Her body stiffened as he lurched against her. She was waiting for him to force her mouth open, she was waiting for the suffocating pain of having him forced into her throat.

Instead he groaned a long inhuman groan, clutched the back of his head and slumped to the floor. She held her breath, her eyes still tightly closed.

"It's ok..."

His words were like water, slow and strangely translucent, fading and fluid.

Slowly she opened her eyes. Behind the crumpled body beside her was Eliot. He was leaning heavily against the bottom of the bed. The side of his head was bleeding, blood running from an invisible wound like rain across a windowpane. His face was pale and clammy, his lips blue-tinged white and his eyes were wide and hooded.

"It's ok."

He repeated himself all in one breath, his lips barely moving.

She lay still for a moment, unable to do anything but breathe in and out. She swallowed hard and slowly, with her eyes on the man who was knocked out cold on the floor. She moved slowly, expecting him to move at any moment.

Now that she was sitting up she could see what Eliot had used to knock him out with. A wooden handled mallet with a flat ended solid metal piece attached to the end.

"I'd been using it to build a fence...out..."

Eliot rested his head against the duvet, staining it a deep red the moment he touched it.

"You shouldn't have moved."

She whispered, her voice strained and high. She looked at him again, lying there, his eyes on her and the faint flicker of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Couldn't let him hurt...you."

"What about the other man?"

He didn't answer. He didn't know.

She raised her eyes to the ceiling. She couldn't hear him up there. There were no footsteps anymore. Perhaps he had gone to meet whoever it was who had agreed to meet him with the drugs.

"If you can...if you can get to it...untie the boat..."

"What?"

She paused.

"I can't drive a boat!"

He closed his eyes and smiled again.

"Yes you can."

"I can't! We cant! I have to get you to hospital."

He gave a shake of his head and winced.

"No point."

He coughed, spitting blood and his whole body seemed to creak, broken bones jarring against one another.

"We have no other option."

His voice choked and gargled within his throat and a string of bloody spittle leaked from the corner of his lips. She opened her mouth to speak, but as she did so a thought struck her.

"Dylan."

She whispered.

He looked at her, blank.

"Dylan! Dylan..."

She stood up shakily, her kneecaps were trembling and her whole body felt cold.

She crept through the door into the sitting room, not waiting for an answer, pausing with every other step to stop and listen for footsteps from above.

She saw her bag, neatly tucked beneath the chair she had sat on when she arrived. She crouched down and, with fingers that barely seemed capable of movement, she unzipped it and reached in, feeling blindly for the smooth plastic of the case of her phone.

She pulled it out slowly, glancing again towards the open door of the boat, and then, when she heard nothing, she crept back to Eliot, kneeling down beside him as she scrolled through her phone book.

Dylan.

She clicked his name and the number illuminated on her screen. It rang against her ear, painfully loud in the silence and she found herself cupping it with both hands against the side of her head to try to muffle it.

"Dylan?"

She spoke as soon as she heard him answer, his voice groggy with sleep and far away.

"I need your help."

-.-

More soon. I'll try to get another update up today. Please review as always, Rita and Connie will be reunited very soon...xxx