Yaay! Another update! I know I left you all hanging with that nasty little cliffhanger, so I worked quickly to get this out. . . And leave another cliffhanger! Haha!

(sweatdrop) Anyway. . . enjoy!

"I told you so."

"Shut up Heero," Noin snapped waspishly, slamming the basement door shut.

"Why? Because you refused to listen to me before? Look at what your stupidity has caused now," Heero shifted his grip on Trowa's limp form for emphasis. "I know you were angry at what happened, but did you really want to go this far? You know as well as I do how my mother is. This is all your problem now."

She sighed deeply. "I'm aware of that...Middie was right, you were right, I screwed up big time. My emotions got the better of me," she glanced between him and Catherine. "Go take them some place where their people will find them. As much as I hate to say it, this isn't the way to do things. I'm going to go find Middie."

They waited until Noin was completely out of site before turning and walking further into the maze of alleyways behind Midnight Masquerade. It would look rather conspicuous to be walking down a crowded sidewalk carrying unconscious people, something they didn't particularly want.

"So did you really kill them, or was that some cock-and-bull story you used as a last resort?" Catherine asked amusedly.

Heero walked silently for a moment, his face unreadable. "Yeah, I really did. I wasn't kidding earlier when I said Dorothy would kill me when I told her the truth. Unfortunately, she didn't believe a word I said."

"Clearly."

"So is Quatre's apartment closer or are his sisters closer? I know every shortcut in this city and the quicker we get somewhere safe, the quicker we can patch Trowa up," he said shortly, irritated at Catherine's sarcasm. "And the quicker I can get back here to help Duo and Wufei."

"Irea and the others are closer, they have a place in Romafeller Palace apartment complexes," she replied, turnings serious. "We use the back emergency exit, the alarm's disabled and everything, so all we got to do is slip in and we'll be unnoticed."

"Good, that's exactly what we need. Follow me."

They made their way through the back alleys as fast as Catherine could follow carrying Quatre, and not possessing Heero's preternatural strength, it was a bit of a struggle. Thankfully enough, Quatre came to as they approached the back exit, allowing her to put him on his feet so he could walk on his own.

"I feel sick..." he groaned, taking a deep breath to calm himself as they entered the building.

"Don't worry, the elevator's around the corner, we'll take that to Irea's while Heero carries Trowa up stairs," Catherine gave Heero the room number and led Quatre to the elevator. "He's in bad shape, but you know that already, eh?"

"Yeah...I wouldn't be feeling like shit if I didn't," he smiled tiredly, then suddenly started looking around confusedly. "Where's Duo and Wufei? Why aren't they here? I can't sense them."

"Well, you see..."

Quatre's face fell. "They're still back in the club? How could you leave them behind?"

"How were we supposed to do anything without back up?" Catherine said defensively. "Duo and Wufei didn't call Irea or myself like I thought they would, they just rushed out after Heero told them Dorothy had you two. I didn't have a chance to call. We had to get Trowa out of there."

"There isn't anything-"

"Heero is going to go back, but for right now, we're at Dorothy's mercy," she replied uneasily. "We just have to hope she leaves Duo and Wufei alive enough for Noin to do something."

"Noin!" Quatre looked alarmed.

"She's on our side temporarily, she realized she made a mistake," Catherine amended. "It's because of her we were able to get here."

"But-"

The empath was cut off as the elevator doors opened and they were met with quite the disturbing scene. Heero stood in front of Irea's apartment with Trowa still in his arms, in the line of fire of ten guns.

"Irea! You guys! Stop! He's here with us!" he shouted, rushing over with Catherine at his heels. "This is Heero, the one we told you about."

His sister eyed the Japanese vampire then smirked. "Well, that's all he had to say, what were we supposed to think with one of them waltzing up to our hideout carrying Trowa in a bloody mess?"

She ushered them all inside and another one of their sisters hovered over Quatre, bringing him water and sitting him comfortably in a chair before he fainted again. Irea, Catherine, and few others relieved Heero of his burden and carried Trowa into the back where all their medical equipment was.

"Aiesha, can you come back here?" Catherine poked her head out into the living room, and the sister who was caring for Quatre nodded and left him and Heero alone.

"So..."

Quatre glanced over at the Asian at the sound of his voice with a tired smile. He was clearly nervous and on edge, standing in the center of the room with his arm tensely folded over his chest. He didn't blame him for being nervous, he was a vampire in slayer territory and even though he was here of his own volition, it didn't make it any easier.

"Sit down Heero, relax, no one else is going to pull a gun out on you," he said amusedly.

"I apologize," Heero replied gruffly, lowering himself cautiously into the nearest armchair and scanning the surroundings.

"I'm being honest, you can relax. Call me selfish, but your nerves aren't helping me feel any better, and I'm too tired to block both you and Trowa out."

Heero looked contrite and quelled his uneasiness. "You can still feel people even if they aren't close to you?" he asked, trying to keep occupied.

"Yes, for the most part. My family, Duo, and now Wufei, people I'm around a lot or have a connection to, I'm able to keep in touch with them," Quatre answered, his smile brightening. "Trowa is an...intimate connection, I can feel him any where he goes. Now, people whom I don't have close association with, I can only sense within a certain amount of area."

"Understandable." He fell silent for a moment. "I need to go back to the club...I don't know how long it'll be until Dorothy is through having her fun."

He started for the door but Quatre got up. "Wait! Tell me, is she really your mother?"

"Yes, unfortunately. And I hate her for it," Heero scowled, then stalked out of the apartment.

Catherine's curly head popped out into the living room again. "Hey- where'd Heero go?"

"Back to Midnight Masquerade."

"Oh good, I was just going to tell him I called Noin," she looked grim. "Dorothy wasn't down in the basement long and now she's stalling for time so Heero could get Duo and Wufei out of there. She said something was definitely wrong, but she couldn't tell what."

"Oh Allah..."

Heero ran at full pace through the streets, his chest burning with all the exertion he was putting out. He had gotten an ominous feeling before Catherine had come out and told the empath her news.

The doors to the cellar were left invitingly open for him as he flew down the stairs and nearly slammed right into Noin, who was waiting at the bottom in the entrance.

"That was quick," she said, caught off guard. "I only just got off the phone with Catherine."

"I left after we found a place for the slayers," he replied impatiently, walking around her. "What's going on here?"

"Wufei's in pretty bad shape, but Duo's seems perfectly untouched."

Heero stopped dead in his tracks as he faced the wall. Noin had taken them out of their shackles and laid them on the floor, both were unconscious. She had been right in her assessment of the situation, Duo was practically untouched, the only marks on him were the fading bruises from the metal cuffs and the punch Noin had planted on his face earlier.

It was unnerving to see him so perfectly intact after seeing what Dorothy had done to Wufei. For the first time, Heero experienced something akin to shock and fear as he digested the sight. Maybe it was because he knew Wufei, had been with him at best and worst, and none of his worst times compared to this one, but he felt a pang of pain in his chest that wasn't because his lungs hurt from running hard.

Heero bent down next to Wufei and slid a hand underneath his neck, inhaling sharply at the sticky blood that glued his black hair on to his hand and the back of his throat. There was so much of it, but he could feel Noin's eyes boring questioningly into him from behind at his hesitation as he gingerly sat Wufei up and put his arms in his laps so he could pick up easier. He winced slightly at the broken bones and torn flesh as he felt through his shredded, bloodied clothes before scooping him up off the floor.

"Well, are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there and stare?" he growled, glaring at the purple-haired woman. "I can't carry them both."

"Where are we taking them?"

"Through the back alleys, Catherine investigated the city for my mother and found an area by Romafeller Palace where quite a few slayers seem to hang around," Heero said abruptly, leading the way into the night. "We'll need to hurry, the night's almost over."

Halfway into his return trip to Irea's, they ran into the aforementioned red head.

"Here, let me take him Noin. I know where we're going," Catherine offered.

"Great, I'll go do interference at the club," she shoved Duo gratefully off into the other woman's arms and disappeared.

"That didn't take much convincing," she said dryly.

Quatre had worked himself into a state of near hysterics again by the time they got back to the apartment, having felt Wufei's pain as they approached. He was pacing a hole into the living room carpet, wringing his hands together when the door burst open and Heero and Catherine came pouring in.

"Take him straight to the back, they're just about done patching Trowa up- oh, he looks so awful..." the empath bit his lip hard as Heero vanished down the hall, then turned around to his lover's sister. "Poor Wufei. What about Duo? I can't sense anything wrong."

"There -is- nothing wrong," Catherine replied with a frown, laying the braided slayer's limp form out on the couch.

"Noin and I found him like this, not a scratch except for what he already had. She had just tore into Wufei like a piñata, from the looks of things," Heero remarked as he reentered the room.

Quatre walked over and knelt down beside the couch, inspecting Duo's slack face closely. He took his chin and turned his head from side to side, scanning over his throat but finding nothing. "I don't understand this. I mean, I'm -thrilled- that there's one less person close to me in pain, but it's so...unsettling, especially with Dorothy's history with Duo."

"Well, we're going to have to wait until he or Wufei wakes up and tells us what happened there in the cellar," Catherine shrugged, though her expression matched the disturbance in the empath's voice.

"What history does Duo have with my mother?"

Heero had not forgotten the verbal exchange between the violet-eyed man and Dorothy when she greeted him.

"I am afraid history is just going to have to repeat itself. Only this time, not only are you not a Maxwell, but you are not even a real slayer! Ironic, no?"

"Fuck you! I don't give a shit what you say! I am what I am, no matter how I got here! Let them go and take it out on me, just like you shoulda fucking killed me years ago!"

Remembering the conversation, he suddenly had an ill feeling that whatever past they shared might have something to do with why he lay unharmed on the couch instead of broken and bloody in the back room with Trowa and Wufei.

"I don't know if we're the appropriate ones to tell you," Catherine answered, still frowning, but not at the Japanese vampire and his question.

"Well, considering our two other wells of knowledge are unable to respond, we don't have much of a choice," Quatre demurred tiredly. "Heero needs to know. Not only is he as deeply involved as anyone else in this apartment, but it -is- his mother also."

The redhead sighed and nodded for him to continue, making herself comfortable in one of the overstuffed armchairs.

"Duo, genetically, really isn't from the Maxwell family, and also isn't a born slayer. He was adopted by the Maxwells when he was really young, we don't know where from. Probably a family that had been killed by the vampires they slayed and left him orphaned. But about ten years ago, Dorothy attacked the Maxwell house, she killed his stepparents and killed his brother Solo right in front of him. Catherine and my sisters raided the house not long after the initial attack. When they found Dorothy and Duo, they were in the middle of a Blood Exchange," Quatre paused, massaging the bridge of his nose to ward off his pounding headache while letting the information sink into Heero's mind. "They drove her off before she could complete the Exchange."

"So Duo is really one of your Tainted slayers?"

"Yes."

Heero sat silently, staring at the couch. It definitely explained why Duo had acted the way he had long ago when they first encountered each other, why he despised him, yet went out of his way to help Wufei, because he had been in the same victimizing situation before. That explained a lot about what happened tonight, why his mother tortured everyone else first. If Dorothy had not had a history with Duo, she would have killed Wufei first, with him being the betrayer, then killed off the slayers without a second thought. But now that he realized the depth of the relationship...finding Duo unharmed is a lot more alarming than it had been an hour ago.

He knew there was no way Dorothy would give up the opportunity to get what she wanted. She was very choosy when it came to the humans she turned, and if Quatre's sisters had stopped her from getting Duo before, then to come upon him again, even ten years later...she would still want her way with him.

As if reading Heero's mind, Quatre spoke up again. "I checked Duo for marks."

"That doesn't mean anything. There won't be marks if bitten a second time."

"What do you mean? You can't bite humans twice, right?"

"Wrong," Catherine sat forward, at attention once more. "There have been cases of twice bitten humans. It's not common at all; there's only a handful of recorded cases in our archives. I think the last recorded one was about fifty years ago. It's different every time, depending on the power of the vampire that's turning the human. In the last case, the vampire was weak and the human went mad and killed himself. I don't know what would happen if someone like Duo were twice bitten by a vampire as powerful as Dorothy is."

"But it was years ago..." Quatre argued worthlessly.

"You know as well as the rest of us that it doesn't really matter," Heero squashed every last argument the blonde could make. "Now, I need to go back to my apartment before dawn, just keep watch and I'll get in contact with you tomorrow night."

"See you later," Catherine waved and the Japanese vampire left. "He does have a point though, we're going to have to keep a constant vigil until Duo wakes up. Just because we -don't- know what happened, it may not be this nasty nightmare we're conjuring up. Dorothy may even have gotten bored after mutilating Wufei, she's like that."

"That's sick," the empath grimaced.

"It's the truth," she grinned darkly. "I've spent enough time around her kind. Why don't you get some sleep, and I'll keep the first watch? I need to debrief Irea and the other of the situation anyway."

"All right, thanks," Quatre smiled wanly and went into the back of the apartment to find an empty bedroom.

I am so mean sometimes. . .

Review! I love reviews! I'll try not to end the next chapter in another cliffhanger. . . but I can't make any promises! (wink)