Chapter 30
The brilliant plan to sneak out of the room and go around on a semi-bogus tour of the place was essentially broken apart as soon as Kenzi was stopped in her tracks on her way to the door by a heavy hand on her shoulder.
"There's someone outside, babe," the wolf whispered bending down to her ear, his eyes golden, his nostrils flared, "A fae, a woman, a succubus."
"The succubus," he elaborated after another drag of air.
"Splendid," the girl huffed, "Like it isn't going to get awkward."
"Bo is here, she is alive and, to all intents and purposes, free to move around," Dyson countered, "Taft will be pissing his white coat in glee. And we've got ourselves an ally."
"Who is also an ex lover of yours," Kenzi turned to squint up at him from under her bangs, "By a weird coincidence, a second of your ex co-rollers in the hay I happen to come face to face with in as many days."
"You are even more adorable when you're jealous," the shifter smirked, "But if you gonna get your jealousy on over every ex of mine, you'd better prepare yourself for a couple of centuries' worth of those."
"Old rascal," the human girl pouted, "Good thing you're immune to STDs. At least, I assume you are, seeing as syphilis didn't kill you in the before insurance medicine epoch."
A loud knocking on the door interrupted her historical digression and with a long-suffering sigh Kenzi threw the door open.
"This place reeks of sex and you look positively luminous – freshly fucked and dopey with love," Bo commented as soon as she was inside the room. One glance thrown at the shifter brought forth an amendment, "And I totally get it why. Even as a dummy, he is still pretty and a terrific lay."
The younger girl's mouth rounded into a perfect O and Bo felt chastised enough to add hastily, "Sorry, succubus humor. I am just saying I am happy he's alive."
"The pretty, fuckable dummy is flattered on both counts, and weirdly happy to see the human tyrant's personal donor," Dyson rumbled coming to stand by Kenzi's side and hugging the slender girl close to his side and they both took considerable delight in watching Bo's face run the gamut from stunned to relieved.
"I gather he is even better than alive and I have no idea how you pulled it off," the succubus smiled sincerely.
"Long story, and pretty gapped," Kenzi dismissed the explanation, "Yours?"
"No less long and gapped, let's just say I did all the work while you two were getting busy and now I am in a bit of a hurry to get out of this mausoleum," Bo said enthusiastically.
"Mind if we join?" Dyson extended a long arm for his shirt draped over a chair-arm, "More chance to escape the good doctor with our hides unpierced by anything sharp in her possession or at her command."
"Well, that might be more about escaping with the good doctor though I am really keen on the unpierced hide part," the brunette replied mysteriously.
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"Seriously," Dyson huffed as they were tearing down the stairs, the unconscious blonde limp in his arms, bridal style, "She is weighing much more than she looks. Are you sure I can't just drop her? I would've been much more useful five minutes ago when Bo had to dispatch the guards on her own."
"Hey, stop whining, and you're not going to drop your potential sister-in-law," Kenzi wheezed out, "And I kinda lent Bo a hand with that."
"Yeah, you slapped one of them like he had pinched your ass and you wanted to show just how indignant you were," Bo threw over her shoulder as she strode ahead of them, "And you know what, I am actually with the wolf-boy on this one – drop Lauren and give me a paw, preferably a clawed one."
She braked to a halt right at the bottom of the stairs and gave a perfunctory nod towards a sizeable group of fae who fanned around the hall – a living barrier between the escapees and the door – their appalled eyes riveted to their unconscious queen, their emptied selves still following the program.
A brief glare from Kenzi prevented Dyson from unceremoniously unloading his human burden and instead the shifter carefully lowered the woman, still down for the count but tied up as a precaution against an untimely awakening, onto the carpeted floor and straightened, his eyes losing the blue, his nails extended into the much required claws.
"Looks like fun," he growled stepping forward to stand by Bo's side.
"Save the queen, kill the traitors," a reedy voice with distinguishable accent shrieked from somewhere behind the ranks of the fae and both the succubus and the wolf winced in recognition.
"Whoever gets through the scrape first, will have Vex's guts for garters, literally," Bo barked and lunged forward, swiping at one of the fae and sucking down another.
Mesmerized by both fear and a weird awe, Kenzi was watching the fray from the relative safety of the bottom of the staircase, dumbstruck by the neat, near choreographic grace and precision of her warrior friends, who threw back the attackers protecting the two human women they loved. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the fae duo were making a remarkable progress with decimating the doctor's thralls.
A rustling noise made her snap out of her bedazzled contemplation of the fight scene and turn round, only to come face to face, or rather face to a jacketed shoulder, with Hale, pale and slightly wobbly but purposeful and resolute as he descended the stairs.
"You are not taking my Queen," he wheezed grabbing Kenzi's shoulder and shoving her hard against the wall, away from the doctor sprawled on the stairs, "How dare you lead traitors into her house, let them kidnap her, tie her up."
"Hale, stop it! She ordered you killed," the girl scrambled to get up, the back of her head tender from its collision with the wall, "She is not your queen, she's your slave-master, snap out of it, I know you can."
"Remember me, Kenzi? You said you loved me? And our child the one that was never born?" she implored as the siren loomed over her, his mouth opening for a song fit to punish the traitor. For a second he faltered, a puzzled look coming over him but he shook it off and the first high-pitched note hit the human's ears making her squirm and shriek in pain.
That got Dyson's attention better than a wail of a port siren pushing the wolf to toss off the fae he had been tangled with like a rag doll and make a desperate dash across the room. He was mere feet away when Hale cut his destructive song and raised a hand, halting the wolf in his tracks.
"That was just a taste," he nodded down towards the girl cowering before him, "Surrender, both of you, or I'll burst your human's eardrums seconds before you can reach us."
"I'll rip your throat out, see how you'll sing then," the wolf snarled, his terror for Kenzi obliterating whatever warm feelings he might be still harboring towards his friend.
"I'll be dead, but she'll be deaf," the siren counted calmly.
Bo socked another of her opponents unconscious and joined the parley. "It's Kenzi, Hale, remember, you loved her once," she rebuked him, choosing the non-threatening approach.
"Before he took her from me," Hale's accusatory look landed on Dyson, "And anyway, my Queen comes first. Surrender, let the guards tie you, both of you, and I'll release the human and I swear not to hurt her."
"Unless doctor Lewis tells you to?" Dyson was still in his snarling mode, though he let his fists unclench and his arms fall down his sides in defeat as the choice was perfectly clear for him.
"Unless doctor Lewis tells me to," the siren readily agreed, his face alight at the mention of his master.
Bo felt someone approach her from behind but with an effort of will overpowering the ingrained instinct, she made her body relax in surrender, following the shifter's lead.
"Let her go, Hale," she said simply, "We surrender."
"But I don't," someone's strangled but defiant voice filled the silence before Hale could sic the guards onto the willfully defenseless fae. Her hands slightly trembling but her eyes betraying no hesitation, Kenzi trained Dyson's gun, which she had finally managed to untangle from the depth of her overcoat, at the siren. Hale's instinct pushed him to fall on his natural defense and his mouth opened for attack but the shot preceded his lethal song.
They both fell – Kenzi lost her balance firing a shot up from her contorted half-crouching position, Hale collapsed from the pain and the impact of the bullet that pierced his shoulder. In a haze of shock not dissimilar to Hale's the girl felt someone tugging her up, almost off her feet, then she knew she passed hands as much smaller ones took possession of her shoulders and Bo's voice cooed into her hurting ear begging her to hang in there until they were out of this shithole. She saw Dyson making short work of the rest of the fae who had already dropped their guard in anticipation of an easy triumph.
"Hale?" she whispered and the other brunette didn't need elaborating.
"He's alive, nowhere near a fatal wound," the succubus soothed her.
"We'll come back for him, right?" the human begged looking for comfort rather than for a confirmation.
"We will," Bo assured her sincerely, "And now let's bounce."
The two fae exited the doctor's mansion with the two sisters on their hands, Bo half-carrying the lighter girl, Dyson hefting the doctor who was starting to stir from her succubus-induced black-out, over his shoulder, which didn't help the headache Lauren was waking to, and making a dash to his car Kenzi had parked down the street.
Swinging the doors open the fae exchanged eloquent glances. "Trading off our humans?" Bo verbalized the thought, "Before you do something to the love of my life, accidentally on purpose."
"Good thinking, I've been fighting the temptation to grab a bite off some parts of the doctor's anatomy," the wolf grumbled, throwing Lauren in across the backseat and taking Kenzi from Bo to hug his precious girl to himself.
"I was so relieved I didn't have to shoot my sister," Kenzi sobbed into the front of his shirt, "Only later to shoot someone else I love."
"You didn't have much choice and you saved us all," the shifter's voice was gently soothing, "We'll take care of Hale, I promise."
"And when you say you love him," he added in an attempt to distract Kenzi from beating herself up, "How jealous exactly should I be?"
Kenzi looked up into his face, saw the light smile curling his mouth, saw a shadow of true worry in his eyes and opted for the truth over a witty comeback. "He is my first true love, the father of my only child. I will always love him in a way, Dyson," she said quietly, "But it's you I am in love with. He is my past, not that happy at that, would you like to be my future?"