat for someone with reptile skin.
"Say goodnight, lizard boy," and both Gideon and Razielle prepared to fire. The hellcat's finger began tightening on her trigger. Sweat rolled down Dragon's face. Gideon's gun clicked as the safety disengaged and his finger began to press the trigger.
"ALL RIGHT!!!"
Gideon leaned in, and Dragon whispered a name. Gideon's grip tightened around his gun until his knuckles turned white. Razielle glanced between him and Dragon, but when he backed off, she followed him, and escorted Reid out of the office building, guarded in back by her uncle.
This parting shot followed.
"You may have forsaken your bloodline, Lord Gideon! But it will not be denied!"
Without batting an eyelash, Gideon turned on his heel and pulled the trigger. The copper-jacketed bullet hit Dragon in the eye. The reptilian shrieks of Razielle's ex-employer followed the trio to the car and out of the parking lot.
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In the car as Gideon drove back to the Vegas headquarters for the BAU, he whispered, "Raze… don't ever think that blood can't be denied. Blood can be overcome by will, by heart, by spirit, if you're strong enough. You and I are strong enough. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Uncle Jason."
"Good girl."
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When the three agents came back to headquarters, they found computer-whiz Garcia throwing up in the trash can. Morgan was popping the tab on a can of Coke - his comfort drink, always a bad sign - looking visibly shaken and as pale as chocolate milk with too much milk and not enough chocolate syrup. JJ was nowhere to be seen (probably still in surgery). Emily had her head between her knees breathing hard, obviously fighting to keep from being sick, and Hotch stared fiercely at Gideon with eyes like an angry raptor.
"What happened?" Reid asked, immediately sensing both his boss's hostility towards the now retired BAU agent and the fear and horror rolling through the room like a steam locomotive.
Without even a grunted syllable or a tersely spoken word, Agent Hotchner picked up a white gift box and handed it to Gideon, who popped latex gloves on before taking it from his old - and angry - friend. The lid to the gift box was off, and the sides were stained dark brown with what was probably blood. Inside was a finger - a man's, judging by the width of the digit, the sparse but dark hair on the knuckles, and the large tiger's eye signet ring. A child's doll lay beside it, splattered with blood, and a lock of dirty blond hair was held to the toy by a bobby pin.
"The hair belongs to Mrs. Reid, forensics confirms. The doll-" Hotch began, voice hard and dark. His eyes glinted like blades.
"It's Lilya's," Razielle whispered, starting to turn very, very white. One hand found the conference table. Her knees began to buckle, but she hastily locked them and managed to remain upright. "It's my sister's."
"And…." The young genius stopped and tried to work up a mouthful of spit to wet his mouth. His breath rasped in his throat. After coughing and swallowing for a moment, and managing to collect himself, the BAU agent found the strength to speak again. "And whose finger is that?" Reid asked with some difficulty.
Razielle managed to whisper, "My father's."
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Disclaimer/Author's Note: don't own anything you recognize. While the mythos behind most of this is based on fairytales from the Brothers Grimm and other public domain sources - like English and Celtic legends and Jewish mysticism and such - I do try to credit my sources.
For example, the shower scene was inspired by the second-newest James Bond movie, Casino Royale, which I saw on a plane to Heathrow a couple years ago.
