Author's Note: Sorry, sorry, sorry! I swear I won't leave you hanging like that again! I have been crazy busy lately, but I am going to get this story moving I promise. This chapter is not very long, but its almost 1 in the morning, and I am trying to give you guys something to read while I write something more substantial. Thanks for all your fabulous reviews; you guys are awesome! Anything in italics are lyrics from the song "New Messiah" by the Philosopher Kings. It is off the album "Famous, Rich and Beautiful". We all know the characters aren't mine because if they were, I wouldn't want to share them.
* * *
When I first saw your brown eyes
I swear that I'd seen your face before
But I can't say where or when
Were you heaven sent?
Or just hell bent
On taking me in
Nick stared at Rachel for a moment his dark brown eyes locked on her cold blue ones. He was unable to comprehend what had just happened. His mind was racing in so many directions at once that he couldn't formulate a single coherent thought. He thought about the confession she had just made. He thought about how he needed to tell Grissom and Warrick. He thought about how terrible it was that mother would do that. He thought that there must be a reason for her actions. He thought about how he needed to do something, anything. The one thing he didn't think about was that she had just stabbed him.
It took him a minute to even realize what she had done. He only began to understand when he looked down at his hands. How odd, he thought to himself. They were covered in blood. Then he saw the dark red stain spreading across the front of his shirt. The blood on his shirt. - it was his blood. His mind finally registered that he was wounded. She had taken a knife a plunged it into his stomach. His thoughts continued to race around in his head as the cracked linoleum floor rushed up to meet him.
He didn't feel anything as his body slammed in to the floor. His head hit the floor with a sickening thud, dazing him even further. His limbs were of no use in breaking his fall. His body felt like it was paralyzed. He commanded it to move but nothing happened. Whether the message never got to his brain, or whether his brain ignored it, he didn't know. All he knew was that he was unable to move. It was terrifying really, because his mind was aware of what was happening but he could do nothing more than think. His body, once an ally, had become his enemy. Through his blurred vision he saw the blood begin to pool on the floor beneath him. He felt the stickiness of his hands as he tried desperately to stem the flow of blood. He could hear the voice in his head screaming at him, telling him that he had to move. He needed to warn Grissom and Warrick. He needed to go down fighting. It couldn't end like this. He couldn't just lay here and bleed to death in this woman's kitchen. The little voice of logic continued to scream at him until it was drowned out by the roar of blood in his ears. He couldn't hear the voice any more. His attention was now being drawn towards the pain that was radiating from the wound. He had been blissfully unaware of the pain until now, but it suddenly attacked him with more force then he could have ever imagined. He swore that he could feel his internal organs writhing in agony from this sudden disruption of their physiology.
Agony.
He hadn't fully understood the true scope of that word before. It had always been just a piece of language, a way of describing pain. He had never attached any sensation to it prior to this. He had felt pain before, maybe even excruciating pain. But agony? Never experienced it.
Until now.
His body felt like it was being mauled as the pain swept over it in waves. The pain was not merely localized to one area. Rather, it traveled across his body and spread its agonizing wrath wherever it went. He could not escape the pain. He could not stop it. He would have cried out but he couldn't find the strength. The pain was even attacking his lungs. Every time he tried to make a sound, the pain would assault him with a new wave of agony, rendering him unable to do anything except think about how much it hurt.
Since his mind seemed to be the only thing unaffected by the pain, Nick tried to focus on his thoughts. He was still able to think and his brain was the only part of his body that seemed to have retained its ability to function. He forced his mind to come back into the tiny kitchen, and forced it to focus on the woman who had done this to him. As he lay there bleeding on the floor, Rachel smiled mirthlessly at him. She began to wash the knife off in the sink and said conversationally:
"Just take your time. I have no better place to be. I've learned from past experience that you can't put a timeline on bleeding the dreams and the life force out of a person. Although I do wish that I had picked a better place to do this – you are making a mess of my floor".
Nick watched in horror as she put the knife back in the drawer and poured herself a cup of coffee. She sat calmly at the table, watching his suffering with a look of mild interest on her face. Though her face held little expression, her eyes were alive. They were flashing with determination and self righteousness. She had the look of someone who truly believed that they were doing the best thing under the circumstances. There was no doubt in Nick's mind that she really thought she was the "New Messiah" and that it was her mission to cleanse the world of those who had hopes and dreams for the future. Yet despite the life in her eyes, she was lacking that certain spark. The spark of humanity. There was no compassion and no remorse. She was evil incarnate.
Is this what it was like for her children, Nick wondered to himself. Feeling this agonizing pain as they lay there watching this woman – no, this monster – carry on as if nothing had happened. She sat calmly, as if she were waiting for nothing more than the dishes to dry.
Nick was suddenly wracked with a new wave of pain. It tore through him with unrelenting force. Tears of pain sprang to his eyes, blinding him. He forced himself to hold them back. He couldn't let it end like this. He had to fight. His mind suddenly drifted to Warrick and Grissom. They were unaware of the situation. They didn't know that Nick was rapidly losing his fight against unconsciousness. Nick realized that if they didn't know anything was wrong, then they weren't going to get to him in time. He was going to bleed to death on this floor, all alone. He would never be able to thank them for all they had done for him. He wouldn't be able to see their faces one last time.
As he slipped into unconsciousness, the tears slipped silently down his cheeks.
* * *
Are you the new messiah?
Churning my blood into fire
* * *
Warrick and Grissom stared at the pot that sat atop the old fireplace. They too found their brains unable to work properly for a moment. The discovery sent chills through both of them. They had got it all wrong. There was no vengeful ex-boyfriend. The killer had been staring them in the face the whole time. They had never even thought of the mother as a suspect, an oversight that was going to cost them dearly. She had killed her own children. As they realized this, their faces grew pale in horror. Without a word, they both turned and looked at one another with the same thought running through their minds.
Nick.
They had left him alone with a murdered. They turned and made a desperate sprint towards the house. Brass saw them and without a single question grabbed his walkie talkie and called to the officer who was out front in the cruiser. Grissom and Warrick had drawn their weapons as they came bursting through the door. The scene in front of them was stunning.
Nick was lying unconscious as the blood pooled around his motionless body. Rachel Hubert sat at the table drinking her coffee as if nothing was amiss.
"Oh Jesus!"
Warrick's desperate cry echoed off the walls of the tiny room as he dropped to his knees next to Nick. He didn't hear Grissom yell to Brass to call an ambulance. He didn't see Grissom aim his weapon at Rachel and warn her not to move. He didn't feel Brass touch is shoulder in a feeble attempt at reassurance. All he could focus on was Nick. His friend was badly wounded. Warrick saw the quickly drying tear stains on Nick's pale face and thought that he might burst into tears himself. He pulled off his jacket and pressed it into the wound in a futile attempt to stop the flow of blood. He pulled his friend off the floor slightly so that Nick's upper body rested in Warrick's lap. The floor beneath them was so dirty that the blood looked black. It had pooled on the floor forming a dirty puddle where the life was slowly seeping out of him. Warrick didn't even notice that the blood had seeped through his jeans and was staining his hands. All he could think was that this wasn't how it was supposed to go down. Nick wasn't supposed to get hurt. He had stayed inside because he was the understanding one, the optimistic one. He had stayed in the house in order to help Rachel find hope. Evil had found him instead. He was an innocent sacrifice in a war that was raging inside the mind of this madwoman. Warrick was terrified that Nick was going to die here on this dirty floor, and there was not a damn thing any one of them could do to save him. Warrick didn't know what else there was to do, so he did the only thing that he could.
He prayed.