Chapter 4
Maia didn't know how long it had been since they'd left. They'd battered and beaten her, bled her until she lost consciousness. Her un-swollen eyelid fluttered open. Her head pounded, her face itched with the blood that dried on her forehead, on the side of her face, her cheeks, her lips. Her skin burned and throbbed. Everything ached. Her sight fell on the open bathroom door. Blood spattered the floor, door and walls, looking very much like a Jackson Pollock painting.
With a pained grunt, she forced herself to her feet and wobbled. Her hands smeared the walls a hot, violent red as she leaned heavily against them, taking small faltering steps to the sink, where she'd left her phone. Her stomach heaved at the sight of her own blood flooding the sink. It pooled there, burgundy and still frothing at the edges. It can't have been long, then, since they'd left her, naked, bleeding, violated, on the hallway floor. Reflexively, her fingers searched the long, deep wound on the inside of her thigh, where they'd cut her, held her over the stoppered sink, and howled gleefully as the blood dripped down her legs. A wave of dizziness threatened to overtake her, and she clutched weakly at the sink's edge to keep her balance. She focused on the pain that drove knives into her skull, and it kept her awake, at least for the time being.
Her phone was caked with blood. It was still sticky with it, and she fumbled with numbing fingers, fought the bile that rose in her throat, typed in the passcode that would unlock the device. The screen blushed red and brown through what was supposed to still be pumping through her veins. She fumbled some more as she sank to the floor, and it rang, once, twice, three times before a familiar voice answered, panting, on the line.
"Hello?"
"Bo." Maia was appalled at the harsh, whispering crack that masqueraded as her voice. "Bo." She tried again, and swallowed around the dry heave that corked her throat.
"Maia?" Bo's voice immediately went on the alert. Maia could hear a shuffling whisper on the other end, like sheets.
"Help me." Maia croaked.
"Where are you?" The loud sharpness made Maia cringe. She was suddenly aware that her ears were ringing, as though they'd been boxed, or had suffered the sound blast of an explosion. Vertigo pushed her again, and Maia was vaguely aware that in moments, she was going to lose consciousness once more.
"Seth's apartment." She managed in a whisper. Then the phone clattered to the floor. She lost the fight to stay awake, and slipped into a blissful coma.
Bo was dressed in record time. She'd tossed her phone onto the bed and briefed Lauren on the situation as she pulled her clothes on and yelled for Vex to get ready. The bewildered doctor threw on her own clothes, her disappointment at being interrupted in the middle of another 'heal' session with her lover completely forgotten.
The couple strode out of Lauren's bedroom and clattered down the stairs to find Vex, ready and confused, though still a little groggy from the long nap he'd taken, and waiting for them on the landing.
"Do you know where Seth lives?" Bo demanded without preamble.
"Yeah. Posh area, twenty minute drive from here." He responded, moving to the side to allow the women to fly past him.
"We'll make it ten. I'll fill you in on the way. Let's go!" The Succubus barked, allowing for pause only to let Lauren gather her med kit and a couple supplies.
They arrived at the upscale building with minutes to spare and screamed to a stop right outside the door that had seemed so safe to Maia mere hours ago. The only lights on at this late hour were on the penthouse floor, and they were all lit, like a cry for help. Bo slammed the presumably locked double doors. They sailed open, a gaping wound where the lock had been before Duncan and his boys had paid their visit.
Maia struggled to regain consciousness once again as the muffled sound of female voices pushed against the velvety blackness that encased her. Once again, the vain hope that Seth had come home pulsed like an electric shock through her; Seth's pale, worried face hovered beneath heavy eyelids even as she recognized it as only a mirage. She felt pain thudding through her again, and panic flared for an instant before she realized that the new arrivals were Bo, Vex, and a woman she'd never met. The Succubus and her blond companion knelt beside her, concern clear on their faces. Maia fought to smile reassuringly at them. It reopened the cut on her lip, and the smile she'd tried so hard to give turned into an ugly, bloody grimace.
"Who did this?" Bo demanded. Her voice seemed so far away…
Black fluttered at the edges of Maia's fuzzy vision, and she squeezed her good eye shut to fight it off.
"I need space, Bo." She heard, and assumed it was the blond who spoke. She hoped she was a doctor of some kind, because pain seared through her whole body and nausea came in crashing waves. Maia forced her eye open again. Absurdly, she was mortified by her own nudity, and again by the pathetic crack of her voice grasping for words.
"Hush. You're safe now. I've got you." The blonde's voice was soothing, and despite herself, Maia found herself slipping into the comforting folds of darkness all over again.
After a small, necessary amount of triage, Lauren wrapped the frail, scrawny girl up in blankets and, with Bo and Vex's help, carried her out to the car and brought her back to her own home. The treatment the girl needed was too extensive to be conducted at the Dark Seer's apartment, she would need the equipment that had been too unwieldy to carry with them.
The human doctor pored over Maia's many injuries. She'd needed stitches across one eyebrow and along the long, deep wound on the inside of her thigh, where the redcaps had bled her, but most of her wounds were shallow and ragged. She was bruised and battered over almost every inch of her body, her shoulders were badly wrenched, and she'd suffered a couple cracked ribs. Her left arm had been broken close to the elbow, and the wrist had been crushed. She'd suffered a concussion, and Lauren had been waking her every fifteen minutes to check her pupil dilation and to check her responsiveness.
Lauren stepped back and massaged her temples, looking quickly over the IV she had hooked up to Maia's arm. She'd needed a blood-bag, glad that she'd kept a small supply of O- at her apartment for emergencies, antibiotics, as well as a good dose of morphine and sedatives to keep the pain at bay while she rested. After the horrific beating the poor girl had suffered in the past few hours, she would need all the rest and care she could get.
Still, it had been nearly fifteen minutes since Lauren had last woken her. Gently, she rubbed her hand over Maia's unbroken arm, careful not to irritate the bruising there.
"Maia. Wake up." She murmured softly, bending close to brush the pad of her thumb over Maia's cheek. Maia stirred, a low, agonized moan falling from her torn mouth. Her unswollen eye fluttered open and focused slowly on the woman that hovered anxiously above her.
"Hey." Lauren smiled soothingly down at her, fumbling with the flashlight to check that both her pupils were the same size and reacted properly to the light flashing painfully into them. "How are you feeling?"
"Oh, you know. Million bucks. Minus about two or three million." Maia's voice was dry and cracked, and so soft, Lauren had to strain to hear it properly. But the joke brought a thin smile to her lips, and she was a little heartened to see Maia struggle to return it.
"Can you tell me your name?" The flashlight returned to her pocket, and Lauren gently pinched and rolled a patch of unbruised skin from Maia's neck between her fingers.
"Maia." She whispered in response. Her eyelid fluttered shut again, and she let out a tiny burst of air in response to the mild pain the pinch provoked. "I felt that."
"Good," Lauren's tentative smile widened a fraction, "that's good. You seem to be recovering from your concussion. Are you dizzy?"
"No." It was more a sigh than an answer, but Maia opened her eye again with a little difficulty to prove how well she could focus her sight. "But I'm so tired…"
They had been doing this for a little more than two hours. Reflexively, Lauren checked the solitary clock that hung on the pristine white wall of the make-shift hospital room. Considering how well Maia had been responding to her in the past hour, it ought to be safe to let her sleep a little longer before waking her again.
"Okay. I'll let you sleep a little longer this time." Lauren cast a cursory glance over the equipment arrayed around Maia's hospital bed, checking that everything was in its place and that all the settings on the IV and heart monitor were correct. Maia's eyes were already shut and her chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm by the time she turned back to her patient. Lauren's lips pursed together worriedly, and she brushed a hand delicately over the clean white cast that covered Maia's arm from her elbow to her knuckles. Carefully, she rearranged the ice pack that draped over the crown of Maia's head.
Heaving a heavy sigh, Lauren turned and tiptoed out of the extra bedroom she'd converted into a hospital space. Bo was sprawled across the couch, Vex was nowhere to be seen. Lauren vaguely remembered his muttered farewell: he was staying at the 'crack shack' for what was left of the night. The door snicked shut quietly behind her. Still, the soft sound was enough to startle Bo, and bring her attention around to where Lauren stood.
"How's she doing?"
"She's sleeping." Lauren answered, exhaustion evident in her voice. She dropped onto the couch beside Bo and leaned in to settle her head against the Succubus' shoulder. "God, the beating she took from them, Bo…"
The Succubus wrapped an arm around her lover and brushed her long, wavy tresses soothingly. She pressed a kiss to Lauren's temple, her eyebrows knit in anger.
"She said there were three of them." Lauren continued, her voice weary, and unsteady. "She's such a tough guy. Every time I woke her to check on her concussion, she cracked a joke. She kept saying if her doctor was smiling, she knew she was going to be just fine." Lauren's voice fractured, "they cracked her ribs, broke her arm and shattered her wrist, and then bled her almost dry over the sink. And the whole time I was treating her, she just kept trying to make me laugh."
"Sounds like she's got a little crush." Bo grinned.
"Bo." Lauren admonished. She pulled away to glare reprovingly at her girlfriend, but the slightly upturned corners of her mouth gave her away. "Still… After all that blood loss, through the concussion, and the incredible amount of pain she must have been in… That she had the strength to get to the phone and call you…" Lauren let her words trail off, and closed her eyes.
"Let's just hope there's more where that strength came from, for her sake." Bo finished for her, firmly. Lauren leaned back in, taking courage and warmth from the love they shared. "I'm going to find Seth." Bo promised to no one in particular. "Then I'm going to find Duncan and his boys. And they're not going to like it when I do." Determination steeled her mahogany eyes, and she pressed another kiss to Lauren's hair. The doctor had finally fallen into a fitful, restless sleep.
Evony shuffled the papers on her desk impatiently, listening with half an ear while her assistant listed her appointments and briefed her on the various tasks of the day. It was still early, a steaming cup of coffee sat untouched on the table and the morning sun shone charmingly into the huge window that walled her office.
"Is there anything you'd like me to take care of before your first appointment?" Anne, another Siñata and a brunette to rival the beauty and intelligence of Evony's last assistant, held her stylus at the ready over her tablet, glasses pushed up on her nose, a focused expression on her ivory features, and waited patiently for instructions.
"No, dear. But can you explain to me why Eric is standing at my door, when I know we didn't schedule an appointment for him?" Evony's tone was blasé, and she looked past Anne at the heavy, muscled Fae that stood self-consciously at her threshold. Anne turned to look, and he stepped forward to stand beside the Siñata at Evony's wave.
"Go." The Morrigan commanded calmly, and Anne left immediately, shutting the door quietly behind her.
"Well?" Evony shuffled through her papers again, bored and impatient with the thug that had already failed her time and again. "This better be good."
"Ma'am. I thought you might like to know," he started, deep voice tentative, "Seth has gone missing." He hung his head, knowing it was not his place to make eye-contact with the Morrigan.
This was one of the singular reasons Evony hadn't already had him disposed of. He was useful in bringing her information from time to time, and he clearly knew his place. She looked over his black leather vest, his heavily tattooed shoulders and his torn black denim pants. She certainly didn't keep him around for his errant sense of style.
"And where did you get this information, Eric?"
"Steve." He corrected quietly. "I went to her apartment to give her the warning you asked me to deliver this morning. It was tossed, and there was blood on the walls. I visited some of your well-placed spies, who claimed they'd seen her human pet with Bo."
Evony sat in silence for a moment, thinking over what the strangely soft-spoken brute had to tell her. The single fact that the human had been to see the unaligned Succubus was not enough on its own to prove that Seth had gone missing or been kidnapped. But this, coupled with a ransacked and bloodied apartment did indicate strongly some very untoward incident.
That the human had gone to Bo rather than the Morrigan annoyed and angered her. Even if she'd sent Eric to Seth's apartment that day to 'convince' her to stop lending her skills to the Light. That someone else had beaten her to Seth's punishment sent a stab of rage through her slim, sensual body.
She trusted what Eric had to say without a doubt, however. She believed that he was both too stupid and too cowardly to ever lie to or betray her.
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Eric." She purred.
"I'm Steve." He corrected again, exasperated almost, but not quite, to the point of snappishness. Evony waved him off and he turned to leave her office, dismissed.
"Anne, darling." Evony called to the open door, not even bothered to leave her plush office chair. The flawless brunette stepped through the portal and stood a respectful distance from the Morrigan's desk. "I need you to call Detective Tamsin. Have her come in right away. And cancel all my appointments until noon." She instructed imperiously. Anne scrawled furiously onto her tablet.
"Right away, Ma'am."
Author's Note: As promised: a new chapter mid-week since this and the last were both relatively short. Chapter 5 will be posted on Tuesday, as usual, and a couple more of our favorite, regular faces will be making an appearance! Thanks to my readers, see you next week!