Black Ice - The Twisted Thread - Part 4
Nov. 7th, 2011 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeShe went back to his place that night. Which was stupid, she told herself, especially with what had happened at the clinic and if the Hellhounds knew where he lived, but it was closer and she didn't want to be alone tonight.
By now Randi had been over to his place often enough to know her way around the kitchen, and he'd had her over often enough to know to have real food in the fridge. Even if neither of them was what one might call an actual factual cook, they could approximate it with throwing things together and opening a couple of beers and calling it even. She curled up against him as they sprawled out over the couch after, sinking into the saggy middle between the cushions and feeling the springs under her butt. But his chest was warm against her shoulders and his hand rubbed along her upper arm, and it felt good.
Squirmy feelings inside and rampant urges nonwithstanding, she enjoyed his company. And maybe part of what she enjoyed was having someone whose company to rest in at the end of the day. They'd managed to hit a point where they could sit on the couch and drink their beers and relax in the silence, well, relative silence. Sometimes there was a television or a radio. But sometimes it was true silence except for the sounds of the city and the house or apartment complex settling around them, and she didn't do silence well with most other people. They always felt a need to talk, or she felt like they were waiting for her to say something.
He didn't need to talk or wait. If he wanted to ask her something, he asked, or he said something if he had something to say. And if not, they moved around each other or with each other easily.
Randi wondered if that was the spell, too, or if that was just them. A love spell had to have something to anchor on, didn't it?
Love spells made her shiver. So did his touch down her shoulder, but love spells in general. She didn't like it. It made her want to get up and move away from him, which wasn't fair to either of them because this was working. More than it felt like it was something coming outside of herself.
But she kept catching herself in behaviors that she didn't normally do, things she never would have done in the first place, and it bothered her that without meaning to or asking for it he could drive her to want to do such out of character things.
Never mind. She set her now-empty bottle aside and turned, rocking up onto her knees on the squishy old couch.
“Mmm?” Ray tilted his head at her, smiling slightly.
She kissed him for an answer. Easier than talking right now.
He was gentle with her. She was gentle with him, more out of not knowing how she wanted to be than anything. But the rain started up again while they made love on his oddly comfortable bed, and it soothed the rough edges of her mind. Exhausted, feverish, she felt like someone had taken both a heater and an egg beater to her brains. He fell asleep soon after and she lay there, still and eyes closed, trying to join him. It didn't work.
By the time the moon had crept beyond the rim of the window she decided sleep tonight was a lost cause and eased herself out of the bed. For a biker and a person as on edge as he was, he was a deep sleeper. She padded out on bare feet into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, from a pitcher that had an actual filter in it, too. Fresh filter; that made her smile a little. Maybe she was teaching him civilization.
It wasn't her apartment. He lived in a real house, albeit a small one. Two bedrooms, narrow corridor, bigger living room and kitchen than she had. It was a ranch house designed to be a starter home for a family, though he lived in it alone and had for years, by the look of things. Bike grease in faded fingerprints on the doorway leading to the garage, magazines dumped in a magazine stand by the door. Mail stacked up on top of the giant TV, coasters and beer mugs, the big thick glass kind you found in bars. She wondered if absconding with beer mugs was the next big thing, now that you couldn't collect matchbooks anymore. Somehow, the thought of him smuggling a beer mug out under that big leather jacket of his made her smile.
On her third circuit of the living room, glass still in hand, she realized what was nagging at her. No library books. Not that many books of any kind, actually, which was really odd considering they'd met in the library.
“Which only means he doesn't have any books out right now,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head. Or at least, not out where she could see them.
It bothered her. Through taking her glass back and rinsing it out, upending it in the dish drainer harder than she should have. Randi froze, listening, but he didn't wake up. Might have rolled over and made the bed creak a little, but he didn't wake up.
So the guy didn't have any library books. Or any books. So what? Maybe he kept them somewhere else, on the bedside table, for instance. She could go back in the bedroom and rummage around, although she didn't want to do that and risk waking him up and having to explain all of this. But if he didn't read a lot of books, what was he doing in the library?
“Probably looking something up specific. Or maybe renting some music or a DVD. Economy crunch hit everyone...” The justifications went back to her internal monologue and did nothing to ease the feeling of disquiet.
Flattering as it was to think that someone had driven him to the library just to meet and hook up with her, she wondered even more about their relationship, now. What was going on here?
If she'd thought she could go back to sleep with a glass of water and a few minutes to herself, that was now impossible. She started around the room, making a slow circuit and checking every little nook and cranny not for some library book, but for whatever she could remember as a spell component. They'd had a day long seminar at this during her EMT training, the most common tools and spell components of witches, things used to affect another person's body or mind or actions. Just in case they ran into it in the field, then they'd know what to look for.
When she reached her hand behind the television she didn't expect to catch anything but dust and wires and maybe some dropped mail or a DVD. She didn't expect her fingers to brush wrapped leather. “It's just some, some decoration. Piece of a glove. Something. It's not...”
Randi pulled it out slowly. It wasn't a decoration, or at least, not one she was familiar with. It looked a little like a dreamcatcher, but while those charms were meant for good she had the feeling this one was meant for something less benevolent. It had bits of twine wrapped in a frame wrapped in black leather, and she bit her lip to keep herself from running into the bedroom right now and asking him if he was missing anything. Pair of gloves. Second best jacket.
If there was something like this in her apartment, too, she was going to scream.
She took it over to the couch and fell into the creaky old thing, turning it over and over again in her fingertips. Cool to the touch; she'd always been told that magic things were warm if they were still in use, so maybe this was a one-time spell. Just to trap him and put that thought in his mind, and not still going. She still wanted to drop it down the garbage disposal and shred the hell out of it. And she wasn't sure she believed in it, either. Hellhounds were one thing, and the fae, and other things she'd seen and touched, people she'd treated with her own hands. Something tiny and fragile like this affecting two people's whole lives like that?
She curled up tighter on the couch. It didn't look right, it didn't feel right, nothing about this situation felt right. If she were a private investigator or a heroine in a story she would be able to pick apart every detail of this charm, figure out who had cast it, track it back to the sender. All she could do in real life was try and fail to remember the details of who had been in the library that night, shiver from the cold, and shiver from the increasing fear of it all until he did wake up at last and come out to carry her back to bed, huddled against him for the reassurance of someone solid in all this world-churning craziness.
“You know, this could be anything, right?”
Randi scrubbed her hands over her face, not wanting to fight again. Not just because of the spell but because she had barely gotten any sleep the night before and she had been exhausted before that. She didn't want to fight now, not over this.
Deep breath. “I know that I don't know what it is,” she told him, in what she thought was a very calm and reasonable tone. “And I know that I was taught to look for the signs of a lot of different magic devices that take control of a person, and this looks like one of them.”
He scowled. He paced, he glared, he looked like he would hit her if she were anyone else and she didn't back up, though she did make sure there was a big heavy object near to hand if it came down to a physical fight.
“But you can't be sure.”
Then again, maybe she just wanted a big heavy object to hit him with. “Look, you said it yourself, you don't know what this is or where it came from, or what it's doing in your house. Do you want to know if someone's fucking with your head or not?
It was either the desperate violence all throughout her body language or the fact that she'd finally put it down to naked, blatant terms that got him. He turned a slow half-circle on one heel, did another circuit up and down along the coffee table, then nodded. And didn't even wait to see if she was behind him before he grabbed his jacket and stomped out the door.
The fact that he seemed to have some idea of where to go disturbed her a little. More so when they pulled up in front of the library. “Um...” Not that he could hear her through the bike helmet. They got off, still with a bit of a pang of separation every time she unclenched her arms from around his waist, and pulled off their helmets.
“Figured if there was anything going on, either someone here might know about it or there might be something still here,” he explained, gesturing with one tired hand at the building.
Oh. That made some sense, really, and she kind of felt stupid for not thinking of it first. But he got a small smile for that. “Okay.”
He smiled back, small and tired but still a real smile, she could tell that much. And it was a real embrace, and with real affection when she leaned in against him, under his arm. He might be a biker and kind of a bastard, and probably part demon as well, but he was also kind and he did work at a real job, she'd seen him at his garage enough to know that even when he didn't know she was watching. He seemed like he was good at what he did, though she didn't know a lugnut from a wingnut from a nutjob.
The library wasn't very full, at least. She glanced over at the circulation desk, back over at him and smiled and leaned her head to his shoulder and whispered, “Don't recognize anyone working tonight from, you know.”
He took an unobtrusive glance, then nodded. “Me either.”
So there was that at least.
“Where were you, that night, you remember?”
He did remember, and they went over. Mechanical manuals, all of them going back a ways, all of them the kind of thing the library didn't let you check out. Which explained both his presence in the library and the absence of library books in his home.
She did have one question, though. “Isn't this the kind of thing you usually keep in the garage?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “But then you get oil all over them, grease, food,” with a wry grin and a chuckle. “Sometimes, if there's a year or something you need to look up we don't have, we come here.”
“That's the most prosaic and unmysterious answer I've ever heard,” she laughed a little, trying to dispel the tension. She felt like she had eyes on the back of her neck.
And when he looked over her shoulder and the humor drained out of his eyes, Randi liked her exposure to the rest of the room even less. “What.”
“Don't look now. Someone's watching.”
Her jaw clenched around the shit she wanted to snap out. Watching them? On purpose? There was a difference between watching them and watching him when people in biker leathers didn't come into the library regularly. Or at least, she was under the impression they didn't. Maybe with the whole looking up stuff in old manuals that was different?
Randi slumped over the table as he started to relax, as the person behind her moved on. He or she must have, Ray wasn't staring so hard past her at whoever that was. “I hate this. I hate this shit. I hate this, figuring this out in the middle of your goddamn turf war, I ...”
“Hey, hey...” he reached out, one hand rubbing her shoulder. “Hey.” And then, and she didn't know why he suggested it then and there, but he did. “We don't have to be in the middle of all of this, you know. We could go off somewhere. I could move to another charter, we could pack up, head out...”
She gave him a flat stare from beneath her hair, tired and in no mood. “With no job. For either of us. No school for me, no job for you, no resources, no savings...” Well, she had a little bit of savings, but she wasn't going to suggest that.
“The charter could...”
“No.” She knew where that led, biker gangs had been in the news lately. “No, we are not doing that, you are, I am not...” There was that clench again, the twisting in her gut, but she was standing firm on this point. “No. No drugs, no guns, no crime, no blackmail or protection or whatever it is you people do for money when you're not doing legitimate work. No.”
He leaned back in his chair, the ugly expression back on his face. Something twisted, pulling up on his cheekbones and pressing against his skin for a second, and then it was gone and in its place was something tired and pained and vulnerable. “Just a thought...”
She blinked again. Then reached out and curled her hand around his. “Hey. It's not a bad thought, in principle. Just, not without some kind of safety net, okay?” She couldn't believe she was considering this. “Not in this economy. Look, if you really want to try it, you call your charter. See if they can set you up in a legitimate job, none of this gang crap that's probably what started the bloodbath over at the hospital.”
That last came out in low tones, but she was proud of herself for saying it straight out like that.
“What about you?”
“I can request my transcripts when the session's over, transfer up to a school in almost any major city. I can apply to hospitals and places like that while you're setting up there, too. We just have to do this careful, okay? Real careful.”
“Okay,” he nodded slightly, glancing over her shoulder for a moment but then back across the table, whoever had caught his attention must not have been that important. He nodded again, slow and considering. “Okay. If it looks like we need to...”
“We can get out of here,” she nodded. Smiled a little. As much as she could manage, anyway.
Somehow, she expected a lair of a gang of bikers to be more paranoid.
And here she was, stretched out on the roof opposite the garage with a pair of binoculars in hand, watching them. Trying to avoid feeling like a stalker even though she really kind of was, but she wanted to make sure. And she wanted to know what the hell was going on. And what this part of his life entailed when she wasn't around and wasn't getting second and third-hand stories from him and the one or two friends he'd told about her.
“Which still doesn't change the fact that you're stalking your kind of boyfriend, Randi,” she muttered to herself. “Nice. Very nice. They have laws about people like you, you know...”
This, too, wasn't like her, and she clenched her jaw shut on the rest of that. Well, talking to herself was totally like her, she had to talk to someone when she was all alone in her apartment. Stalking her boyfriend, no, not so much. This wasn't the kind of behavior of a normal person in a normal relationship. And she justified it by saying that she was keeping an eye on him with the bloodbath earlier, the Hellhounds, the people casting spells on them but really, it wasn't normal behavior. It wasn't even acceptable behavior by her usual standards.
She should go. She should pack up and go and never, ever mention this to him, or anyone. She should pack up and go and never do anything this dumbassed again.
He was talking to someone. Out of some perverse instinct, she trained the binoculars on them.
Someone tall, bigger than he was, which was an accomplishment. Not only taller by a couple inches even allowing for the angle and the perspective shift, but also broader across the shoulders. Maybe. It was hard to tell. This taller broader someone didn't like what he was hearing, evidently, and she wondered if he was telling the guy he wanted to pack up and move out. Whatever the word was for it. He'd mentioned something about charters, switching charters, but that still meant leaving, and even if it didn't mean leaving the club there was going to be some resistance.
Dammit. This was turning into a shouting match, she guessed. Or was going to. Even if they hadn't raised their voices to where she could see, she'd spent enough time watching people's body language as a paramedic to know that the guy was going to be a problem.
“Come on, disengage, get out of there,” she muttered, making faces. Whatever he was saying, it didn't work. Wasn't working to placate his friend, and it wasn't working to get him out of that situation any quicker. She more than half expected it to explode into a fist-fight or something. At least neither of them had a major weapon. She thought.
One sound behind her brought her head sharply up from the binoculars, but it was far too late. By the time she heard the foot scuff on the rooftop the guy's buddy was standing over her, clapping a hand over her mouth and nose and wrapping the other hand around her upper arms and shoulders, pinning her arms to her side.
He pulled her backwards in an awkward position that bent her spine in ways her spine screamed not to be bent, though it had to be awkward for them, too. But it kept her from struggling, which was probably a plus for their side, and she couldn't count the number of hands she felt on her body after that. Kicking as hard as she could, clawing at the arm around her, not that it did much good. They were big, and they were strong, and they smelled like wet dog.
Then it smelled like wet rag, chloroform. She was unconscious before she could ask them if maybe that wasn't a little too out of date.
Randi woke with a splitting headache, whether because of the chloroform or because of something that had happened while she was out, she didn't know. She had a splitting headache, she was on her back on a mattress that smelled like pee and other things she didn't want to think about, and the light kept buzzing and flickering. Which might also be the source of the headache even if her eyes hadn't been open until a second ago. The light flickered through the blindfold, irritating her even as muted as it was.
Her hands were bound behind her back, which was fine if you were one of those super-bendy yoga people from the movies and could work your feet through your wrists or something. Not so much for her. Maybe there was something with sharp edges she could cut the rope on, or was that something that only happened in the movies, too. She rolled herself up to her feet, but all she could find was a solid wall and a length of pipe. No jagged edges of metal, nothing in front of her but cold concrete under her feet. It felt, now that she thought about it, like someone's basement.
This always happened in the movies. Some of the time in real life, too. Or so she'd seen on the news.
There were voices coming down the stairs. Some of them she only half recognized. One of them was familiar.
“How do I know you're telling the truth?” Zenya asked, and Randi tried to get up to her feet before she realized that doing so with her hands pinned behind her back might not be the best of ideas.
“Hey, Zenya, I'm over...” overbalanced. Over her head, she stumbled again and fell hard against the wall, skidding back down to the mattress.
Laughter all around her, or at least, in a half-moon shape in front of her. “That proof of life enough for you?”
“Turn the camera around.”
That was Ray's voice. He didn't sound happy. They did something, she heard feet shuffling and saw a different colored light appear through the blindfold. So maybe it was a webcam type chat. Proof of life, she dredged that up from some half-forgotten television show about thieves and kidnappers, or maybe it was a movie. Proof of life happened when there was a ransom demand.
What the hell were they demanding?
“Happy?”
And why did that voice sound familiar?
“No,” Ray sneered. She could imagine the look on his face, the way he seemed to grow a couple of inches in all directions when he was pissed. And loom, he was very good at looming. “So why don't you tell us what you want, and we'll see if we can get it for you.”
That had to take restraint. Either that or there was something about these kidnappers she wasn't getting. He sounded pissed off, and between him and his gang it wasn't like him to just back down or roll over when he was this pissed off. At least, she thought he wouldn't.
This was also the part where she was supposed to say don't give them a thing, except she didn't. Beneath the unreasoning hatred of her unidentified kidnappers and the bravado fantasies of breaking loose and kicking all their asses she was all but wetting herself in fear. This wasn't the kind of situation that ended peacefully. They probably hadn't even called the cops.
No, Zenya was with Ray. Why was she with him? Randi had never introduced them, had he gone to the hospital when she'd turned up missing? She would have called the cops, she was sensible like that.
“... and get out.”
She'd missed the first part of that, too, while she was trying to figure out what was going on, why her two friends had suddenly joined forces. Dammit. She had the feeling their demands were important, a clue as to who they were and what they were doing, why they were doing this. No, stupid, of course their demands are important and full of clues, they wouldn't just ask for a pepperoni pizza and a stack of brownies because they had the munchies.
Screw this. “Ray?”
“Yeah, baby?”
Someone came and clamped a hand down on her shoulder, forcing her to sit back down again. She glared up at them through the blindfold. “You okay? Why're you with Zenya?” What the hell had happened while she was gone?
“He came to make sure you didn't turn up at the hospital the wrong way 'round,” Zenya broke in, dry but with her old humor laced all through. Probably putting on a brave front with all the rest of them. “He may look like a thug but he's good people, your guy.”
Randi felt her cheeks heat up, smiling even if she didn't mean to or didn't want to or didn't feel much like smiling. Stupid damn spell. “Yeah, I guess he is...” and then she clamped her lips shut and listened to the angry murmur around her. Damn. That's what this was all about, wasn't it. Not a ransom, but her. And not even her for herself, her for what she represented. This wasn't about the bike charter or any other thing, but they'd gotten to him through the gang, and now she knew where she'd heard those voices before. Those were the guys from his gang with the patches on their jackets and the look in their eyes. And that smell of burning hair ends around them.
“All right, you guys have had enough time to talk,” was all the warning she got, before the big meaty hand closed around her mouth and nose again. Another rag, another dose of chloroform, another headache spiking through her eyeballs and up into her brain. She did find out a couple of things before she dropped out of consciousness, though. One, judging by the sliver of clear vision she got from under the blindfold, there were only three of them. At least, three pairs of boots on the ground.
The other was that they did need her alive after all. Because they needed him alive. Maybe there were some good points to being soul-bonded to someone else.
They brought her up the stairs by one arm; she stumbled as much as she could and bounced off the basement railing to try and convince them to at least undo her arms. It worked, sort of. They brought her arms around to her front and tied them again, muttering the whole time about how she'd better not try anything or they'd do a whole list of terrible things to her. She could imagine the consequences of all of them, too. She'd brought people into the ER with those kinds of injuries.
Turned out it wasn't time for the meeting, anyway. One of them asked if she needed to go to the bathroom before they got in the car.
“That's awfully nice of you.” Sarcasm dripped from her every pore, as much as she could throw at them at least.
There was a moment of silence before the reply that she took for the shrug she couldn't see. “Don't want you pissing on my seats.”
Fair enough. She snorted again and went and stalked in one direction before they laughed at her and grabbed her by the arms and took her to the bathroom. By the time she got to the door she realized that they weren't going to untie her hands, might not even leave her in the bathroom on her own. Maybe one of them would pull down her pants for her. Somehow, that was more disturbing and humiliating than the earlier threats.
They didn't, though. She got to fumble at her pants by herself, to her deep and knee-loosening relief.
“What's taking so fucking long in there?” someone yelled, by the time she'd gotten her pants down and sat her butt on the cold porcelain seat.
Randi swore at them. “You try pissing with your hands fucking tied behind your back.” Only they'd tied her hands in front of her. Close enough.
It turned out she didn't have to go that bad, though, and while she pretended she was still struggling with her pants she fumbled around the tiny toilet as best she could. There had to be something useful in here. If she came out with her blindfold off they'd just tape her eyes shut, so she made do with the shapes she could see through the cloth. Toothbrushes, why the hell did kidnappers bother with brushing their teeth? Face wash and aftershave and deodorant, which she guessed made sense if they were trying to get laid. Razors, both safety and straight.
Straight razor. That was a goddamn straight razor they'd left on the sink.
She stuffed it down her pocket as quick as she could, making sure it was closed, then pulled up her pants the rest of the way and buttoned them. The whole time her skin prickled with cold and with waiting for them to say something like, hey you better be out in five seconds or we're coming in after you or, worse, hey didn't you leave that straight razor in there. But they still didn't say anything.
“Look. I'm out. See?” Hands tied in front of her, pants fastened, door closed behind her so they couldn't see the contest of their bathroom disturbed. She didn't know how they shaved in that tiny little hole of a bathroom that gave whole new dimensions to the phrase water closet. They turned her around while she pictured them moving around each other, elbows in everyone's way. Anything to distract her from what was coming.
Outside the gravel was hard, sharp and pressing right into her bare feet; she didn't know what had happened to her shoes. Maybe they'd gotten knocked off of her, she thought she'd felt one come loose while she was trying to kick them in a soft place. They marched her towards something that turned out to be a truck, as she found out when she tripped forward into the cab and banged her shins on the front, swearing loudly.
“Get in there or I'll pick you up and throw you in,” one of them said, while the other two laughed. “Shut up!” Not that they did, but the laughter subsided. Randi turned far enough so that they could see her giving them the rude fingers, one wrist crossed in front of the other. Then she did get in, slid all the way to the other side.
Wedged in against that corner of the cab, it was almost like there wasn't anyone in the truck at all. At least it would have been if it weren't for the cell phone argument the driver had with another guy, someone riding ahead and making sure the site was clear, she guessed. And they drove. The road hissed by, she tried to keep track of the miles and the potholes but that didn't work either. All those wonderful action movie cliches and devices, spoiled for her lack of practice. Maybe she'd close her eyes and try to find her way on the road the next time she and Ray took a ride.
Good thought, that. Keep thinking like she was going to make it out of this, like they were both going to make it out of this.
The truck stopped with a jolt, hard enough to rock her in her seat. Her shoulder bumped against the door latch, her forearm bruised against the handle, which gave her a decent enough excuse to curl up against that side for a second. Just long enough to pull the straight razor and slip it into her sleeve. She'd have to make do with her hands tied if she could get the blindfold off.
“Oh, come on, you stupid...” More name calling, more threats. He came around the other side and yanked her out of the car, and now she did hear the sound of other bikes pulling up, bikes that sounded like Ray's. It wasn't too much to hope that he'd come with his boys for backup, right? His real boys, the human ones, if he had any human allies... And then they took the blindfold off and she saw what he had for allies.
A couple of the gang, yeah. A couple of them who looked more scared than anything, who weren't in charge of anyone and were so far from being any kind of alpha of the group that they might as well have been on the moon for all the help they were going to be her. Zenya was there, looking scared but determined. Scottie, too. Scottie had his black backpack, bless him, the one that always had the full medical kit inside. She wished she could believe he wouldn't need it.
The formalities started. She slipped the razor out of her sleeve as best she could and started to saw at her ropes.
“What the hell are you...”
One of them grabbed for her wrist, and she skipped back a couple of steps, slashing out at his hands with the razor. It was just enough to make him step back, just far enough, and she knew where all the soft spots were. All the places where the veins and arteries, the really big blood vessels ran close to the skin. She opened his throat before she thought about the fact of what she was doing.
He stepped back, gagging. How hard had she cut him, anyway, surely not hard enough to hit his trachea? There was maybe a second or two where she tried to figure that out, and then he turned to his friends and they could see the blood pouring down and it was on from there. Guns blazing.
“Get down!” she screamed, ducking behind the truck.
She saw Zenya and Scottie beating feet for the van, hoping that it would shield them. She saw a body in leather falling, curled up behind the wheel well and wondered if putting as much metal and rubber between her and the bullets would even do anything, and then the door slammed above her. More swearing.
“Shit... you fucking idiot! What the hell...”
The truck pulled away. Randi scrambled for cover again, something, anything to hide her from the bullets even if a part of her knew how stupid it was to try to hide from bullets, only to realize that they were leaving. Why were they leaving?
The pile of black leather on the ground wasn't moving. Those rings looked awfully familiar.
The utter shattering of her mind had to be the spell, she decided. She wasn't the kind of person to completely break over something like this. That decision propelled her across the pavement to kneel down next to him, careful, checking everything in order, airway, breathing. There was no breathing. Well, with six or seven bullet holes that she could see penetrating that beautiful, soft leather jacket, no wonder. Zenya tried to pull her away, but she still had work to do, she had to check and maybe apply a pressure bandage, stop the bleeding...
“Come on, baby, okay, come on, we need to get out of here, the cops'll be here any...”
Scottie picked her up around the shoulders and she kicked him, kicked back against his shins, and he winced. Yelped the second time, but he still all but shoved her into the van and she bounced off the opposite wall, turning and lunging for the door again only to have it slammed in her face. That confused her, being stymied confused her, and her cheeks were hot but her skin was cold, and then they were in motion, Zenya coming into the back with her and throwing a blanket around her shoulders and explaining how she was in shock while Scottie floored it and sped hell for leather out of the parking lot.
She got out of the hospital after the 72 hour evaluation when they couldn't find anything wrong with her physically and couldn't explain her mindset in terms that painted her as a danger to herself or others. Randi knew the system. She'd checked in enough people for these kinds of evaluations herself, she knew exactly what words to avoid using to keep herself out of the damn white room.
She met Zenya as she stepped out of the entryway, blinking against the cold sun. “They called you?”
Her friend nodded. “They didn't want you to be home alone.” And by the sound of her voice, Zenya agreed. She looked worried. Randi couldn't say that she wasn't right to be worried, but she wasn't sure how she felt, either.
“I'll be okay.”
Zenya nodded, and they moved out to the car together. The air was crisp, that kind of cold just short of being freezing that nonetheless didn't have enough moisture in it to be comfortable. Everything showed up in sharp focus, but all of it in shades of blue and gray, cool colors. Nothing warm, nothing loud either. Everything muted and soft and empty.
She settled in the passenger seat and felt the uncomfortable, unfamiliar fabric squish under her body. Okay, it wasn't that unfamiliar, but it felt like it, after weeks of being on the bike. She wondered what would happen to that bike, now. Did they give it some sort of viking funeral, everything that belonged to the guy was buried with the guy? Did they torch it? Did they leave it rusting in some corner because now it was sacred and no one else could ride it? That'd be stupid. Then again, they didn't exactly make themselves conspicuous with intelligence.
This whole thing was the work of someone who had conspicuous intelligence. The spell. The fascination, the bond. And it wasn't the work of someone who wanted to keep the gang together, not when it involved taking out one of their most prominent members. Crippling the leader.
“Can we stop at the library?” she asked, as Zenya pulled out of the hospital complex entire.
Zenya gave her a quizzical look, but nodded. “Sure, yeah.” On the face of it it sounded like a good idea. Get a couple books, she could stay in bed a couple days, keep busy, and then catch up on her school-work and pick up her shift again.
And she could do that, but after she figured out who the hell the spellcaster was. It was someone Ray had seen in the library the other day. Someone who worked there, who had worked there both days even if she hadn't noticed them, and someone who would probably have one hell of a headache now that the spell was broken and backlashed on the caster. She didn't know much about magic and how it worked but she did know that when people's workings came undone they got blistering migraines, at the very least.
Three people working the circulation desk that day. One person checking people out, a perky goth girl with black spiderweb arm-warmers and bangles all over her head, probably not someone suffering anything more painful than a blister from her high heels at the moment. One of them a kindly woman of middle age, sorting through books to re-shelve and answering questions. One of them a man leaving through a back door with his hand pressed to his forehead as though it pained him, hair thinner and gray, face caucasian featured and more tanned in the skin tone. Hard to place. But she'd know him if she saw him again, and there was something familiar about him.
She lost Zenya in the stacks and slipped back through a side door to what appeared to be a hallway along the back of the library dotted with 'Employees only' doors.
“Bad day?”
He straightened, turned around and she realized he wasn't much taller than she was. The sweater made him seem bigger, thick as it was, but he was actually a small and slender man. Didn't hold himself too much like a combative person, either. “I'm sorry, you're not supposed to...”
Not combative was fine, it meant she could stalk towards him and take out all her confusion and hurt and fury over the past few days on punching him in the face. Hard.
Okay, not as hard as probably Ray could have, or anyone else with actual training, but she was used to hauling around people and equipment and it gave her a certain amount of muscle even if she didn't know how, technically, to throw a solid punch. And he wasn't expecting it. He rocked back and yelped right up until she stepped forward again and grabbed his throat, pressing on his windpipe.
“See, one of the fun parts about being a nurse?” Nurse in training, but if he didn't know that by now he didn't have to. “You know where all the soft squishy bits are, and you can hurt people to make them tell you things. Like why...”
“I needed someone inside their organization.”
That was way faster than she expected. She let go so he could speak more clearly, not sure she'd heard him right the first time. He swallowed, but didn't step back, and not in the way that suggested it was because he didn't have much further to go before he hit the wall. He stayed upright and facing her, so she was forced to keep herself in his personal space or take a step back. Which she wasn't willing to do, either.
This was the second time in as many months as she'd gotten up close and personal with a guy she barely knew. Not a habit she wanted to get into.
“It wasn't personal...” he took out a handkerchief, an honest to god white handkerchief, and dabbed at his nose. Little blood, nothing major. “I needed a way in, and I needed to put some heart and some soul into the soulless. With you, I found both.”
“What the hell did you do to us?” It came out thick and choked, half a whisper and half a gurgle. Like she was coughing up the words.
He shrugged, spread his hands. “I created a bond between you that I thought was unbreakable. Evidently, I need to rework my for--”
“He's dead.”
And for whatever reason, despite appearing to have full knowledge of what Ray was into, that surprised him. “I see.”
“Yeah, you see.” Randi thought about hitting him again, even balled up and raised her fist, but dropped it again when he didn't react in any kind of threatened way. “You see, you ... you jackass.” Too tired to fight, she turned and started for the door again. Zenya would be looking for her, anyway.
By now Randi had been over to his place often enough to know her way around the kitchen, and he'd had her over often enough to know to have real food in the fridge. Even if neither of them was what one might call an actual factual cook, they could approximate it with throwing things together and opening a couple of beers and calling it even. She curled up against him as they sprawled out over the couch after, sinking into the saggy middle between the cushions and feeling the springs under her butt. But his chest was warm against her shoulders and his hand rubbed along her upper arm, and it felt good.
Squirmy feelings inside and rampant urges nonwithstanding, she enjoyed his company. And maybe part of what she enjoyed was having someone whose company to rest in at the end of the day. They'd managed to hit a point where they could sit on the couch and drink their beers and relax in the silence, well, relative silence. Sometimes there was a television or a radio. But sometimes it was true silence except for the sounds of the city and the house or apartment complex settling around them, and she didn't do silence well with most other people. They always felt a need to talk, or she felt like they were waiting for her to say something.
He didn't need to talk or wait. If he wanted to ask her something, he asked, or he said something if he had something to say. And if not, they moved around each other or with each other easily.
Randi wondered if that was the spell, too, or if that was just them. A love spell had to have something to anchor on, didn't it?
Love spells made her shiver. So did his touch down her shoulder, but love spells in general. She didn't like it. It made her want to get up and move away from him, which wasn't fair to either of them because this was working. More than it felt like it was something coming outside of herself.
But she kept catching herself in behaviors that she didn't normally do, things she never would have done in the first place, and it bothered her that without meaning to or asking for it he could drive her to want to do such out of character things.
Never mind. She set her now-empty bottle aside and turned, rocking up onto her knees on the squishy old couch.
“Mmm?” Ray tilted his head at her, smiling slightly.
She kissed him for an answer. Easier than talking right now.
He was gentle with her. She was gentle with him, more out of not knowing how she wanted to be than anything. But the rain started up again while they made love on his oddly comfortable bed, and it soothed the rough edges of her mind. Exhausted, feverish, she felt like someone had taken both a heater and an egg beater to her brains. He fell asleep soon after and she lay there, still and eyes closed, trying to join him. It didn't work.
By the time the moon had crept beyond the rim of the window she decided sleep tonight was a lost cause and eased herself out of the bed. For a biker and a person as on edge as he was, he was a deep sleeper. She padded out on bare feet into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, from a pitcher that had an actual filter in it, too. Fresh filter; that made her smile a little. Maybe she was teaching him civilization.
It wasn't her apartment. He lived in a real house, albeit a small one. Two bedrooms, narrow corridor, bigger living room and kitchen than she had. It was a ranch house designed to be a starter home for a family, though he lived in it alone and had for years, by the look of things. Bike grease in faded fingerprints on the doorway leading to the garage, magazines dumped in a magazine stand by the door. Mail stacked up on top of the giant TV, coasters and beer mugs, the big thick glass kind you found in bars. She wondered if absconding with beer mugs was the next big thing, now that you couldn't collect matchbooks anymore. Somehow, the thought of him smuggling a beer mug out under that big leather jacket of his made her smile.
On her third circuit of the living room, glass still in hand, she realized what was nagging at her. No library books. Not that many books of any kind, actually, which was really odd considering they'd met in the library.
“Which only means he doesn't have any books out right now,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head. Or at least, not out where she could see them.
It bothered her. Through taking her glass back and rinsing it out, upending it in the dish drainer harder than she should have. Randi froze, listening, but he didn't wake up. Might have rolled over and made the bed creak a little, but he didn't wake up.
So the guy didn't have any library books. Or any books. So what? Maybe he kept them somewhere else, on the bedside table, for instance. She could go back in the bedroom and rummage around, although she didn't want to do that and risk waking him up and having to explain all of this. But if he didn't read a lot of books, what was he doing in the library?
“Probably looking something up specific. Or maybe renting some music or a DVD. Economy crunch hit everyone...” The justifications went back to her internal monologue and did nothing to ease the feeling of disquiet.
Flattering as it was to think that someone had driven him to the library just to meet and hook up with her, she wondered even more about their relationship, now. What was going on here?
If she'd thought she could go back to sleep with a glass of water and a few minutes to herself, that was now impossible. She started around the room, making a slow circuit and checking every little nook and cranny not for some library book, but for whatever she could remember as a spell component. They'd had a day long seminar at this during her EMT training, the most common tools and spell components of witches, things used to affect another person's body or mind or actions. Just in case they ran into it in the field, then they'd know what to look for.
When she reached her hand behind the television she didn't expect to catch anything but dust and wires and maybe some dropped mail or a DVD. She didn't expect her fingers to brush wrapped leather. “It's just some, some decoration. Piece of a glove. Something. It's not...”
Randi pulled it out slowly. It wasn't a decoration, or at least, not one she was familiar with. It looked a little like a dreamcatcher, but while those charms were meant for good she had the feeling this one was meant for something less benevolent. It had bits of twine wrapped in a frame wrapped in black leather, and she bit her lip to keep herself from running into the bedroom right now and asking him if he was missing anything. Pair of gloves. Second best jacket.
If there was something like this in her apartment, too, she was going to scream.
She took it over to the couch and fell into the creaky old thing, turning it over and over again in her fingertips. Cool to the touch; she'd always been told that magic things were warm if they were still in use, so maybe this was a one-time spell. Just to trap him and put that thought in his mind, and not still going. She still wanted to drop it down the garbage disposal and shred the hell out of it. And she wasn't sure she believed in it, either. Hellhounds were one thing, and the fae, and other things she'd seen and touched, people she'd treated with her own hands. Something tiny and fragile like this affecting two people's whole lives like that?
She curled up tighter on the couch. It didn't look right, it didn't feel right, nothing about this situation felt right. If she were a private investigator or a heroine in a story she would be able to pick apart every detail of this charm, figure out who had cast it, track it back to the sender. All she could do in real life was try and fail to remember the details of who had been in the library that night, shiver from the cold, and shiver from the increasing fear of it all until he did wake up at last and come out to carry her back to bed, huddled against him for the reassurance of someone solid in all this world-churning craziness.
“You know, this could be anything, right?”
Randi scrubbed her hands over her face, not wanting to fight again. Not just because of the spell but because she had barely gotten any sleep the night before and she had been exhausted before that. She didn't want to fight now, not over this.
Deep breath. “I know that I don't know what it is,” she told him, in what she thought was a very calm and reasonable tone. “And I know that I was taught to look for the signs of a lot of different magic devices that take control of a person, and this looks like one of them.”
He scowled. He paced, he glared, he looked like he would hit her if she were anyone else and she didn't back up, though she did make sure there was a big heavy object near to hand if it came down to a physical fight.
“But you can't be sure.”
Then again, maybe she just wanted a big heavy object to hit him with. “Look, you said it yourself, you don't know what this is or where it came from, or what it's doing in your house. Do you want to know if someone's fucking with your head or not?
It was either the desperate violence all throughout her body language or the fact that she'd finally put it down to naked, blatant terms that got him. He turned a slow half-circle on one heel, did another circuit up and down along the coffee table, then nodded. And didn't even wait to see if she was behind him before he grabbed his jacket and stomped out the door.
The fact that he seemed to have some idea of where to go disturbed her a little. More so when they pulled up in front of the library. “Um...” Not that he could hear her through the bike helmet. They got off, still with a bit of a pang of separation every time she unclenched her arms from around his waist, and pulled off their helmets.
“Figured if there was anything going on, either someone here might know about it or there might be something still here,” he explained, gesturing with one tired hand at the building.
Oh. That made some sense, really, and she kind of felt stupid for not thinking of it first. But he got a small smile for that. “Okay.”
He smiled back, small and tired but still a real smile, she could tell that much. And it was a real embrace, and with real affection when she leaned in against him, under his arm. He might be a biker and kind of a bastard, and probably part demon as well, but he was also kind and he did work at a real job, she'd seen him at his garage enough to know that even when he didn't know she was watching. He seemed like he was good at what he did, though she didn't know a lugnut from a wingnut from a nutjob.
The library wasn't very full, at least. She glanced over at the circulation desk, back over at him and smiled and leaned her head to his shoulder and whispered, “Don't recognize anyone working tonight from, you know.”
He took an unobtrusive glance, then nodded. “Me either.”
So there was that at least.
“Where were you, that night, you remember?”
He did remember, and they went over. Mechanical manuals, all of them going back a ways, all of them the kind of thing the library didn't let you check out. Which explained both his presence in the library and the absence of library books in his home.
She did have one question, though. “Isn't this the kind of thing you usually keep in the garage?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “But then you get oil all over them, grease, food,” with a wry grin and a chuckle. “Sometimes, if there's a year or something you need to look up we don't have, we come here.”
“That's the most prosaic and unmysterious answer I've ever heard,” she laughed a little, trying to dispel the tension. She felt like she had eyes on the back of her neck.
And when he looked over her shoulder and the humor drained out of his eyes, Randi liked her exposure to the rest of the room even less. “What.”
“Don't look now. Someone's watching.”
Her jaw clenched around the shit she wanted to snap out. Watching them? On purpose? There was a difference between watching them and watching him when people in biker leathers didn't come into the library regularly. Or at least, she was under the impression they didn't. Maybe with the whole looking up stuff in old manuals that was different?
Randi slumped over the table as he started to relax, as the person behind her moved on. He or she must have, Ray wasn't staring so hard past her at whoever that was. “I hate this. I hate this shit. I hate this, figuring this out in the middle of your goddamn turf war, I ...”
“Hey, hey...” he reached out, one hand rubbing her shoulder. “Hey.” And then, and she didn't know why he suggested it then and there, but he did. “We don't have to be in the middle of all of this, you know. We could go off somewhere. I could move to another charter, we could pack up, head out...”
She gave him a flat stare from beneath her hair, tired and in no mood. “With no job. For either of us. No school for me, no job for you, no resources, no savings...” Well, she had a little bit of savings, but she wasn't going to suggest that.
“The charter could...”
“No.” She knew where that led, biker gangs had been in the news lately. “No, we are not doing that, you are, I am not...” There was that clench again, the twisting in her gut, but she was standing firm on this point. “No. No drugs, no guns, no crime, no blackmail or protection or whatever it is you people do for money when you're not doing legitimate work. No.”
He leaned back in his chair, the ugly expression back on his face. Something twisted, pulling up on his cheekbones and pressing against his skin for a second, and then it was gone and in its place was something tired and pained and vulnerable. “Just a thought...”
She blinked again. Then reached out and curled her hand around his. “Hey. It's not a bad thought, in principle. Just, not without some kind of safety net, okay?” She couldn't believe she was considering this. “Not in this economy. Look, if you really want to try it, you call your charter. See if they can set you up in a legitimate job, none of this gang crap that's probably what started the bloodbath over at the hospital.”
That last came out in low tones, but she was proud of herself for saying it straight out like that.
“What about you?”
“I can request my transcripts when the session's over, transfer up to a school in almost any major city. I can apply to hospitals and places like that while you're setting up there, too. We just have to do this careful, okay? Real careful.”
“Okay,” he nodded slightly, glancing over her shoulder for a moment but then back across the table, whoever had caught his attention must not have been that important. He nodded again, slow and considering. “Okay. If it looks like we need to...”
“We can get out of here,” she nodded. Smiled a little. As much as she could manage, anyway.
Somehow, she expected a lair of a gang of bikers to be more paranoid.
And here she was, stretched out on the roof opposite the garage with a pair of binoculars in hand, watching them. Trying to avoid feeling like a stalker even though she really kind of was, but she wanted to make sure. And she wanted to know what the hell was going on. And what this part of his life entailed when she wasn't around and wasn't getting second and third-hand stories from him and the one or two friends he'd told about her.
“Which still doesn't change the fact that you're stalking your kind of boyfriend, Randi,” she muttered to herself. “Nice. Very nice. They have laws about people like you, you know...”
This, too, wasn't like her, and she clenched her jaw shut on the rest of that. Well, talking to herself was totally like her, she had to talk to someone when she was all alone in her apartment. Stalking her boyfriend, no, not so much. This wasn't the kind of behavior of a normal person in a normal relationship. And she justified it by saying that she was keeping an eye on him with the bloodbath earlier, the Hellhounds, the people casting spells on them but really, it wasn't normal behavior. It wasn't even acceptable behavior by her usual standards.
She should go. She should pack up and go and never, ever mention this to him, or anyone. She should pack up and go and never do anything this dumbassed again.
He was talking to someone. Out of some perverse instinct, she trained the binoculars on them.
Someone tall, bigger than he was, which was an accomplishment. Not only taller by a couple inches even allowing for the angle and the perspective shift, but also broader across the shoulders. Maybe. It was hard to tell. This taller broader someone didn't like what he was hearing, evidently, and she wondered if he was telling the guy he wanted to pack up and move out. Whatever the word was for it. He'd mentioned something about charters, switching charters, but that still meant leaving, and even if it didn't mean leaving the club there was going to be some resistance.
Dammit. This was turning into a shouting match, she guessed. Or was going to. Even if they hadn't raised their voices to where she could see, she'd spent enough time watching people's body language as a paramedic to know that the guy was going to be a problem.
“Come on, disengage, get out of there,” she muttered, making faces. Whatever he was saying, it didn't work. Wasn't working to placate his friend, and it wasn't working to get him out of that situation any quicker. She more than half expected it to explode into a fist-fight or something. At least neither of them had a major weapon. She thought.
One sound behind her brought her head sharply up from the binoculars, but it was far too late. By the time she heard the foot scuff on the rooftop the guy's buddy was standing over her, clapping a hand over her mouth and nose and wrapping the other hand around her upper arms and shoulders, pinning her arms to her side.
He pulled her backwards in an awkward position that bent her spine in ways her spine screamed not to be bent, though it had to be awkward for them, too. But it kept her from struggling, which was probably a plus for their side, and she couldn't count the number of hands she felt on her body after that. Kicking as hard as she could, clawing at the arm around her, not that it did much good. They were big, and they were strong, and they smelled like wet dog.
Then it smelled like wet rag, chloroform. She was unconscious before she could ask them if maybe that wasn't a little too out of date.
Randi woke with a splitting headache, whether because of the chloroform or because of something that had happened while she was out, she didn't know. She had a splitting headache, she was on her back on a mattress that smelled like pee and other things she didn't want to think about, and the light kept buzzing and flickering. Which might also be the source of the headache even if her eyes hadn't been open until a second ago. The light flickered through the blindfold, irritating her even as muted as it was.
Her hands were bound behind her back, which was fine if you were one of those super-bendy yoga people from the movies and could work your feet through your wrists or something. Not so much for her. Maybe there was something with sharp edges she could cut the rope on, or was that something that only happened in the movies, too. She rolled herself up to her feet, but all she could find was a solid wall and a length of pipe. No jagged edges of metal, nothing in front of her but cold concrete under her feet. It felt, now that she thought about it, like someone's basement.
This always happened in the movies. Some of the time in real life, too. Or so she'd seen on the news.
There were voices coming down the stairs. Some of them she only half recognized. One of them was familiar.
“How do I know you're telling the truth?” Zenya asked, and Randi tried to get up to her feet before she realized that doing so with her hands pinned behind her back might not be the best of ideas.
“Hey, Zenya, I'm over...” overbalanced. Over her head, she stumbled again and fell hard against the wall, skidding back down to the mattress.
Laughter all around her, or at least, in a half-moon shape in front of her. “That proof of life enough for you?”
“Turn the camera around.”
That was Ray's voice. He didn't sound happy. They did something, she heard feet shuffling and saw a different colored light appear through the blindfold. So maybe it was a webcam type chat. Proof of life, she dredged that up from some half-forgotten television show about thieves and kidnappers, or maybe it was a movie. Proof of life happened when there was a ransom demand.
What the hell were they demanding?
“Happy?”
And why did that voice sound familiar?
“No,” Ray sneered. She could imagine the look on his face, the way he seemed to grow a couple of inches in all directions when he was pissed. And loom, he was very good at looming. “So why don't you tell us what you want, and we'll see if we can get it for you.”
That had to take restraint. Either that or there was something about these kidnappers she wasn't getting. He sounded pissed off, and between him and his gang it wasn't like him to just back down or roll over when he was this pissed off. At least, she thought he wouldn't.
This was also the part where she was supposed to say don't give them a thing, except she didn't. Beneath the unreasoning hatred of her unidentified kidnappers and the bravado fantasies of breaking loose and kicking all their asses she was all but wetting herself in fear. This wasn't the kind of situation that ended peacefully. They probably hadn't even called the cops.
No, Zenya was with Ray. Why was she with him? Randi had never introduced them, had he gone to the hospital when she'd turned up missing? She would have called the cops, she was sensible like that.
“... and get out.”
She'd missed the first part of that, too, while she was trying to figure out what was going on, why her two friends had suddenly joined forces. Dammit. She had the feeling their demands were important, a clue as to who they were and what they were doing, why they were doing this. No, stupid, of course their demands are important and full of clues, they wouldn't just ask for a pepperoni pizza and a stack of brownies because they had the munchies.
Screw this. “Ray?”
“Yeah, baby?”
Someone came and clamped a hand down on her shoulder, forcing her to sit back down again. She glared up at them through the blindfold. “You okay? Why're you with Zenya?” What the hell had happened while she was gone?
“He came to make sure you didn't turn up at the hospital the wrong way 'round,” Zenya broke in, dry but with her old humor laced all through. Probably putting on a brave front with all the rest of them. “He may look like a thug but he's good people, your guy.”
Randi felt her cheeks heat up, smiling even if she didn't mean to or didn't want to or didn't feel much like smiling. Stupid damn spell. “Yeah, I guess he is...” and then she clamped her lips shut and listened to the angry murmur around her. Damn. That's what this was all about, wasn't it. Not a ransom, but her. And not even her for herself, her for what she represented. This wasn't about the bike charter or any other thing, but they'd gotten to him through the gang, and now she knew where she'd heard those voices before. Those were the guys from his gang with the patches on their jackets and the look in their eyes. And that smell of burning hair ends around them.
“All right, you guys have had enough time to talk,” was all the warning she got, before the big meaty hand closed around her mouth and nose again. Another rag, another dose of chloroform, another headache spiking through her eyeballs and up into her brain. She did find out a couple of things before she dropped out of consciousness, though. One, judging by the sliver of clear vision she got from under the blindfold, there were only three of them. At least, three pairs of boots on the ground.
The other was that they did need her alive after all. Because they needed him alive. Maybe there were some good points to being soul-bonded to someone else.
They brought her up the stairs by one arm; she stumbled as much as she could and bounced off the basement railing to try and convince them to at least undo her arms. It worked, sort of. They brought her arms around to her front and tied them again, muttering the whole time about how she'd better not try anything or they'd do a whole list of terrible things to her. She could imagine the consequences of all of them, too. She'd brought people into the ER with those kinds of injuries.
Turned out it wasn't time for the meeting, anyway. One of them asked if she needed to go to the bathroom before they got in the car.
“That's awfully nice of you.” Sarcasm dripped from her every pore, as much as she could throw at them at least.
There was a moment of silence before the reply that she took for the shrug she couldn't see. “Don't want you pissing on my seats.”
Fair enough. She snorted again and went and stalked in one direction before they laughed at her and grabbed her by the arms and took her to the bathroom. By the time she got to the door she realized that they weren't going to untie her hands, might not even leave her in the bathroom on her own. Maybe one of them would pull down her pants for her. Somehow, that was more disturbing and humiliating than the earlier threats.
They didn't, though. She got to fumble at her pants by herself, to her deep and knee-loosening relief.
“What's taking so fucking long in there?” someone yelled, by the time she'd gotten her pants down and sat her butt on the cold porcelain seat.
Randi swore at them. “You try pissing with your hands fucking tied behind your back.” Only they'd tied her hands in front of her. Close enough.
It turned out she didn't have to go that bad, though, and while she pretended she was still struggling with her pants she fumbled around the tiny toilet as best she could. There had to be something useful in here. If she came out with her blindfold off they'd just tape her eyes shut, so she made do with the shapes she could see through the cloth. Toothbrushes, why the hell did kidnappers bother with brushing their teeth? Face wash and aftershave and deodorant, which she guessed made sense if they were trying to get laid. Razors, both safety and straight.
Straight razor. That was a goddamn straight razor they'd left on the sink.
She stuffed it down her pocket as quick as she could, making sure it was closed, then pulled up her pants the rest of the way and buttoned them. The whole time her skin prickled with cold and with waiting for them to say something like, hey you better be out in five seconds or we're coming in after you or, worse, hey didn't you leave that straight razor in there. But they still didn't say anything.
“Look. I'm out. See?” Hands tied in front of her, pants fastened, door closed behind her so they couldn't see the contest of their bathroom disturbed. She didn't know how they shaved in that tiny little hole of a bathroom that gave whole new dimensions to the phrase water closet. They turned her around while she pictured them moving around each other, elbows in everyone's way. Anything to distract her from what was coming.
Outside the gravel was hard, sharp and pressing right into her bare feet; she didn't know what had happened to her shoes. Maybe they'd gotten knocked off of her, she thought she'd felt one come loose while she was trying to kick them in a soft place. They marched her towards something that turned out to be a truck, as she found out when she tripped forward into the cab and banged her shins on the front, swearing loudly.
“Get in there or I'll pick you up and throw you in,” one of them said, while the other two laughed. “Shut up!” Not that they did, but the laughter subsided. Randi turned far enough so that they could see her giving them the rude fingers, one wrist crossed in front of the other. Then she did get in, slid all the way to the other side.
Wedged in against that corner of the cab, it was almost like there wasn't anyone in the truck at all. At least it would have been if it weren't for the cell phone argument the driver had with another guy, someone riding ahead and making sure the site was clear, she guessed. And they drove. The road hissed by, she tried to keep track of the miles and the potholes but that didn't work either. All those wonderful action movie cliches and devices, spoiled for her lack of practice. Maybe she'd close her eyes and try to find her way on the road the next time she and Ray took a ride.
Good thought, that. Keep thinking like she was going to make it out of this, like they were both going to make it out of this.
The truck stopped with a jolt, hard enough to rock her in her seat. Her shoulder bumped against the door latch, her forearm bruised against the handle, which gave her a decent enough excuse to curl up against that side for a second. Just long enough to pull the straight razor and slip it into her sleeve. She'd have to make do with her hands tied if she could get the blindfold off.
“Oh, come on, you stupid...” More name calling, more threats. He came around the other side and yanked her out of the car, and now she did hear the sound of other bikes pulling up, bikes that sounded like Ray's. It wasn't too much to hope that he'd come with his boys for backup, right? His real boys, the human ones, if he had any human allies... And then they took the blindfold off and she saw what he had for allies.
A couple of the gang, yeah. A couple of them who looked more scared than anything, who weren't in charge of anyone and were so far from being any kind of alpha of the group that they might as well have been on the moon for all the help they were going to be her. Zenya was there, looking scared but determined. Scottie, too. Scottie had his black backpack, bless him, the one that always had the full medical kit inside. She wished she could believe he wouldn't need it.
The formalities started. She slipped the razor out of her sleeve as best she could and started to saw at her ropes.
“What the hell are you...”
One of them grabbed for her wrist, and she skipped back a couple of steps, slashing out at his hands with the razor. It was just enough to make him step back, just far enough, and she knew where all the soft spots were. All the places where the veins and arteries, the really big blood vessels ran close to the skin. She opened his throat before she thought about the fact of what she was doing.
He stepped back, gagging. How hard had she cut him, anyway, surely not hard enough to hit his trachea? There was maybe a second or two where she tried to figure that out, and then he turned to his friends and they could see the blood pouring down and it was on from there. Guns blazing.
“Get down!” she screamed, ducking behind the truck.
She saw Zenya and Scottie beating feet for the van, hoping that it would shield them. She saw a body in leather falling, curled up behind the wheel well and wondered if putting as much metal and rubber between her and the bullets would even do anything, and then the door slammed above her. More swearing.
“Shit... you fucking idiot! What the hell...”
The truck pulled away. Randi scrambled for cover again, something, anything to hide her from the bullets even if a part of her knew how stupid it was to try to hide from bullets, only to realize that they were leaving. Why were they leaving?
The pile of black leather on the ground wasn't moving. Those rings looked awfully familiar.
The utter shattering of her mind had to be the spell, she decided. She wasn't the kind of person to completely break over something like this. That decision propelled her across the pavement to kneel down next to him, careful, checking everything in order, airway, breathing. There was no breathing. Well, with six or seven bullet holes that she could see penetrating that beautiful, soft leather jacket, no wonder. Zenya tried to pull her away, but she still had work to do, she had to check and maybe apply a pressure bandage, stop the bleeding...
“Come on, baby, okay, come on, we need to get out of here, the cops'll be here any...”
Scottie picked her up around the shoulders and she kicked him, kicked back against his shins, and he winced. Yelped the second time, but he still all but shoved her into the van and she bounced off the opposite wall, turning and lunging for the door again only to have it slammed in her face. That confused her, being stymied confused her, and her cheeks were hot but her skin was cold, and then they were in motion, Zenya coming into the back with her and throwing a blanket around her shoulders and explaining how she was in shock while Scottie floored it and sped hell for leather out of the parking lot.
She got out of the hospital after the 72 hour evaluation when they couldn't find anything wrong with her physically and couldn't explain her mindset in terms that painted her as a danger to herself or others. Randi knew the system. She'd checked in enough people for these kinds of evaluations herself, she knew exactly what words to avoid using to keep herself out of the damn white room.
She met Zenya as she stepped out of the entryway, blinking against the cold sun. “They called you?”
Her friend nodded. “They didn't want you to be home alone.” And by the sound of her voice, Zenya agreed. She looked worried. Randi couldn't say that she wasn't right to be worried, but she wasn't sure how she felt, either.
“I'll be okay.”
Zenya nodded, and they moved out to the car together. The air was crisp, that kind of cold just short of being freezing that nonetheless didn't have enough moisture in it to be comfortable. Everything showed up in sharp focus, but all of it in shades of blue and gray, cool colors. Nothing warm, nothing loud either. Everything muted and soft and empty.
She settled in the passenger seat and felt the uncomfortable, unfamiliar fabric squish under her body. Okay, it wasn't that unfamiliar, but it felt like it, after weeks of being on the bike. She wondered what would happen to that bike, now. Did they give it some sort of viking funeral, everything that belonged to the guy was buried with the guy? Did they torch it? Did they leave it rusting in some corner because now it was sacred and no one else could ride it? That'd be stupid. Then again, they didn't exactly make themselves conspicuous with intelligence.
This whole thing was the work of someone who had conspicuous intelligence. The spell. The fascination, the bond. And it wasn't the work of someone who wanted to keep the gang together, not when it involved taking out one of their most prominent members. Crippling the leader.
“Can we stop at the library?” she asked, as Zenya pulled out of the hospital complex entire.
Zenya gave her a quizzical look, but nodded. “Sure, yeah.” On the face of it it sounded like a good idea. Get a couple books, she could stay in bed a couple days, keep busy, and then catch up on her school-work and pick up her shift again.
And she could do that, but after she figured out who the hell the spellcaster was. It was someone Ray had seen in the library the other day. Someone who worked there, who had worked there both days even if she hadn't noticed them, and someone who would probably have one hell of a headache now that the spell was broken and backlashed on the caster. She didn't know much about magic and how it worked but she did know that when people's workings came undone they got blistering migraines, at the very least.
Three people working the circulation desk that day. One person checking people out, a perky goth girl with black spiderweb arm-warmers and bangles all over her head, probably not someone suffering anything more painful than a blister from her high heels at the moment. One of them a kindly woman of middle age, sorting through books to re-shelve and answering questions. One of them a man leaving through a back door with his hand pressed to his forehead as though it pained him, hair thinner and gray, face caucasian featured and more tanned in the skin tone. Hard to place. But she'd know him if she saw him again, and there was something familiar about him.
She lost Zenya in the stacks and slipped back through a side door to what appeared to be a hallway along the back of the library dotted with 'Employees only' doors.
“Bad day?”
He straightened, turned around and she realized he wasn't much taller than she was. The sweater made him seem bigger, thick as it was, but he was actually a small and slender man. Didn't hold himself too much like a combative person, either. “I'm sorry, you're not supposed to...”
Not combative was fine, it meant she could stalk towards him and take out all her confusion and hurt and fury over the past few days on punching him in the face. Hard.
Okay, not as hard as probably Ray could have, or anyone else with actual training, but she was used to hauling around people and equipment and it gave her a certain amount of muscle even if she didn't know how, technically, to throw a solid punch. And he wasn't expecting it. He rocked back and yelped right up until she stepped forward again and grabbed his throat, pressing on his windpipe.
“See, one of the fun parts about being a nurse?” Nurse in training, but if he didn't know that by now he didn't have to. “You know where all the soft squishy bits are, and you can hurt people to make them tell you things. Like why...”
“I needed someone inside their organization.”
That was way faster than she expected. She let go so he could speak more clearly, not sure she'd heard him right the first time. He swallowed, but didn't step back, and not in the way that suggested it was because he didn't have much further to go before he hit the wall. He stayed upright and facing her, so she was forced to keep herself in his personal space or take a step back. Which she wasn't willing to do, either.
This was the second time in as many months as she'd gotten up close and personal with a guy she barely knew. Not a habit she wanted to get into.
“It wasn't personal...” he took out a handkerchief, an honest to god white handkerchief, and dabbed at his nose. Little blood, nothing major. “I needed a way in, and I needed to put some heart and some soul into the soulless. With you, I found both.”
“What the hell did you do to us?” It came out thick and choked, half a whisper and half a gurgle. Like she was coughing up the words.
He shrugged, spread his hands. “I created a bond between you that I thought was unbreakable. Evidently, I need to rework my for--”
“He's dead.”
And for whatever reason, despite appearing to have full knowledge of what Ray was into, that surprised him. “I see.”
“Yeah, you see.” Randi thought about hitting him again, even balled up and raised her fist, but dropped it again when he didn't react in any kind of threatened way. “You see, you ... you jackass.” Too tired to fight, she turned and started for the door again. Zenya would be looking for her, anyway.