Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of the characters from the anime, but I do own everything else.
A/N: I am nearly finished with this story. I've only two more chapters after this one and an epilogue, so I'd like to take a moment to give my gratitude to my faithful reviewers for sticking with me on this nail-biting adventure. S2Teennovelist, Ilovemanicures, YoungBountyGirl, Geneva Dim, Kearitona Sjachraelgil, AyaSeth, Chibitomodachi, Queen Hathor, BakuraLOLZ99, and Yaminisu, you're all amazing. It's thanks to you that I make such fast updates. I would like to know from anyone else what they think about my stories, so drop me a review once in a while. They always brighten up my day. ^_^
Once I'm finished with Crimson Guardian, I will get back to writing Shattered Memories. I think my pirate boys have been put off long enough.
On with the story!
Chapter Nineteen
Arthur Hopkins was roused from sleep by an insistent knocking at his front door. He supposed that he should have been awake already, and he got out of bed to answer the door. He was shocked and anxious to find Mahado on his doorstep, breathing heavily and doubled over as if he had just finished a long, hard running stint.
"Are you all right? What is it?" Arthur questioned, fearing that something might have happened to his granddaughter.
"Yes sir...but you must...come quickly. There has been...an emergency...please hurry." The man panted, slowly recollecting his composure.
"Yes, of course." Arthur replied and he quickly dressed and grabbed his medical bag before moving back to the door where he saw Mahado had flagged down a cabbie. The men climbed into the buggy and Mahado barked out directions to the Henderson Manor before they started quickly back to Seto's family home.
"Tell me what has happened. Is Rebecca all right?" Arthur demanded.
"Yes, Rebecca is quite all right. This morning there has been an incident. My nephew's caretaker and Lord Henderson were both wounded. I fear the young woman may be dying. She has a vicious injury in her abdomen that, as far as I am aware, has yet to stem or stop bleeding. The young master is very distraught over Athena's condition." Mahado briefly explained.
"Athena? Is she not the woman my granddaughter speaks so highly of? I heard she was dead."
"Nay. She survived; for how much longer still remains to be seen." Mahado said ruefully, and hung his head in despair.
"I shall do the best I can do to help this young lady."
Oddly enough, Mahado smiled a little at Arthur's comment, but it was not due to relief. How odd…
Seto ignored Mokuba's fussing over his leg as he continued to apply pressure to Athena's injury. The blood flow seemed to have slowed a little, but something did not seem right. Athena's pulse was slowing, her breathing shallow, and her skin was growing cool every passing moment. An unfamiliar emotion caused him to feel as though his heart was in his throat. He felt something inside that he had not experienced in over twenty years. He felt debilitating dread, crippling grief, utter hopelessness…all the things he did not think he would ever experience again after his mother's death.
His uncle, Mokuba, and their small entourage arrived at the manor a few moments after Athena killed Kalim. They had felt predictably shocked, horrified, and relieved all at the sight that greeted them upon crossing over the threshold into the foyer. Their horror was understandable at seeing the carnage that had ensued during their absence, their shock over finding Seto holding an unconscious, heavily wounded, unconscious Athena, trying desperately to stop her bleeding gave way to relief at finding that Athena had survived the Wellingshire fire. That relief was a hollow one, because none of them were certain if Athena would recover from her wounds.
Mahado had immediately gone to get help from Doctor Hopkins. Isis had gone upstairs to check on the children. As Seto had ordered, she was keeping the young ones in their room until Athena's condition was finalized. It would devastate them to give them false hope if Athena did succumb to her wounds.
Mokuba and Raphael had assisted Seto in carrying Athena upstairs to the nearest vacant bedchamber where Seto had waited impatiently for Mahado to return.
Where are they? Seto demanded as Athena's expression became pinched and her breathing hitched slightly from pain. So much blood…why is she still bleeding so much?
Seto was startled out of his thoughts as Arthur came striding quickly into the bedchamber.
"Let me have a look." He instructed, and Seto lifted his soiled tunic away from Athena's abdomen to let the physician see her wound. "My, this is serious." He murmured unnecessarily before he set his medical bag down on the bed. He rifled through the contents before pulling out a small jar of some pale green ointment.
He opened the jar and scooped up a little of the ointment onto his first two forefingers. He set the jar down and lifted the hem of Athena's tunic, "Luckily none of her vital organs have been struck. Hold her still." Arthur instructed.
Seto held Athena's right wrist down on the bed, hiding her silver claws behind his leg while his other arm came around her shoulders and pressed her against his thighs.
Immediately after Arthur began smoothing the paste over Athena's wound, the unconscious woman came awake in a violent blur. He nearly lost his grip on Athena's wrist, but somehow he held on. She barred her teeth in an animalistic snarl. The tendons in her neck were clearly visible.
"What the bloody hell is that?" Seto demanded.
"It is a mixture of medicinal herbs to stem the bleeding and combat infection. It is the ginger root that makes it burn so fiercely."
You have no idea how close you had just come to death.
After Arthur was finished smearing that godawful ointment over Athena's wound, the bleeding slowed to a trickle, and Athena collapsed against Seto in exhaustion, panting from the pain. All of her thrashing had made her tunic to climb higher, revealing a wealth of brutal-looking scars and…
Seto's eyes widened at the long, deep gash in Athena's left side. It bled freely and looked to have been dealt by a saber. Athena had most likely prevented any extreme damage, but someone had tried to cut Athena in two. And it was not a recent wound either.
How long had she had that? Was she wounded when she met with me at the Crawford's gala? Why did I not see it before?
Arthur did not bat an eye at the wound, and he began to spread that paste over and even inside the ragged edges of the injury. Athena pressed her face into Seto's stomach, and he felt a trickle of moisture slide down his abdomen. He slid his fingers through Athena's hair to offer silent comfort.
"I will have to sew the wound shut." Arthur muttered as he returned to look through his medical supplies and pulled out a needle and several strands of sterilized horsehair.
Arthur threaded one of the strands through the needle's eye and pushed the needle through Athena's skin, starting at one end of the wound and working his way across.
Athena ground her teeth and clenched her eyes closed tightly. The pain was not nearly as horrible as the ointment had been, but her nerves were hypersensitive and she could feel every poke, prod, and drag sensation was agitating. After several minutes and one hundred and four sutures, Arthur motioned for Seto to hold Athena upright so that he could wrap the bandages around her abdomen. Once he was certain that the bandages were tight enough, he began the process of a blood transfusion. He pushed a needle into a prominent vein in Athena's forearm that was connected to a long tube and a funnel-like, wooden bowl. He pulled two large jars of blood out and began to pour the contents into the bowl and fed the blood through the tube and into Athena's body.
It was not long before Athena's skin began to warm and her tone lost the sickly yellow pallor that it had recently acquired.
"There now, that should do the trick. Now, where were you injured?" He asked Seto.
"On my thigh, but it is not nearly as severe as it could have been." Seto replied.
"Yes, well, since I am here, let me have a look." It was not a suggestion.
Seto learned first hand how horrid that ointment was, but the wound did not require stitches. After Arthur finished mending the two young adults, he collected his supplied and went in search of his granddaughter. It would not hurt to check in on her just to be certain she was safe. After all, it was a grandfather's duty to worry for his grandchild.
Mokuba stood with his back against the doorframe, watching Seto as re recollected himself after his treatment, and then glanced down at the now unconscious Athena. He let out a long drawn-out sigh at the sight.
"What happened this morning, Seto? You never did say." He asked.
"Just as it appears. There was an intruder that trespassed and threatened us all, and so we dealt with him accordingly." Seto replied, sounding impartial to the event. The myriad of emotions he had felt while watching Athena fight to the death with Kalim was still raw in his mind.
"That is not what I saw; I saw a massacre in the aftermath. Putting down a hostile trespasser does not require mutilating the man beyond recognition before the killing blow is dealt. If word gets out about this, and you know that it will, you will have to go in front of the magistrate, and you may be judged as a murderer and executed. I need to know the truth. What happened downstairs?" Mokuba argued.
Seto turned to glare venomously at his older cousin, "If it is a crime to protect one's household and their precious ones, than I deserve to die!"
Mokuba was taken aback by the vehemence in Seto's voice. He realized with mortifying clarity that he did not know the man before him at all. In the last six years, Seto and Mokuba had become two very different people. The woman in Seto's arms…the Danish orphan boy…even Mokuba's young fiancée have achieved in dragging Seto back to some semblance of normalcy in the last six months than Mokuba had in his entire life.
"Seto, please…I do not want to lose you again before I have a chance to learn about the man you have become. I have been a fool for too long, and I want to help. Please tell me?" Mokuba pleaded.
Seto continued to glare at Mokuba before he shook his head, "It is done." And he looked down at Athena's slumbering face. "There is nothing to tell that has already been said. Should the magistrate find me guilty for defending my home, then so be it. However, I was already declared a murderer when I tortured and killed Vivian."
Mokuba stared at Seto and then down at Athena. Something was missing from this equation, and that something was the woman lying silently against his cousin. Why was she the one more wounded of the two? Where did she come from? Why did she show herself now of all times? Why was she not with the children while Seto was killing the stranger?
Mokuba had a distinct impression that Athena had played some role in this morning's slaughter, and until he found out exactly what it had been, Mokuba could not trust her.
"Very well, Seto. If you do not want to confide in me, I will respect your wishes." Mokuba said, sounding defeated, "I am glad that you are all right." With those words spoken, Mokuba turned his back on the pair and left the room. Neither of them was aware of the enraged expression on Mokuba's face.
The remainder of the morning and afternoon, Mokuba, Mahado, Raphael, Valon, Alastair, and several other male solders and servants helped remove the strange man's body and to clean up the blood in the entrance hall. Arthur informed them of three more male corpses on the floor of Yugi's bedchamber.
"What? In Yugi's suite?" Mokuba questioned before he rushed upstairs to see for himself.
Mokuba felt sickened as he saw the corpses, their blood was splattered all across the room. One had a knife through his neck, another had his head turned completely around, and the third man had trails of dried blood running from his eyes, nose, and mouth.
This seemed too closely related to the other man's murder…something about the situation…that these bodies had been inside Yugi's bedchamber when they were killed…
Something in his mind clicked, and he immediately fled the room and started back toward the suite where he had left Seto with Athena. That woman was not what she appeared to be, and if his suspicions were correct, Seto was in danger.
When Mokuba threw the door open, Seto was gone, and Athena lay still on the bed. Mokuba's eyes searched the room, and a shimmering of silver caught his eye. He picked up the dagger and came toward the bed, glaring furiously down at Athena's slumbering form.
"I will not allow you to harm my cousin." He whispered maliciously, and lifted the knife in the air.
Before he could bring it down upon Athena's chest, a pair of piercing scarlet eyes shot open and froze Mokuba in place. It was then that Mokuba saw some sort of distorted gauntlet on Athena's hand, with razor-tipped finger blades attached to each of Athena's fingers.
He noted in horror that it was completely stained in blood…