Chapter 15: Last wishes

After the wedding, the young bride was taken to her chamber. The head servant asked if there was anything at all that your highness would need.

A last meal, perhaps.

The young bride's request was strange: a bucketful of lye water, a bucketful of sweet milk and an armful of switches.

Why would a bride make such a strange request if she was about to die a horrible death?

NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS

I groaned as I felt my whole body tingling as feeling came back with a vengeance. I opened my eyes and found Tony's face hovering over mine, holding my head gently in his hands as Ziva looked worriedly down at me.

I blinked repeatedly and could feel my ears ringing as Tony helped me sit down on the dirty floor of the alley.

"What happened?"

Tony and Ziva shared a worried look, before answering me, "You were drugged with the same anesthetic the other victims were doped with. We've found out that it's used for terminal cancer patients to minimize pain and dampen feeling during the last stages of metastasis."

"Oh God," I touched my abdomen, but found my clothes exactly as they were, my guts exactly where they should be.

Inside me.

"He didn't kill me." I said, surprised that somehow I had survived a meeting with our killer, despite the fact that I had been doped at that moment.

"No, he didn't." Tony bit his lip, looking at me worriedly.

"But why?"

Tony helped me stand up, supporting me with an arm around my shoulders as dizziness assaulted me and made the floor wiggle beneath me.

"He took someone else." Ziva said in a somber voice.

I opened my eyes and looked at her confused, before looking around and noticing someone missing.

"Where's Laura?"

NCIS NCIS NCIS

"911, what's your emergency?"

"I'm just putting my jacket under his head, we don't want him hurt, do we?" a woman's voice was heard, but it came far away, as if the phone wasn't being held near her head.

Something growled in the background and the woman again spoke in a calm voice, as if trying to pacify a beast, "You don't want to kill him, Norman. He's a Federal Agent. If you kill him, NCIS will hunt you with no mercy and you don't want that. You want to live."

"You don't know what I want."

"Ah, I do. I know you better than you know yourself."

"Ma'am, can you hear me?" The operator insisted, just to hear the noise of some buttons being pressed. She could still hear what was happening, but it came muffled as if some cloth was over the speaker.

"I can help you, Norman. I know what you want."

"What do you think I want?" The man's voice sounded again distorted as if he had a lisp or a very bad cough, rasping his throat.

"I know you want to punish all those who mocked you and hurt you. Those who called you a monster, regardless of how deeply hearing that cut and hurt you. I know that you are afraid of dying alone. But most important of all, I know you want to live to finish what you've started. The ouroborus, right? No beginning and no end, always in movement, never done with your task."

The man grunted in agreement.

"Let me help you. We have to leave this place, the cops will be coming soon after him."

"I should kill him."

"NO!" That's the first time the woman showed fear, her voice trembling a little before she controlled herself again. "You've done enough killing, Norman. Let me help you with the binding of your wounds. I'll help you out of here. Just leave him here, someone will find him soon."

"Why would you want to help me?"

"Because we're not that different, are we? We both are moved by the same thing."

"What would that be."

"Vengeance."

The operator frowned as he heard the voices dim as the footsteps lead them away from the phone. He selected the audio of the recording he did and forwarded it to his supervisor, asking him to look up what the hell NCIS stands for.