It was near even fall when he and Rei had come stumbling into the alley, his Godson a step ahead, a trained tracker and far less likely to get them lost than Mesteno despite the Sadist's rather intimate knowledge of the city's back alleys.
The trap had taken them both unawares, a very deliberate placement and closer to Teslim's stronghold than the site of the kidnap itself. Just a touch of bare flesh to the greasy, black substance upon walls and cobbles and suddenly, the air had been full of it, noxious, potent and very deadly. It was unlikely Mesteno would ever remember much beyond that point, because a single, shallow breath of it had been enough. Somehow, his Godson had lifted a shield against it, one which barred the fumes and intersected the alley, but the silver-maned tracker was gone who-knows-where, plucked out of the alley via mishap with the very work he'd been weaving to save them.
Save them it had, but Mesteno was sprawled belly down, quite unconscious with flecks of blood drying on his lips and the air rattling on each slow, infrequent inhalation. What had begun as an intended rescue had finished in disaster, and he wasn't even awake to be aware of the fact!
Distraction had always been her downfall.? Even in her most aware moments, all it took was a whisper of a promise and she was drawn off the path and onto another.? She never left anything but the echoes of footsteps behind her, but they never stayed long enough for her to find her way back.?
This night was like any other, the clouds threatened rain, bunched up and smearing out the stars leaving all the stories untold.? The spider web of alley ways drew her wandering deeper into the city, or perhaps maybe it was the child's play of shadows along the dark, brick walls.? Either or, distraction had a reason for her tonight and that reason lay just beyond the next bend, sprawled on his stomach and gloriously unconscious.?
The smile she wore was just for him as she drew deeper into the alley.? So intent on the tangle of red-gold hair, she didn't notice how the black on the walls frightened her shadows away.
Don't touch, Dream Child.
No good would come of any contact with it...but who was there to tell her? Certainly the man sprawled upon the cobbles wasn't going to be of use. He'd fallen with enough force to split his scalp somewhere, hidden in all that hair, but the colours were so alike that who'd find it, at a glance? It might be scented though, for his blood smelled too rich, too potent a thing to ignore for mouths that wanted, and it was a minor miracle that he'd not been stumbled across by something?undead and hungry.
Luckier still that no one living had stumbled across him while his body snatched clumsily at the soul energy of any living thing in the alley's narrow confines. The rats and the small, crawling things were about as valuable as copper pennies where a soul's currency was concerned, but it had been enough to keep the damage from spreading internally. To keep death at bay, for whom surely it had been too long in coming already.
Aoife would have no trouble in reaching him. No trouble at all.
Rich, potent, and red.? It was red and that was what drew her closer.?
She had been using free liberties quite often with the Sadist, and that was when he was upright and scowling beautifully at her (he was so selfish with his smiles).? But here and now, he had no say, nothing but the quiet gurgle of life's breath.?
She was quiet normally, but this time the murmuring of silence could have hidden her steps from his ears and the sound of denim rubbing when she crouched closer.? Her humming was sweet enough, gentle to lull, like the tip-tap tickle of her fingers along his back until they stilled to feel for the rise and fall of his life.
The heartbeat was so slow... but it came, as did the breath, such a small rise and fall of the ribs too sharply jutting beneath the thin shirt. Someone with less patience investigating might have thought him dead, for he was cold to the touch too, and only lacked the tell-tale stiffness of rigor mortis to be truly authentic.
Her fingers travelling his back did not go unfelt, for this was not one of his normal, death-deep slumbers. It was poison induced, something he struggled against, struggled because he knew there was something he was supposed to be doing. Urgently. His eyes stayed shut as if the lids were too heavy to peel open, but he gave a sound like the most hopeless of groans, a sound which saw more blood bubble out on a cough that rattled him weakly.
And if she didn't lean over him at that!? One hand planted on a sprawl of his tangled hair, the other pressing into those sharp ribs and something else stepping up the length of his spine (give her a minute to notice, there is red).? The notes had froze in her throat, song forgotten, so much pay attention to at once.? And she reached and leaned, quite boldly over him smearing two little fingers across his chin before straightening in her crouch using his back once again as a hand hold.? Her thumb rubbed across her fingers painting them such a pretty red.? It was the blue that ate away at the quiet gray in her eyes, blame the blue for the sinful thoughts she had just then.?
There was something else to explore though, something else she plucked at through the damp fabric of his shirt.? There was a gentleness in the way she lifted the hem of his shirt, it didn't match the smile that painted her lips pink nor the glow that swelled in her eyes.?
One ring, two ring, three ring, four.?
A look left then right before she leaned over him again.? A sweep of ebony hair and summer sun flowers kept her words for his ear when she brushed his hair back.? "Let me help you."
More jostling, it shook away the mind cloud until he could feel the solidity of the ground beneath him, the cold which had seeped up through his clothes and into flesh and bone. But it wasn't the cold which was keeping him from moving. Not even the weight of the girl upon his back. The poison had done something to his nerves, left him feeling so amorphous that he thought his back must have been broken, something severed to leave him so useless.
No...he wouldn't have felt what he did. The fingers at his chin perhaps, but not the cold against his spine as she lifted the shirt to bare his scar riddled back, and the heavy D rings which were rooted in the muscle to either side of the bony column. Aoife. He knew that voice. What was she doing here?
"Fa..." he murmured, but her name came out broken and gurgled, and when his eyes cracked open to the finest, paper-thin line, they were as reflective as an alley cats, the pupils so enormous that his retinas bounced it back alarmingly. "Eeef.."
Help him? She was such a?small, weak little thing. How was she going to help him? More to the point, why would she?
"Shh."
The gesture was too kind when she smoothed his hair back again, such a pity his eyes were shut.? The presence, the pressure were just...gone.? She took them with her when she stood.? The sweep of the alley drew her attention just across the way before it also took her with it, leaving Mesteno alone once again with cold cobblestones, the fetid stench, and small pool of his own blood.? ---
Seconds turned into minutes and seemed like days stretching into weeks before the soft sound of footfalls and steps drew close to his motionless body.? She would always be familiar to him in every way he would probably like to erase, but she wasn't alone this time.?
Stronger hands, rougher hands, slid between his arms and hooked under and over his shoulders hauling him up against a not so feminine body that reeked of fish and stale cigarettes.? And then there was dragging that seemed to last longer than a lifetime.?
No, God damn it, I have to find Gem!
But he could barely form even partial words, there was no way to coerce his tongue into getting something that complex out. And was it better that she'd persuaded someone to help her, or would he have been safer lying there in his own blood? His breathing quickened subtly, and he hung uselessly limp, bones weak as water as the stranger with the rough hands dragged him. Now and then another fit of coughing, but upright now it was harder to get the thick, bubbling stuff?from his throat. There was nothing he could do but scream bloody murder inwardly...and remain shamefully vulnerable outwardly.
It was just perfect, really.? Slime layered cobblestones turned into a dirt caked wood floor, the darkness was always the same and would continue to be as it followed them.? Those rough hands hauled and tugged and with no warning they were gone, leaving all the useless limbs to crumble upon the body that was dumped on a floor.? It was cruel.? Heavy steps rang away only to be replaced by softer ones, the whisper of denim, and a muffled scraping sound.
"He wasn't a very nice, was he?" The voice he knew again, by his ear.
It wasn't a hospital bed. He should have been grateful for that, he supposed, because they always called the damn Watch when he finally woke up and started swinging, disoriented at the doctors. The men in uniform didn't need any more reasons to lock him up indefinitely. But being dumped on a dirty wooden floor wasn't much of an improvement from the alley, and the company? Well it was still Aoife, and that didn't bode well.
His eyes slipped open again, straining to focus beyond a blur. Was it dark?still? It didn't matter whether or not it was, really, his night vision was exemplary.
"What...?" The best he could manage for now. What did she want with him? He could not, would not assume that she was doing this out of the goodness of her heart.
It was dark, but not enough to obscure the lay of the room from his reaching eyes.? He hadn't been moved far.? This part of the city was littered with abandoned buildings, forgotten shells of something else left behind.? An entrance to one hadn't been far from where he lay outside in the cold.? The long hall had been littered with yesterday's trash.? Rats skittered for cover when they'd past, glaring with beady eyes as dinner had been interrupted. The room they were in was a simple thing really.? The door sagged shamelessly off the hinges, it might have been beautiful once.? One blank wall and two more carrying two windows each; Aoife was in there.? The glass was fogged with misuse, dirt, and days old rain.? There were a few broken squares of glass, and that, was the only guiding light for the push of the moon through the clouds.? It spilled over the floor and stretched as far as it could chasing shadows into rag piled corners.?
"Shh...you need your strength."? She was being so nice. And then something razor sharp bit into the skin at his left wrist.
It looked a bit like the s***ty little apartment he kept for a bolthole down near the docks. The one with the wall which still wore a stain from Sutton's suicide. He half expected to spot it there, and wondered whether he'd dreamed it once upon a time for her to see, to know. But the walls were only grubby, not splattered. And she was too close for comfort.
Stubbornly, he tried to organise his crumpled limbs into coordinating themselves, but the best he could manage was a flex of muscles and a slow, drowsy blink. No good. It made him recall the dream - the one where he'd been pinned down and she'd had the audacity to start carving into his calf where the scar was. Perhaps what was why he seemed unsurprised at the pain which bloomed brightly in his wrist.
"Don'...Aoifffe.." It came out growled, and truth be told he was f**king furious that he was defenceless around her. Little wench had some strange fascination with blood. And he'd taken hers. He had a funny feeling karma had caught up with him at last.
"Sit still."? It was chaste and sounded more like sssit ssstill.?
Karma was a b**ch with a nasty bite, like the one in his right wrist to match the left.? Pain bloomed like the blood that welled there to comfort it.? The musky smell of the room flooded with copper and honey, not just his.?
"You shouldn't nap in alley's, Mesteno.? It isn't safe."? She did have the audacity to lecture him.?The words followed her as she moved somewhere behind him.?That odd scuffling drag chased after. There was pressure again in his back, however he'd arranged himself.?She pressed into his shoulder blades and was playing with the hem of his shirt again.
The pain was nothing, really. He didn't even mind it, and if it'd been someone else, different circumstances, he might have even enjoyed it...
But this was the Dream Walker and who knew what a mentally unstable half-fae intended, bleeding him the way she was? So he bled, the scent of it thick and dark (if a scent could even have shades) while it ran little rivers over the contours of his hands, the tendons of his wrists. Of all the times to end up at her mercy.
Gods, I'm sorry, Gem. Please don't be dead.
He gave up with the protests, seemed to have come to the conclusion that it wouldn't be worth the effort while he couldn't even speak sense, and waited with the breath rattling unattractively in his throat while she toyed with the hem of his shirt.
Damn it. His clothes needed to stay put.
Fabric ripped, hem to neck exposing his back to the cold fingers of moon that streaked through a broken panel of glass; so much for his clothing staying put.?
What was she doing back there?? Never you mind, all in good time.? If he lay still and stopped squirming, his back would escape the blunt tipped kisses his wrists had not.? There was tugging along his spine, metal scraping metal, and at times pulling at his wrists.? Such an intricate thing she made up in the seconds she'd taken to do it.? The muffled noise was gone and silence flooded in to takes its place.? Rats skittered in the hall, creatures in the alley outside, but nothing from the dreamwalking half-breed.? Something so warm, and so fresh, and so sinfully delicious sprayed in hot, little drops over his face.?
"Wake up, it's okay now."
Had he been capable of moving as much as he'd have liked, he'd have been on his feet and stumbling out into the crisp, February night to resume the hunt. But he couldn't. Couldn't even keep one small girl from ripping his damned shirt up.
It wasn't a pleasant view. He was all bone and muscle, an anatomy model thinned down and wrapped in the thinnest of skins. There were markings carved across his upper back, almost interrupted by a horrific, dark patch of scarring where something had torn one of his shoulders apart, other trenches where the damage had been too great for the sides to knit cleanly, and of course the rings she? tormented. There had been six, once upon a time. One was absent, torn loose to be worn in a desert man's hair and likely never to be seen again.
Each little tug at those caused a shiver, tensed the muscles to the point that the sensitivity was obvious, and he bared his teeth at her, a snarling, half-starved wolf of a man. "What...is that? What?" He tried to move again. Slumped as if his limbs were as stable as wet clay. Groan.
Fabric hid secrets for many and Mesteno was just another, though she'd stolen some of his from him once upon a dream or two.?
There was enough slack in whatever she did for him to sit, kneel if he wanted.? Standing would be...rather difficult but possible.? What she'd done, you see, is wrapped barbed wired around each of his wrists (there's been no rope coiled about).? Now, this wire was slack enough for him to move his arms no further than the plane of his body.? Should he attempt to do that, it would pull tightly against the rings she'd threaded it through down his back.? The tail end of what had been left over was wound about the rusted, metal loop of an abandoned anchor resting against the wall.? He was free to go if he pleased, but the anchor would be coming.?
She hadn't gone without barbed kisses, the palms of her hands were ruined with them.? Sweet, smelling Fae blood welled at the sites and was what rained down on his face as she flicked it at him again.? "Wake-up."
"Are you..." Cough! "F**king insane, woman?"
Throat like gravel, the taste of his own blood in his mouth when he spoke, but it was the scent of hers which did terrible things. And he couldn't not smell it. It was there on his skin to be breathed in, warm. The taste was a remembered thing, and he couldn't avoid desiring it, because the part of him which hungered woke at the scent, just the way it had back at the inn when Teslim had left the basket with its gory contents.
But it was strange what that appetite could do. It drove him like a bullwhip, like fire nipping at his heels, and the next time he tried to scrambled up, straining his arms and legs so that they woke with agonising pins and needles, he actually had some small degree of success. Right up until the barbed wire pulled, and he felt skin tearing at his wrists, dozens of little metal spikes puncturing, the rings in his back lifting, jerking the wrong way. He was so startled by what she'd done that he froze, staring at her incredulously, blood matted hair clinging to one side of his face in the gloom.
"The f**k have you done to me!?"
"I was once."? She'd been crouched before him, balanced on the balls of her feet in such tiny, little ballet flats.? Her arms were draped over her knees, hands and fingers dangling loosely from beneath sleeves that were always too long.? She followed him up with bright, blue eyes; bye bye quiet gray.? There was blood on her chin, hers or his, not quite sure; maybe she'd had an itch during her attempt at artwork a la Mesteno.? His fire flared temper made her smile, it was beautiful.? "Are you angry?"? She tipped her head with the question, cheek nearly touching her shoulder.? "Because I'm not sorry."
He didn't have time for this, the need to get out was urgent, but God DAMN she'd known just how to goad him. Might as well have jabbed at his temper with a cattle prod. The Latin came surging up out of him like water from a fountain, blood-spattered and rumbling as he cursed her, a patina of pink clinging to the enamel of his teeth as he strained towards her as if he'd tear her limb from limb. Or, that would have been the idea, had he the strength for such things. Instead the barbed wire tightened, sank?deeper and the anchor wouldn't budge. He ended up keeling forwards, smacking his chin on the floor and biting back a shout at the sudden pain tugging at the muscles of his back.
"Medius fidius. In tartaro adrebis!" That was probably a yes.
She was close enough that some of his pink stained spit jumped through the air and landed on her hands.? She was quiet and still as he raged and shouted at her in a language she didn't understand.? When he had finally spent himself of that borrowed energy, she too fell to her knees and planted her hands on the floor, leaning down with a tumble of all that dark hair and wildflower sun scent.? It was a very naughty position to be in, but that didn't concern her.? The tips of her fingers danced on the dirty floor near his head.?
"You're very weak right now, you should save your strength."? She slid her arm across the floor and tapped his hand where the rich scented blood flowed freely from his struggles.? "You're making a mess."
His jaw was throbbing. Falling face first hurt, and along with every other little pain she'd inflicted, the burn in his lungs too, he really could have done without the mother of a headache that was descending on him.
"I'll show you a f**king mess. I'll make sure you're still breathing to see it while I take the rest of you apart. Don't f**king think I won't." And it wasn't beyond him. He was so expert in his field that it would be a small thing, to keep her pinned to her body like a bug under glass while?he took his time butchering her.
If he'd been thinking straight he'd have realised that making threats would do him no good, but fury had obliterated wisdom just now and? he attempted to reach for the hand near his, pulling against the barbed wire to further mutilate his own wrists, wrench at the rings. If he caught her? She was getting dragged in. Well...feebly. He couldn't even keep himself straight, let alone drag a woman about.
"I'm sure you'll think about it."? She very well knew that he was capable of his threats and she was walking a very fine line using this weakness of his against him.?
He didn't have to reach far to get ahold of her hand, but the wounds he'd inflicted upon himself (no thanks to her handiwork) had coated his hand, and now hers in his blood.? His fingers danced over her wrist, groping a stolen touch over a thick scar on the delicate underside before slipping off rejected.? She curled her arm away from him and clicked her tongue.?
"I don't want to hold your hand.? He wouldn't like that.? He doesn't like you."? She slid her hand along his throbbing jaw leaving a blood smear trail (sweet and rich combined) before she gripped his chin, lifting his head so that they were eye level.? "You should be nicer to me."
He shouldn't have cared who 'he' was, but as always his curiosity was pressing. Too much blood on the air. The scent of it was glazing his eyes, the hunger in him mounting until it wasn't comfortably bearable. How he resented that grip on his chin, let his lip curl to bare a canine at the contact.
"He? Who the f**k is he and why should I care? You think there's a chance in Hell I'll be 'nice' to you now?"
He shook his head obstinately to try and free his head of her grasp, and sat back, haunches to heels to catch his breath and try to stop the world from spinning. He'd wasted too much energy struggling, and the damn toxin was creeping back in, dimming the world at the edges. Don't fall asleep. You have work to do, you useless bastard.
The head shaking did him no good, but when he sat back she let his chin go with a pinch of her fingers and mimicked his posture.? She was much to close for his comfort.?
"You should be.? Because I'll find them when they sleep."? Again, that smile painted her lips too red to be pink.? It was nothing out of the ordinary.? She still spoke with that quiet, airy lilt of the Highlands.? Still wore a shirt with sleeves too long.? Still had hair darker than the pitch of black.? But there were no riddles, no nonsense rhymes, and nothing left of the morning mist in her eyes.? "And when I find them, they'll know it was because of you."
There was a very real risk that at this point he'd pass out again. And then what? Pitch forwards again and this time end up with his face in her lap.
He paid special attention to remaining conscious.
Perhaps that was why her words made so little sense. "Them?" The coughs caught up with him again, shook him hard enough that the barbed wire twisted a little more and braceletted his wrists in blood and raw flesh. Drops fell like dark, fractured garnet on the floorboards.
"I don't know what you mean. What did I do to anyone?" Lots of things. Many things. To more people than there were days in a year. What was it he was supposed to be doing again? "God damn it Aoife, get this f**king mess off me!" He strained towards her again sharply, as if he could make her get it off him by invading her personal space. The anchor fell over against the wall.
He invaded her space all right, first with his blood spattered coughing, a ruby dotted picture on the side of her face.? His lurch though would have set him off balance as would have the tip of the anchor along the wall.? The way he spent his energy on anger was fascinating to her, and she had hardly done a thing...well, besides the obvious.?
"Them.? All of them that mean anything to you."? She had stayed relatively clean through out this whole ordeal, save for her torn up hands which she rested palms up on her legs.? She couldn't go home looking like she'd done bad things.? "You really need to calm down.? Home is far walk away."? She wasn't touching that anchor again.? It burned her twice.
Well that was a threat he understood, couldn't quite believe, either. She was blackmailing him! And by that point the after effects of the toxin were pressing in too thickly for him to ignore. His head felt too heavy upon his scarred neck, the blood loss, whilst normally nothing which might have concerned him, was wearying, and there'd been no energy to tap into in the first place. Only the rage, and that was fast fading. The anchor had fallen, and it dragged on the barbed wire again, pulled it backwards so that the spikes cart-wheeled where they were buried, bursting out through the skin they'd yet to break and flattening the rings back down against his sharply jutting spine. His eyes started to slip closed again.
"I was supposed to be... They got her. Got her. Ngh..." Aoife evaded having him face to crotch, because he keeled over sideways. Hit hard with another smack of his head.?
Blackmail or not.? He may uphold one end and force himself not to rip her to pieces in public, but if he ever caught her alone she was very well sure that he'd drain her nearly dry and leave her barely breathing.? It was a good thing he couldn't get into her head.?
His mumbling had no effect on her and made the least bit of sense.? Nothing changed in bright blue of her eyes when he fell, except perhaps the fresh flow of blood.? The sight had her pupils swelling black into blue pushing it to the very edges.? He keeled over and she followed with the tip of her head.? And even though she wasn't sure he was finished, she took the chance and leaned over him.?
"I know you won't forget.? I thought you'd like it, our time together.? From me, " she rubbed her thumb over his lower lip painting it red with her blood, "to you."? Then she straightened and reached for the loose fabric of his tattered shirt, using it to wipe her hands off.? "You should rest."