I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.

Notes: ok, so some more bad, bad words here .. but the stress warrants it.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

He stood completely still in the doorway just staring, another side of his brain registering the reliable sounds of Kono clearing other rooms on the second floor. One hand still clenched the doorknob in a grip that was much too tight. The other held his weapon, but if he needed to use it then he would need a larger than life prompt. He had just quietly ensured with Danny that he was okay; and that both cousins were content enough in their understanding of the slight change-up in the normal pairings. For all of that, now Steve was the one who was most definitely not fine.

"Oh my god," Steve whispered, knowing it was the stupidest thing he could even consider saying. Yet he had no choice as he took two steps into the large bedroom. He thought he would find Doctor Ramirez at best, but certainly not what he saw now.

The bedroom was really a suite with a small sitting area off to the side and a fireplace in the far left-hand corner. It was trimmed in mahogany, ornately done with a thick white marble mantle. More for impact, it was obvious that it had never been used. Then it only got worse as Steve absorbed the rich, warm colors and the way the breeze, which came in through the room's single floor to ceiling window, chased the filtered light diffused by the lace white curtains across the hand-woven carpet.

The setting was plush and beautifully ostentatious down to the four-poster bed which he faced from the doorway. Only dimly did he realize it held no canopy but it didn't really matter by that point.

At first stunned by the reality of the sight which Danny had described in great detail, Steve felt his stomach twist uncomfortably. In the background, he heard the chatter as Kono successfully continued to clear each room. On the main floor, Danny and Chin were doing the same, yet Steve could neither move nor speak.

He anticipated seeing the snake but the room was completely empty. It was immaculate and utterly devoid of a true comfort. It was nothing but a shell.

Steve heard Danny first. Partially in stereo as his voice echoed from the main floor and also through Steve's comm link. Consumed by a sense of foreboding, Steve was finally moving. Danny's voice was roughened by an increase in his stress level. He stammered once and then twice over the comm link, the rising sense of a near fear clearly causing his voice to momentarily fade.

"Guys. Ah .. yeah .. Steve. I .. I uh ... got a dead snake in here. Nothing.. uh .. nothing else so far."

"Copy that." In the hallway now, Steve blinked as he slowly processed the words. At first mentally distracted, Steve barely got the acknowledgement out after he backed up and slammed the bedroom door closed. His brain kicked in then, perhaps a second too late as he lingered briefly in the long second floor hallway.

"Don't touch it." Everything was wrong and very badly off. Steve wasn't sure if he spoke aloud or if it was only running through his head at that point. "Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't touch it."

He was turning then and making for the staircase when it happened. "Shit! Steve!"

Danny's startled shout was louder than he'd ever heard and it finally shook his own tongue loose in his head. "Don't touch it!" Steve bellowed as he ran flat out and attacked the landing to the top of the staircase without pausing to take three and four gamboled steps at a time.

"God, Danny, don't touch it!" He was yelling now at the top of his lungs as he hit the bottom, not needing to guess which way to turn when he heard the stunned shout of a very real pain.

"Danny! Don't touch it!"

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Wiping the sweat as it beaded across his forehead, Danny determinedly toed the dead reptile, relieved it was of a dull bland gun-metal color. No psychedelics or multicolored bands requiring the learning of a rhyme in order to be safe. He shivered against the dreamt feeling of the reptilian's body on his chest and focused solely on Ramirez and the absolute fact that they were soon to solve a number of dire cases.

"Nothing's going to happen," Reprimanding himself, Danny peered briefly around the room. Through the far door which led from study to over-sized dining room, he caught a brief glimpse of Chin. Everything was as it should be and the chatter through the comm link was normal and soothing. Plus the damned thing was already as dead as could be. However, what Danny didn't know was that the doctor's favorite snake, the Rinkhals, was known to feign death.

"Damned snakes." Angrily, Danny prodded it harder with his shoe before forcing himself to hunker down to do the same with the muzzle of his gun.

"Sick. Why couldn't you have all been dead in these damned dreams, too." Unable to escape entirely though, Danny muttered under his breath, somewhat fascinated by the snake's weird appearance and soft texture. Its long body was twisted in an unnatural position with its fanged mouth weirdly open as if it had been run over by a vehicle on the side of a hot dusty road. But in the plush modernly adorned study, of course, that wouldn't' have happened. In fact, there was no sign of injury or damage whatsoever.

Besides the merciless shadows of his dreams which were thriving in his imagination, what Danny didn't like was the snake's actual presence in the room and what it signified. Dead or not, it was free and out-of-place for any number of very valid reasons. Franklin Ray was their man; he was absolutely the same man responsible for so many horrific deaths and Danny fretted for Doctor Ramirez' safety.

"Shit." With a start, Danny wondered if more had been set loose from whatever cages Doctor Franklin Ray had hidden somewhere inside the mansion and if that's why the creature was dead. His head swung nervously as he tried to see every corner of the room from his position.

"No, you are not going to get the best of me," Danny bent his head to dab his face into his shirt sleeve. He was more than uneasy and aching to leave the stifling atmosphere of the main floor and the house as a whole. It was darker than it should be and even though he could hear his teammates through is comm link, it almost wasn't enough. Snakes fighting amongst themselves was something he was far from being interested in.

"Chin. Steve." He got up from his crouch quickly, newly alarmed at the concept of another and very alive snake possibly staring him down without his knowledge. Chin was on the main floor with him and just one or two rooms away. But Steve and Kono were upstairs clearing the second floor.

"Guys. Ah .. yeah .. Steve. I .. I uh ... got a dead snake in here." Danny continued carefully moving about the large study as he gave the update through his comm link with a nervous, eerie twitch. "Nothing.. uh .. nothing else so far." The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he turned to survey more of the room.

"Copy that." Through the link, Danny heard the weirdness of his partner's tone and then the uncomfortable verbal acknowledgement from each team member. The fact no one had questioned anything more about the find was disconcerting and it put them all on edge as they worked through each room in the rambling mansion.

Looking suspiciously now at the long flowing drapes which covered the windows down to the floor, he backed up to peer with new intent into corners. Positive he saw a fast slithering movement, he ducked lower to follow the shadow under the desk and tripped backwards when a gleam of shiny black eye momentarily glared back.

"Shit!" His inadvertent stumble brought the heel of his shoe in contact with the dead snake behind him and he lurched forward in disgust by the soft yielding feel. Completely distracted, he didn't realize that the 'dead' Rhinkals cobra had moved in fright itself.

The delicate hiss was like air escaping a child's balloon and the sound nearly stopped his heart as he turned in a wide-eyed stare to see the dead reptile very much alive and in an obvious defensive posture. With no recourse but to protect itself, the Rinkhals cobra was on end and waving threateningly in the air. The large female was upset and very unhappy too about its latest set of circumstances. The journey away from fellow feral captives had been arduous and defensively exhausting. The darkened study had beckoned and the snake thought itself safe ... but then, a new threat arrived.

Eye to eye they stared at each other ... then .. it lunged viciously towards his face in a blur of motion.

"Shit! Steve!" His backwards stumble into the wall left him with nowhere to go and he hit it hard. Danny heard Steve's voice hollering commands but so enthralled by his new reality, he couldn't reply or even understand the words. The snake seemed huge in the small space. Now on-end, its very dark body had wide, white horizontal stripes around its upper midsection, but the flared caped neck and newly gaping mouth were terrifying.

This time, it was really happening despite lack of bedroom, canopy bed, or a colorful kaleidoscope of sequences. Yet, he still had no control. The only other remembered equals after the terrible frantic comparisons were to be the mind-blowing volume of pain ... and the resulting blindness.

Seconds later, it hit him and the pain was indescribable and beyond what he'd felt in his dream. A thousand pieces of shattered glass coalesced and then splintered into shards in each eye. He staggered and fell to his knees as the air left his lungs. Forced to drop his gun, Danny clutched at his face, then his eyes and literally let out with a stunned agonized shout of pain.

He had no choice because his brain had no time to process the weirdly undulating form of the strangely hooded snake a millisecond before it lunged aggressively upwards at an angle towards his face. There were no snakes in Hawaii. His dreams had to be only bad dreams because it made no sense for them to be anything else; and yet, he was on his knees fighting through an impossible pain.

The Rhinkals had lunged towards his face but didn't physically touch him, yet Danny was in the most extreme agony he'd ever felt in his life. He saw the fangs before being blinded as if sprayed with water; but this was no water.

Sightless, he clawed at his face wiping, smearing and palming his eyes in a vain attempt to get the venom off ... to make the pain stop. Slumping down, his fear escalated as a segment of his brain realized he was helpless and it could strike again ... or do worse ... though what could possibly be worse, was beyond his current ability to reason.

"Gun." He had no idea what he'd do with it, but his training demanded that he find his weapon. One handed, Danny fell forward to sloppily feel around the thick area rug in order to locate the weapon. One finger, then two found the coolness of the muzzle and he nearly cried in relief until a set of spikes slammed suddenly into the back of his hand.

"Need ... help!" Comm link forgotten, Danny literally screamed for help now as he jerked backwards with his wounded hand tucked into his chest. The shock sent his respiration and pulse rate skyrocketing as sheer panic replaced his ability to think with collective purpose. Caught up in blinding pain, Danny was helpless as he gasped for help, fruitlessly rubbed fingers, one hand and even his shirt sleeve over his eyes; never hearing the gunfire to extinguish the cobra from existence.

"Danny!" Steve came on a run, gun drawn and at the ready though he heard no signs of physical altercations. Nothing but god-awful screams which reeked of pain and fear. Steve saw the snake immediately, standing on end and poised to strike when he aimed dead center at his elevated length. Not knowing where it ended or began, he aimed just below it's wide cape to neatly decapitate the reptile.

He fired just as it lunged once more, bewildered by the spray of liquid that flew through the air to miss Danny by mere inches as he now lay curled on his side and spasming on the hand-milled ornate Indian rug. The startling effervescence of airborne droplets as the snake was pulverized bore a rod of fear through Steve's chest as he realized that liquid venom had already gone directly into Danny's face.

"What the fuck happened! Danny!" Steve barreled in as soon the bullet found home and the upper half of the cobra disintegrated into gore. Falling to his knees, he crooned, pleaded and the physically fought with his partner to get past the keening cries of pain.

"Eyes .… can't see. Burns ... can't see." Danny whimpered, mewled embarrassingly, and then resisted Steve's pull against his wrists. "Bit ... bit me."

"No, no, no." Numb with fear, Steve hissed himself as he grappled with his partner. There was no way Danny had been bitten by a snake. He couldn't accept that fact though he was witnessing the aftermath first hand. Ray only excelled in acquiring deadly animals and Steve felt his chest clench as he too, nearly began to panic.

"Danny, let me see. Stop moving! Let me see!"

"What the hell happened?" Stepping over the lower half of the destroyed reptile, Chin slid next to them. He was stunned by the ongoing sight as Danny rolled in agony on the floor with both hands ground tightly into his face. Fighting for control, Steve's fingers were sturdily wrapped around each wrist, yet so far he'd been unable to peel back either hand.

"His hand." Chin saw the bloody mark which was bruising and almost blackening as he watched. The sharp exhale from Steve evidently meant that he hadn't noticed that particular issue for another larger problem.

"I know, but his eyes first. Get me a med kit. That psychopath has to have something in here. Something with eye wash or find me bottled water … anything!" Chin was off before Steve finished the command. He didn't need to know more because Danny's traumatic suffering was so apparent.

"Easy, Danno. Let me see." Steve couldn't get through the throes of agony though which settled in every synapse of his partner's body beginning with the sensitive tissues of his eyes. Each breath was a badly shuddering partial inhale and choked exhale as pleas for help became unintelligible sickly moans.

Chin found the medical kit in the narrow hallway where he'd been about to clear another room before moving to the kitchen and pantry. Tearing the kit off the wall, he went no further. Bringing the box back on a dead run, he virtually dumped its contents out on the floor between the two men.

"Eyes, Chin. I'll hold him while you flush them out." Steve hadn't moved and had gained little ground in separating Danny's hands from his face. Straddling Danny to keep him down, Steve was forced to violently yank Danny's wrists down to his chest in a tight pinning move. The instantaneous result was a reversed back-breaking arch as Danny bucked violently off the floor in a useless attempt to unseat him.

"Steve." Chin swallowed hard at the tear-streaked skin and then the extent of the blotchy red swelling centered haphazardly across Danny's eyes, forehead and down one cheek. Erratic breathing punctuated the room as their friend fought for air against a tidal wave of impossible pain.

"I know and I see it. Now get to work, Chin. The damned thing sprayed him in the face, so get it done. Use the whole damned bottle up if you have to and then find another." He was yelling now in fear and frustration, confused and scared to death that Danny would be blinded or worse as the helpless struggle refused to lessen. Glancing down, he tried to study Danny's bloody hand wondering how they were ever going to care for that with such limited knowledge.

Under his knees, Danny heaved upwards again with a choked cry. This time Steve was almost unseated as Danny fought in a blind panic. But through his struggles, Chin couldn't accurately flush Danny's eyes or gain enough grip.

"Chin, you have to flush his eyes!" Panicked as Chin missed when his tenuous gentle grip was torn away, he cursed at Steve's shouted demands.

"I'm trying! Kono, where are you? Get in here!" Reacting to the stress of the moment, Chin bellowed into his comm link, relieved when his cousin appeared.

"Here. Here, here! I heard ... I was already on the way but this damned place is so big." Kono was there in seconds, fearful of what she was now seeing and hearing. Her next words were full of a shocked disbelief as she realized Danny's eyes were wedged tightly shut and that her cousin was desperately trying to flush them out.

"What happened ... did it bite him? In the face?"

"Grab his head and hold him still," Chin demanded with a hand poised to physically open one eye and then the other with the bottle of sterile eyewash ready. "Hold him tight."

Focusing on the task at hand, Chin tried not to really see the bloodshot swelling as he carefully peeled back each lid for an ample flushing which did little to ease the moans and shuddering pain of his friend.

"Hurts. Get it ... out." Danny tried to hold still. He tried to help his friends help him, but he couldn't seem to stop for the pain he was experiencing. His eyes burned relentlessly while the pain in his hand seemed to be traveling up into his wrist and higher into his forearm.

"Hold on Danny. We got you, buddy," Steve chanted senselessly as he watched Chin's methodical care. "It'll be fine. We got you."

At his head, Kono sat on her knees with a hand on either side of Danny's temples. She failed at covering her stunned exclamation as she felt the hot fevered pain through her finger tips and then shuddered in kind as his vibratory agony tumbled through her. Yet the shadowed abstract movements eventually caught her attention. Holding Danny, she let her attention wander to be sure and wound up holding her breath in fear.

"Guys." Her voice was a soft murmur. She saw it once, under the dark recesses of the large desk. Then another by the long, floor-length draperies across the room and then a third just behind her cousin's hunched back.

"Guys." Her voice cracked when she knew for certain. The two men ignored her for the issue at hand and she narrowed her eyes as a shadow became solid form. Kono was distracted for a moment as their comm links crackled and she heard Duke citing possible movement on the far side of the property near the stables. But they had no time and for all of them, Kono slammed her hand to her comm link for a short acknowledgement and fast demand. "Copy that, Duke. Get an ambulance here!"

"We have to get out of this room." A single solid form became two and she felt the shock through the fingers she had anchored to each side of Danny's head. Slithering near the desk and then across the dark-wood of paneling, the scales glimmered menacingly.

"Now, we have to go now. There's more snakes. There's more!" She changed her pitch entirely as she half-knelt reluctantly waiting for permission to move. Pausing only because neither Chin nor Steve understood that the danger was much worse than first anticipated.

"Boss! We have to go now!"

"Fuck." Following her eye, Steve saw them then and moved in a single, smooth reactive motion. "Get out of here. Both of you; I've got Danny."

Diving off his partner, he pulled him up into a fireman's carry without another thought except to move and get to safety. "Go! Get out!"

Hanging limply over Steve's shoulder, Danny groaned and then choked as air was pushed violently from laboring lungs. His world swirled in a whitish blur as his chest heaved and pain inducers overloaded at a sickening rate. But it didn't stop. It only worsened as Steve ran for daylight with the sounds of gunfire echoing staccato-like to his rear.

Steve was yelling as each booted foot fell solidly on the floor and then hit grass. In sensory overload, Danny moaned again as pain flooded his system from the hard jarring treatment.

He gagged as the world swiftly shifted into a dizzying free fall even though he felt sets of hands carefully lowering him from Steve's shoulder down to the ground. Moaning pathetically with his eyes spasmodically tightly shut, the brighter natural light leaked through his reddened lids to send slivers of glass once more into his damaged retinas.

~ to be continued ~