Chapter 12. Don't Leave Me!

And so it was that the gates of Hell itself were inching open.

Thorin, who had been watching Justin with hooded eyes sprang on him immediately. Pulling a six-inch blade from what had appeared to be a Leatherman case, Thorin pressed it to the quavering man's throat, backing him to the wall, blue eyes burning with unconcealed hatred.

"What have you done, you filthy worm?"

Justin threw a glance at Naomi, almost as if he expected her to jump to his rescue. "I've done nothing!"

"Liar! Why look to the girl? What help would she offer you?" Thorin pushed the tip of the blade further into the hollow of Justin's throat.

Naomi narrowed her eyes. "Not help. Assurance. He needs to know that it really is me."

Thorin looked to Naomi in shock. "Why?"

"He helped my father. With everything. What did you call it, Uncle dear?" Naomi directed the last sentence at Justin, quivering and now on his knees. "Ah, yes. Initiation."

Up until now no one had noticed Lauren slipping into the kitchen and taking the scimitar from the kitchen drawer.

"Vivian take the children to the basement." When Vivian hesitated Lauren became unusually forceful. "Now! Go dammit!"

Vivian ushered the children into the hall, beckoning to Benny, asking him to help her keep the kids busy.

Lauren stepped away from the kitchen doorway, scimitar raised. "Thorin step away."

Thorin knew what was good for him, previous dealings with angry women and that scimitar had indeed taught him something, and with a light push he left Justin kneeling on the floor. Lauren took Justin by the scalp and dragged him to the middle of the living room floor.

"Lauren, please-" Justin whimpered, raising his hands up to his sister in supplication.

" Shut up! What have you done? Oh, wait, never mind, I ALREADY KNOW!"

Lauren slashed the scimitar into the flesh of Justin's cheek, drawing a cruel half-smile. " YOU ARE A SPINELESS EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING! NOT ONLY DID YOU TAKE MY ELDEST DAUGHTER FROM ME, I FIND OUT NOW THAT YOU ABUSED HER? THAT YOU HELPED HER FUCKING FATHER?"

Lauren's rage was tangible and Justin seemed to shrink into the carpet " I LIVED WITHOUT MY GODDAMN DAUGHTER FOR TEN FUCKING YEARS! AND YOU HAD THE AUDACITY TO COME BACK AND HOLD ME! TO TELL ME THAT WE WOULD FIND HER SOON! TO SEE, AND PLAY WITH AND LOVE THE BROTHER AND SISTER THAT GREW UP WITHOUT HER! YOU LIED TO ME FOR TEN MOTHERFUCKING YEARS!"

Lauren's voice became soft and even more dangerous. Trailing the scimitar's blade around his neck, across his shoulders, leaving it at a spot on his lower back.

"I shouldn't kill you. I should take my time and make you feel only a fraction of the pain you caused me. Fortunately for you I don't have the luxury of time. Roast in Hell, you piece of SHIT!"

Lauren punctuated the last word by burying the blade of the scimitar into Justin's torso, twisting her face into something like a smile as she drew the blade from his body.

Naomi wasn't shocked, wasn't upset. She just watched in indifferent silence as the man who had tortured her through her childhood bled into the cream colored carpet, gasping and choking.

Thorin was the first to break the silence. "Ren we need to get ready."

Lauren nodded, still watching her once-brother die slowly.

Weapons, and Kevlar were doled out quickly. Vivian was handed a small belt with throwing knives in holsters all the way around, Lauren tucked two sets of miniature double-headed axes around her person, two in holsters in her boots, one in a holster at her hip and holding onto the last.

Kili was handed a quiver and a compound bow, Fili a pair of axes, only marginally larger than Lauren's and Thorin drew a sword that glowed like platinum.

Naomi and Benny were handed Berretta 9000's and four extra clips. Naomi looked up at Thorin. "Where are the kids?"

Thorin tilted his head toward a small, almost invisible door. "Saferoom. Nuke-proof, locks on the inside, food enough for a small Dwarven army and a very gun-savvy nine year old."

Naomi chuckled. "No DNA test needed for that one."

"No way in hell." Vivian smirked.

Thorin motioned their group to various spots around the kitchen and living room, giving Benny a general run-down of how to kill someone with a semi-automatic handgun.

Everyone knelt in a ready position, waiting with bated breath for the moment when the Devil himself would break down the door.

None of them had to wait long.

"Honey, I'm ho-ome!"

The Durin clan wasn't doing well. Fili had a gunshot wound in his shoulder that was bleeding badly, but he was still dispatching the men and dogs that came for him with relative ease. Kili had moved into the rafters to snipe when a Chinese throwing star cut off the use of his left leg and he almost took a bullet to the head. (Naomi had never been more happy to have Benny around)

Thorin was sporting a good-sized gash across one side of his face and a broken nose, among other comparatively minor injuries.

Lauren, Vivian, Naomi and Benny were mostly uninjured and untargeted, but they assumed that it was only because the attacking parties had received orders to do so.

Just as the last man dropped dead, Lauren's third axe embedded in his forehead, and everyone almost breathed a sigh of relief a small projectile broke the window and landed in their midst. Apple-green smoke poured from it and Thorin's cry came just a few seconds too late.

"Sleeping gas! Cover!"

It only registered for Naomi as she hit the floor, ears ringing, sight blurred, that this was the end.

But it wasn't. No, reality was much, much worse.

Naomi opened her eyes to Kili's face above her. "Kili! Are you-" Her question turned to a rattling scream as she realized that it wasn't all of Kili above her. His features were twisted, mouth and eyes sagging grotesquely, face a pasty grey that Naomi had only seen before in corpses. Kili's head was pinned by scalp and skin from the back of his neck and hung just above her, perfectly eye level. Screams morphed to hysterical sobs merged with curses upon the world.

"NO! KILI! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME, YOU BASTARDS!" Naomi thrashed against the bonds holding her hands above her head, kicking in an attempt to loosen the ones at her feet.

For the first time since waking Naomi could hear past the sound of her own shouts and screams. Dry sobs wracked the body beside her as the voice that belonged to Vivian tried to comfort her. "Shh. Shhh-sh-sh. I know baby. It's going to be okay. Baby calm down."

Benny moaned on her left, Naomi looked at him and gasped. His face was bruised and scratched and cut and broken so badly that for a moment Naomi didn't recognize him.

Lauren's hoarse voice echoed further away. "Mama's here honey. Listen to me, Benny's fine. I'm fine. Vivian's fine. It'll be okay."

"HOW CAN YOU TELL ME THAT! IT'S NOT FINE! KILI IS DEAD!" Naomi's desperate, grief-filled shrieks dragged off again into wracking sobs.

"Look who finally woke up!" The sinister voice could only have belonged to one person.

Naomi was yanked to her knees in front of her father. Tears fell freely onto the basement's concrete floor, Naomi refused to meet the cold white-grey eyes of the man who had sired her. Lauren, Vivian, and Benny were quickly placed shoulder to shoulder with Naomi and somewhere she could here a knife being sharpened.

Azog's voice slithered around the room like a dark snake. "My children, son-in-law and lover! How nice of us to finally be together again!"

Naomi looked up and blinked. No. That wasn't right. She could have sworn that he had just been her father! The voice was unmistakable! But he looked like Vivian now!

"My master has given me many forms, each unique in appearance and chaos caused. Vivian's father, the raven devil. Naomi's father, Lauren's lover, blonde and bloody. Benjamin's divider, old and mousy."

Azog flickered through each form as he listed them, grinning. "I have been every nightmare, every fear, every bully and everything that has ever caused you grief. And I am going to kill you."

Azog was given a katana from somewhere outside of Naomi's vision. "Goodbye, my loves."

Naomi braced herself for the stroke.

.

.

.

.

It never fell.

A blinding light obscured everything in the room and suddenly Gandalf stood in the center, staff raised.

Naomi fainted.

When she woke Lauren and Vivian were keening, holding each other and rocking as Benny stared in to space. Naomi noticed that nothing had changed in the room, her father still stood mid-swing, his henchmen grinning. Nothing had changed but their places in the room.

Gandalf's voice rang out. "Come here, my children."

Obediently the four of them clustered around the elderly wizard. "I can't bring back the men you love. I can however alter the past from before you met them." Lauren looked as though she were about to raise a question. "No amount of time before the attack would change the outcome in this world. You foru will have to travel to Middle Earth and win your beloved's hearts all over again."

"And the children?" It was Vivian who spoke.

"They will continue in the current space-time orientation. You will see them when you dream." Gandalf regarded them critically. "I can only do this for you once. This is your chance to return to the life you once had. I will be with you along the journey and when the time comes I will tell you how to reverse this great tragedy. Do you accept?"

The four of them exchanged a glance and they spoke at once. "We do."

Gandalf smiled sadly. "Good luck."

The next thing Naomi knew she was falling. backward into nothingness.

This is the last story chapter for this one. I'm a monster. I know. I cried. RnR please! I will post one more chapter for this when I put up the name of the next book and a thank-you!