Chapter 10
Lauren made it across the threshold on legs shaking from utter exhaustion. Her two fae patients had taken most of her night as well as her strength and general enthusiasm for practicing her life-saving profession. At that particular moment the blonde doctor would gladly sell a bunch of a car-crash casualties for a quick shower and a bed. On second thought, these long-dreamed-of attributes of home could be foregone in favour of any horizontal surface long and wide enough for sleeping purposes. But her first logical choice turned out to be already taken by a small form emitting soft snoring-whining noises from under a blanket. Kenzi was sprawled on the sofa in Bo's living-room and Lauren had to prop herself against the armrest to let the image register in her tired mind. A barely audible creaking of the stairs alerted the woman to another presence and when a warm arm slid around the blonde, she gratefully shifted her weight onto the succubus. "She's just gone to sleep, Lauren," Bo whispered into the blonde hair, "She was agitated and worn-out at the same time but the exhaustion finally won out."
"Tell me about it," the doctor whispered back, not without an envious note.
"Let me get you upstairs," the succubus read her tone correctly, "You're barely standing up."
"I operated on a near-fatally wounded friend, had to face a mightily pissed kitsune with poor control of her temper and her talons and topped my night off with patching up a beaten-up Ash, also not in the best of moods."
"The only way I know of making you feel better is probably not an appropriate idea given your physical state," Bo murmured sympathetically, "So, I'll just restrain myself to merely tucking you in."
Which she gladly got down to after she walked her human lover upstairs and into their bedroom. Lauren didn't even fully register a pair of very well-practiced hands stripping her of her clothes and only fluttered her eyelashes open seconds before sinking into a deep sleep. "They are both dangerous," she was barely coherent with drowsiness. "Kenzi is wild and Hale is festering."
"It'll be ok, baby. As soon as Dyson is awake, Kenzi will rein in her wild impulses and Hale's been taught a good enough lesson tonight," Bo said soothingly, but Lauren was already beyond the point of deflating this optimistic view of things and the brunette settled next to her for some much deserved, though unaccustomedly action-lacking, rest.
The doctor's psycho evaluation, however, merited closer attention. While the two women were sleeping it off, the festering one and the wild one were far from restful. Hale, freshly swabbed and bandaged, was busily pulling all the strings he could think of. A call to the Morrigan with a back-scratching trade-off offer, a quick visit to one of the Ash's secret storerooms for a thing he intended to put to a good use if push came to shove and the plan of revenge was set into motion.
Kenzi, in the meanwhile, after a few hours of recharging on the sofa got up filled with a gnawing worry that immediately propelled her through the routine of grabbing a shower and something that could pass for an early-hours breakfast and setting off for the compound again. This time her sole focus was back on the wolf. The kitsune sneaked past a snoozing male nurse and into the room where she positioned herself by Dyson's bed and took his hand into hers as gently as if she could inadvertently break it. In response to her touch the man's fingers twitched and his nostrils flared instinctively drawing in her scent.
"Kenzi, are you alright?" he got out his voice painfully laborious and muffled. "I'm fine!" Kenzi exclaimed impulsively squeezing his hand. "Did we get him?" Dyson voiced the worry preying on his half-conscious mind and the girl didn't need elaboration to know who he was talking about. "He's dead," she answered in an emotionless tone fully reflecting her present attitude to this fact.
"Good!" the wolf managed a semblance of a nod and Kenzi looked down to see red imprints on his skin left by her nails. Appalled, she unclasped her fingers and whispered apologetically, "Sorry, Dy, I'm hurting your hand." But Dyson seemed too swamped by a different pain to pay any attention to the scratches, "My hand? Unless you're filing my legs with a blunt saw you have nothing to be sorry for."
When the proper morning was well on its way, Bo, flustered and gasping after a sprint she had taken, burst into the patients' room and she was greeted by the sight of Kenzi perched on the side of the hospital bed, her eyes fastened on Dyson's face and her hand to her mouth while her sharp teeth were working nervously on a piece of gold chain. Bo found the mannerism disconcertingly familiar bur refrained from rooting around in her memory for its origin. At the moment the succubus couldn't care less about it or about where the kitsune had picked up the item of jewelry but she was extremely preoccupied by her friend's obvious anxiety and pain as much as she had been frantic to find the sofa empty before that.
"You should've warned me you were leaving, Kenzi," Bo said briskly, approaching the bed cautiously. "I was worried, you know."
"Sh-sh!" the younger fae half-turned and for a second stopped her chomping to put a finger to her lips for extra emphasis, "He was awake and he said his legs were hurting. Which means he can feel them, Bo, he'll be walking again, right? And he said he loves me and then he was out of it again. Where's Lauren? Why isn't she here? Dyson may need her any minute." Her tone, happy first, quickly turned fretful and Bo flinched as the word "wild" supplied by her lover crossed her mind coupled with "unbalanced".
"Lauren was knackered and she went home for a bit of sleep, she'll be back any moment," the brunette explained evenly, trying not to reveal the inner turmoil taking hold of her. In her present state Kenzi seemed equally dangerous in the infirmary and out of it. As much as Bo wanted to keep the mentally unstable kitsune off the streets she didn't trust her around Lauren either.
As if to compound her preoccupation Kenzi sprang to her feet and started to pace the length of Dyson's bed, her steps noiseless but jerky. "It's taking him so long to recuperate," she motioned to the wolf, "And he's in so much pain. Maybe another doctor should be brought in, a fae one. Or Trick might know a magic cure, maybe he can just write it in his books for Dy to be healthy again."
Bo heaved a deep sigh and moved over to the girl putting her hands onto her shoulder to keep her in place and looked her in the face. "You know as well as I do that Trick can't use his powers without dreadful repercussions. And you know that Lauren is a wonderful doctor, the best, and you have to calm down and trust her. Give it some time, just be here for Dyson," she admonished and, before the frenzied objection that she already saw taking form in the pale grey eyes of her bestie could burst out, the succubus pressed her lips to the girl's and took a deep draw. A stream of kitsune chi hit her with a delicious thrumming quality and a tingling wave spread through Bo's body, closing the small scraps that Kenzi's sharpened nails were leaving in her skin at the same time. The succubus interrupted the feed when she judged she had taken enough and helped the girl onto her spot on the edge of the hospital bed.
"I'm so sorry, Kenzi," Bo pronounced her voice quivering with sincerity and regret, "But I had to chi-suck you into some kind of submission. You wouldn't have calmed otherwise." Initial hurtful disbelief on the younger girl's face was unexpectedly supplanted by a sudden understanding. Kenzi leaned into the footboard putting her hand on Dyson's leg as if looking for a lifeline. "I'm flying off the rails, Bo," she smiled thinly, "And you figured the weaker Kenzi is, the slower the marble-losing process."
"Dyson will set you right, as soon as he can," the succubus nodded, "Until then just stay here by his side and we'll hope you don't have enough energy left to attack anyone or go around looking for trouble or causing it."
Bo went out of the compound far from soothed but temporarily satisfied with her stop-gap measure and at the exit door ran into Lauren rushing in to check on her lupine patient.
"Kenzi is here, Lauren," Bo warned the blonde and saw her face tense at the news, "Relax, I've defused her for the time being. She's running low on chi – I had to kiss her out of it – and is relatively harmless. But promise to call me as soon as you see her recharged enough to give trouble." The doctor didn't bother masking her relief despite the fleeting stomach-clenching sensation at the thought of her lover kissing the kitsune. After the door swung shut behind the succubus Lauren turned and bumped straight into a fae male nurse who she had left in charge in the last responsible move she was capable of the previous night.
"He's stable, doctor Lewis," the nurse dutifully reported and at Lauren's non-verbal urging continued, "His girl-friend showed up in the wee hours and then Bo the unaligned succubus joined her but has already left."
"And you?" the blonde enquired about the nurse's phone-in-hand ready-to-scoot-out position.
"I am just taking a minute's breather to call my wife, doctor Lewis," came the respectful answer. Content with her inquiries, Lauren went over to Dyson's room while the nurse resumed his way out. Once in the open air the he put through the announced call but, strangely enough, neither his tone nor the employed form of address corroborated the version he had presented to his human superior. He delivered practically the same report to someone he was calling "sir", though his voice upgraded from respectful to overtly obsequious and he added the salient fact of having overheard what Bo had told the doctor about weakening Kenzi. On the other end of the line Hale put down the receiver and turned to two huge men waiting for his orders. "It all comes together even better than I hoped. The coast is clear, gentlemen, the kitsune is in the infirmary, temporarily at a disadvantage."
"Shall we bring her into the dungeon, sir?" one of the men asked.
"As the events of the last night served to show, the dungeon is not exactly the most suitable place to hold the rabid fox," the Ash frowned at the memory of what he could only term as his double disgrace brought about by the women who were supposed to look up to him as their ruler. "No, not the dungeon. I've got a very special chamber prepared for her instead and a very special neighbour."
Tamsin braced herself against the headboard and winced as the pain lanced through her temples. "I should really cut down on booze," she murmured, "getting old." But another deep, system-cleansing intake of air brought on more clarity and the valkyrie looked around with a frown. The room she found herself in contained two beds, a nightstand and a moderately-sized wardrobe. A side door was opening into what looked like a tiny bathroom. The ensemble didn't look like a motel room or a chance night acquaintance's room, at least, much less did it resemble the interior of the flat Tamsin had been the not proud occupant of for the last couple of months.
The blonde sniffed herself, looked over the sheets, got up and made a round of the room. She tried the handle of the door and, on finding it locked, tried her shoulder against it but the wood wouldn't give an inch. The valkyrie returned to the bed and plopped back down resolved not to expend her energy unnecessarily until she adjusted her goals with more accuracy.
"I haven't changed out of my Hale-kicking Kenzi-retrieving clothes, no sane one-night-stand amateur would fall for the amount of BO I am sporting and a perv would leave stains on the sheets. The room is warded by a spell," she resumed her findings. "And my head is pounding like someone spiked the last beer I remember gulping down with a valkyrie knock-out poison. Neat! And I am trapped."