Suddenly, Vicki knew who it was, who it had to be. The girl who had sent Jon that creepy message when they were in London, weeks ago. The girl who had shot him by accident, intending to shoot Correy instead. The girl who had never been caught, who had disappeared, who said she had been ill for a year. Obsessive and dangerous, and she'd caught them both in her web.

Disturbing though the scene was, Vicki couldn't take her eyes from it, details becoming clearer slowly as her eyes adjusted to the painful flare of light above her. And though she was frightened, she knew that staying panicked would only hurt the baby, somehow managing to calm her gasping breath and pounding heartbeat, feeling the unborn baby in her womb begin to calm as she did so. How long that calm could last depended largely upon someone - something - currently curled up beside Vicki's sleeping husband.

From this distance, the redhead couldn't yet work out the details of that macabre little tableau on the beautiful bed, so out of place in the cold darkness of this seemingly purpose built chamber of horrors. Drawing her gaze away, Vicki let herself take in the other details of the place, however frightening. No windows to let in natural light - indeed, the place felt as though it was underground, deep beneath the natural ground level of the city, if indeed they were still in the city at all. She had to assume they were still in Rhy'Din; one woman could not have removed an unconscious Jonathan Granger and his wife from their hotel and passed through the city gates without interference from at least someone. Not on the night of the Fifty Shades ....premiere.

The space they were in had been divided into two areas, distinct and separate and obviously intended for very different purposes. Vicki lay in the sparser part of the chamber, pinioned upon what felt like a very cold metal table. Belatedly, she realised she was naked beneath the single covering blanket, some traitorous part of her mind wondering what had been done to her while she was unconscious. Why had their captor chosen to cover her over when it was obvious she had little interest in Vicki's comfort at all" To Vicki's left lay another metallic table, like the appliance dollies used in hospitals. Various trays lay atop that table, their contents covered over with immaculately clean cloths. More disturbingly, beyond this table could be seen an incubator, already padded and warming, ready for a baby born pre-term to be set within.

Vicki's gaze snapped away from that sight quickly, feeling her pulse beginning to rise once again, the panic in her heart infecting her unborn baby once more. With supreme difficulty, she fought the desire to sob, hating the feeling of helplessness, of inevitability. The thought came to her of the Granger ring Caroline had pressed into her hand only a few weeks ago, of the secret locator hidden inside the bloodstone that could be activated by depressing the stone into its setting ....but a ripple of her captive fingers took that hope away. All her rings were gone, wedding and engagement rings too, and a nasty suspicion settled over her as to where they now resided.

Grinding her teeth in impotent fury, she turned her head toward the other side of the room, the part that had been turned into some parody of luxury. A four-poster bed, a fine French armoire, hangings on the walls to hide the damp and mould, thick real fur rugs on the floor. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make that side of this place habitable, if not exactly sanitary. Everything had a slightly moth-eaten look to it; old and probably discarded by someone else in the city above over the months it had taken to create this place.

Finally, Vicki turned her gaze back to the creature lying on the bed with Jon. She could see now why they had only ever caught glimpses of her at night. It was a plain face, the skin a vaguely pallid grey, straw blonde hair hacked wildly short yet just long enough to disguise a mark in the middle of the forehead. That mark was an X, and even from here, Vicki could see that it was an old injury that had not even attempted to heal. Whatever had happened to that woman, she was no longer human. There were open, weeping holes in each of the creature's palms, and some seepage on her left shoulder betrayed a wound not unlike that on her forehead.

But the eyes ....They should have been unremarkable, plain brown eyes in a plain face, nothing to write home about. But they burned, obsession written plain as day in the manic depths. They looked at Jon with possessive adoration, and at Vicki with a hate so inhuman it took her breath away. There was human intelligence there, human emotion, trapped inside a being that was no longer human at all.

Shaking, Vicki drew in a slow breath, taking the chance that so long as she was still pregnant, this insane thing that held them would not kill her or risk killing the baby. She had to be sure they were completely out of reach. Opening her mouth, Vicki opened her lungs for the first time in years, screaming out a long, ear-splitting cry for help that pierced the silence of the room and echoed back to her from the dank walls.

The creature beside Jon leapt up, shambling over to her other captive at speed, and delivered a vicious slap to Vicki's face with the back of her hand, leaving old blood and lymph smeared across the redhead's cheek as the scream suddenly cut off.

"Stupid bitch," the inhuman girl hissed down at her. "No one can hear you. No one cares."

But one person could hear, and that one person did care, more than any other. And thanks to Vicki's screaming, he was waking up.

Jon thought he heard a scream, a familiar scream, one he thought he should recognize. It seemed to be coming from somewhere close by, but his mind felt muddled like he was drunk or high, and the part of his mind that was lucid, thought he was only dreaming. And then, there was a voice that cut through that scream, also familiar, a snarl of words dripping with hatred and malice so ugly it made him shudder with fear, too real to be a dream and too close for comfort. He heard himself groan as he rolled to one side, his body feeling as heavy as lead. What the hell was going on' Why couldn't he move" It took great effort to open his eyes, like his eyelids were heavy weights, fluttering with the effort. Senses other than sight were the first to return.

He smelled something strange - like old, wet rags, a damp smell with a distinct rotting odor that made his stomach turn, choking briefly on the bile that was rising in his throat. He felt something soft looped around one wrist that he couldn't quite reach with his fingers, soft but snug, and he realized with a sinking feeling of dread that he was restrained. His first thought went to Vicki. Was this some kind of kink of hers he didn't know about' What kind of game was she playing? The last thing he remembered was falling asleep in her arms in the hotel room after they'd snuck out of the premiere.

"You know, I said that." The sudden turn of their captor's madness stayed calm, but something in Jon's plea had distracted her, at least momentarily. "When your cousin came looking for me, after you got in the way of my shot. And when she handed me over to your other cousin. I begged them not to do what they did to me, but you know what? I'm glad they did now." She leaned on the incubator, looking Jon straight in the eye. "I can't die," she crowed, insanity pouring through her gaze. "Your security guard last night' He put three bullets into my heart, and I'm still here. That Eli is a genius, and when we're done here, I'm going to do to you what he did to me. We can have forever, Jon. We'll be immortal."

"What-what are you talking about?" he exclaimed, feeling the panic rising again. "Oh, my God..." he muttered, as the full realization of her statement was starting to sink in. She'd been the one who'd shot him, though her real target had been Correy. She'd been the one who'd sent them the menacing message in London. She was the stalker. That all made sense now, but what Eli had to do with it, he wasn't quite sure. "What cousin" What did Eli do to you?" Keep her talking. Jon's fingers strained against the cord that held his wrist, slowly sliding the Granger ring around his finger so that he could access the stone that would tell his family where they were and that they were in trouble. But even if he could activate it, it would take time for them to get there, and he didn't have any time to waste.

He swallowed down the panic, wide awake and alert now that he knew what was happening and that Vicki and the baby's lives were in his hands. He had to think fast and think smart. If only he could distract her long enough to free his hand. He realized with a shudder that there was a scalpel on a metallic table near Vicki, along with several other instruments meant for cutting and slicing and prying open. If he could just get his hand free, he might be able to save them.

"He made me what I am." And she seemed ridiculously proud of that fact. "Oh, not these ..." She held up her hands, showing off the weeping, coagulated sores that you could see right through in her palms. "Or this." Lowering one shoulder of her threadbare shirt, she showed him an X-shaped scar like the one on her forehead, the edges glistening with pus and blood and lymph. "The dark one gave me these, the one who deals" She's a vicious bitch. I'm going to tear her into little pieces when we're done." She turned away, wheeling the incubator back to its place by the wall as she continued speaking. "I don't really know what Eli did to me. He didn't explain much. It hurt. It turned my blood into fire and stopped my heart, and every time I thought I was dead, he brought me back to life to keep on experimenting on me. He put all kinds of monsters' blood into me, just to see what would happen." Her expression changed to something cold and calculating. "I'm going to kill him, too."

Gigi, Jon realized with a sinking heart. Why hadn't she told him' Why had they kept this from him' What the hell had they done after he'd been shot' If they'd wanted revenge, why hadn't they just killed her" If they had, then none of this would be happening. Jon looked hard at the girl, flinching as his mind flashed quickly back to the night of the shooting. Just a quick glimpse of a face looming in the darkness. A shot rang out in the night, and Jon pushed Correy aside, shielding him from the bullet, pain like fire tearing into his shoulder, his leg, another shot and another, and then everything went black.

The memory itself flaring like fire in his brain at the sight of that face. How could he remember when the doctors had told him it was useless" It was the vampires who'd given him back those memories, choosing which memories to give him and which to keep. "You. You tried to kill Correy," he said between clenched teeth, anger slowly rising, first at the memory of that cold night in March, and then at the horror of what she was about to do to the woman he loved.

His opponent was not focused on him, though. Spitting blood and bone and teeth, she snarled as Jon fell away, unphased by her injuries, rolling to her own knees to crawl toward the operating table once again. Her eyes levelled a malevolent glare on Vicki. "This is all your fault," she spat, pulling herself up, dripping blood and mucus over the redhead's bare skin. "I'm going to kill you!" But Vicki hadn't exactly been idle during the scuffling on the floor. With an almighty heave that split the skin on her ankle and left a trail of her own blood on the hemp, she dragged one foot free of the rope that bound it and kicked out, pushing the girl away from her.

Jon curled his hand around what he'd later realize was a tweezers and stumbled to his feet, just as Vicki kicked the girl away. He raised the instrument like it was a knife and bore down on the girl, driving her backwards toward the bed and squeezing the tweezers closed to thrust both ends into an eye.

Borne down onto the bed, the girl's arms opened as though to embrace Jon, the grimace on her face almost something close to a smile if not for the fury that blazed from her eyes. Well, eye. The one that received both points of the tweezers directly into the iris popped like an overripe grape, splurging blood and more of that foul-smelling ichor over Jon's hand as the girl screamed, finally feeling some kind of pain under his determined attack. The scalpel still in her hand, she flailed at his arm, howling with maniacal fury.

He knew it wasn't a killing blow, but it might give him enough time to scramble for a better weapon. He rolled away from her, shaking the blood and pus from his hand, barely stifling a gag, as he stumbled again, still reeling from the blow to the head. He snatched up the metal tray from the floor and spun around, returning the favor and whacking her in the head with it, hoping to stun her long enough to finish her off.

As Jon whirled away, the girl still flailed and screamed, scrabbling at the implement that was lodged in the now empty socket of her eyeball as she twitched and jerked in pain. She slid off the bed, groping in Jon's direction, only to receive the tray full in the face, the impact knocking the tweezers deeper into her skull, cleaving deep into her brain. She dropped to her knees with an inarticulate yell, the scalpel falling from her twitching fingers.

She just barely caught his arm with the scalpel, slicing into his arm, not deep enough to do any serious damage or to slow him down, but enough to make him bleed. He watched as she fell to her knees, ignoring the pain in his arm. Nearly worn out, he noticed the scalpel fall from her fingers, and with the last of his strength, he drove himself at her again, shoving her back onto the floor and smashing her full in the face with the metal tray, letting it fall to the ground, as he scrambled for the scalpel.

Half-blinded, most of her motor-functions finally out of her control thanks to the sharp metal imbedded in her brain, Eli's undead corruption of Jon's mentally unstable fan put up barely any fight as she was forced down onto the ground, her limbs still twitching as her severed neurons fired without success. Blood and pus and foul lymph pooled beneath her head as Jon slammed the tray into her face once again, flattening what was left of her nose up into her frontal lobes, groaning like some kind of badly constructed zombie.

With the scalpel in hand, he stabbed her, driving the thin blade into her heart, again and again until she stopped twitching and was no longer moving. Straddling her broken and oozing body, he waited to make sure she was really and truly dead, before rolling off and to his feet, the scalpel embedded in the girl's chest, a foul mass of blood and oozing fluids. He clutched at his wounded arm a moment, as if only just now realizing he was bleeding, and stumbled toward Vicki to free her from her bonds.

Whimpering through her tears, still frightened that their insane captor was going to somehow come back to life and attack Jon once again, Vicki couldn't take her eyes from the still mass of blood and bone and other disgusting bodily fluids no one ever sees in films. "Oh, God ....oh ..." As soon as she was free, she pushed herself up, heedless of her nakedness, and threw her arms around Jon, sobbing out her fright into his chest. She'd never been so frightened, so vulnerable, in her lifetime, and she hoped never to be again, pouring out that horrifying feeling until it ebbed away. Drawing back, she scrubbed at her wet cheeks, reaching to look Jon over in concern. "You're bleeding, are you all right' She didn't ....she's not going to wake up, is she?"

Jon took his wife in his arms, sensing that she was far more shaken by all this than he was, and he was pretty shaken. He held her close against him, stroking her hair, whispering soothing words, trying to calm her, even though all he really wanted to do was lose the contents of his stomach and curl up in a ball until help arrived. "Oh, God, Vicki. Are you all right?" he asked as he cupped her face in his hands and looked her over, both of them concerned for the other's safety. "Is the baby all right?" he asked, laying a hand against her swollen belly to feel for movement.

Trembling in the wake of her overly emotional outburst, she held onto Jon as he looked her over, her hand following his to the curve of her stomach, feeling for the reassuring stretch and kick of the baby in her womb. "I'm fine, she didn't ..." She trailed off, shaking her head as a chilled shudder went through her, acknowledgement of her lack of protection against the chill of the chamber slow to make itself known. "We're both fine," she repeated, drawing in a shaky breath. "I just want to get out of here."

Jon wasn't much more clothed than she was, just in his pajamas and those were filthy, covered in gore. He let go of her for a moment, just long enough to yank a blanket from the bed and wrap it around her shoulders, rubbing her arms to offer warmth and comfort. "It's all right. I activated the locator in my ring. Help should be coming soon." He knew his words were little comfort, but they were all he had. "It's okay, Vicki. It's over."

He drew her close again, holding her in his embrace until help came. There was no point in trying to find their way out alone, not wounded and in their state of undress. He drew her head away from the sight of the dead girl's body, holding her tight against his chest, trying his best to keep her warm and safe.

Shivering, she let him look after her without argument for once, that lack of resistance proving more than anything else how shaken the past hour had left her. She deliberately kept her eyes away from the mess of blood and bone that was the body, until one word in Jon's litany of comfort rang through her head. "Ring," she repeated, pulling her left hand from the folds of the blanket to look down in tearful anger at her bare fingers. "That bitch took my rings!"

Johnny closed his fingers around Vicki's rings to keep them safe from the flames and moved to his feet, extending his free arm toward the dead girl's body, and with what seemed like no effort at all, that arm was suddenly engulfed in flames which he then directed in a flaming stream toward the body, like a flame thrower. The smell of burning flesh lasted only a moment before the body was burned almost immediately to ash. He said nothing, no smart remarks, no words wishing her a peaceful rest. He only burned the body to ash, filling the previously cold room with heat as warm as a summer day.

"She won't be bothering anyone anymore," Johnny remarked mostly to himself. It was no big secret that he didn't like killing; it was always a last resort with him, but this was different, and the ghoul was already dead.

Jon watched as the body went up in flames, no pity inside him, no grief, no remorse, only anger, exhaustion, pain, relief. "Thanks," he told Johnny as he was handed Vicki's rings.

Johnny quietly excused himself. "If you two are okay, I'm gonna go outside and let the cavalry know where to find you."

The flare of heat, whatever its source, did the trick in burning off the chill from Vicki's bones, and though she couldn't see what was being done, she could guess, grateful that neither of them had wanted her to see the final death dealt out to someone who had taken her obsession beyond life and death and into insanity. Her voice, however, was still muffled as she heard Johnny excuse himself. "Find me some shoes!"

Johnny furrowed his brows as he picked his way from the room. Where the hell was he supposed to find a pair of shoes at this time of night' Should he raid a shoe store" He didn't even know her size. "Shoes, yes, ma'am."

But she wasn't going to need shoes because Jon wasn't going to allow her to walk, and he wasn't planning on sticking around her any longer than necessary. In fact, whether it was cold outside or not, it was time to leave, and he wasn't taking no for an answer. "Hang on, Johnny! We're coming with you." He pressed the rings into the palm of Vicki's hand, before carefully tucking the blanket back around her and scooping her up in his arms to follow the Torch through the chamber to the catacombs that led to fresh air and freedom.

Johnny heard them and waited, a small flame flickering from his fingers to light the way to their escape.

"Wait - Jon!" Cocooned so she couldn't struggle and scooped up into her husband's arms, all Vicki could do was protest vocally as she was borne out of the chamber. "You don't have any shoes, either - mind the knives! - and you don't know what?s out there for you to slip on." She paused, looking up at Jon as Johnny illuminated the passageway, sliding her rings back into their accustomed place on her left hand under the blanket. "You're ignoring me, aren't you?"

"Hush, Vic," Jon admonished her gently, carefully picking his way barefooted through the catacombs. His head and body were aching, but he couldn't stay there any longer, and the possibility of cutting his foot in comparison to almost losing her and the baby, seemed a small price to pay. "I'll be fine. I just want to get you out of here and go home, okay?" He wasn't taking no for an answer. He had a feeling whoever was coming for them wasn't bringing shoes, and he wasn't waiting to be bodily carried out when he could walk.

"I can take her," Johnny volunteered, as they caught up with him. Though he had a feeling the other man's ego might be wounded, he saw what kind of shape they were both in and knew Vicki was right. "It's okay. You can trust me," Johnny reiterated, looking helpfully from one to the other. "I'll get her out and come back for you."

"Jon, please." After a moment of determined wriggling, she got a hand free to reach up and turn Jon's face toward hers, looking him in the eye. "There is no point looking after me if you don't look after yourself. You promised me you'd look out for yourself while you were looking out for me, don't you dare break that promise now." She arched her neck, daring to touch her lips to his, reminding him that looking after himself was a part of that deal they'd made when they'd first got together, just over a year ago. She glanced at Johnny. "You're temporarily deaf and blind, right?" she told the hero with a faint smirk.

Johnny grinned back, turning his back to the couple while they had their moment. He'd had plenty of his own with Olivia, after all. "Sorry, I can't hear you!"

Jon, on the other hand, was not smiling. He was frowning at his wife, despite the kiss, but part of him knew she was right. He was exhausted and feeling sick and just wanted to get them both out of there and breath fresh air again. He knew if he let Johnny take her, he'd be alone in the darkness for a little while, but it was a small price to pay. "All right," he agreed, thinking as much of Vicki as she was thinking of him. "Get her out of here. I'll wait here."

"No," Vicki objected straight away. "I'm not leaving you on your own down here, that wasn't the idea. Put me down." And the look in her eyes suggested that if Jon didn't put her down, there would be hell to pay. She'd been through a personal hell, and she'd had it up to here with being told what to do. "Johnny can light the way, and we'll take it slowly," she said firmly. "I am not leaving you alone, Jonathan Granger."

Jon sighed, giving up. There was no fighting city hall or Victoria Marshall when she had her mind made up, and apparently, her mind was made up. He knew she'd been through hell and was only trying to think of her, but she was even more stubborn than he was. "You're the stubbornest woman I've ever met, you know that?" he grumbled, very carefully setting her on her feet.

"Hey!" Johnny called from a short way up ahead. "They're here! It's about damned time!" he grumbled, his heightened sense of hearing catching the sound of footsteps heading their way.

The stubborn in her eyes gentled as Jon gave in and set her down, her hands quickly busy with tucking the blanket around her chest securely before linking her fingers with his. "Thank you," she murmured to her husband, rising onto her toes to kiss his jaw gently. "The sooner you're checked over and we're home, the happier I'll be, I promise." She glanced up as Johnny announced the arrival of the cavalry, relief spreading through her face.

Jon clenched his jaw, not understanding why she was fussing and so worried about him when she was the one who'd been in real danger here. Her and the baby. It wasn't until they were topside and the EMTs were looking them over that he realized how horrible he was feeling. It wasn't until it was all over that he finally lost the contents of his stomach on the pavement and allowed himself to acknowledge what had just happened down there. A couple of hours later and they were both cleaned up, stitched up, and tucked into bed, a nursing staff on hand to key an eye on them, if needed. Jon came away with a mild concussion and a few stitches, but all things considered, it was a small price to pay. His wife and child were safe, and that was all that mattered. For now.

((Ding dong, the witch is dead. Er, the ghoul is dead. ;) As always, huge thanks to Vicki's awesometastic player for this scene, for writing the introduction, and for playing the nasty. You're da bomb! Lots of fun! This takes care of Jon's stalker for now, but stay tuned as our heroes and heroines have to deal with the aftermath.))